A ROOM WITH A POINT OF VIEW
AN ALARM BELL AND A CALL TO ACTION
The new report found the largest increase in child poverty rates in Canada on record. Image credit: JOSEPH GONZALEZ on Unsplash.
By SHAGORIKA EASWAR
As we head into another new year, sobering lessons from 2024 to keep in mind include a report on child poverty from Campaign 2000.
The new report found the largest increase in child poverty rates on record. Nearly 1.4 million children in Canada lived in poverty in 2022, according to the report released by Campaign 2000: End Child and Family Poverty, a national non-partisan coalition monitoring federal progress (or lack thereof) on child and family poverty.
In the two years from 2020 to 2022, child poverty rates increased by nearly 5 percentage points when nearly 360,000 additional children fell into poverty.
“The numbers in this report card are shocking, even to those of us who track this issue,” said Leila Sarangi, National Director of Campaign 2000 and lead author of the report. “Every province, territory and the City of Toronto have seen their largest annual increase in rates of child poverty within the last two years. Certain groups who face systemic marginalization in our communities are disproportionately affected. It’s been thirty-five years since the federal government signed on to uphold all children’s rights and eradicate child poverty but clearly, the federal poverty reduction strategy is failing. We are heading quickly in the wrong direction and failing our children, again.”
Poverty is often viewed an individual’s poor decision, Sarangi, a Grant’s Desi Achiever, had said in an earlier interview in Desi News. “If they only got an education, worked harder, pulled themselves up by their bootstraps...That is just not true. That discounts systemic discrimination. We have to be respectful. We need to look at real causes, and come up with trauma-informed responses. There’s a very real physiological and psychological response to trauma. Children who experience poverty are more likely to experience it later. Child poverty is related to worse health, social and economic outcomes. Parents should be able to afford swimming lessons for their children. Or be able to buy a birthday gift if their child is invited to a party.”
The new national report card, Ending Child Poverty: The Time is Now, shows that the jump in poverty rates in 2021 was the first increase in 10 years, and the latest increase in 2022 was the largest on record. It has been five years since the federal government legislated their poverty reduction strategy, but families are living in deeper poverty than they were in 2015, the year from which the government measures progress. In 2022, Canada saw a return to child poverty rates higher than in 2019 when the government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy came into effect.
“Government policies and programs must be approached as poverty reduction strategy initiatives,” said Morna Ballantyne, Executive Director of Child Care Now. “The $10aDay Child Care Plan is a great example of a significant new investment that could be used for poverty reduction. We have been making the case for a zero to ten dollar a day maximum system of childcare, and government-led initiatives to expand the availability of not-for-profit and public licensed childcare programs, to ensure that the one and a half million children in this report card can access the program and end the exclusion of low-income families from this essential public service.”
Campaign 2000’s report card provides bold and achievable recommendations to advance social and economic equity, income security, decent work, childcare, housing, pharmacare and more.
“We’ve put forward a platform with nearly 60 recommendations that federal parties can adopt to create a meaningful plan,” Sarangi added. “This report card is both an alarm bell and a call to action.”
Campaign 2000 is a pan-Canada public education movement to build awareness and support for the 1989 all-party House of Commons resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. It was launched in 1991 out of concern about the lack of progress.
It engages local communities to examine child poverty and children’s well-being, encouraging them to take action and advocate for the advance of doable public policy solutions to income security, affordable housing, childcare, pharmacare, mental health and dental benefits, etc., for families and children.
More info at www.campaign2000.ca.
KEY FINDINGS FROM THE 2024 NATIONAL REPORT CARD
Leila Sarangi addresses a press conference.
Nearly 1.4 million children live in poverty in Canada, or roughly 1 in 5 children.
Families lived in deeper poverty. On average, family incomes fell $14, 276 below the low-income measure, after tax in 2022 compared to $10,050 in 2015.
Child poverty increased in every province and territory. The highest increase for children under 18 was in Nunavut (+6 percentage points) and among the provinces in Ontario (+3.5 percentage points).
More than 110,000 families with children fell into poverty in 2022.
Nearly all children (99%) under 18 years old who do not live in families live in poverty.
Nearly one in two children (45%) growing up in lone-parent families live in poverty.
In 2019, the Minister of Disability Inclusion was given a mandate to double the amount of the Child Disability Benefit. To date, there has been no movement in this urgent area.
Racialized and immigrant children experience disproportionately high rates of child poverty due to systemic racism, discrimination and barriers to services and employment.
Addressing intersectional and systemic discrimination with poverty reduction initiatives is essential to reducing the high poverty rates experienced by children from disproportionately marginalized groups.
New investments are needed, including broadening access to the CCB, creating a new End Child Poverty Supplement for those in low income, and ensuring adequacy of the CCB children’s disability benefit.
Establishment of a standard $0-$10 a day per family sliding scale fee model of childcare to enable access for families in poverty is needed. Canada’s universal childcare plan must include low-income children.