Governments are failing almost 800,000 kids across Canada who face the shame and exclusion of growing up poor, says a new report.

Campaign 2000, a non-partisan network devoted to ending child poverty, is calling on Ottawa and the provinces to spend roughly $10 billion over the next five years -- as a start.

"The time for excuses is over," Marvyn Novick told a news conference Tuesday.

He wrote the report entitled "Summoned to Stewardship: Make Poverty Reduction a Collective Legacy."

A targeted effort to cut child poverty in half by 2017 should include higher child benefits and work tax credits for low-income families, plus a minimum wage of at least $10 an hour, the report says.

Such tactics would help ensure that it pays more to work full-time than collect social assistance.

Little has changed since MPs of all stripes promised in 1989 to eliminate child poverty by 2000, Novick said. His report finds that the rate has hovered at about 12 per cent.

"Child poverty eats away at the social fabric of communities," he said. It essentially creates "two Canadas" -- one of inclusion and opportunity, another of exclusion and deprivation.

"The consequences of growing up in poverty can follow children all of their lives," former senator Landon Pearson told the news conference.

Campaign 2000 has been pushing politicians to do more since 1991.

Spokeswoman Laurel Rothman praised such measures as the Canada Child Tax Benefit, which paid $9.3 billion for 5.3 million kids last year, under a complex formula that takes into account family income.

But she said child benefits should be increased to $5,100 a year per child. That increase, which would cost about $5 billion a year -- equal to the cost of a one per cent drop in the GST -- could alone cut child poverty by 37 per cent, she said.

Campaign 2000 measures poverty using Statistics Canada's low-income cutoffs for 2005. According to that measure, a family of four in a small city earning less than $27,000 a year after taxes is considered low-income. …

Campaign 2000 counters that being poor is not just about being hungry or homeless, it's about social exclusion and missed opportunity.

Social advocates also point to an explosion in the use of food banks over the last decade as proof of how social spending cuts have laid many families low.