Two important new voices joined the call for a BC poverty reduction plan in the last couple days. First, on Tuesday, BC Provincial Health Officer Perry Kendall released a special report entitled Investing in Prevention. The report received quite a lot of media attention. However, most of the coverage dealt with the common-space issues of [...]
Entries Tagged as 'child poverty'
New voices in support of a BC poverty reduction plan
September 30th, 2010 · Seth Klein · 2 Comments · Children & youth, Poverty, inequality & welfare
What will it take to bring smarter family policy to BC?
September 27th, 2010 · Iglika Ivanova · Comments Off · Children & youth, Transparency & accountability, Women
Did you know that the BC government has set a goal to reduce early childhood vulnerability to 15% by fiscal year 2015? You can hardly tell by their actions. BC did introduce full-day kindergarten in some communities this fall, but other than that the family policy front has been rather quiet lately. The latest childhood [...]
Tags: accountability·child poverty·childcare·children·families·family policy·poverty·role of government·Women
Your Brain on Capitalism
September 7th, 2010 · Peter Prontzos · 3 Comments · Children & youth, Education, Environment, resources & sustainability, Poverty, inequality & welfare
At least as far back as Sokrates, people have speculated on the relationship between psychology and politics. In the 20th century, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm and members of the Frankfurt School (such as Herbert Marcuse) pioneered discussion about how individual dispositions affect one’s social and political ideologies. On the other hand, social psychologists like Stanley [...]
Poverty reduction: What other provinces are doing
June 8th, 2010 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Children & youth, Poverty, inequality & welfare
BC has much to learn from other provinces when it comes to poverty reduction. Six provinces now have poverty reduction plans, although most are still fairly new, and therefore we don’t yet have data to tell us what kind of success they are meeting with, the exceptions being Quebec and Newfoundland. What their plans and [...]
Child poverty: How does BC stack up against those provinces with a plan?
May 29th, 2010 · Seth Klein · 1 Comment · Children & youth, Poverty, inequality & welfare
A week ago, I appeared before the BC Legislature’s Standing Committee on Children and Youth. The committee, to its credit, had decided to spend a day hearing witnesses on the subject of child poverty, and what BC could do to make a difference. Among the points I raised with the committee: too often this issue [...]
Tags: child poverty·poverty
Early indicators of how the recession has hit BC’s poor
May 29th, 2010 · Seth Klein · 1 Comment · Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Just wanted to draw readers’ attention to a great op-ed piece in The Province newspaper this past Thursday: “Recession slammed BC’s poor; and it’s not over,” by Chandra Pasma. Chandra is a policy analyst with Citizens for Public Justice (a faith-based social justice group), and author of a recent report entitled Bearing the Brunt: How [...]
Tags: child poverty·poverty·recession
Living Wage: Congratulations to New Westminster
April 27th, 2010 · Seth Klein · 8 Comments · Children & youth, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Some great news to share on the living wage front. Last night (April 26), New Westminster City Council voted unanimously to adopt the first municipal Living Wage policy in Canada. They have used the broad definition of the family living wage, developed two years ago by CCPA, First Call and the Victoria Community Council (meaning, [...]
Tags: child poverty·living wage·poverty
Child Poverty in BC — taking a look back
January 15th, 2010 · Seth Klein · 2 Comments · Children & youth, Poverty, inequality & welfare
In response to the provincial government’s efforts to explain away child poverty stats, First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition (which produces the annual BC child poverty report card) has started to produce monthly fact sheets to set the record straight. The first of these short reports was posted to their website this week. [...]
Tags: child poverty·poverty
Healthy eating put out of reach for the poor
December 16th, 2009 · Seth Klein · 5 Comments · Children & youth, Health care, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Remember the Premier’s “Great Golden Goal” (G3?) about healthy eating? True, we don’t hear so much about it these days. But it was a laudable goal. Eating a healthy diet is important if we are to improve the overall health of the population, and thereby help to slow rising health care costs. And it’s particularly [...]
Food Bank use takes a distressing jump
November 19th, 2009 · Seth Klein · 3 Comments · Poverty, inequality & welfare
On Tuesday, Food Banks Canada (the national association of food banks) released its annual Hunger Count report. While the report received some good national coverage (particularly on CBC), I was surprised to see no mention of it in the Vancouver Sun. The report, which surveys food banks across the country every March, found that in [...]
