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POVERTY IN CANADA
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SOCIO > POVERTY IN CANADA — RESOURCES
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This fourth section in our Poverty and Homelessness pages presents selected statistics, news and resources on poverty and child poverty in Canada.
This page includes a range of subjects, including the definition of poverty, Low Income Cut Offs (LICOs) and other measures of poverty, minimum wage across Canada, welfare incomes across Canada, legal aid and public
legal education resources, provincial and community anti-poverty strategies, national and provincial Campaign 2000 poverty report cards, etc.
For current news and reports, selected studies
and presentations on poverty in Canada, see
Poverty in Canada: News and Selected Reports.
On this page...
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Poverty expands healthcare costs, policing burdens and diminished educational outcomes. This in turn depresses productivity, labour force flexibility, life spans
and economic expansion and social progress, all of which takes place at huge cost to taxpayers, federal and provincial treasuries and the robust potential of the
Canadian consumer economy. [...]
We believe that eradicating poverty and homelessness is not only the humane and decent priority of a civilized democracy, but absolutely essential to a productive and
expanding economy benefitting from the strengths and abilities of all its people. [...] |
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New Poverty Series by Michael Enright
With a timely set of interviews, CBC Sunday Edition host Michael Enright launched a new Poverty Series on 18 October 2009. He spoke with Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, whose take on the issue is both
informed and pragmatic; Segal explores the backward thinking and Victorian attitudes that prevent real progress on this front, and offers real solutions. His approach is truly enlightening.
The second interviews, with Ron Hikel and Evelyn Forget, provide important information with respect to MINCOME, a successful guaranteed annual income experiment conducted in Dauphin, Manitoba,
between 1974 and 1978.
Poverty: Segal Duration: 00:21:47
It's a problem that may never go away. "The poor," or so the Bible tells us, "will be with us always." But the idea that poverty itself is an intractable issue does not excuse governments
from trying to address it. And for decades, politicians and policy makers have tried in many different ways to reduce if not eliminate it.
Over the course of this season at the Sunday Edition, we want to talk about poverty — why does it exist in one of the richest countries on earth, how big a problem is it,
and what can be done about it? But poverty is a problem that's increasingly difficult to define. In this country, we can't even agree on how to measure it.
Statistics Canada can tell us the unemployment rate, the gross domestic product and the consumer price index. But what Stats Canada won't — and can't — enumerate is a poverty rate.
And that's because the politicians haven't agreed on exactly what poverty is. Senator Hugh Segal is expending much of his political capital on keeping poverty on the national agenda.
And he's not only one of the few national figures devoted to this issue — he's one of the even fewer Conservatives to take up the fight. Senator Segal joined us from a studio in Kingston.
Poverty: MINCOME Duration: 00:19:52
That's Senator Hugh Segal. He's one of the politicians that's doing what he can to try to reduce poverty in this country. As the Senator mentioned - back in the 1970s, an ambitious
experiment in social engineering was conducted in the province of Manitoba. It was called MINCOME — as in minimum guaranteed income.
The study involved some residents of the city of Winnipeg - but what made MINCOME so audacious was what happened in a small farming town about 300 kilometers northwest. From 1974 through
1978, Dauphin, Manitoba was a town with no poverty. Every one of the nearly 13,000 residents of Dauphin and the surrounding area was eligible to receive a guaranteed annual income. The
information gathered throughout the project was supposed to help policy makers evaluate the plan to see if the program should be expanded. But when the funding dried up, the project ended.
And the data remained unexamined — in hundreds of boxes which were put into storage. Nearly thirty years went by before anyone started to analyze MINCOME.
Ron Hikel was the Executive Director of MINCOME. He now works for US Congressman Eric Massa and was in our studio in Washington, DC. Evelyn Forget is a professor in the Community Health
Sciences Department at the University of Manitoba. She's the one who tracked down the MINCOME papers, decades after the conclusion of the study. And she's completed her first analysis
of the data. She's was in our Winnipeg studio.
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Housing as a Mechanism in Poverty Reduction
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Solving Poverty: Four cornerstones of a national strategy for Canada
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Vital Signs®
2009 National Vital Signs Report
NEWS RELEASE
Young Canadians face worst job market in decades, says annual report card
Canada’s Vital Signs also highlights trends in aboriginal education, violent crime
OTTAWA (Oct. 6, 2009) – Canada’s youth jobless rate has soared under the economic pressures of the
past year and even the lucrative summer months were a bust, with young people’s hours of work hitting
30-year lows, according to Canada’s Vital Signs 2009, the annual report card on quality of life from
Community Foundations of Canada.
“The report shows us how the impact of the recession has been immediate and severe for vulnerable
groups, such as youth,” said Monica Patten, President and CEO of Community Foundations of Canada. “It
also shines a light on inequities that pre-date the recession, such as the disturbing high school completion
rates among the aboriginal population.”
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Vital Signs® 2009 — LOCAL REPORTS |
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2008 National Vital Signs Report
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Community Foundations of Canada (CFC) is the membership organization for Canada's vibrant and growing network of 164
community foundations.
Community foundations bring together
people who care about their communities. They are independent, volunteer-driven,
charitable organizations that aim to strengthen their communities by
facilitating philanthropy, by partnering with donors to build permanent endowments and
other funds from which they support community projects, and by providing leadership on issues of broad
community concern. |
Vital Signs® is an annual community check-up conducted by community foundations across Canada that measures
the vitality of our cities, identifies significant trends, and assigns grades in at least ten areas critical to
quality of life. Vital Signs® is based on a project of the Toronto Community Foundation and is coordinated nationally
by Community Foundations of Canada. The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation provided critical support for the national
expansion of the Vital Signs program.
Each city's report card data is a compilation of numerous research sources, much of it local, that help communities
make connections between issues and trends in different areas. The findings are presented in a reader friendly format
to make them as accessible as possible. |
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Vital Signs® 2008 — LOCAL REPORTS |
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CFC offers professional development and training opportunities to its members,
provides communication links and acts as an information clearinghouse,
facilitates partnerships and initiatives with national and regional funders,
reflects member views and concerns on philanthropic issues, promotes sound
public policy [and] is active in global networks that promote philanthropy and a healthy
civil society.
Community foundations build and manage permanent
endowments, using their knowledge of their communities’ needs to connect donors to the causes and organizations that can
help them make a lasting difference. With more than $2.9 billion in assets, the community foundation movement is one of
Canada’s largest grantmakers, providing more than $176 million in grants last year to thousands of charities. | |
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Vibrant Communities
Poverty is one of Canada's most serious and persistent social problems. Canadians think significant things can be done about it.
Vibrant Communities was founded on the unique approach of bringing together multisectoral leaders - from business, government,
the voluntary sectors and citizens, including people directly affected by poverty - to compassionately and creatively solve
poverty. The heart beat of Vibrant Communities comes from leaders and national sponsors in communities across Canada.
Since 2002, Vibrant Communities has been learning to tackle poverty in new ways. It is lead by four highly respected national
sponsors including: Tamarack - An Institute for Community Engagement, The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation along with the
Caledon Institute of Social Policy and Human Resources and Social Development Canada. Community-led efforts in Victoria, Surrey, Edmonton,
Calgary, the Niagara Region, Hamilton, St. Michel (Montreal), Trois Rivières and Saint John have been beacons by creating welcoming,
vibrant communities. Some of the significant results to 2007 include more than 1200 local partners in 15 communities that have
collaborated in creative ways to assist over 34,000 individuals in their journey out of poverty. Communities pursue their best
pathways to reduce poverty. These may include: workforce development and employment, education and training, housing supports,
income security, and human resource practices including wage adjustments or policy change. "One of the strengths of Vibrant
Communities…is its single-minded focus on eliminating poverty. Motivating and engaging all sections of the community to attain
this goal has been paramount" (Tim Brodhead, President, The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation).
Although we have demonstrated many successes using the Vibrant Communities approach, we need to learn more about what works
in poverty reduction and why. We are continually striving for better rather than simply replicating "good enough." Vibrant
Communities is growing and we invite Canadians to join together to create durable solutions to poverty.
For more information please contact:
Susan Eckerle Curwood, Community Coordinator: susanc@tamarackcommunity.ca |
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Saskatchewan Justice Minister Don Morgan acknowledged there is a major problem, pointing to poverty as the main contributor.
"We just look at it as we know that we have a significant portion of the population that have a socio-economic gap," said Morgan.
He said the province is attempting to provide supports to low-income children through community schools and is also increasing the number of children put into foster care.
Income was touched on as a likely cause in the report as well.
The report said differences in age, education and employment status could only partially explain the discrepancy between aboriginal and non-aboriginal incarceration.
About 50 out of every 1,000 aboriginal people without any post-secondary diploma or employment were incarcerated as of May 16, 2006, whereas just 4.3 out of every 1,000
aboriginal people with a diploma and employment were incarcerated.
While the gap is narrower for those with education and employment, aboriginal people are still about 14 times more likely than non-aboriginal people to be incarcerated. [...]
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Some other interesting stats from the report: Over 245,000 BC workers
earn less than $10 an hour. The average total income for the richest one
tenth of one percent of families grew by almost a million dollars between 1982
and 2004 to about $2.5 million a year. Meanwhile the average income for
the poorest 10% of taxfilers in 2004 was $6000. The income of the richest
10% grew while the income of the poorest and second poorest 10% fell. [...]
The Report Card says governments should increase minimum wage to almost $11
an hour, end the $6 an hour training wage, raise welfare to about $1300 a month
for a single person, restore welfare earnings exemptions and stop clawing back
child support payments, among other things.
The UN report says that the CEDAW committee is concerned that there is no
federal accountability to ensure that there are minimum standards for social
assistance funding. It calls on the Canadian government to establish those
standards.[...] |
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Community Profiles
Source:
Urban Poverty Project 2007
Canadian Council on Social Development
Almost 70% of all poor people - almost 3.3 million - lived in Canada’s 25
largest urban areas in 2000. Responding to these pressing human needs presents
an enormous challenge - and one which requires planning, persistence, and
partnerships.
The Urban Poverty Project (UPP) supports those efforts with
reliable data and analysis. Community Profiles is the first product from the
Urban Poverty Project. It provides 2001 Census data on 13 critical social
indicators in a concise fact sheet format for 111 places in Canada, including
cities, regions and provinces.
Online Tool: Find Your Community
The following drop-down lists contain data sheets about 111 different
communities and geographic levels across Canada. [Please see the glossary for definitions
of the geographic levels (CMAs, CDs, CSDs)].
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If you need data on a community not listed, click
here. | |
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Poverty and Policy in Canada
Poverty and Policy in Canada provides a unique perspective on poverty and its importance to
the health and quality of life of Canadians. This original volume considers a range of issues t
hat will be of great interest to a variety of audiences. Throughout the book, particular emphasis
has been placed on the lived experiences of poverty.
This new book has three straight-forward goals:
Author Dennis Raphael PhD, Professor and Undergraduate Programme Director at the School of Health Policy and Management at York University, serves as a consultant
to the Canadian Public Health Agency and is an advisor to an upcoming PBS series on social inequalities and health in the USA. |
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UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre
Source:
Child poverty in rich countries 2005
Innocenti Report Cards, 6 (2005:36pp.)
ISBN: 88-89129-39-5
The proportion of children living in poverty has risen in a majority of the world's
developed economies. No matter which of the commonly-used poverty measures is applied, the situation of children
is seen to have deteriorated over the last decade. This publication is the sixth in a series of Innocenti Report
Cards, designed to monitor and compare the performance of the OECD countries in meeting the needs of their children.
It is also the first in what will be an annual Innocenti Report on Child Poverty in Rich Countries.
[Child poverty in rich countries 2005]
 Figure 1: The Child Poverty League
...the percentage of children living in ‘relative’ poverty, defined as households
with income below 50 per cent of the national median income...(p.04)
Table adapted from original figure (bar graph) which does not show numeric "Rank".
Canada: children still waiting
A descriptive overview of the measures of low income produced by the Canadian
statistical agency, Statistics Canada, is offered by M. Skuterud, M. Frenette and
P. Poon, Describing the Distribution of Income: Guidelines for Effective
Analysis, Statistics Canada, 2004, Catalogue No. 75F0002MIE, No.010.
A summary of the first set of findings from the Canadian Market Basket
Measure of Low Income is available at [hrsdc.gc.ca],
while the specifics of the construction of the basket are
presented in M. Hatfield, Constructing the Revised Market Basket Measure,
Ottawa: Human Resources Development Canada 2002. The quotations in the text
are taken from these sources.
The all party resolution committing the government of Canada to "seek to
eliminate child poverty by the year 2000" can be found in Government of Canada,
Hansard, November 24, 1989.
The reference for the government quote "it is not possible to say with certainty
whether the incidence of low income for children using the Market Basket
Measure is higher or lower than in the years prior to 2000." is www.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/cs/comm/news2003/030527.shtml (p.35) |
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Christmas is quickly approaching and many charities are busily preparing to help the needy during the holidays. Here is a list of organizations
seeking your help and a separate list of organizations selling Christmas items as fundraisers in the coming weeks. Many offer receipts for income tax purposes on request. Not all agencies
could be listed....[Read more]
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Note: In the event that the above URLs no longer work, we have replicated the Canada.com Network page and content of this important article
here. Copyright remains with the Ottawa Citizen and the Canada.com Network. |
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