‘MOM, ARE WE RICH?’
Sitting on the porch at the cottage last week, my son asked, “Are we rich?” Something about loons calling and breakfast sausages sizzling hinted at a life of privilege.
I thought about reminding him it’s just a rental but didn’t want to burst his “Keeping up with Lake-Kashwakamakers” bubble. “We’re in the middle,” I replied. Reaching for a childfriendly analogy, I added, “Life is like a game of snakes and ladders: sometimes our fortune goes up with an unexpected contract or bonus, sometimes it comes back down because of a leaky roof or busted alternator. A little good luck helps.”
Last week, about 300,000 Canadian children, some of whom might have also wondered aloud about rich and poor and where they fit in, benefited from a little good fortune of their own. The Liberal government has rolled out the new Canada Child Benefit (CCB), hoping it takes the rank and file of our nation’s working poor on a long overdue trip up the ladder — or, at least, a little closer to the middle.
For the past two decades child poverty has been on the rise in Canada. According to the 2014 National Report Card published by Campaign 2000 ( a public education movement born out of concern about the lack of government progress on this issue), since 1989 child poverty in Canada increased from 15.8 per cent to 19.1 per cent. It also found higher rates of poverty among “recent immigrant and indigenous fam- ilies as well as children with disabilities.”
The new CCB will provide a maximum annual benefit of up to $ 6,400 a child under the age of six and up to $5,400, a child for those aged six to 17. Families with less than $30,000 in net income will receive the maximum benefit. Jean-Yves Duclos, the federal minister of families, children and social development, says the CCB will lift 40 per cent of all children out of poverty, and projects an overall drop in child poverty from 11.2 per cent to 6.7 per cent.
The CCB is an ambitious and expensive program, ex- pected to cost $ 22.4 billion over five years. In the short term, the Liberals hope it will cement their position as the party of choice for the middle class. In the long term, nervous taxpayers will have to wait for the data to roll in before finding out if a big cheque from the public purse is really the best way to bring struggling families into the middle class.
Yes, Canadians want to help kids who need it — to see them have more nutritious food, better housing, and maybe even a summer rental or camping trip. But there’s that lingering skepticism: will the kids really benefit? Around kitchen tables and in online comment threads last week it became clear to me the old “beer and popcorn” scab is still there for the picking.
For many Canadians, poverty remains a one- dimensional story: indigence is a direct result of bad choices. If you slid to the bottom on the back of a snake, it was probably your fault and, anyway, poverty is something you can climb out of if you’re not afraid of a little hard work.
If there was ever any truth to that minimalist narrative, it has long since departed.
Today you can work very hard and still be poor. Cam- paign 2000 found that 40 per cent of children in poverty live in homes where their parents have full-time, yearround employment.
As for whether the heads of these families can be trusted with no- string- attached money, most low- income earners are already behaving responsibly: housing their families in increasingly expensive cities, feeding their children from a pot of money that is perpetually boiling dry, stretching bags of lentils (and other low-cost proteins) further than anyone imagined possible. A little good luck will probably go a long way.
But t he CCB is not a permanent fix — not for grinding poverty or working poverty. Addressing the child poverty crisis also demands a jobs strategy. The notion of being able to work your way out of poverty can’t be for the history books just yet.
An April 2015 report by the Metcalf Foundation likened Toronto and Vancouver — home to the largest concentrations of Canada’s working poor — to “modernday Downton Abbeys where a well-to-do knowledge class relies on a large cadre of working poor who pour their coffee, serve their food, clean their offices, maintain their gardens, mind their children, and clean their houses.”
In a recent blog post about Canada’s middle- class jobs challenge, the Broadbent Institute reported there has been a “disproportionate increase in low pay, precarious jobs,” with “the proportion of low paid workers in Canada, defined as earning less than two- thirds of the median wage” — $ 22 an hour as of June 2016 — “is, at 21.8 per cent, the third highest in the industrialized world,” according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The result is an hourglass labour market: heavy on the top and bottom, with few middle- income opportunities.
To use the snakes and ladders analogy: there is a gaping hole on the board where the mid- level career ladder used to be and another where a living wage used to earned. Until we find a way to bring these climbing opportunities back, the game will be rigged in the snakes’ favour.
FAMILIES ALL ACROSS CANADA GOT GOOD NEWS THIS MONTH — BIGGER CHILD BENEFIT CHEQUES YES, CANADIANS WANT TO HELP KIDS WHO NEED IT … BUT THERE’S THAT LINGERING SKEPTICISM: WILL THE KIDS REALLY BENEFIT? — MICHELLE HAUSER