Poverty masked; B.C.'s child poverty worst in country, report shows
The Daily News (Kamloops)
27 Nov 2007
By: Mike Youds

Unlike the poverty that marginalizes adults, child poverty is largely hidden from view, the president of the Kamloops Food Bank board said Monday.

Bob Duncan made the observation while releasing the results of the second annual Basics For Babies appeal held by radio station B-100.

"It's often not the children who are noticed because they are at home or in school," Duncan noted.

The poverty of adult individuals is often seen in the street as the public encounters visible symptoms -- panhandling, prostitution, substance abuse, crime or mental illness.

Family poverty is more insidious and more often dwells behind closed doors.

"It's the children who don't have a voice," Duncan said. He was asked to comment on a new national report that found B.C.'s child poverty rate is the highest in the country.

In its annual report released Monday, Campaign 2000 -- so named because eliminating child poverty by the year 2000 was once an all-party resolution in Canada -- finds that the rate of child poverty has not changed in 18 years. The group is also calling on the federal government to cancel the next one- percentage-point cut to the GST and divert the money toward efforts to eliminate child poverty.

According to the report, more than 23 per cent of B.C. children live in poverty. The survey found an estimated 174,000 poor children in the province -- more than the combined populations of Victoria, Nanaimo and Comox. It found children are most vulnerable to poverty in single-parent female families.

Consistent with that finding, the local food bank has increasingly had to serve the basic nutritional needs of families in recent years. Basics for Babies is part of that focus.

"Kamloops has one of the lowest (average) birth weights in the province," Duncan said, pointing to one indicator of family poverty. "That's one reason we've started to emphasize hampers for pregnant or nursing mothers." ….

"It's a shameful and alarming record the government refuses to address," James said during question period.

It fell to Kamloops MLA Claude Richmond, B.C.'s minister of employment, to defend the provincial government's record on child poverty in the face of the report released Monday.

Richmond stressed the importance of increased employment and easing the tax burden on the working poor.

"We take it very seriously, the well-being of children," he said. "Since 2001, we have taken 111,000 people off of welfare rolls and put them back into the workforce."

The government has raised welfare rates by $50 per month, cut or eliminated income tax for poor families and offered medical plan cost reductions, Richmond said.

"The fact that the economy is doing so well is extremely important. There's 370,000 jobs out there that didn't exist six years ago."

The fact that B.C.'s economy is much more robust than a few years ago in some ways complicates the picture. Why have poverty rates not gone down as employment has gone up?

Laura Kalina, a community nutritionist, pointed to the imminent release of another report, Cost of Eating, as adding another piece to the puzzle. That report will put the challenge of meeting family nutritional needs into provincial perspective. The report is due to be released later this week.

Wages have not kept pace with the cost of living, a factor that hits home hardest with single- and low-income families, she speculated. Housing is one of the key issues, with a shortage of affordable family units in Kamloops.

"That's where I think families, particularly with young kids, are feeling the pinch." …

"We're probably better in B.C. for food action programs but still the bottom line is there doesn't seem to be enough money for families."

SURVEY FINDINGS:

The poverty rate for single-parent families headed by females is 48.1 per cent, while the poverty rate for families with two working parents is 15.3 per cent. The survey also found that 85 per cent of poor children live in B.C. families where at least one parent is working. The survey looked at B.C. welfare rates and found that the income for a family of four is $20,451, when, according to Human Resources and Skills Develop Canada's market estimates, it should be at least $32,099.