A woeful record on child poverty
Nearly 25 years ago, Canada’s MPs agreed unanimously that child poverty was a crisis which demanded action — and that it was possible to end the crisis in just over a decade. They were right on both counts.
Unfortunately, successive governments since 1989 have fallen far short of meeting the goal. And a new report released this week by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) and Save the Children Canada shows just how widespread child poverty remains — while demonstrating an alarming concentration among First Nations children in the western provinces.
Across Canada, the story over the past two decades has been one of inaction and stagnation. Child poverty rates remain roughly where they were in 1989: approximately 17 per cent of Canadian children live in poverty, which falls well within the range of other studies applying different poverty lines. That figure places Canada near the bottom of the pack within the OECD, whose members have an average child poverty rate of 12 per cent.
What’s worse, Canada’s utter failure to meet its commitment to end child poverty isn’t for lack of some obvious areas of need where modest investments could make a huge difference.
The CCPA’s new report goes beyond past studies by looking at census data to assess poverty rates on First Nations reserves (which may be omitted from the labour force studies often used in other assessments of poverty). That closer look reveals that status First Nations children in Saskatchewan have the highest poverty rates of any group in any jurisdiction, at a stunning 64 per cent.
Of course, First Nations fall under federal rather than provincial jurisdiction — meaning that poverty within that group is exactly the area where concerted federal action could make the most difference. And indeed, the CCPA observes that the federal government could eradicate all child poverty among status First Nations for the relatively modest cost of $580 million per year — less than half the price of federal oil and gas subsidies that have been slated for elimination, but maintained by the Conservative government.
Instead of making the choice to deal with child poverty within their jurisdiction, past federal governments have capped the resources available to identify and address the glaring needs of status First Nations children. And so in the area where the federal government could act directly to reduce child poverty, matters look to be getting worse rather than better.
Meanwhile, children from other marginalized groups — including aboriginal children living off reserve and the children of immigrants and racial minorities — also face rates of child poverty higher than the national average. But no group is immune from the problem: even the “non-racialized and nonimmigrant” grouping includes a child poverty rate of 12 per cent.
This doesn’t mean that we lack the resources to end child poverty. The CCPA estimates that 1,168,000 Canadian children live in poverty, and pegs the cost of bringing every single one of them up to the poverty line at $7.5 billion per year.
That undoubtedly represents a substantial price tag. But it roughly matches the federal revenue generated by a single point of GST — meaning that that for a penny on each dollar of the price of consumer goods and services, we could keep Canada’s longstanding promise to end child poverty. Or alternatively, the long-term annual cost of taxfree savings accounts could also do the job.
As a result, we have a simple choice to make in deciding whether to ensure that child poverty doesn’t limit the opportunities available to future generations of Canadians. It’s long past time for Canada to be a leader rather than a laggard on that front. Fingas is a Regina lawyer, blogger and freelance political commentator who has written about provincial and national issues from a progressive NDP perspective since 2005. His column appears every Thursday. You can read more from Fingas at www.gregfingas.com