Question

1. Search the Internet for a provincial or federal government overall OR a department business plan.
2. Examine the plan for underlying public policy objectives. List and describe the objectives.

Topic:  Alberta Poverty Reduction Strategy .

Next, select one point from the policy that particularly interested you, confused you, or angered you. Formulate a question to begin a general discussion. (Note: ensure that your questions elicit an idea, not just a one-word answer. Rather than asking "Do you agree?", formulate a question such as "What do you think about the government's objective of...?")

Answer 1

                        The government of Alberta has formulated a poverty reduction strategy which is a community driven process that is aimed at poverty reduction over the next 5 years and to reduce the overall poverty in the next 10 years. ‘Together we rise tomorrow’ is one of the province wide initiative to promote the health of children in Alberta. With almost 3,18,000 Albertan’s on the verge of poverty which includes nearly a lakh children, it is very important as to why such programmes should be undertaken. The following are the major policy initiatives and the working structure of the above program

· The government would engage Albertan’s to develop the Children’s charter and move with the Albertan approach of Early Childhood development

· The strategic plan aims to eliminate childhood poverty in the next five years and to reduce overall poverty in the next 10 years.

· It has a community-based evaluation strategy and a program that has intermediate and long term strategic goals.

· It has a methodology of speaking with the Albertans especially the children to find out how the poverty would look like in each sectors of the economy and would contribute to Alberta’s social policy framework.

· The Children first Act is a right move in this regard which would review all the policies related to children and thus would make the children safe within the city.

· The affer-tax income measure is based to find the poverty measure which states that income is only one form of poverty measure as there are many other factors that contributes to the same.

All the above are the major policy objectives of the poverty reduction strategy. The major question that rises in this view is that

‘Why should the Albertan program focus only on children poverty alone and not on other factors that lead to poverty also? If so, what is the program to formulate the same?’