The Honourable Jean‑Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, announced the release of the Canadian Poverty Reduction Strategy: What We Heard About Poverty So Far report, on Tuesday February 20th via a Facebook Live broadcast.
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Hello fellow Social Change Agents!
I am wrapping up my second week here as an official member of the Tamarack Family and have been reflecting on my experience so far.
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Just before the holidays, United Way of Central Iowa, as part of the OpportUNITY Plan, announced that in 2016, 11,000 more individuals were financially self-sufficient in three state counties: Polk, Warren, and Dallas. This is incredibly significant to the community, as it marks the first time in recent memory that Central Iowa has seen a reduction in poverty. The good news reflects well on the hard work of United Way of Central Iowa and their partners, the value of a Collective Impact approach to poverty reduction, and the importance of a robust measurement strategy.
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In one of my volunteer roles, I co-chair LivingSJ—a collective impact movement in Saint John with a goal to end generational poverty. What many may not realize is that generational poverty is a much more stubborn and complex problem to solve than situational or temporary poverty. When a person or family with a job/house/car/etc… gets into dire straits after suffering a catastrophic financial event, they are often privileged to have friends and family with assets to lean on temporarily, with their gravity typically pulling them upward towards recovering to their norm. However, with generational poverty, the gravitational pull is often reversed, continually holding people down, generation after generation, because in many respects the knowledge of what heights can be reached gets lost to the collective conscience.
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In its 16th Annual Report, Strength in numbers: Targeting labour force participation to improve prosperity in Ontario, Ontario’s Panel on Economic Growth & Prosperity analyzes Ontario's GDP per capita compared to ten similar peer jurisdictions (Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, the Netherlands, Tennessee, Sweden, Michigan, Australia, British Columbia, and Québec) and analyzes the labour force participation rate of youth, women, older workers, and Indigenous Peoples in Ontario.
The analysis reveals that Ontario continues to experience a ‘prosperity gap’ – GDP per capita is $5,600 below its peer jurisdictions.
Removing the barriers faced by these four groups has the potential to close Ontario's prosperity gap and could add $54.0 billion to the economy.
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British Columbia is one of the most prosperous provinces in Canada, yet poverty remains a serious issue in many communities. According to a new report released today, key indicators of poverty remain startlingly high in the Lower Columbia Region (LCR) of BC’s West Kootenay. For example, the four local foodbanks support approximately 5,000 visits per year. Additionally 1,600 households – 1 in 5 in the region – are in housing need, and in 2013, the last year for which there is reliable data, 990 children were living in poverty.
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