POVERTY

The Child's Name is Today

Gabriela Mistral

POVERTY POLICIES

We are guilty of many errors and faults

But our worst crime is abandoning the children,

Neglecting the fountain of life.

Many things can wait.

The child cannot.

Right now is the time bones are being formed,

Blood is being made, senses are being developed.

To the child we cannot answer, "Tomorrow",

The child's name is "TODAY".

And the impact on women and children

Is there any reason not to?

Children,

Poverty,

IMPACTS GENERATION TO GENERATIOn

OUR INVESTMENT

and Early Intervention

Where it all lands...

INCOME DISTRIBUTION

More equal income distribution has been proven to be one of the best predictors of better overall health of a society.

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Report card and opportunity

5 NUMBERS TO REMEMBER ABOUT

Early Childhood Development

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Going to the hospital

Family differences in income and education directly correlate with brain size.

Low income predisposes people to material and social deprivation.

The greater the deprivation, the less likely individuals and families are able to afford the basic prerequisites of health such as, food, clothing, and housing.

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DCS

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Swimming Lessons

http://www.thecanadianfacts.org/The_Canadian_Facts.pdf

http://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3983

Nature Neuroscience May 2015

OR EXPENSE.

POLICY DRIVES REFORM

creating conditions where good policy is good politics

Current State

• Provincial Housing Strategies (e.g., A Housing Strategy for NS & Business Plan)

• Frozen Federal investments (transfer payments)... holding the status quo - no new investments.

• Rent Supplements, Repair and Emergency Grants, CMHC affordable housing projects.

• Municipal Initiative: Safe, Warm, Dry Policies. Licensing of rental units. Affordable housing lens.

• Advocacy for a National Housing Strategy!

Gaining Traction in Canada

Guaranteed Livable Income

A solution to reinvesting our wealth for the benefit of human development.

And since then...

So, where are we now?

In 2015, the UCCB program will expand. But, it remains poorly designed and the government will eliminate the non-refundable Child Tax Credit to help pay for the enriched UCCB.

Current Child Benefit System

CONFUSED

MINCOME -

It's too complex; what you get is NOT what you keep; some is taxed, some isn't - it depends, treats families different by type, and in some cases helps a minority of well-off one earner families who don't need it.

Between 1974 and 1979, residents of a small Manitoba city were selected to be subjects in a project that ensured basic annual incomes for everyone. For five years, monthly cheques were delivered to the poorest residents of Dauphin, Man. – no strings attached.

And for five years, poverty was completely eliminated.

Dr. Evelyn Forget is the researcher at University of Manitoba credited for tracking down those 1,800 dusty boxes of Mincome raw data that sat forgotten for 30 years. In 2011, Forget released a paper distilling how Mincome positively affected people’s health using census data.

...BUT

These investments and supports ensured that well into the 1980's there was a decent supply of fairly affordable housing.

However, beginning in the 1980's the federal government began to draw down its investment -- the elimination of our national federal housing strategy began, culminating in the termination of spending on new affordable housing stock by the federal government in 1993.

The current government wanted to put its own stamp on the system by boosting child payments for middle and high income voters and offering families cash INSTEAD of universal child-care services.

Beginning in the 1930's, the Canadian government increased the housing supply through key programs investments, including

• government insured mortgages,
• direct investment in social housing,
• tax incentives and subsidies for development of rental and co-op housing.

Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) was created in 1946 to address post-war housing shortages.

... placing greater weight on "parental recognition" for non-poor households.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/mincome-in-dauphin-manitoba_n_6335682.html

Social Programs in Canada

The Funding Crunch

CORE OBJECTIVES

OF FEDERAL CHILD BENEFITS -- income payments on behalf of children, delivered in the form of cheques or income tax reductions --

and the elimination of a Federal Housing Strategy

Two fundamental and related purposes

helps fill the gaps between the earning of low and modest-wage parents and their families' income needs.

• Poverty Reduction

• Parental Recognition

• Child Tax Benefit and UCCB
• Employment Insurance
• Disability
• Social Assistance (Welfare)
• Maternity Leave (1 year)
• Guaranteed Income Supplement
• Canada Pension Disability
• Canada Pension Plan
• Old Age Security (OAS)
• Health Insurance
• Pharmacare (seniors & low income earners)
• Dental (to age 14)
• Social Housing

views benefits as an important way for society to provide some financial compensation for the fact that parents bear expenses that childless households, at the same income level, do not.

Often, children live in poverty because women do....

CHILD BENEFITS IN CANADA

POLITICS VERSUS POLICY

Child benefits are social programs that can be powerful tools to combat poverty and inequality. They not only help low-income families but also the middle class. The federal and provincial governments over the years have achieved considerable progress in strengthening the architecture of child benefits in Canada.

UNFORTUNATELY, the current federal government took an about-face on child benefits when it came into power in 2006. It imposed a series of programs intended to help not only low- and middle-income families --- the traditional target of child benefits --- but also affluent households that do not need help from government.

http://www.caledoninst.org/Publications/PDF/1073ENG.pdf

Let's not let another generation suffer

Broken Promises

1998

The shifts in housing and tax policy, particularly as they relate to affordable housing, over the past 30-40 years have resulted in a crisis in affordable housing in Canada.

Families who depend on

In a rare act of cooperative federalism, Ottawa and the provinces and territories launched the

NATIONAL CHILD BENEFIT

“Canada’s welfare system is a box with a tight lid. Those in need must essentially first become destitute before they qualify for temporary assistance,” Don Drummond (TD Bank’s former chief economist, 2010)

• In NS, total welfare incomes have remained flat since 1989 (in constant dollars).

• Families are struggling with income gaps that fall well below the poverty line.

• In 2013, welfare incomes for a lone parent family with one child was actually $700 per year lower than it was in 1989 (in constant dollars).

welfare

Where has Canada landed?

INTEGRATED CHILD BENEFIT

A restructured version that built on the same strengths as the latter program, reinvested welfare-embedded child benefits, and eliminated the distinction between child benefits for the working poor and the non-working poor.

Silencing Science:

• Funding to the National Council on Welfare was cut... one of their mandates was to track income rates and poverty.

Canadian Social Policy has a watershed year.

1993

https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Nova%20Scotia%20Office/2014/11/2014_NS_Child_Poverty_Report_Card.pdf

RESULTS: reducing poverty, improving school test scores, decreasing aggression and maternal depression, and reducing hunger.

It launched a major restructural reform of federal child benefits replacing a mismatched trio that was inequitable, complicated and mostly incomprehensible to most.

The new program, was non-stigmatizing, inclusive, provided a stable and assured supplement, declined as incomes rose, what you saw was what you got (none taxable), and it paid the same to all families regardless of the source of that income, where they lived or their family type.

The provinces and territories also delivered child benefits, targeted to families on welfare.

This resulted in the inequitable situation where families on welfare received twice as much child benefits as the working poor.

Although it is generally accepted that while some dynamics are similar in both rural and urban areas (mental health, addiction, domestic violence, etc); homelessness looks different in rural communities. Often those in need rely on informal networks to couch surf or double up, they sleep rough in unsafe dwellings, seasonal "cottages" and recreational trailers during all seasons.

http://www.foodbankscanada.ca/getmedia/76907192-263c-4022-8561-73a16c06dd2f/HungerCount_2014_EN_HR.pdf.aspx

Housing is connected

to everything!

.

It is physical design; it's community economic development; it's social development; it's important to health and educational outcomes; it's a poverty reduction tool, an investment, a wealth creator and a generator of economic development. It is both an individual and public good!

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Services and Supports

G

A

P

Our Local Numbers

Social Assistance Benefits

Disability Benefits

Pension Benefits

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Basic standard of living

SINGLE ADULT

$17, 813

MBM

• Advocacy for Universal Childcare continues.

ECEC is a public good, a human right and part of building the equal, just Canada we value. Young children are citizens in their own right, entitled to a fair share of society’s resources, including appropriate high quality ECEC programs provided as a public good, not a commodity.

Canada has never had a national early childhood education and childcare (ECEC) program or policy.

We made a very modest start in 2005, when a Liberal government tabled the national Foundations program.

At that time, all provinces/territories developed action plans and agreed to proceed with support from federal funding. However, the following year, the newly elected Conservative government cancelled the bi-lateral agreements that were the basis of the evolving program.

Food Bank Solution

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I grew up worse than my kids

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Contributes to the problem of poverty and shifts responsibility back on the community...

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Met on the streets

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One of the richest countries

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Food Bank

8-year-old Isaiah is trying hard to grow up healthy, smart and well adjusted despite the odds stacked against him.

Isaiah knows he's been categorized as "less fortunate," and his short life has seen more than his share of social workers, food banks and police interventions.

His parents struggle to overcome a legacy of stereotypes, abuse and dysfunction. More than anything, they want Isaiah and his siblings to have access to opportunities they never had.

A look at the numbers...

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Out of the cycle

Can we afford to do any less?

END POVERTY TODAY!