By Stephanie Myles
Talk is cheap when it comes to ending child poverty.
That was the message from people who work with child poverty on a daily basis as policy experts, activists and people with firsthand experience met to offer solutions to this Canada-wide problem.
“Knowing how all these potential policies could impact is hard to imagine for people on a daily basis,” said Linda Osmond of the Catholic Family Service of Ottawa.
Osmond was reacting to panel discussions at a Jan. 25 conference on child poverty organized by children’s service and advocacy groups and Ed Broadbent, MP for Ottawa Centre.
The conference follows November’s announcement that Canada’s child poverty rate has risen to 15.6 per cent, despite a unanimous commitment from Canada’s federal political parties 15 years ago to end child poverty by the year 2000.
“We have, in Canada, fallen totally behind in terms of our commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” said Broadbent, referring to a 1989 United Nations conference in which Canada committed to ending child poverty.
Panelists linked child poverty to family poverty. Policy suggestions included affordable child care, increased child benefits, and a $10-an-hour federal minimum wage.
“A single adult working full-time for a year … should get an hourly wage sufficient to bring them to the poverty line,” said Andrew Jackson, a Canadian Labour Congress economist.
Other panelists spoke of the realities of child poverty.
“Child poverty is about not having enough to eat . . . it’s about living in overcrowded conditions,” said Barbara Carroll, of the Coalition of Community Houses in Ottawa.
“Child poverty is about not having enough clothes, shoes, boots, or maybe enough diapers for your baby.”
Carroll said children who live in poverty have poorer health and development.
Osmond said she has seen these problems increase in her 16 years serving low-income families. But nothing will be done to stop child poverty until it becomes too severe to ignore, she said.
“Sometimes the political will doesn’t come without the problem being so enormous that you have to deal with it, and I think they’re going to have to get there.”
While discussions on child poverty are necessary, Osmond said it would be more useful to develop strategies and timelines to implement suggestions.
“I think they need to go back and look at what the components of poverty are, and at what level it’s affected,” she said. “Is it local, is it federal, is it provincial policy? And then look at the kinds of initiatives they need to take to address it more globally.”