Our local food bank is in the midst of its 29th annual Thanksgiving Food Drive - three decades in which use has climbed repeatedly over the ensuing years. This year some 850,000 Canadians will visit food banks each month.  One wonders why it is that successive Canadian governments have proved so ineffective at seriously dealing with poverty rates in the country. They have all pointed to one measure or another that highlighted their dedication to the matter, and yet the rates remain stubbornly high.Michael Ignatieff's insightful new book, released last week and called The Common Virtues, opens with a recounting of a 1562 meeting between French philosopher Michel de Montaigne and three painted “Indians” who had been captured in Rio de Janeiro and brought to France. When he inquired what they thought of French society they noted how they were astonished at Europe's inequality, of how a few lived in castles while others “starved at their doors.” They went on to express great confusion that nations so blessed with wealth and might could so easily accept such clear levels of poverty.This response caught the French off-guard, since they viewed their culture as the highest form of human attainment in the world. The prosperous West of today holds to the same belief regarding its wealth and affluence, yet frequently has difficulty acknowledging that its levels of homelessness, mental illness, poverty and gender inequality (poverty's harshest effects fall on women) belie its illusions of grandeur.In a month where so much natural and human violence has filled our screens, filling us with horror, we forget Mahatma's Gandhi's observation: “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” The reason? Because it isn't a dramatic one-time event, but a grinding, seemingly hopeless, never-ending trek of isolation, that is left to fester in perpetuity.Gandhi would have found common understanding with the Indians that met with Montaigne. He said near the end of his life: “A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” If that is true, then most Western nations, for all their prosperity, have a lot of explaining to do.Richard Nixon's economic legacy has been so obscured by Watergate that we forget that his attempts to fight poverty exceeded those of either of the Clintons or Obama. His outlook was remarkable enough that any pundit today would describe Nixon as leftist. There's a reason why Noam Chomsky called him, “the last liberal president.”Nixon was the President who established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. He also pushed for healthcare reform for all citizens. He threw his weight behind the Equal Rights Amendment for equal pay between men and women. And when it came to poverty, Nixon frequently spoke of the need to finish his predecessor's – Lyndon Johnson – building of the Great Society. With all the interest in a Basic Income Guarantee in Canada today, it would surprise many Canadians to learn that, as far back as the early 1970s, Richard Nixon promoted scrapping welfare in favour of a Guaranteed Minimum Income – a measure that Congress inevitably killed.In the progressive 1960s and 1970s, Liberal governments spoke frequently of tackling poverty, and it was in 1989 that the Mulroney government vowed to end poverty by the year 2000. By that target date, citizens were saddened to discover that the rate of children in poverty had, instead, doubled.Truth be told, Canada is no closer to solving the poverty, homelessness or mental health dilemma than in the past. The irony is that the world has become far wealthier than in those previous decades and both governments and their citizens, while holding to the rhetoric of taking dramatic action for the most marginalized of Canadians, refuse to sacrifice enough to accomplish such ideals.It is important that we recognize that Canada possesses the resources to live up to its past ideals of eradicating poverty; it's just that the will no longer exists to make it a reality. The dream remains, yet it's just that - a dream. And such visions, as author Joan Didion reminds us, can often remind us of what we have lost in the living of our comfortable lives:“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door ... and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”Glen Pearson was a career professional firefighter and is a former Member of Parliament from southwestern Ontario.  He and his wife adopted three children from South Sudan and reside in London, Ontario.  He has been the co-director of the London Food Bank for 29 years.  He writes regularly for the London Free Press and also shares his views on a blog entitled “The Parallel Parliament“.   Follow him on twitter @GlenPearson.