Unless health promoters are prepared to raise and address these issues, they are
wasting their time.
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Welfare recipients becoming poorer, new report charges
By
MARGARET PHILP
SOCIAL POLICY REPORTER
TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL
Friday, Apr. 11, 2003
People on welfare are poorer than ever across the country, with
social-assistance rates slipping every year and a multibillion-dollar federal
antipoverty program that has ignored the lowest-income Canadians.
In a report released yesterday, the National Council of Welfare lashes out at
the provinces for "punitive and cruel" welfare rates that are "disgracefully
low." It also accuses Ottawa of turning its back on people receiving social
assistance by allowing provinces to claw back a hefty share of benefits
recipients collect under its much-touted National Child Benefit.
Over the years, as some provinces, including Ontario, have slashed welfare
benefits, and others have allowed inflation to eclipse social-assistance
rates, people on welfare have sunk further and further beneath the poverty
line. The gap between their incomes and those of ordinary Canadians has
widened.
Ottawa responded to rising child-poverty rates five years ago with its
National Child Benefit -- a mix of tax breaks and monthly supplements for
low-income families.
But the report shows that while working-poor Canadians have a few more dollars
in their pocket, the government's flagship antipoverty program is failing the
poorest people on social assistance, who were promised they would not lose
ground.
Still, as the number of people collecting a social-assistance cheque plunges
and Ottawa puts more into the NCB -- $10-billion has been budgeted next year
alone -- the provinces are footing the bill for a dwindling share of welfare
recipients' incomes.
"This report shows people are worse off," said John Murphy, chairman of the
welfare council, an advisory body to Human Resources Development Canada.
"That means, to me, that the government needs to address a broken promise.
Welfare rates are abominably low and something needs to be done. The federal
government pours money in, provincial governments are doing nothing, and
people on welfare are falling further behind."
In 2002, the report says, welfare income as a percentage of the poverty line
was as low as 20 per cent for a single able-bodied person in Newfoundland and
Labrador, and as high as 65 per cent for a family of four in Prince Edward
Island.
(The poverty line used in the report is Statistics Canada's low-income cutoff,
a measure that considers families poor if they spend more than 56 per cent of
their total income on food, clothing and shelter. Each year, Statscan
calculates the LICOs for households of different sizes in communities of
different sizes.)
Last year, as the cost of living rose 2.2 per cent, the purchasing power of
welfare benefits in all provinces but Quebec and the Northwest Territories
shrunk.
Between 1986, when the council issued its first report on the welfare systems,
and 2002, social-assistance rates in constant dollars had dropped almost
across the board.
In Manitoba, a family of four on welfare had lost 29 per cent of its income; a
single person in Alberta collected 48 per cent less; and a single parent with
a child in Ontario was surviving on a benefit 24 per cent lower.
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