BC Council for Families

One in ten Canadians lives in poverty, and the cycle of poverty must be broken “once and for all” according to a report tabled in the Senate last week. The report, In from the Margins: A Call to Action on Poverty, Housing and Homelessness, calls on government to overhaul social programs that it says are “substantially broken” in order to eradicate poverty.

Among the 74 recommendations in the report:

• Work with the provinces to create a national early learning strategy.
• Develop a federal housing strategy.
• Increase the National Child Benefit to $5,000 by 2012.
• Require all agencies receiving federal health dollars to address the underlying causes of illness and disease: poverty, unemployment, substandard housing and poor nutrition.
• Ensure that income supports for people on welfare meets the poverty level.
• Develop a national income support program for the disabled.
• Boost the Working Income Tax Benefit so those in low-wage jobs can escape poverty.
• Special measures for urban aboriginal people, immigrants and seniors.

"You can effectively eradicate poverty. It just takes solid public policy initiatives," said Senator Hugh Segal, chair of the Senate subcommittee on cities, which authored the report. The federal government has 150 days to respond to the report’s recommendations.