Nearly one in every four children live in poverty in Canada after 20 years of broken promises
Child poverty rate still 23% two decades later: report
October 07, 2008
Canada needs to do more to fix the child poverty rate because it has remained virtually unchanged in two decades, says an annual quality of life report card released Tuesday by the Community Foundations of Canada.
The non-governmental organization said the Vital Signs 2008 report shows more than one in five children (1.6 million or 23%) lived in poverty in 2006.
That's the same level as 1989, the report suggests, when Ottawa pledged to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000.
The report card is an initiative by 15 Canadian community foundations to measure the quality of life and make recommendations to improve it. Each of the communities released a separate report card as part of the initiative.
The study also found that more Canadians are finishing high school. In 2007, 22% of Canadians had not finished high school which was down from 38% in 1990.
However, the report also found gaps in educational levels among different groups. Among Canadians aged 25-44, the share of men without a high school education is more than 30% higher than that of women.
Also, In 2006, 43.7% of aboriginal people did not have a high school diploma, the report found.
The CFC said a full report will be made available Oct. 16 at www.cfc-fcc.ca.
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From the National Post
The Issues: Thinking about the children
October 07, 2008
A week-long look at some of the key planks in the party platforms. Today, Matthew Coutts looks at child care
The question of child care in Canada reached a major turning point in the 2006 election, as the emerging Conservative government scrapped a Universal Child Care strategy between the federal and provincial governments and replaced it with monthly payments for families with young children. Here are the party positions this time around.
LIBERALS
Stephane Dion's party has pledged up to $1.25-billion of federal funding annually by the fourth year of a Liberal mandate to create 165,000 new spaces. They have also said they would retain the current $100 monthly payments and provide additional tax benefits through the Green Shift plan worth $1,300 annually for a two-child family making $60,000, and up to $2,400 for a family making $20,00 per year.
NDP
Jack Layton has said his party would provide $400 per child per month, tax-free, for households earning $38,000 a year or less and $250 per month for households earning less than $188,000. It would also create 220,000 new child care spaces by the program's fourth year.
CONSERVATIVES
The Tories would retain the Universal Child Care Benefit's $100 monthly payments to support parents with children under six years of age, giving them a choice to either care for their child at home or subsidize child care programs. They also promised to improve the program by making payments tax-free for sole-support single-income families and protecting the payments against inflation.
LIBERALS
Stephane Dion's party has pledged up to $1.25-billion of federal funding annually by the fourth year of a Liberal mandate to create 165,000 new spaces. They have also said they would retain the current $100 monthly payments and provide additional tax benefits through the Green Shift plan worth $1,300 annually for a two-child family making $60,000, and up to $2,400 for a family making $20,00 per year.
NDP
Jack Layton has said his party would provide $400 per child per month, tax-free, for households earning $38,000 a year or less and $250 per month for households earning less than $188,000. It would also create 220,000 new child care spaces by the program's fourth year.
GREEN PARTY
The Greens say they would provide access to affordable, quality child care through a federally funded universal child care program at a cost of $3.3-billion annually by 2011.