Today, November 24, 2009, marks the 20th anniversary of the unanimous resolution in the House of Commons to “seek to achieve the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000.”
Just shy of 10 years beyond that target, what progress has been made? According to Campaign 2000’s 2009 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty, released today to mark the anniversary, the answer is not very much.
Twenty years later, 1 in 10 Canadian children – about 637,000 – and their families live in poverty. That’s more than half a million children, in one of the wealthiest nations in the world. How can this be? The figures are even more appalling when we look within our First Nations’ communities. There, 1 in 4 children live in poverty.
This is unacceptable in a nation as wealthy as ours. Because unlike many other less fortunate nations around the globe, here in Canada, there IS enough. Enough money. Enough safe, clean water. Enough food. Enough energy. And certainly enough capacity, materials and labour to provide safe, secure housing for all.
The progress toward making sure the “enough” means that everyone does indeed have enough has been minimal. Over the two decades since the resolution, the rate of child and family poverty has gone down slightly, from 11.9% in 1989 to 9.5% in 2007. That’s a difference of just 2.4%, representing roughly 155,000 children.
But over the same time period – the current economic downturn notwithstanding – the country experienced a time of tremendous growth, and the gap between Canadians earning the highest and lowest incomes increased dramatically.
So how do we address child poverty? First, we understand that child poverty is family poverty. By and large, poor children live in poor families, most of them with parents who are working full-time for low or modest wages, and still find themselves unable to make ends meet. The report card indicates that more than 4 in every 10 children living in poverty have at least one parent who works full-time throughout the year.
Eliminating child and family poverty will require a coordinated, multi-pronged approach. It is a question of housing affordability. It is a question of a proper minimum wage – or perhaps even of ensuring that all Canadians have access to a guaranteed livable wage. And it is a question of proper and adequate income supplements and supports to raise these families – and their children – out of poverty. Most low and modest-income families do not have access to affordable or geared-to-income housing or high quality child care services that allow parents to go to work without losing a significant portion of their earnings to child care expenses.
One of the key reasons we have not managed to live up to the decades-old resolution is that the mechanisms for success were never put into place.
Eliminating child poverty will only happen as part of a big picture, comprehensive national strategy that will see the federal government working in collaboration with the provinces, territories, First Nations communities and a wide range of community providers and stakeholders to eliminate poverty in Canada. Period.
Currently, 7 out of 10 provinces have – or are working on – a poverty reduction strategy, with only British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan yet to commit. In 2008, premiers from Ontario and the Atlantic provinces called on the federal government to develop a national poverty reduction strategy to work in concert with provincial efforts to prevent and reduce poverty.
In their 2009 Report Card, Campaign 2000 calls for a comprehensive plan to make Canada poverty-free, including public policy and labour market strategies to prevent families from falling into poverty. They too call for all levels of government (federal, provincial, territorial, municipal and First Nations) to meet to develop a coordinated poverty reduction strategy.
There is a growing chorus of voices – among them those of the EFC and StreetLevel: The National Roundtable on Poverty and Homelessness – who are calling for both a national poverty reduction strategy and a national housing strategy. It has become evident that hands-off doesn’t work. A piecemeal approach doesn’t work. And voices of all political and faith stripes, from service providers and community associations to think-tanks, non-profits and policy groups are joining together to say it is time to do something that does work.
The Parliamentary HUMA committee has been studying the role of the federal government in developing and establishing a national poverty reduction strategy, and last week passed a motion introduced by NDP MP Tony Martin, which says the following:
“That, with November 24th, 2009 marking the 20th anniversary of the 1989 unanimous resolution of this House to eliminate poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000, and not having achieved that goal, be it resolved that the Government of Canada, taking into consideration the Committee’s work in this regard, and respecting provincial and territorial jurisdiction, develop an immediate plan to eliminate poverty in Canada for all.”
Today, the House of Commons approved the motion.
Let’s hope that this agreement in the House signals a genuine willingness to overcome partisan and jurisdictional excuses and obstacles, and to work together to eliminate poverty for Canadian children, families and men and women of all ages.