One in eight children in Canada – 788,000 in all – are living in poverty, a new report says.
Ontario remains the “child poverty capital,” with 345,000 children living in impoverished conditions, according to the 2007 national report card on child and family poverty in Canada.
“More parents are working but are still poor,” said Ann Decter, national co-ordinator of Campaign 2000, which released the report card this morning.
“It does not have to be this way.”
Eighteen years after the Commons passed an all-party resolution to end child poverty in Canada, little progress has been made “despite a growing economy, soaring dollar and low employment,” Decter told a Parliament Hill news conference.
Having a job is no answer to escaping poverty – in 2005, 41 per cent of all low-income children lived in families where at least one parent had a full-time job, she said.
Teachers see the sad consequences of child poverty every day in their classrooms - in students who are malnourished, who don’t have winter clothing and who don’t have the money to pay for field trips, said Emily Noble, president of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation.
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