How we treat the worst-off

It's probably out of fashion to mention that governments aren't providing for Canada's most needy. If so, I don't care.

“Total welfare incomes everywhere in Canada were well below poverty lines once again in 2004,” the report said.
Adjusting for inflation, the report said, many provincial and territorial benefits in 2004 were at their lowest levels since the 1980s. Typical welfare incomes across Canada, it noted, were thousands of dollars below the poverty line.
Single, employable recipients in New Brunswick were the worst off, with total incomes amounting to $3,388 – only 19 per cent of amount at the poverty line.

The shocking part to me is that even with the end of the fiscal crunch in the '90s, the relative funding for welfare programs has still declined. This is a failure of both policy (doesn't a below-sustenance level of welfare pretty much assure that a person can't so much as appear presentably at a job interview?) and compassion.

Update: And of course, that ever-leftist CBC news completely ignored the above story, while giving substantial air time to this. A story yes...the more important one, not by a long shot.