Welfare recipients poorer than Canadians imagine: report
BY NORMA GREENAWAY
DECEMBER 9, 2008
Vancouver Sun

OTTAWA - Amid fears a souring economy will throw more Canadians onto provincial welfare rolls, a federal advisory body is issuing a bleak report that says most people living on social assistance are so impoverished that adequate housing, jobs and recreational activities are beyond their reach.

With the exception of some residents of Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, the country's 1.7 million welfare recipients subsist on incomes far below what most Canadians can imagine living on, the National Council of Welfare says in a massive report being released Wednesday which documents welfare incomes in 2006 and 2007…. an overwhelming majority of welfare recipients were living in what constitutes deep poverty when compared to a trio of measurements, the report showed.

"There is nowhere on welfare where it's decent living," council chairman John Rook said in an interview from Calgary.

The report said welfare for a single employable person ranged from a low of $3,574 in New Brunswick last year to a high of $9,348 in Newfoundland and Labrador.

A lone parent with one child in Alberta had the lowest welfare income, $13,703, while Newfoundland and Labrador had the highest at $18,788.

….The reports says most welfare recipients are unable to improve their lot because, among other things, social assistance rates are not indexed to inflation in many provinces and some provinces claw back benefits when recipients' incomes are boosted by other benefits aimed at the needy.

The welfare system, which is supposed to be the safety net of last resort, is destined for more strain in the coming months as more people, many of whom may not qualify for employment insurance benefits, are thrown out of work….

"When there is an economic downturn, even more people fall behind and it's even more important to have a strategy to reduce poverty," said Rook.

The report says five provinces - British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario - recorded their lowest levels of welfare incomes between 2000 and 2007.

The incomes of single employable people were the worst across the board, but the incomes for almost all disabled people, lone parents and families on welfare fell below the three poverty measures used in the report, which included the before- and after-tax low-income cutoffs set by Statistics Canada, as well as the Market Basket Measurement, which says someone is low-income if their disposable income falls below the cost of a standard basket of goods and services - including food, shelter, clothing and other items - in different locations.

The report says fears that providing welfare recipients with "too much" money will discourage them from seeking work are misplaced.

"Have we seriously examined the cost of providing too little, so that the possibility of being hired, or being productive in any larger sense, moves rapidly out of reach?" it asked….

For a couple with two children, British Columbia and Alberta came in at the bottom. The social assistance provided such families in 2007 was only 60 per cent of the after-tax, low-income cutoff of $33,946 in both those provinces….