By Seth Klein and Adrienne Montani On February 11, British Columbians will enjoy a well-deserved new stat holiday. With the inaugural Family Day, Premier Christy Clark has made good on a promise made during her bid for the BC Liberal leadership. The winter stretch needed a new long weekend, and many will appreciate this new-found [...]
Entries Tagged as 'welfare'
Seeking a Real Families First Agenda this First BC Family Day
February 7th, 2013 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Children & youth, Economy, Employment & labour, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Taxes
Tags: child poverty·children·living wage·minimum wage·poverty·welfare
The case for exempting child support from welfare
July 20th, 2012 · Kendra Milne · Comments Off · Children & youth, Poverty, inequality & welfare, Women
Based on recent announcements, it seems that the Ministry of Social Development is in the mood to address some of the long-standing problems within BC’s welfare system (although welfare rates remain distressingly low). Seth Klein recently recapped the Ministry’s June 11th announcement, which set out almost 30 proposed changes to the system. More recently, the [...]
New BC welfare rules: some positive steps forward (and a couple steps back)
June 12th, 2012 · Seth Klein · 10 Comments · Poverty, inequality & welfare
Yesterday (June 11) the BC government surprised many when it announced a host of welfare policy changes. In all, almost 30 welfare rule adjustments are to be enacted (the full list can be found here). After more than a year as premier, the announcement was billed as “the first pillar of [Premier Clark’s] Families First [...]
Tags: poverty·poverty reduction·welfare
Congratulations to Jagrup Brar: Time to raise welfare rates
February 3rd, 2012 · Seth Klein · 1 Comment · Poverty, inequality & welfare
On Tuesday, BC MLA Jagrup Brar wrapped up his month living on a basic welfare income of $610. He has returned to his family and a comfortable home. But we owe him great thanks. And kudos as well to the folks at Raise the Rates, who issued the challenge that MLAs try living on welfare [...]
Tags: child poverty·poverty·welfare
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 [...]
Vancouver’s poverty rate leads country
April 5th, 2010 · Seth Klein · 2 Comments · Housing & homelessness, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Thanks to Jean Swanson for drawing to my attention a new report from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities called Mending Canada’s frayed social safety net: The role of municipal governments. The report looks at key social indicators in 24 Canadian municipalities, and contains some stark findings for Vancouver. Jean summarizes these in a blog post [...]
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 [...]
Yet another case of our government delaying the release of important data
May 12th, 2009 · Iglika Ivanova · Comments Off · Media, Poverty, inequality & welfare
Less than a week after BC’s Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA) report raised serious questions about secrecy in government (see Keith’s comments here), The Tyee reporter Andrew MacLeod has uncovered another case of important statistics not being released on time. The culprit this time is the Housing and Social Development Ministry, which typically [...]
Government report on welfare leavers at odds with narrative
May 1st, 2009 · Seth Klein · Comments Off · Poverty, inequality & welfare
Kudos to the Tyee’s Andrew MacLeod for extracting a long delayed report on welfare leavers from the provincial government. The report can be downloaded here. Andrew’s Tyee article about the report can be found here. The report uses tax data of BC welfare leavers between 2000 and 2005 to see how people have done. Comparing [...]
Tags: accountability·Andrew MacLeod·release of information·welfare
