Opposing signs on downtown Eastside
Vancouver Sun
April 12, 2008
By: Larry Pynn

The signs of economic activity are all around: new transportation projects, a skyline of construction cranes, and a bumper crop of help-wanted signs.

So are the signs of poverty, especially on the Downtown Eastside, with its legions of homeless, mentally ill, and addicted.

So how does one measure the changes since The Vancouver Sun published its Children of Poverty special report in 1994, especially for impoverished families with children?

The B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition tells us that B.C. continues to have the worst child-poverty rates in Canada, leading the way for the fourth consecutive year.

Statistics Canada figures released in the coalition's November report show that based on gross incomes, B.C. had a child-poverty rate in 2005 of 20.9 per cent excluding aboriginal reserves, compared with a national rate of 16.8 per cent.

While no one can be satisfied with those sorts of figures, a closer look shows that the poverty rate has actually seen a decline since 1994, when B.C. scored a rate of 22.1 per cent, and since 2002, when B.C. peaked out at 24.2 per cent.

Isn't that a good-news story?

Not to Michael Goldberg, former research director for the Social Planning and Research Council of B.C., who is today the semi-retired chair of the Youth Advocacy Coalition.

"Clearly, fewer people are poor now than in 1994," he says…. "But they're nowhere what they should have been on the strength of our economy. For the poorest of the poor, there are fewer of them, but their lives are much worse."

The province helped by raising welfare rates in 2007 -- monthly benefits for a single person increased to $610 from $510, for a single parent with child to $946 from $846 -- but those represented the first hikes since 1992 and certainly did not account for inflation.

Jean Swanson, coordinator of the Carnegie Center Action Project, states: "It's worse, a lot worse. People are homeless because they can't get on welfare and can't pay rent."

…. A single parent with one child in Vancouver receiving a gross annual income of $23,000 would be considered living below the poverty line, the coalition reports, but not so if they were living in a smaller community such as Prince George, where the cost of housing is less.

Whatever your definition, child poverty belies simple one-step solutions.

Goldberg says what's needed is a coordinated approach, just as the province has set targets on reducing climate change. "Why in B.C. are our poverty rates so high, given the booming economy?" he asks. "It's a complex phenomenon. The marketplace can't deliver all the solutions."

The coalition reports that the richest 10 per cent of B.C families with children had an average income of $224,665 in 2005, up from $146,492 in 1993.

By comparison, the poorest 10 per cent of families with children had an average income of $16,520 in 2005, up slightly from $15,150 in 1993.

B.C. also has the highest proportion of working poor families because of inadequate hours of work and too many low-wage jobs, the coalition argues.

WHAT CAN BE DONE TO ALLEVIATE CHILD POVERTY?

The B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition recommends the senior governments commit to this 10-step action plan:

- Raise the minimum wage to $10.50 an hour, with future annual increases tied to the cost of living, and abolish the $6-an-hour training wage.

- Increase the minimum call-out time to four hours from two hours.

- Raise welfare rates to meet income levels in the federal government's Market Basket Measure (an estimate of family costs based on basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, transportation and other household expenses), increased annually based on the cost of living.

- Restore welfare earning exemptions and the income exemption for child support payments.

- Increase the Canada Child Tax Benefit, a tax-free monthly payment made to eligible families to help them with the cost of raising children under age 18, to $5,100 per child from $3,240.

- Rescind cuts to Employment Insurance made by successive federal governments to better protect workers during a temporary loss of wages.

- Ensure universal access to high-quality, accessible child care.

- Redouble the commitment to social housing for low-income people, to prevent the high cost of housing from draining the limited resources of those living near or below the poverty line.

- Set up a universal plan for coverage of prescription drugs and dental care for British Columbians.