Poverty Remains Long After Christmas is Gone

Christmas is nigh and the good and the generous have been hard at work throughout our communities, making sure that each and every family awakens to everything it takes to make the day a joyful one. They’ll have food and toys and clothing and all will be fine — for a few days. Sadly, though, Christmas soon fades and the struggle continues for those for whom poverty is a sad, daily reality.

According to the 2020 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Nova Scotia, published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) on December 9, this province has the third-highest poverty rate in Canada and the highest in Atlantic Canada. There are 41,370 children living in poverty in our province, many of them right here in Cape Breton, which has the highest child poverty rate in the province at 34.9%. And this report, based on 2018 data, doesn’t capture the effects COVID has had on low-income families.

Lesley Frank, the Acadia University professor and CCPA-NS research associate who has co-authored the Poverty Report Card for many years, expressed her own feelings about the bleak situation in this province – feelings that range from “anger and sadness to embarrassment and worry for those families struggling through hardship.”

Report Card co-author Laura Fisher, an MA student at Acadia, fears that people are “becoming numb” to the stories of poverty. “It is urgent,” says Fisher, “that the provincial government implement policy changes swiftly to both lift families from poverty and prevent more children from joining their ranks.”

Co-author Christine Saulnier, director of CCPA’s Nova Scotia office writes that while poverty is “first and foremost” a lack of income to meet basic needs, it is also about social and economic exclusion:

Poverty is linked to who is excluded from participating fully in our society and on what grounds. It is shaped by multiple and intersecting experiences of discrimination, including those based on sex, disability, race, ethnicity, migration status, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation and gender identity. Inadequate and inequitable systems and structures create conditions that marginalize some, leaving them few options, while benefitting others. Many face low wages, precarious employment, weak income supports, discrimination, continual colonialization, social and geographical isolation, and gaps in public services.

Others, meanwhile:

…supported by weak employment regulations, tax loopholes, and unfettered access to whatever they need, increase their profits while offering charitable donations to fill the gaps left by a system that is heavily weighted in their favour.

At what point, asks Saulnier:

…do we begin to ask whether child and family poverty is not simply a matter of government neglect but in fact is a means of maintaining social stratification? We feel that this question needs to be asked as we examine yet another year with increasing numbers of children in Nova Scotia families living in poverty.

Transformation, she says, will not be realized until we “do better by our most vulnerable families.” What would “doing better” look like? For Saulnier it would mean:

…providing at least enough income support for families to meet their basic needs. Doing better also means ensuring families have access to childcare, the public health care they need including mental health care, pharmacare, dental care, as well as available and affordable essential services, including food, housing, transportation and internet.

It’s been 30 years since the Canadian House of Commons passed a resolution “to eliminate child poverty among Canadian children by 2000,” (which obviously didn’t happen). How sad it is that between 1989 and 2018, child poverty rates decreased in every province and territory except Nova Scotia. (In 1989, the province’s child poverty rate stood at 24.4%, in 2018, it was 24.6%.)

Have we become numb to the numbers or, worse still, do we consider 41,370 Nova Scotian children — almost one in four — living in poverty acceptable?

 

Certainly, this province does little to help lift families from poverty. The Report Card notes that NS has the lowest welfare incomes in Canada for single-parent families with one child (only 57% of the Market Basket Measure of poverty), and the second lowest, for couples families with two children (61% of the MBM).

The CCPA used the revised, 2018 base Market Basket Measure for its calculation, a metric intended to reflect:

…a modest, basic standard of living, that the costs of the contents of the basket in different geographical regions (of which there are presently 50) are estimated as precisely as possible, and that the income available to families to purchase the basket is appropriately defined and measured.

A discussion paper published in February this year by Stats Canada explained the differences between the 2008-base MBM and the 2018-base MBM, including the addition of cellular telephone services to the list of “other expenses” in recognition of a “widespread need” for such services — and gave an idea of the difference these changes made in determining poverty rates.

In Cape Breton, according to the 2008-base MBM, a family of four required an annual income of $35,524 to rise above the “poverty-threshold.” Under the 2018-base MBM, that amount increases to $42,533. I would suggest the 2008 figure is more than many Cape Breton families can imagine having at their disposal, let alone the 2018 figure. Both are likely to be achieved only through the intervention of some “higher” power. Is the federal government listening?

 

But back to the CCPA report on poverty which, interestingly and importantly, tells anonymized stories of poverty in Cape Breton, shared by the executive director of the Cape Breton Family Place Resource Centre, JoAnna LaTulippe-Rochon, when she spoke to the Nova Scotia Standing Committee on Community Services.

The stories are heartbreaking, including the description of a grandmother who provides “primary care” to many of her grandchildren, some of whom are still attending school, one with “special needs.” The grandmother, who lives in a “small rental unit,” often goes without food herself in order to feed those in her care. Another told of one mother’s experience with rodents, which got so bad:

…that the rats ate food that was put out to be prepared for her family’s meal. When we covered the cost and sent an exterminator to the home (given that the landlord refused to do so), the exterminator reported that it was the worst he had ever seen—there were “several generations” of rats in the house. Her child gets so depressed about the state of their living arrangements, she has a difficult time going to school. Her mental health is worsened by the difficult living conditions such that she left home to move in with a neighbour. Her mother is devastated feeling unable to provide for her children

The most dismaying story recounted by LaTulippe-Rochon, to my mind, was of those people who, without a car or unable to drive, feel “forced to perform sexual acts” as payment for drives to get groceries or for medical appointments, etc, for their children. That “special place in hell,” I would hope, is reserved for those who take advantage of those living in poverty in such a shameful manner.

Another pertinent and unfortunate fact revealed in the Poverty Report Card is that 100% of families relying on government support as their income source live in poverty in Nova Scotia, where the “amount of support falls far below the poverty line.”

 

This year’s Report on Poverty in Nova Scotia contains mostly bad news, and readers can sense the frustration and concerns of the co-authors, perhaps especially of Frank, who has been involved with these reports for two decades.

There is a bright spot, however, and it concerns how present federal and provincial government income benefits to individuals and families (including federal and provincial child benefits, the goods and service tax credit, the working income tax benefit, employment insurance, income assistance, and the affordable living tax credit) have helped reduce the rate of child poverty in Nova Scotia.

One graph displays the level of poverty reduction that results from income supports to Nova Scotian families. In 2018, such programs led to a 38.7% reduction in child poverty — without them, 67,510 children aged 0-17 would live in poverty in this province, instead of 41,370.

The CCPA offers 11 recommendations to lift those 41,370 children and their families out of poverty — and to help this province reach the goal set by the House of Commons over 30 years ago — recommendations including increasing the minimum wage to $15/hour, introducing permanent rent control and extending universal healthcare to include mental healthcare, long-term care, pharmacare and home care.

So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun

Well, I know what Lesley Frank, Laura Fisher and Christine Saulnier have done. They have produced, through their tremendous efforts, this well documented and realistic review of poverty levels in Nova Scotia. I’m sure their hope for 2021 is that by facing up to the negative aspects of their 2020 report and enacting even some of their very pointed recommendations, there will be much better outcomes for those 41, 370 children and their families who are struggling to survive.

 

 

Dolores Campbell, a lifelong resident of Sydney, is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Cape Breton Highlander, the Nova Scotian, Cape Breton Magazine, Catholic New Times and The Cape Breton Post.