Report: 1 in 9 Canadian kids grows up poor; Group will call on Ottawa to raise child tax benefit, spend more on child care
Penticton Herald
November 21, 2008

At least 760,000 Canadian kids -- about one in nine -- are growing up poor, says a new report that calls on the Harper government to follow the lead of some provinces and take action.

The 2008 report card being released today by anti-poverty group Campaign 2000 likely underestimates the true extent of hardship, said national co-ordinator Laurel Rothman.

That's because the numbers reflect Statistics Canada's low-income cutoffs from 2006, the most recent available, long before the current economic slide.

A family of four living in a small city is considered relatively low-income if it earns less than $27,745 after taxes.

…. "We're going to have a whole group of middle-class people who may not have access to EI. They're not going to have much choice after a few months of going through savings.

"So I think we have lots of reasons for the federal government to take this seriously, put together a plan, and set some targets and timetables." Rothman said the child-poverty rate hovers just below 12 per cent -- just half a percentage point less than it was in 1989. That was the year MPs of all stripes vowed to wipe out child poverty by 2000.

What's especially startling, she said, is that 40 per cent of disadvantaged kids have at least one parent working full-time for low wages and meagre benefits.

"They're the working poor." Rothman said there's at least some hope in poverty-cutting plans introduced or on the way in Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Newfoundland and Quebec are generating income-tax revenue with targeted training, child-care measures and other efforts to help parents get and keep jobs, she said.

… The Harper government has taken a notably hands-off approach to health and social issues that it deems primarily provincial turf.

Rothman and other anti-poverty activists insist Ottawa has a crucial role to play.

Campaign 2000 will today call on Ottawa to raise the Canada Child Tax Benefit to $5,100 from just under $3,300, arguing that's the minimum needed to lift kids out of poverty. It will also urge more federal child-care funding to the provinces and greater access to employment insurance benefits.