B.C. lags on child poverty, report says: Advocacy group touts action plans adopted by six other provinces
Times Colonist/Vancouver Sun
By Lindsay Kines
November 24, 2009

B.C. needs to follow the lead of six other provinces and adopt a clear plan for reducing child poverty if it hopes to shed its reputation as the worst performer in the country, says a report due out today.

First Call B.C.'s Child Poverty Report Card says the province posted the highest rate of child poverty for the sixth-straight year in 2007 -- even before the current economic recession.

In that year, 156,000 children were living in poverty in B.C., a number "greater than the combined population of Nanaimo and Prince George," says the report by the First Call B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition, which represents 90 organizations across the province….

"We have failed a generation of children affected by poverty by our failure to keep the promise made in 1989," the B.C. report says. "Now is the time for British Columbia to make the necessary commitment to a provincial poverty reduction plan with clearly defined targets and timelines."

The report, however, relies on the controversial use of Statistics Canada's Low Income Cut-off to measure poverty. The LICO is the point at which most Canadians spend at least 20 percentage-points more than the average on food, shelter and clothing.

"Statistics Canada repeatedly emphasizes that it does not attempt to measure childhood poverty," B.C. Liberal backbencher Ralph Sultan, a former bank economist, said in the legislature last week. "That 'childhood poverty' label is not a label of its own invention. That's a label apparently made up and attached by First Call."….

First Call urges B.C. to commit to a poverty-reduction plan such as those adopted by Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba.

The report also urges the government to:

- Appoint a cabinet minister to oversee a poverty reduction plan.

- Raise the minimum wage to $10.80 an hour and tie it to increases in the cost of living.

- Abolish the $6-an-hour training wage.

- Raise welfare rates.

The report comes as the B.C. government faces pressure on a number of fronts to tackle child poverty.

Children's Representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond urged a joint leaders' meeting on the issue earlier this year, but was rebuffed by Premier Gordon Campbell.

The Union of B.C. Municipalities, however, called for a provincial child-poverty plan at its annual convention last month.

And Turpel-Lafond raised the issue with the province's Standing Committee on Children and Youth again last week.

"I would just put it on the record for the committee that I remain strongly of the view that British Columbia is lacking a coherent plan for child poverty," she said. "Those children in poverty are not achieving the outcomes in education and health and well-being that they need to achieve. The level of co-ordination is not there, as I'm seeing it is in other jurisdictions that are ahead of British Columbia, like Newfoundland, like Ontario, like Manitoba."