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 results tell us is that poverty isn’t inevitable – that policy matters.

The example of Newfoundland is particularly instructive. There, the Conservative government of Danny Williams has made poverty reduction one of its overarching goals. Back in 2004, Newfoundland’s poverty rate was the second highest in Canada after BC’s. It is now 6.5 per cent, the third lowest in Canada. Their plan has led to concrete policy changes: welfare benefit rates have gone up (and were already higher than BC’s relative to the LICO) and they have been indexed (they go up every year according to the CPI); the minimum wage has been increased to $10; and the province followed Quebec and made dental care universal for children.

Ontario now also has a plan. Indeed, their plan is legislated, with a 25% reduction in 5 years. And notably, that legislation, the Ontario Poverty Reduction Act, was passed with unanimous all-party support, one week before BC’s provincial election last May, at the height of the recession. Like Newfoundland, they have a cross-ministerial secretariat, with a lead minister. And their lead minister must present annual progress reports. They have struck a welfare review panel, undertaking a comprehensive review of all the social assistance rates and rules. And they have gone the route of introducing an Ontario Child Tax Credit (like the federal one) worth $1,300 a year (another policy vehicle for increasing the incomes of low-income families, whether their income comes from welfare or paid employment).

More recently, New Brunswick has tabled their plan. The government there has fundamentally altered the tone of the debate, particularly about welfare. They too have legislated their plan in what they call the Economic and Social Inclusion Act. They too have all-party support. They have enacted some very large increases in welfare benefit rates, and indicated that this is only the start. And they have increased and indexed the minimum wage. And they too have a secretariat to coordinate plans.

The key common features of these plans are these:

• They have been advanced with all-party support
• They have specific targets and timelines, which in most cases are embedded in legislation.
• They are comprehensive (meaning they deal with income – both social assistance and other government income supports, as well as measures to boost labour market income; but they also address the social infrastructure on which low and modest income families depend, such as housing, education, child care, and community health care; and they have specific measures to address poverty among those populations where poverty is most acute, such as Aboriginal people, recent immigrants, people with disabilities and metal illness, and single parents).
• They have accountability mechanisms, such as public consultations, funding for independent monitoring groups, and obligations to report annually on progress. A key need is for timeline benchmarks that are frequent enough that a government can be held accountable within the life of each mandate.
• There is a cross-ministry secretariat to coordinate and integrate plans, and to ensure that policies do not act at cross-purposes.

(The preceding was part of my recent presentation to the BC Legislature’s Standing Committee on Children and Youth. For the full presentation, click here

And to join the call for a BC poverty reduction plan, click here

Among the points I raised with the committee: too often this issue gets lost in a fruitless debate about how to measure poverty. The simple truth is that no measure is perfect. But by whatever measure one uses ­­–– the LICO (low-income cut-off) before-tax, the LICO after-tax, or the Market Basket Measure –– BC has the highest overall poverty rate and the highest child poverty rate in Canada. So we need a plan to change this reality.

The point is to pick a consistent measure (or a set of measures), which allows us to monitor progress over time and relative to other jurisdictions.

And when one compares BC’s performance (using either the LICO or the MBM) in this way – relative to the historic norm and relative to others – what emerges is not good.

The poverty and child poverty rates have come down in recent years (at least up to 2007, the last year for which we have data). That is to be expected. Generally, the poverty rate tracks the economic business cycle. For this reason, people are rightly worried that the poverty rate in 2008 and surely in 2009 will go back up (already we know from the annual Hunger Count report that food bank use was back up 15% in 2009 – an early warning).

But even within the data leading up to 2007, there are worrying elements:

• For example, after a near unprecedented period of economic growth, spanning from the end of the recession in the early 1990s to 2007, one would have expected to see much more of a decline in the poverty rate. But that didn’t happen. Instead, by 2007, the overall BC poverty rate (at 11%, using the after-tax LICO) had still not managed to attain the 1989 trough of about 10% reached before the 1990 recession.

• With respect to child poverty, the performance is even less impressive. 1989 was also the year in which the House of Commons resolved to end child poverty by 2000. As we all know, that didn’t happen, and indeed, the national child poverty rate by 2007 saw no progress – we were right back to where we started in 1989. But this masks provincial differences. In fact, most provinces have seen a modest improvement. The national picture is weakened by the fact that only two province saw negative progress in that time – Ontario and BC.  Indeed BC realized the least progress since the House of Commons’ ill-fated resolution, with child poverty increasing by 30 per cent between 1989 and 2007.

• Also, while the national child poverty rate has consistently gone down since the mid 1990s, BC alone saw a disturbing upward spike in the years 2002, 2003 and 2004 (again, you see this using either the LICO or MBM). This is likely a result on welfare policy changes instituted in 2002.

It is instructive to look at how BC does relative to some other provinces, and in particular, relative to Quebec and Newfoundland, as they are the provinces with the longest standing poverty reduction plans.

In many respects, the MBM is a better measure, as it is more reflective of the actual costs of basic goods in each place (such as differences in the cost of housing). However, data only goes back to 2000, and for the first few years, HRSDC was not reliably producing annual updates. But that appears to now be changing.

Importantly, the success in Quebec and Newfoundland isn’t just about an improved economy and job creation. Notably, if one were to look at market income alone, the child poverty rate in both of these places in 2007 was higher than in BC. It is after incorporating government transfers that their poverty rates fall below us. The lesson: government policy makes a difference.

Conversely, when we rely only on the market, economic growth and job creation, the results with respect to poverty reduction are weak. That is what we see in the BC case, where we have recorded very low unemployment in recent years (up to the onset of the recession), but poor progress on child poverty. In BC, the story of child poverty is primarily as low-wage story; 56% of poor children in BC live in households with at least one parent working full-year full-time in the paid labour force.  That’s why a plan needs to address issues such as the minimum wage, employment standards, and a living wage. And that’s why, when we call for a poverty plan, and the response from the Premier is that the government’s goal is to have the lowest unemployment rate that we can – that goal, while laudable, is insufficient.

Here’s an excerpt:

B.C. had the third-highest increase in unemployment in the country during the recession. Some 51,800 jobs were lost between October 2008 and October 2009, representing 2.2 per cent of B.C.’s total jobs. Unemployment increased over this period to 8.3 per cent from 5.2 per cent.

While the number of EI recipients rose sharply as unemployment grew, with nine B.C. urban communities experiencing an increase of 115 per cent or more in the number of EI recipients, coverage remained low, rising to 48.2 per cent in October 2009. In other words, more than half of B.C.’s unemployed were not receiving benefits, despite the fact that the province’s economy was one of the most devastated by the recession.

Citizens for Public Justice, along with Canada Without Poverty, has been leading a campaign called Dignity for All – a national call to end poverty in Canada.

Consider the HST, for example, which the government famously described as “the most important thing we can do for the economy” because it lowers the costs of business investment by $1.9 billion per year. The government chose to tax consumers more in order to keep the shift revenue neutral instead of raising the lost revenue from other business taxes.

While corporate and small business tax rates are getting smaller by the year, the minimum wage has not budged since 2001 and is now the lowest in Canada.

The intuition behind this economic strategy is that lower business taxes and relaxed workers’ rights would make it easier for firms to reap higher profits, thus encouraging them to set up locally. This in turn should create jobs for the local population and bring about economic growth. Jobs and economic growth are expected to, well… lift all boats as the saying goes.

Unfortunately, the type of jobs created by business friendly measures are often not the stable, well-paying jobs that people need to be able to support themselves and their families. As a result, the economic growth that is generated tends to benefit a small minority. In BC, we’ve seen this clearly over the last 25 years, when economic growth was strong yet poverty remained largely unchanged and income inequality increased substantially.

A recent OECD report confirms that job creation is not the be all and end all of social and economic policy. The report, entitled OECD Employment Outlook: Tackling the Jobs Crisis, devotes an entire 45-page chapter to the question “Is work the best antidote to poverty?”

The OECD researchers show that while employment considerably reduces the risk of poverty, simply having a job is not a guaranteed path out of poverty. On average in the OECD, 7% of people living in households with at least one worker were poor. In Canada, this number was higher, 9%.

Working poverty is so widespread that it accounted for close to 70% of all poor people in Canada even during the economic boom of the mid-2000s (roughly the same as the OECD average).

This OECD report is just the latest confirmation of something that social policy researchers have known for a long time: even a robust economic recovery will not eliminate poverty and social exclusion without a comprehensive, government-led poverty reduction plan.

What kind of poverty reduction policies does the OECD recommend? The report acknowledges that poverty is a complex social problem and country-specific factors need to be taken into account, but it argues that “social transfers play a key role, precisely because they can be targeted towards the most vulnerable households: on average in the OECD area, they reduce by almost half the rate of in-work poverty.”

On this front, Canada can and should be doing a lot better. Other OECD reports, such as the 2007 Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries, have documented that social transfers in Canada became less generous between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, so it should not come as a surprise that our poverty rates (including working poverty) have grown since. BC has been among the worst performers in the country on these measures.

It’s clear that job creation is an important goal, especially at the tail-end of a deep recession, but it should not be pursued single-mindedly, without concern for the workers’ economic security or their ability to earn enough to afford the basics like housing, child care, education and training upgrades.

The type of jobs created matters a lot, which is why the OECD calls for increased training opportunities for those who have lost their jobs as a result of the recession. They suggest shifting “the focus and resources behind activation from the “work-first” approach which tended to dominate prior to the crisis to a “train-first” approach for those at high risk of long-term unemployment.”

Indeed, access to education and training opportunities throughout the lifecycle can greatly improve a person’s employment options and ultimately boosts the productivity of the economy as a whole. Investments in training and education partially pay for themselves with the extra tax revenue collected from higher paid workers. Yet such investments are largely missing from BC government’s one-sided labour market approach.

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, modelled on a family of four with two young children), and applied the policy to both direct staff and contractors, which is fantastic, as it means this now sets a national standard/precedent for similar policies/bylaws. Hopefully, other cities will follow soon.

The motion was as follows:

That the City establish a Living Wage Policy that is tied to an hourly rate established each year by the Living Wage for Families Campaign; and,

That the Living Wage policy will apply to both full time and part time employees; and,

That there be no threshold in terms of dollar value of a contract or number of employees; and,

That the policy apply to persons that perform physical work on City premises and properties; and,

That staff bring back information to Council regarding implications of the Living Wage on contracted services.”

It’s a great win for the Metro Vancouver Living Wage for Families campaign (which includes First Call, CCPA, ACORN, HEU, and many others). Special recognition should go to the lead city councillor on this, Jaimie McEvoy, and to BC ACORN which initiated this effort in New West.

Of the 24 cities, Vancouver has the highest percent of population with low income; the highest percent of working poor families; and the largest and fastest growing income gap between rich and poor. Welfare income was also very low in Vancouver, and Vancouver had the second highest number of households which paid more than 30% of their income for rent and/or lived in inadequate housing. Vancouver was also worst for “community affordability.” That means that the combination of low income plus high cost of living makes the poorest fifth of Vancouver residents worse off than those in other cities.

The after-tax dollars for someone at minimum wage in this province is quite good compared to some of the other provinces that have a higher minimum wage.

This isn’t the first time that the government has used the low taxes argument to dismiss calls for higher minimum wages, but has anybody bothered to check whether their logic is correct? Do BC’s low taxes make up for the low minimum wages we pay?

There are reasons to be skeptical of the Minister’s assertions: previous CCPA research has documented that BC’s personal income tax cuts disproportionately benefited higher income taxpayers.

A back of the envelope calculation to check how much tax would a full-time, full-year minimum wage worker owe in each province reveals that minimum wage workers in other provinces have more money left in their pocket after paying provincial taxes than a BC minimum wage worker would be able to earn in one working year (with the possible exception of PEI).

To make this graph, I used the provincial personal income tax comparison published in the 2010 BC Budget (appendix table A3). The income levels compared start at $10,000 and go up in $10,000 increments, so I wasn’t able to get at the tax level for the exact minimum wage incomes. I used the tax payable at income of $20,000, which is more than what the minimum wage worker would owe in all provinces except Ontario (because they earn less than $20,000). Even at these overestimated tax levels, the extra income that higher minimum wages bring more than offsets the extra taxes owing, leaving workers better off (see table).

BC may be home of the lowest tax rates, but it’s also home of the highest after-tax poverty rate in the country – 11.1% of British Columbians lived on after-tax incomes below Statistics Canada’s low income cut off rate in 2007.

Minister Coell, take note: even if you don’t tax low wage workers at all, they only earn so much. There are many low wage workers in BC who would be much better off if they could earn higher wages even if they had to pay slightly higher taxes on them.

The first of these short reports was posted to their website this week.

The report includes a startling finding — not only does BC have the highest child poverty rate, our province has also realized the least progress since the House of Commons’ ill-fated 1989 resolution to end child poverty. Make that negative progress. While most provinces saw a drop in their child poverty rate between 1989 and 2007, only Ontario and BC saw the situation worsen, with BC experiencing the largest increase (of 30%).

Here are the details:

Let’s take a longer-term view of the child poverty statistics and compare poverty rates twenty years ago in 1989 and in 2007.  The year 1989 was the best year of the 1980s for the economy, and the national child poverty rate was 15.3 percent.  It was also the year that the House of Commons voted unanimously to work to end child poverty by the year 2000.

Canada never got anywhere near that goal.  In fact, the national child poverty rate in 2007 was 15 percent.  The year 2007, like 1989, came at the end of a long cycle of economic growth prior to the current recession.

The table shows the poverty rates for Canada and each of the provinces in 1989 and 2007.

CHILD POVERTY RATES IN 1989 AND 2007, CANADA AND ALL PROVINCES
	1989	2007	% CHANGE
Alberta	19.3	11.2	-42%
Prince Edward Island	13.5	8.3	-39%
Newfoundland and Labrador	20.0	13.0	-35%
Saskatchewan	21.9	16.7	-24%
Manitoba	22.7	18.8	-17%
Nova Scotia	16.1	14.9	-7%
New Brunswick	17.9	16.7	-7%
Quebec	16.0	14.9	-7%
CANADA	15.3	15.0	-2%
Ontario	11.9	14.5	+22%
British Columbia	14.5	18.8	+30%
Source: Statistics Canada, Income Trends in Canada  1976 to 2007 (Low Income Cut-Offs Before Taxes)

Eight provinces reported declines in the child poverty rate in this 20 year period, some of which were dramatic.  British Columbia and Ontario were the only provinces that did worse over this time period, with BC the worst by far.  Together, child poverty in these two provinces kept the national child poverty rate from falling significantly.

The provincial government of Ontario recently passed anti-poverty legislation with the unanimous support of the legislature that seeks to reduce the child poverty rate by 25 percent over five years.

New Brunswick’s decision to increase their minimum wage is part of a larger poverty-reduction plan adopted last November. This move shows that New Brunswick is committed to ensuring a decent standard of living for all workers not just on paper but through action as well.

It’s worth noting that this time last year, New Brunswick’s minimum wage was $7.75, putting it in last place among all Canadian provinces. How much difference a year can make!

Closer to home,  our Premier’s latest excuse for inaction on minimum wages has been the poor economic conditions (most recently used in a mid-December interview on the Bill Good show, see here). That is despite the fact that we’re among the provinces least harmed by the recession and that other, worse affected provinces are managing just fine with higher minimum wages. Now that I think of it, the boom wasn’t the right time to increase minimum wages either, according to our government. Hmm.

As a result, minimum wages remain frozen at $8 per hour, well below where they need to be to ensure that full-time, full-year work is a ticket out of poverty.

Kudos to New Brunswick’s government for showing us that it is possible to maintain one’s social conscience during a recession, and confirming that public policy is, essentially, a matter of choice and not something dictated by “the economy.”

That’s why British Columbians should be concerned about a report released earlier this week by the Dieticians of Canada — The Cost of Eating in BC 2009.

Unfortunately, the Dietitian’s report received virtually no media coverage. But it makes a vital point — British Columbians on social assistance and those working for minimum wage cannot afford a healthy diet. For them, meeting the Premier’s great goal is simply out of reach.

Here’s the report in its own words:

Dietitians publish the report to bring attention to the fact that not all British Columbians have enough money to buy healthy food.  While shelter and food costs have risen significantly over the past decade, income assistance rates have remained virtually unchanged and minimum wage, once the highest in the country, has remained at $8.00/hour. For those receiving income assistance or earning minimum wage there simply is not enough money to pay for housing and food, let alone other necessities. Unemployment is up and more people are relying on assistance.  There are too many living in poverty in BC and too many lined up at food banks. Dietitians are calling for the provincial government to take some additional action to address poverty in this province. Other provinces are taking action.  Quebec and Ontario have anti-poverty legislation, while Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and New Brunswick all have poverty reduction plans.  Common to them are significant changes to income assistance and increases to minimum wage.

The report contains important calculations, comparing the cost of basic necessities (including a healthy diet), set against the income provided by welfare or a minimum wage job. For example, a family of four on income assistance would need more than 100% of their income for shelter and food alone, leaving nothing for anything else.

The core finding of this report isn’t just of concern to those families caught in this untenable situation. In truth, we all pay for this policy failure. A poor diet means poor health, and we all pick up the tab for that. That’s why the Dietitians have joined the call for a comprehensive poverty reduction plan for BC

The report, which surveys food banks across the country every March, found that in March 2009, food bank use was up nearly 18% nationally, and 15% in BC –– the largest single-year jump and the highest number of people assisted on record.  81% of BC food banks reported an increase in demand in 2009. Of the nearly 90,000 British Columbians who relied on food banks that month, 31% were children, 12% reported employment income, 6% were on EI, 19% were receiving disability-related income support, and 44% were receiving social assistance (yet more proof that our welfare system is structurally dependent on food banks and other charities for people to meet their basic food needs).

Food bank usage had been in decline since 2004, until this year. And so, this report provides important evidence of the impact of the recession. We won’t have up-to-date poverty statistics for another year or so, so reports like this provide an early glimpse of how vulnerable people are impacted by the downturn.

If we are going to end hunger in our society, charity alone is not going to get the job done. We need an income support system and wages that ensure people can meet basic needs. And the report provides yet more evidence that both BC and Canada need comprehensive poverty reduction plans, something Food Banks Canada itself calls for in this report.

It’s hard for me to see friends struggle financially, so I’ve tried to encourage Emily to get a better job. Though she doesn’t have a degree, Emily is bright and a hard worker — she should be able to do better.

But Emily doesn’t want to get a better paying job. There is no point, she tells me, because she’s close to the cut off point of many of the government subsidies she relies on and if she made even $1,000 more per year, she’d lose so much in government benefits that her net income would end up lower.

She’s calculated that she needs to earn thousands of dollars more per year to compensate for the value of the lost benefits and she figures that she can’t get such a job without finishing her degree. Which she can’t afford because her low income doesn’t allow her to save up for school. But she can’t get a higher-paying job to help finance her education because if her income went up she’d lose her childcare subsidy, her housing subsidy and will have to start making payments on her student loans.

It seems like the system is stacked against her.

And she’s not the only one. Many low-income people find themselves in a similar position as the majority of government benefits are targeted to the lowest income categories and phased out quickly as soon as the family’s income gets above the bare minimum. A recently released CCPA brief addresses the problem of benefit “stacking” and presents some possible solutions. You can read more about it here.

It’s a classic case of unintended consequences: policy-makers start with the laudable goal of helping the most needy first and they try to avoid spending scarce resources on those who are able to pay for themselves, but in targeting benefits narrowly to the lowest income families they make it very difficult for people like Emily to break out of the low-wage cycle of economic insecurity. For those who need to obtain further post-secondary education or training to be able to move up, the system becomes a catch-22 when BC’s high tuition fees are taken into account.

Benefit stacking is a real problem in BC and it needs to be considered carefully in the design of all new low-income tax credits and other benefits. I haven’t run the numbers, but my guess is that the new low-income credits the government just introduced in the last budget (the HST credit and the new premium assistance) are only compounding the problem.

A recent report released by the OECD devotes an entire chapter to the question “Is Work the Best Antidote to Poverty?” OECD Employment Outlook: Tackling the Jobs Crisis looks at the impact of the global recession on labour markets and presents some very interesting observations on the problem of working poverty in industrialized countries. In the end, the researchers find that we need more than just job creation to deal with poverty:

Employment reduces considerably the poverty risk, but does not solve all problems. On average in the OECD area, 7% of individuals living in households with at least one worker are poor.

According to the same report, in Canada this number was 9%. Moreover, the data show that working poor account for close to 70% of all poor people in Canada, which is roughly the same as the OECD average.

Yes, in all countries people who do not work experience higher poverty rates than those who do (no surprises here), but it’s sobering to realize just how common working poverty is. This leads the researchers to conclude that

the working poor constitute an important target population for anti-poverty policy in most OECD countries.

What kind of anti-poverty policies may be necessary? Poverty is a complex social problem and country-specific factors need to be taken into account, but the report notes that:

Social transfers play a key role, precisely because they can be targeted towards the most vulnerable households: on average in the OECD area, they reduce by almost half the rate of in-work poverty.

On this front Canada’s not doing very well. Previous OECD reports (such as last fall’s Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries) have noted that social transfers in Canada have become less generous between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, so it should not surprise us that our poverty rates (including working poverty) have grown.

Another very interesting point made in the report is the call for increased training opportunities for those who have lost their jobs.

At the same time, OECD research suggests that it would be advisable to shift somewhat the focus and resources behind activation from the “work-first” approach which tended to dominate prior to the crisis to a “train-first” approach for those at high risk of long-term unemployment.

All in all, this report adds to the evidence that even a strong economy will not eliminate poverty on its own without a comprehensive, government-led poverty reduction plan.

Perhaps someone should send Gordon Campbell a copy.

Late last week, the BC Poverty Reduction Committee released its analysis of the three main parties’ platforms with respect to the call. In summary, here’s where they have landed:

The BC Liberal Party does not commit to a poverty reduction plan with clear targets and timelines. The Premier has written, “the Province of British Columbia has made promising steps to address the challenges associated with poverty and we are working on additional measures to put together a comprehensive plan to continue moving forward.” The closest the Liberal platform comes to suggesting a real target is in the area of homelessness, in titling the one-page policy section on housing, “Ending homelessness with new solutions.” The section describes various initiatives to date (outlined below). But this goal of ending homelessness is not linked to clear timelines.

The BC New Democratic Party platform does commit to “Developing a poverty reduction plan with targets and timelines that build on our initiatives that will raise the minimum wage, support jobs and skills training, increase affordable housing, improve child protection and change income assistance.” This is good news. However, the NDP plan does not specify what the poverty reduction targets and timelines should be (presumably this would be determined after the election), nor does it say if such targets and timelines would be legislated (which is key to accountability). The NDP commitment with respect to homelessness is more concrete. Their plan commits to “Ending the crisis in homelessness in 5 years.”

The Green Party has included poverty reduction as a priority in their platform, British Columbia’s Green Book: “The Green Party understands that immediate action is needed to ensure every British Columbian has a meaningful opportunity to share in the wealth of this province.” The key goals of their plan include ensuring British Columbians can all meet their basic needs, and “reversing the trend towards greater disparity between rich and poor.” Additionally, in the area of housing and homelessness, the Green Party has committed to “safe and affordable homes” for everyone living in BC. As the Green Party is not contesting government, they have not costed out their policies.

A more detailed analysis of the party platforms/positions with respect to the poverty reduction call can be found here.

Premier Campbell’s stubborn refusal to commit to poverty reduction targets has been particularly disappointing. During the election campaign, Premier Campbell has repeatedly been asked by reporters and citizens if a re-elected Liberal government would bring in a comprehensive poverty reduction plan with targets and timelines. On each occasion, he has refused to say yes. Instead, the premier has replied that his goal is “to have the lowest unemployment rate that we can,” because “a job is the best social program.” It is correct that job creation is important to poverty reduction. But most poor British Columbians are already employed in the low wage workforce (where they face a minimum wage that hasn’t moved since 2001), and record low unemployment over the past few years has not changed the fact that BC has the highest poverty rate in Canada. So clearly, a focus on employment is insufficient.

During last Sunday’s TV leaders debate, Steve Kerstetter asked (in a recorded question) what new initiatives the leaders would take to reduce child poverty. Notably, in his response, the premier did not mention any new initiatives, but rather, simply talked about things the province has already done.

Once again, the premier selectively noted that BC’s child poverty rate has declined by 15% since 2003. Why 2003? Because that’s when BC’s child poverty rate peaked at 19%. What the premier neglects to mention is that the latest BC child poverty rate of 16% remains 2 percentage points higher than it was in 2001 (when it stood at 14%).

Premier Campbell spent much of the interview disputing the use of StatsCan’s low income cut-off as a legitimate measure of poverty. This is curious, given that the premier’s own BC Progress Board uses the LICO after-tax as one of its key social indicators.

He claimed the LICO fails to capture the government’s tax cuts, but the child poverty stat used by Mi-Jung Lee (16%) is the LICO after-tax. He claimed the LICO failed to capture the government’s elimination of MSP premiums for low-income people, yet BC is in fact the only province that charges individuals MSP premiums.

The fact is, BC has the highest overall poverty rate and child poverty rate in Canada regardless of what measure one chooses to use – the LICO pre-tax, the LICO after-tax, or the federal government’s Market Basket Measure (MBM). Indeed, the MBM (unlike the LICO) captures the actual costs of basic goods and services in a given community, and by this measure, BC has an even higher poverty rate.

Our premier’s reaction is in striking contrast to Premier Danny Williams. Not long ago, Newfoundland shared with BC the ignominious distinction of having the highest poverty rate in the country. But when presented with this reality, Premier Williams chose not to dispute the data, and instead embarked on an ambitious poverty reduction plan that is getting results. Despite the lower cost of living in Newfoundland, they now have a higher minimum wage than BC, higher welfare rates, and two years ago become the first province to index welfare rates to inflation (Nova Scotia has just announced it will do the same). And Newfoundland no longer shares top spot with BC in the poverty rankings.

Premier Campbell selectively notes that BC’s child poverty rate has declined by 15% since 2003. Why 2003? Because that’s when BC’s child poverty rate peaked at 19%. What the premier neglects to mention in that in 2001 the child poverty rate was 14%, two percentage points lower than it is today.

When Mi-Jung Lee asked the premier directly if BC should follow other provinces and bring in a poverty reduction plan with legislated targets and timelines (as BC has done for climate change), the premier replied that, “Our goal is to have the lowest unemployment rate that we can, which reduces poverty.” Unfortunately, while job growth is important, if we’ve learned one thing, it is that employment is no guarantee that a person escapes poverty (especially when the minimum wage has been frozen for eight years). Despite BC’s comparatively low unemployment rate, we have the highest rate of poverty in the country. Consider this: about 3.5% of British Columbians rely on social assistance, while the overall poverty rate is 13%. Similarly, a majority of poor children have at least one parent working full time in the paid labour force. The breadth of poverty in BC is a low-wage story.

The premier was right on one point: income is not the only thing that matters to the well-being of low-income families. Public services and programs also matter. Key among these would be universal child care (if we had it). And if BC followed the lead of Newfoundland and Quebec and made dental care part of the public health care system for all children, that would be a big boost too.