Ottawa neglecting its mission to eradicate childhood poverty, new report warns

A national coalition that advocates for children and families says Canada's mission to eliminate child poverty stalled during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the group is urging the new federal government to take bolder and more decisive action to protect children.

A new report by the group Campaign 2000 found that more than 1.3 million Canadian children, or 17.7 per cent, are living below a poverty line used by Statistics Canada.

"That's a pretty significant number of kids who are suffering from the harms and the effects of missing meals, not having the right kinds of clothes and parents working really long hours," said Leila Sarnagi, the Campaign 2000 national director.

The coalition, which has more than 120 members, takes its name from a 1989 House of Commons resolution to end child poverty by the year 2000.

The report released Wednesday also found that low-income, single-parent families are now further from the poverty line than at any point since 2012. The average such family with two children is $13,262 from reaching the poverty line. The gap was $9,612 in 2015.

The poverty line used in the report is known as the Low Income Tax Measure After Tax, which Statistics Canada defines as 50 per cent of the median income of Canadian households.

The report is based on the most recently available tax data, which is from 2019.

Sarnagi said the economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic likely means child poverty has worsened since then.

"We think that it's going to be worse, that it will show us worse outcomes and higher rates of poverty in the pandemic," she said.

The highest child poverty rate in Canada is in Nunavut, at 34.4 per cent. Manitoba, with a rate of 28.4 per cent, was the highest of any province.

Sarnagi says policies introduced during the Trudeau government's early years — primarily the Canada Child Benefit — had a significant positive impact on child poverty levels. 

Those gains are now slowing, she says, because the government has not adequately expanded benefit programs, nor has it made it easier for parents to access the programs.

"Families who are in deeper poverty, the Canada Child Benefit is not reaching them, it's not bringing them up and above that low income measure," Sarnagi said. "The reduction has stalled."

The report notes that at the current pace of lifting children from poverty — 24,200 children moved above the poverty line in 2019 —  it will take Canada another 54 years to completely eradicate child poverty.