Poverty is a phenomenon that tends to be periodically rediscovered. In 1989, at the urging of advocates, then federal NDP leader Ed Broadbent introduced a motion that was unanimously supported by the House of Commons. It committed Canada “to seek to achieve the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000.” In 1991, a group of Toronto activists co-founded Campaign 2000, partnering with community and national organizations, including faith groups, to build a coalition to hold Ottawa’s feet to the fire. Not only had no efforts been made to implement the resolution, but then prime minister Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government had made significant cuts to the very policies that would reduce child poverty.
I joined the campaign in 1992. I was a new assistant professor at the University of Manitoba, just back from Berkeley, Calif., where I had focused my studies on poverty reduction. We were all optimistic that the resolution would be fulfilled because we thought the main obstacle was a lack of awareness among the public and politicians, and we could fix that through public education and policy advocacy.
You may unsubscribe from any of our newsletters at any time.
Well, it hasn’t worked out that way. According to the Canadian Income Survey, the child poverty rate was 13.7 percent in 1989, and in 2023 (the last year for which we have data) it had decreased by only half a percentage point to 13.2 percent. In the intervening years, there were ups and downs but no significant changes in the overall trend — with one exception.
The pandemic proved to be a natural experiment in showing how income support policy can decrease child poverty. Because of pandemic subsidies like the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, the national child poverty rate fell by almost a third, from 11 percent in 2019 to 7.5 percent in 2020. This unprecedented drop meant that there were 248,000 fewer children experiencing the corrosive effects of poverty in 2020 than in 2019 — more than the entire population of Regina. Unfortunately, as the pandemic benefits were withdrawn in 2022 the child poverty rate began to increase, and by 2023 it was 13.2 percent, exceeding the pre-pandemic level.
More on Broadview:
- Why child poverty is rising in Canada again
- In Oscar nominee Julian Brave NoiseCat, the trickster endures
- What if Elon Musk becomes a trillionaire?
What should we do about this? We need to advocate with federal and provincial lawmakers for improved policy in at least four areas: more effective income support (such as adding a low-income supplement to the Canada Child Benefit); government action to attract jobs that pay well and provide good benefits; better public services, especially in housing and childcare (including a sliding scale beginning at $0 for daycare fees, rather than the $10-a-day standard cost); and stronger anti-discrimination safeguards, because poverty rates are so much higher for Indigenous and racialized children.
If we consider children as rights bearers, we owe them a childhood free of deprivation, stigmatization and the psychological stress of poverty. Beyond this, poverty increases one’s lifelong risk for compromised physical and mental health, disability, violence, poor educational and occupational outcomes, and premature mortality. From a purely self-interested perspective, decreasing child poverty will lead to lower public spending on health care, social services and criminal justice, and higher taxation revenues through increased labour market participation.
Canada is now 25 years overdue on its goal to end child poverty. It shouldn’t take a pandemic to force us to do the right thing.
***
Sid Frankel is a senior scholar at the University of Manitoba and a longtime member of the Campaign 2000 steering committee
Thanks for reading
Independent journalism rooted
in faith and justice is under threat
Broadview is the only media organization in Canada offering thoughtful, values-driven journalism from an inclusive, progressive Christian perspective. But our work depends on your support. If you value what you've just read, please act now.
A gift today helps keep this journalism alive tomorrow.
With gratitude,
So who pays for this? Our taxes? Does that mean those of us who pay more taxes go into poverty ourselves? Could it be that child poverty became higher as we needed to pay the CER back?
Do we cut back on other Government spending, to avoid heavier taxes? If so which ones? We could take away the senior “benefit” taxes, who BTW have paid the most into the tax system, but that too would lead into senior poverty, lose/lose situation.
There are a myriad of reasons for child poverty, some are beyond anyone’s control, to parental (in any form) neglect.
We will never end child poverty, or climate change, or mental illnesses, or greed. We live in a fallen world, the best we can do is make the best of a bad situation, one day at a time, doing the best we can. We cannot put dates on resolving issues without leaving it in God’s hand, Psalm 33:10-11 “The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.”
Well said, Gary. It seems that folks who try to address social problems such as poverty or homelessness, or anything else come at it from a “reasonable” viewpoint without much real world knowledge. As you say, there are many, many reasons for social problems. Yes, they can all be solved if we lived in an ideal world in which there were no vices, everyone was well educated and had good jobs, we had government social programs that took care of those less fortunate and corporations were content with making reasonable profits rather than gouging the public. Eliminating poverty is a nice thought, but it’s just that.
Rev. Dr. Lillian Perigoe and her husband Rev. John are proud of the response from Canada’s faith communities to the 1989 Campaign Against Child Poverty. We are pleased that after 35 years the unanimous resolution to end Child Poverty in Canada continues to provoke responses from both critics and proponents.