>> 30
i think you're being harsh waha. personally i agree with you, but you have to be intelligent enough to know that most welfare systems are broken enough that in some situations they are preferable to working. anyways, here are your damn dirty statistics:
http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/stats.htm
(i'm paraphrasing): 80% of poor 2 parent canadian families not on welfare make 15,000$ a year. by comparison, the average 2 parent canadian family makes 86,000$ a year.
its hard to find the average amount received per family, but if you take the amount given to all families from this table: 219,705,000,000
http://www11.sdc.gc.ca/en/cs/sp/socpol/publications/statistics/9999-000096/table1.shtml
aka 219 billion dollars, aka 21.92% of the canadian gdp (don't believe me? go to the link, i could be reading the table wrong).
# of families receiving benefits, as of this table: 3,213,513
http://www11.sdc.gc.ca/en/cs/sp/socpol/publications/statistics/9999-002455/tab106e.shtml
219,705,000,000 / 3,213,513 = 68,369.
what this means is that accounting for all social benefits in canada (its hard to say what % of canada receives some. pop. = 32 million, but how many "people" is 3.2 million families? its a good guess to say that about 20% of canadians receive some benefits, i think), takes an average of 68 thousand canadian dollars to administer and provide, per family.
what services this includes, according to the first website:
aboriginal assistance, job training, education savings funds, student loans, employment insurance, "income security programs", adoption services, anti-homelessness initiative, literacy initiative, "new horizons for seniors", day care programs, food assistance, and unemployment assistance.
the reason i wrote out that long list is because i wanted to head off any suggestiosn that 20% of gdp is a fine price to pay for unemployment + free healthcare. note though, that this does not include healthcare, or education, those are seperate departments. so 22% of gdp is consumed before education, defense, or healthcare are considered.