Shockingly high rates of poverty

HALIFAX, N.S. — A social policy group is calling on governments to join forces in addressing “shockingly high” rates of poverty in Nova Scotia.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ provincial office says comprehensive plans from the municipal level to the federal government are needed to help poor families, particularly the 35,870 children who live below the poverty line in Nova Scotia.

“A robust poverty reduction strategy says, ‘here’s our goal, here’s the timeline and here are all the various ways we need to come together as governments and all government levels to do this,’” Christine Saulnier, a co-author of the 2017 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Nova Scotia, said in an interview on Monday. The report, which used information from Statistics Canada’s 2015 data, found that the child poverty rate in the province decreased marginally, less than a percentage point, in 2015 compared to 2014. But overall Nova Scotia has done “very poorly” in working toward the goal of eradicating poverty, the report said. More than one in five Nova Scotian children live in poverty and the 2015 rate is higher than it was in 1989.

Saulnier singled out “shockingly high” rates among African Nova Scotian children at 40 per cent, 67.8 per cent in the Arabic community and over 70 per cent in some First Nations communities such as Eskasoni.