Being unable to provide for your children is a stress no parent should have to carry, says Graham Hookey.
According to Statistics Canada, child poverty rates in Canada declined by more than 50 per cent between 2015 and 2020, largely a function of an increase in the Canada Child Benefit Plan.
Despite this, the poverty rate for single-parent families headed by women was still more than 30 per cent. The current figures on child poverty are not available, as the gathering of such data is a somewhat sluggish process, but, since inflation began to soar in 2021, no doubt the pendulum has swung the other way. Since the greatest cost in raising children is feeding them, and inflation has taken the biggest bite out of food prices, it seems only logical that those families who were teetering along the poverty line will have fallen over the cliff in the last couple of years.
In fact, between 2019 and 2022, children’s visits to food banks has increased 35 per cent and food banks are projecting a 60 per cent increase in food bank usage, by the total population, from 2022 to 2023.
Even with the latest federal budget promise of a “grocery rebate,” and the raising of minimum wages in some provinces, the next year is appearing pretty bleak for those families with single incomes and low wages.
Occasional handouts, which make for great political photo ops, are not the answer to systemic poverty and food insecurity. As a highly developed country, we should be doing much better.
I don’t pretend to understand the complexity of budgetary decisions at the provincial or federal level. I am certain there are a lot of conflicting demands. But, from a human psychology perspective — and, let’s face it, mental-health supports are being touted as a serious shortcoming in our medical system — Abraham Maslow’s old hierarchy that places safety and security at the forefront of human mental health should help to define some of the government’s priorities when it comes to creating a just and civil society.
People need housing and food security if they are going to be able to contribute to society in any meaningful way. Our public policy goals should not be to prop up the lack of such security with temporary handouts or community volunteer programs, but to institute affordable-housing projects, living-wage rules and food-security provisions so that all people, but particularly children, are not vulnerable to housing and food insecurity.
The poor are always impacted by economic variations more than those who have buffers of savings or additional assets. Any change in basic necessities, food, rent, utilities or transportation costs disproportionately impacts those who have no way of making up for such changes. They are forced to make extraordinary choices, between things like food or rent, the lack of either of which has a dramatic impact on children. It is stressful enough to be poor, but being unable to provide for your children is a stress no parent should have to carry.
Although the statistics of 2020 seemed to be a nice pat on the back for work done in the five years before that to relieve child poverty, the reality is that the gap between the rich and poor has increased sharply, almost 50 per cent in the last 20 years. This growing gap between the small number of haves and the large number of have-nots (50 per cent of all working Canadians earn less than $26,000 a year) is impacting political and economic thinking and potentially fomenting civil disruption — the truck blockade of Ottawa and the current numerous labour strikes being the outcome of such collective thinking.
Perhaps the issues are too complicated for our current generation of leaders to resolve, being somewhat set in their ways of economic planning, but, if the next generation of leaders grows up hungry and insecure, we may have much more of a challenge to the way of life that we just may be taking for granted at the moment.
Graham Hookey is the author of “Parenting Is A Team Sport” and can be reached at ghookey@yahoo.com.
By Graham Hookey – simcoe.com – Tuesday, April 4, 2023