Friday, June 19, 2015

Juxtaposition

Sure, it might be tempting to say there's no difference at all between this...
The federal government touted a number of initiatives Wednesday for improving First Nations’ well-being but could not explain why a new report showed the prosperity gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people was widening in some cases.

The report, released by the federally appointed National Aboriginal Economic Development Board, found that First Nations living on reserves had shown the least improvement.

Relying on 2006 and 2011 census data, the report found the non-aboriginal employment rate went from 62.7 per cent to 61.2 per cent. For First Nations living on reserves, it dropped from 39 per cent to 35.4 per cent.

Large disparities in income levels remained. In 2010, average income was $18,586 among aboriginals on reserves and $30,266 off reserves. For non-aboriginals, the average was $41,052.
...and this:
China’s president, Xi Jinping, has told villagers in one of the most deprived areas of the country, where four children killed themselves last week by swallowing pesticide, that poverty is nothing to fear.

He made the comments in Huamao, a village in the south-western province of Guizhou, according to China’s official news agency.
...
Speaking to Caixin, a current affairs magazine, in the wake of the children’s deaths, Ye Jingzhong, a scholar from the China Agricultural University in Beijing, said: “Rural society is withering.”

Xi’s trip to Guizhou appeared partly designed to address such concerns. The ruling Communist party of China “cares a lot about farmers, particularly those in poverty, and has enacted various policies to boost rural development”, the president reportedly told villagers.
But there's certainly one distinction worth drawing. Unlike Stephen Harper, China's leaders at least deigned to show up in the general vicinity of the people they're telling to keep suffering through avoidable poverty.

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