It didn't have to turn out this way.

While profound global economic forces over the past generation have impacted the GTA economy, social policy analysts and anti-poverty campaigners say governments have exacerbated the income divide between rich and poor.

From slashing taxes and punching holes in the social safety net to making it harder for professional immigrants to get work in their field of expertise, they say decisions at Queen's Park and in Ottawa have meant that low and middle-income earners have largely missed out on the benefits of a period of sustained economic growth.

"Trickle down was supposed to create jobs and jobs were supposed to create prosperity," said Armine Yalnizyan, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. "Well, we got the jobs but we ain't got the prosperity."

Yalnizyan and others said free trade deals and increasing globalization have lead to a dramatic loss in lower-skilled manufacturing jobs across the GTA over much of the past 20 years. And, in place of those well-paid positions with benefits is a higher percentage of lower-salaried service industry ones and part-time work with few benefits or job security.

Meanwhile, higher-skilled and more-educated employees have seen their incomes swell, fuelled in part by a disproportionate benefit from tax cuts.

The Toronto snapshot of the widening gap between the incomes of rich and poor highlighted by the latest Statistics Canada census figures "makes us start to question whether in our city we have the ability for people to get jobs that you can support a family on," said Frances Lankin, president of the United Way of Greater Toronto.

"We're seeing a huge growth in the working poor," Lankin said. "And, looking behind those numbers we see the impact on people, particularly the crippling factor it has on kids being raised in a family that's not economically secure."

Also alarming, Lankin said, is the increase in impoverished single-family homes. That points to, among other things, the need for more low-cost child care and enhanced social housing, she said.

At the same time as there's been no replacement for those good-paying jobs, Lankin and others note there's been a reduction in social programs from both senior levels of government, increasing the divide.

They point to Employment Insurance eligibility rules being tightened, making it much more difficult for those working these low-paying jobs on the fringe to qualify. Welfare rates in Ontario, slashed more than a decade ago, are increasing, but remain too low while the minimum wage is rising but not to a rate that someone can live on.

"Most of the elements that have created this growing gap in wages are the result of conscious decisions and choices made by our political and corporate leaders," said John Cartwright, president of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council. "It's not inevitable."

From free trade deals and World Trade Organization negotiations that failed to better protect our manufacturing sector to the contracting out of government jobs and weakening of union protection, Cartwright said, "middle-wage jobs have become poverty-wage jobs."

David Pecaut, chair of the Toronto City Summit Alliance, a coalition dedicated to improving life in the city, said "it's very dismaying" to see declines in real wages at the low end.

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And, he said, given that immigrants will drive future labour force growth in the GTA, it's particularly frustrating that they're still finding it difficult "getting traction" because of questions over their foreign credentials and certification.

"It doesn't make sense to bring nurses here or engineers and then put them through all kinds of hoops that don't let them get in the labour force quickly," said Pecaut.