Social security rates for B.C. poor slammed as MLA ends welfare month hungry, broke

Call it a poverty diet – but poverty is a matter of health and safety, a B.C. politician argued. After living for the month of January on $610 – welfare's financial aid for a single employable person – Surrey MLA Jagrup Brar found himself not only $7 in debt, but 12 kilograms (26 lbs) lighter.
 
Today, the seven-year New Democratic Party (NDP) politician woke up in his home, with his own family, whom he had only been allowed to visit once a week – and even had to pay them for his meals.
 
Dressed in plain black shirt, faded jeans and blue baseball cap, Brarremoved his well-worn work boots for a weigh-in. The scale didn't lie: after only 31 days in soup kitchen line-ups, a cramped single resident occupancy (SRO) room, and even dumpster diving, the strikingly tall MLA had dropped from 108 kg to 96.5 kg.
 
“That diet is available to anyone,” joked a man from the back of the boisterous room in a Powell Street co-op housing common room, to laughter from many Downtown Eastside (DTES) residents attending his farewell speech and press conference yesterday.
 
“At this rate of losing weight, in nine months he would completely disappear,” joked veteran anti-poverty advocate Jean Swanson. But the message of Raise the Rates, the group behind Brar's month-long 'Welfare Challenge,' was dead serious.