A recent report card on poverty paints a bleak picture for our children. While the federal government vowed to erase child poverty by the Year 2000, the rate of children in Canada living in squalor has soared. As readers will find Yellowknife is no exception.
Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Nov 22/00) - The NWT has a higher rate of children living in poverty than the rest of the country, says a Salvation Army spokesperson.
This paints a bleak picture of the North when put in contrast with a report on child poverty released on Monday by Campaign 2000, an anti-poverty coalition.
"If anything the stats (in the report) are lower than what we would see in the NWT," said Capt. Al Hoeft, who's worked with the Salvation Army in Yellowknife for 10 years.
According to the report titled Child Poverty in Canada Report Card 2000, 1.3 million children live below the poverty line in Canada -- 400,000 more than a decade ago.
The rate for children living in poor households has risen 43 per cent since 1989 and the rate of children living in poor working families has gone up 55 per cent. The report also points to a recent UNICEF report that ranks Canada 17th out of 23 industrial nations in terms of child poverty.
Any family that spends more than 55 per cent of their income on food, shelter and clothing fall below the poverty line according to Campaign 2000.
The report points out that 11 years ago the federal government vowed to erase child poverty by the year 2000, but child poverty is still hovering around recession levels.
For logistical reasons the report did not give a statistical breakdown of child poverty in the three territories and First Nations reserves but Yellowknife poverty activists say they don't need statistics to prove the trend is the same in the North.
"I certainly haven't seen any improvement ( in child poverty)," said Lyda Fuller, executive director of the YWCA. "There are more and more kids in dire situations in the North."
While there are no specific child poverty stats in the North there are numbers that point to the North's poverty problems.
In Yellowknife alone, 100 families are on waiting lists for public housing.
According to 1996 statistics 510 families in Yellowknife live below the $20,000 mark, 1,445 in the NWT.
Fuller says that lack of access to resources is another form of poverty that is prevalent in the North but hard to gauge.
"Many families from smaller communities are just scraping by," said Fuller.
She says she knows of one family with an autistic child who has no access to services.
"This child has no chance to get services," said Fuller.
The report proposes the government redirect 1.5 per cent of the projected GDP to help poor families in Canada.
