Stop clawing back child support from children
Al Hawkins issued a statement Monday saying that his Department of Advanced Education, Skills and Labour is reviewing the province’s policy of clawing back child support payments from families receiving income support.
With all due respect, what is there that needs to be reviewed?
How about a recap of the issue, instead?
Child and Youth Advocate Jacqueline Lake Kavanagh has provided just that.
On Monday, she issued an investigative report which clearly points out that penalizing single-parent families by deducting child support payments from the amount of income support they receive is denying children money earmarked for their care.
Lake Kavanagh says this policy conflicts with federal government practice, which stopped treating child support payments as taxable income more than 15 years ago.
She also cited several jurisdictions in Canada where policies have been updated to put the rights of children first and where child support payments are no longer clawed back from families on income support.
In Ontario, for example, the clawback stopped in 2017.
As the Waterloo Region Record reported in February of that year, “Evidence from other jurisdictions shows parents who owe child support are more likely to pay if they know their children will directly benefit from all the money” — a point this province should heed.
There’s certainly less incentive to write a cheque for child support if you know the money is never going to reach that child.
In Nova Scotia, the government will stop clawing back child support from families on income assistance in August. Single mom of two Sharon Himmelman told the CBC she was receiving $169 a month in child support, a portion of which was regularly deducted from her income support. She says the change will help her pay for clothes and school supplies — necessities her children surely deserve.
In British Columbia, the policy was changed in 2015, with the BC Child Advocacy and Youth Coalition announcing on its website, “the government will finally stop picking the pockets of 5,400 of BC’S most vulnerable children.”
The Northwest Territories did the same in 2016.
My point is that the groundwork for this policy change has been done and done again in other provinces and territories.
Why does our provincial government feel the need to reinvent a wheel that’s already spinning nicely?
As the Child and Youth Advocate found in the research for her report, in Canadian jurisdictions where “the practice of recovering child support payments has ceased, there has been no significant change in the practices of support enforcement programs. Operational budgets have remained the same, with no change in practices or staff complements.”
In other words, changing the policy does not result in massive upheaval to government processes and practices.
What it does mean is that money intended to support children is more likely to be used for that purpose, and not to help pay the rent and the heat bill because there isn’t enough left at the end of the month to spend on the child’s needs.
This is common sense and the obviously right thing to do, and every day the government spends on its review is another day children have to go without something they need.
Children who have two parents deserve the financial support of both parents, whether they cohabitate or not. Current policy is depriving the children in our province who need it the most the financial assistance that is intended — and courtordered — for them.
And the issue affects women predominantly. Of the 2,588 families who had child support clawed back in the 2015-17 period the report covers, 2,580 of those families were headed by single mothers and eight by single men.
Lake Kavanagh concludes her report with this admonition: “As the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador continues to move forward during challenging economic times, there is an even greater responsibility to care for those who are most vulnerable. We can and must do better.”
This is no time for bureaucratic foot-dragging. Just do it.