Canadians: Imagine Ron McLean

Imagine Ron McLean: But much as I love watching the Olympics and all the energy and enthusiasm that goes with them, I deeply wish that we had the same excitement and media coverage for poverty reduction. Imagine Ron McLean announcing with bated breath that we had just lifted so many Canadians out of poverty and into lives of dignity. Or if we gave gold, silver and bronze medals to businesses that created new well paying jobs or for those organizations and governments that were dedicated heart and soul to creating real economic opportunity for the shrinking middle class and the growing number of Canadians who find themselves on the outside looking in, according to The Star. On Feb. 13 representatives of many of Torontos faith communities gathered at City Hall for the second annual Faith in the City Conference . The subject was the growing income gap and what we as faith communities can do to address it and I love the Olympics, the gifted athletes, the competition; the joy of victory and the sorrow of loss that goes with these games are the human experience in a microcosm. In fact, as the gold medal mens hockey game is scheduled to take place on a Sunday morning at 7 a.m., when Canada I m an optimist takes to the ice, we will be showing the game on the screens at the front of our church, combining prayer and hockey, a most Canadian combination. The increasingly grim situation that many Canadians are facing transcends our dated notions of left or right. We need a new paradigm that fits the revolutionary times in which we find ourselves. We are all living in the midst of a revolution technological, social and economic and we keep attempting to use solutions from the old world and are surprised when they no longer work in the new. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.