B.C. BUDGET DOES LITTLE TO ALLEVIATE POVERTY

Not enough progress made on child care and housing issues, writes

This month, the provincial government announced it is setting new 10-year targets to reduce poverty. But Budget 2024 tells a disappointing story for B.C.'s poorest families. Surely the times we are in — with skyrocketing rents, high inflation, and increased use of food banks — call for a budget aimed at poverty reduction. But a quick word search of the Budget 2024 document finds the word “poverty” only five times, and only in the name of the Ministry for Social Development and Poverty Reduction.

While the absence of poverty reduction priorities in the budget appears to be at odds with new poverty-reduction targets, data from Statistics Canada finds child and family poverty heading in the wrong direction.

In 2021, 14.3 per cent of B.C. children were living in poverty, up from 13.3 per cent in 2020. The situation for lone-parent families, mostly led by mothers, is far worse, with 40.4 per cent of children in these families living in poverty compared to 7.4 per cent for children in couple families. More than half of all poor children in B.C. live in lone-parent families.

The B.C. Family Benefit could be an effective poverty-reduction strategy if it targeted the poorest families and was indexed to inflation, but Budget 2024 promises only a one-year increase ending in July 2025.

There is no doubt this 25 per cent increase will help many families until then, but a commitment to indexing the benefit would ensure it keeps up over the long term. Government could also look at establishing an early years supplement for families with children under five that does more to assist those in the lowest income deciles with vulnerable children who are not yet in school.

The rollout of a $10-a-day child-care system continues to be inequitable and prevents many parents from securing employment opportunities that would boost family incomes.

While Centre for Family Equity's recent report, A Whole Life, showed that access to $10-a-day child care had a profoundly positive effect on the health, well-being and economic outcomes of low-income lone mother families lucky enough to get a spot, investment in a fully universal $10-a-day public child-care system has stalled.

Our participatory research project found that one of the largest barriers to securing quality employment is exclusion from the labour market due to the lack of affordable, quality, and accessible child care.

And those who were unable to access a $10-a-day spot were still struggling to afford child-care costs even with fee reductions while working a full-time job.

Against this backdrop of inequitable access, it is estimated that more than $600 million in federal contributions to child care in B.C. is going unspent as government predicts continued difficulty in spending the funds on schedule.

Budget 2024 does not provide reassurance that government can scale the program fast enough to play a significant role in lowering family poverty in the near term. We must evolve income and disability assistance policies to provide bridges rather than barriers to education, training, and feasible work, but this cannot be accomplished without access to universal $10 a day and before and after-school child-care spaces.

For families who are living in deep poverty and dependent on social assistance or income-tested social housing units, the system is rigged against them. Finding a $10-a-day child-care spot may make it possible to secure employment, but earning a modest working-class income can disqualify a parent from affordable housing.

On the affordable housing file, Budget 2024 showcased a $198-million investment over three years to support the new B.C. Builds program.

B.C. Builds (for renters), a program that will identify government, non-profit and community-owned land for development, is aimed at households earning between $134,410 and $191,910 annually to qualify for a two-bedroom home.

Budget 2024 describes the intended group for this housing as “middle-income people and families.” Not only is this B.C. Housing program aimed at households earning far more than B.C.'s low-income families, but it is also well above the median family income, which in 2021 was $99,610.

The Centre for Family Equity represents the experiences and interests of our membership, who are mostly low-income parents and caregivers trying to make ends meet in B.C.

Our member-informed research tells us that reducing family poverty in 2024 is linked to access to affordable, quality child care; access to safe affordable housing; and enough income to live comfortably and raise healthy children. We applaud government for increased spending on access to family law legal aid and last year's B.C. Family Benefit supplement for lower-income single parent families, but we must ask: What is in this budget to assist B.C.'s poorest families with the cost of living?

On the most important strategies to reduce family poverty for those in the greatest depth of poverty, Budget 2024 falls short.