Scarborough families struggle to make ends meet

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Sam Thuraisamy says he accepts that his future is a series of low-wage jobs, maybe two at a time.

"My focus for everything is on my kids," the Scarborough man said this week before switching to a more familiar Tamil. "But hopefully my kids' future will be better."

Once a clerical worker in Sri Lanka, Thuraisamy makes $7 an hour delivering pizza as a "contract" driver with no benefits. His wife works in a bakery for minimum wage to feed their three children.

"There are so many families like me who are struggling...their whole life is a struggle," he said.

Tomorrow, Ontario's Liberal government is expected to release a long-awaited anti-poverty strategy, one Children and Family Services Minister Deb Matthews called a comprehensive plan that will create better opportunities for children.

"We did make the difficult decision of focusing on kids first," Matthews said in an interview, pledging that the strategy formed after extensive talks with citizens and groups will try "breaking the inter-generational cycle" by boosting education.

"The best protection against poverty is a good education," she said.

Matthews comments came the same day as the Children's Aid Society of Toronto released a report, Greater Trouble in Greater Toronto, echoing others before it by showing child poverty is entrenched in the city.

From 1997 to 2005, it says, Scarborough gained 25 per cent more children but an estimated 32 per cent - or 47,530 children - lived there in poverty.

Colin Hughes, a Scarborough-based community worker for the society, said he's cautiously optimistic on what the strategy may include.

"What we really want to see is some concrete action and some progressive action," he said.

"Investing in children, as every parent knows, provides great, great returns."

Sitting at the East Scarborough Storefront in West Hill, Thuraisamy said the government has to look through the eyes of workers and close a loophole that lets employers deny benefits and a minimum wage to workers like himself.

"Even though there's a law, we still don't get vacation pay, holiday pay," he said.

Across the table, Koneswary Koneswaran said she has worked through a temp agency paying her $7 to package chocolate because she had no other choice.

Now, she's drawing Employment Insurance payments after a job that paid $9 and hour. Her husband works but makes $10 an hour, barely enough for the rent, Koneswaran said, explaining in Tamil she has two children and cannot even buy the food they need, let alone the toys they want.

"You don't have any other way to turn, you get angry," she said, adding governments can help by raising the minimum wage and the child tax benefit.