It’s a very short trip from the limousine seat to the curb. Jim Mann never missed a payroll for the dozen men who worked for his flourishing landscaping business he built from the ground up. Now he lives hand-to-mouth. His pockets are empty long before his next social assistance cheque arrives.

In early 2010 over two hundred civic and faith leaders fanned out into thirty Ontario communities. Their goal? To explore how the least fortunate people in one of the world’s richest places are faring.

The Interfaith Social Assistance Reform Coalition’s latest social audit exposed a tattered social assistance system run by volunteers desperately struggling to fill the gaps. There can be no papering over the savage inequalities and suffering exposed in this compelling look at life from the margins.

Brice Balmer is an adjunct professor in the Graduate Theological Studies program of Conrad Grebel University College and the University of Waterloo. He works in a variety of ecumenical and multi-faith organizations, and his research interests include spirituality, addiction, social justice and poverty.

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Mira Dineen is entering her final year of study at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where she is completing her Honours B.A. in Global Development Studies.

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Kingston writer Jamie Swift is the author of a dozen books, most recently The Vimy Trap, or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War (with Ian McKay), finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the Canadian Historical Association Prize for the Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History. He has held the Michener Foundation fellowship for public service journalism and was a longtime documentary producer for CBC-Radio’s “Ideas.” In addition to the writing life, he is a social justice advocate. He taught “Critical Perspectives on Business” at the Smith School of Business, Queen’s University for many years.

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• Short-listed, Ontario Legislative Assembly Speaker's Book Award