Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to rise in the House today, as the Official Opposition critic for training and youth, to support the motion standing in the name of the hon. member for Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing. The motion reads as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of reaffirming its commitment to seek to achieve the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000.
In a country that has already won international recognition for its quality of life, it may seem strange that it should be necessary to advise the government to deal with a problem as serious as that of child poverty. Children are a country's greatest asset, and it is thanks to them that nations develop and evolve. Thanks to them, we can look forward to the future.
However, according to a recent study by the Canadian Institute of Child Health, in 1991 1.2 million children in Canada were living in poverty, which is 500,000 more than in 1981. Today, 20 per cent of our children live in poverty in this country.
The hon. member who moved the motion mentioned more recent figures-1.3 million children-which indicates a trend and shows that the situation continues to deteriorate.
Forty-two per cent of child deaths before the age of one year can be attributed to prenatal conditions. The mother's quality of life before birth is crucial to the life expectancy of the child. The incidence of learning disabilities and mental health problems among children from poor families is double that of children in the rest of the population.
If I may, I shall digress for a moment. I was told recently that even in the supposedly richer areas, children in increasing number go to school without breakfast or a nutritious lunch. No wonder their failure rate is so high and they eventually become high-school dropouts.
One cannot talk about child poverty without talking about poor families. As we all know, in the past few years, the average family income has not kept up with the cost of living.
According to the same report on child health I quoted earlier, in Quebec, in 1993, a single parent earning the minimum wage had to work 73 hours to have an income equivalent to the poverty level. In Canada, the same single parent on social assistance, with one dependant child, would receive 65 per cent of that. In 1991, 453,200 single parents were women whereas a mere 83,600 were men. Therefore, we cannot talk about child poverty without talking about the poverty of mothers, especially single mothers.
Single families make up 20 per cent of all families, but the most alarming situation is that of single mothers with children. Indeed, in Canada, close to 90 per cent of children living with a single mother live in poverty.
Our young people, and that includes children of course, find themselves in a situation we had not seen since the Depression, that is to say that they are in a worse predicament than the previous generation. They have less opportunities than their parents had. The report on child health in Canada, which was published this week, and from which I got my statistics, was funded mostly by the federal government. I would like to hope that the federal government reacts quickly and with concrete measures in the light of this troubling conclusion because it would be obscene for the government to commission a study and then to ignore its findings, particularly when it comes to the health of our children.
As my hon. colleague who introduced the motion indicated, this is not the first time that the House of Commons looks into child poverty. On november 24, 1989, at the initiative of the hon. member representing Oshawa at the time, the House unanimously passed a resolution similar to the one before us today, to eliminate poverty among children by the year 2000.
May I digress for a moment to say how disappointed I was when we did not get unanimous consent to vote on this motion, while consent was granted in 1989 and all the hon. members present at the time voted in favour of the motion. That was five years ago. Things are getting worse instead of getting better. Why is that? A resolution was passed, but why has the situation deteriorated? I say that it is because the Conservative government of the day did nothing to correct the situation and in the past year, the Liberal government has continued, as we heard again this week, to consult the people on social program reform, but this reform will only take effect next year, yet another year away.
That will make six years since a unanimous resolution was passed to fight child poverty. However, the Liberal Party at that time was in favour of the resolution as it voted unanimously for the motion in 1989. Members then, even some who are ministers today, said many things which are worth quoting. Even the member for St. Boniface, whom I see in front of me, spoke in favour of this motion in 1989.