Surrey-Fleetwood MLA speaks to Kwantlen
Jagrup Brar spoke to Kwantlen students and faculty about his experience living on welfare.
By Sarah Schuchard
Several dozen students and faculty came to hear Surrey-Fleetwood MLA Jagrup Brar at Kwantlen’s Surrey campus on Feb. 9 to learn about his experience living on welfare for the month of January.
After shelling out rent money, Brar found himself living on a diet of noodles, eggs, bread, and peanut butter. Brar only had an allowance of $610, which is the average welfare allowance given to an able-bodied individual in British Columbia for one month. He planned to spend half of his time in Surrey and the remainder of it in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, living in the notorious single-room-occupancy (SRO) buildings. It was difficult for Brar — after the cost of housing, he was left with little more than $100, and by Jan. 25 he was completely out of money.
When he took on the challenge, which was given by the Vancouver-based organization Raise the Rates, he said he had little support from those close to him and his community often asked why he wanted to do it.
Brar saw it as an opportunity to experience the hardships of poverty first hand and to “tell a story of half a million people living in poverty in [the] beautiful province of B.C.”
When Brar spent the second half of his challenge in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside he describes it as anything but pleasant, saying that one of the SROs he observed was so bad that he wouldn’t even bring his dog in.
“It was eye opening, it was shocking. It was disturbing to see people living in these conditions in the province of B.C.,” he said.
Brar said what changed his perspective of people living in poverty was hearing a man named Rick tell his story during Brar’s first day of the challenge.
Brar found out that after working 20 years in the construction industry, Rick had been diagnosed with liver cancer and was no longer able to keep his job, resulting in him having no choice but to live off of welfare.
Brar wanted to make it clear to people that the common stereotypes of people living on welfare are not accurate.
“Out of half a million people in poverty in B.C., 64 per cent of them are actually working,” he said.
He makes it clear that not all is well in the system and that changes are needed to ensure that people are living with respect and dignity in British Columbia.
Brar wants more affordable housing, the removal of earning exemptions, easily-accessible transit, raised welfare rates and for jobs paying decent wages in order to ensure a standard of living for those that are able to work.
Brar said, “I would like to conclude by saying that I apologize to the people who lost their lives because of poverty. We failed to provide them the resources to live to their full potential,” he said.
“We are a wealthy province, we can do way better.”
