Madam Speaker, I am rising on a question that I raised in June with regard to the number of children living in poverty in Canada. I was quoting numbers of over 100,000 children in British Columbia, but I want to put this into a national context.
In an article in The Vancouver Sun on September 26, Paul Kershaw indicated a number of grim statistics. He says:
Canada allocates just 0.34 per cent of GDP to child care and kindergarten services for children under age six (2008). This is just over half of the United Kingdom and New Zealand; and barely one-third of what is allocated in France, Sweden and Denmark.
He also said:
Canada ranks among the industrialized countries with the highest rates of child poverty. Child poverty in Canada is three to five times higher than the countries that make it a real priority to eliminate poverty among the generation raising young kids.
He concludes by saying:
On the other hand, history books make clear Canadians have been reticent to build new social policy since the 1970s.
This reticence is especially evident in our slow national response to the fact that the generation raising young kids today is the first in a long time to struggle with a dramatically lower standard of living than their parents.
That highlights the fact that when we are talking about child poverty, we are talking about children and families.
I want to give a perspective on both coasts. In New Brunswick on September 27, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released some numbers that we often hear about the economy. It released numbers saying that the cost of poverty for the Province of New Brunswick is $2 billion.
These calculations are based on research that consistently links poverty to poorer health prospects, lower literacy, more crime, poor school performance for children and greater stress for everyone living in poverty. There is not only a cost to the family, but there is a cost to the community, the province and the country in not dealing with poverty.
In British Columbia, B.C. Campaign 2000 released the 2010 child poverty report card, and it had some very grim statistics. In fact, it said that the 2008 figure before tax followed six consecutive years when British Columbia had the worst child poverty record of any province in Canada. Campaign 2000 equated it to about 121,000 children, which is more than the total populations of Campbell River, Mission, Squamish and Vernon combined. We have more children living in poverty in British Columbia than the combination of a number of cities in our province.
The report goes on to say that it is worse for children under the age of six, who had a poverty rate of 19.6% in 2008. Almost 20% of British Columbia children under the age of six are living in poverty.
The 2010 child poverty report card also reminds us that Canada signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 and that the House of Commons unanimously passed a resolution to seek to achieve the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000, yet the report goes on to say that one of every seven children in B.C. still lives in poverty despite years of unprecedented economic prosperity.
In B.C. up to 2008, we have allowed income inequality to increase.
In my riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan, we have higher than average welfare rates in general, and although some progress has been made, the report says that the Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District still ranks among the highest in the province in terms of poverty-stricken students. In case we think we are just talking about numbers, it goes on to say that these children are doing without food. When kids leave on Friday, they come back on Monday and have barely eaten all weekend.
When will the government give us a concrete plan on lifting children and families out of poverty?