The Cities Innovating to Reduce Poverty Eastern Regional Summit took place in Mississauga from September 18 – 19th bringing together 206 learners from more than 29 cities and communities from across Eastern Canada. This included government and public sector staff, elected officials, community agency leaders, and interested residents collaborating to learn from one another on how we end poverty in Canada.
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How has the Vibrant Communities – Cities Reducing Poverty (VC – CRP) network contributed to poverty reduction in Canada? In seeking to answer this central question, the State of Cities Reducing Poverty paper highlights the network’s numerous and varied impacts.
As the paper documents, the VC – CRP multi-sector model has helped facilitate community leadership on poverty, including among mayors and municipal councils, the business community, and people with lived and living experience of poverty. The network has also led and contributed to significant policy and systems changes in domains such as living wage, transportation, housing, and financial empowerment.
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This is the September 2018 edition of the Cities Reducing Poverty Policy Digest which aims to provide timely poverty-related policy updates and resources from across Canada.
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At the end of 2017, I was looking for ways to get more involved in my community. When I first heard of the Leeds Grenville Poverty Alliance, I was intrigued, but could not figure out exactly what their mission was. When I attended my first meeting, I was quite intimidated, walking into a large boardroom with people who work on these issues every day. It soon became apparent that the work they do is meaningful, and that I was fortunate to be able to listen and learn. The following are some of the things I’ve learned about being a part of this group.
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The Government of Canada’s first Poverty Reduction Strategy, Opportunity For All, was released on August 21, 2018 in Vancouver, BC. Based on a vision of a Canada without poverty, and on the principle that all Canadians deserve a fair and real chance to succeed and live with dignity; the strategy commits to strengthening the middle class and helping those who are working hard to join it. Informed by an extensive community engagement process, Opportunity For All is organized by three pillars, establishing a working definition of poverty and official income poverty line, and a commitment to reducing the poverty rate in Canada by 50% by 2030.
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Within the Cities Reducing Poverty network, building public awareness and shifting attitudes about poverty is a critical part of the work. So I was interested in what the Angus Reid Institute’s recent study of poverty, which was released in two parts this summer, revealed about Canadians’ views on poverty.
The first part of the study defined and quantified poverty in Canada by asking people whether and how often they have struggled economically. The study created four segments of the population based on the responses:
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