Riding by Riding Analysis Shows Child Poverty in Canada Knows No Boundaries

Despite multiple all-party resolutions to eliminate child poverty and poverty among all persons, the 1991 ratification of the Convention of the Rights of the Child and Canada’s position as one of the wealthiest nations on earth, many children continue to suffer the indignity, hunger, insecurity, stress and social exclusion of poverty.4 Statistics Canada data show that children are especially vulne. [...] The federal government must be guided by the objective of reducing and eradicating poverty in all economic, fiscal, taxation and social policy decision-making and budgetary priorities in the short and long term. [...] For example, we have recognized important federal action and investments in areas such as indexing the CCB to inflation as of 2018, investing to improve access to the CCB among Indigenous families, the redesign of the Working Income Tax Benefit to the new Canada Workers’ Benefit and funding for Statistics Canada to address key gaps in poverty measurement. [...] • An increase of the maternity and parental leave benefit level to 70% of employment income and a reduction of qualifying hours to 300 over the best 12 weeks of the last 12 months of work. [...] We name First Nations and use the term Aboriginal deliberately in order to be consistent with the language used in cited sources and to maintain the specificity of recommendations and the accuracy of the data as it is being reported.