Checking up on poverty in BC following the International Day to Eliminate Poverty
October 17th marked the annual International Day to Eliminate Poverty, which offers a time to reflect and take stock of the state of poverty in the province. We turned to the 2022 Annual Report by the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction on the Poverty Reduction Strategy. This ministry aims to “reduce overall poverty in B.C. by 25% and child poverty by 50% by 2024”. Following the poverty reduction review process this year, which included public town halls, input from organizations like ours, and consultation with key stakeholders, the next Poverty Reduction Strategy will be released in the Spring of 2024 with new targets and priorities.
The 2022 Annual report outlines the Ministries’ work in key areas: housing; families, children and youth; education; employment; income supports; and, social supports. The report also recognizes the relief COVID-19 measures created and notes that the poverty rates are shifting as these measures are no longer available.
Despite these targets, poverty rates in British Columbia are the second highest in Canada (after Saskatchewan), and people are experiencing incredible and worsening challenges across the province.
Many individuals and families are facing rapidly increasing costs of household essentials like food, housing, and transportation. Extreme weather, such as the 2021 heat dome, forest fires, and atmospheric rivers, continue to cause displacement, death, injury, and other catastrophic impacts on people and communities. The cost of food and housing are major contributors to both the breadth and depth of the poverty that British Columbians are experiencing and as these costs rise, more needs to be done to address poverty in BC urgently.
The housing crisis deprives many British Columbians of the right to secure affordable, adequate housing, with people in poverty among those most severely impacted. According to Statistics Canada data, BC has the dubious honour of ”leading the country as the province with the highest rate of unaffordable homes.” The lack of a supply of new, affordable rental housing amid an ultra-low vacancy is increasing the pressure on renters. Implementing vacancy control, upscaling massive investment into building non-market affordable housing options, and de-financializing housing to make it a human right, not an investment, are critical areas of intervention. The recently introduced legislation on empty homes taxation should be re-invested into building affordable non-market housing for low-income people and their families.
Gender-based violence is also profoundly linked to housing; staggering numbers of women return to violent partners because of a lack of affordable housing. More transition homes for women, girls, and gender non-conforming people are badly needed. This also leads to unnecessary child apprehension, which we know disproportionally affects Indigenous families and, in turn, creates more involuntary interaction with the family policing system.
A recent Food Banks Canada Report Card gives BC a D- grade on poverty reduction efforts, crediting the cost of housing and food as significant factors. BC has seen a major increase in access to food banks, even more than the national average, and according to Food Banks BC, 30% of food bank users are children. Another worrying trend is the reported increase in visits from marginalized people, including Indigenous people, immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities, seniors, and students. At the same time, according to a Food Banks Canada report, food and monetary donations are down.
Food security and income are deeply interconnected issues. With the social assistance rates for low-income people still keeping folks in deep poverty and the cost of food and housing increasing so drastically, poverty will continue to needlessly devastate the quality of life in BC for thousands - but real solutions are possible.
Maytree’s Welfare in Canada report looks at the total incomes available to those relying on social assistance (often called “welfare”), considering tax credits and other benefits alongside actual social assistance amounts. The 2022 report calculated that people on all forms of social assistance are still kept below the deep poverty line. The BC PovertyReduction Coalition has long called on the BC Government to raise the rates to at least the poverty line, which would bring hundreds of thousands of people to a much better standard of living, including many children, and to tie these rates to account for inflation. The rates and associated clawbacks trap people in poverty and create intergenerational impacts on children who grow up on assistance.
TogetherBC’s focus on breadth targets means it has not addressed the depth of poverty many marginalized and equity-deserving groups are experiencing and the entirely preventable human suffering that results. As noted in the National Advisory Council on Poverty’s 2021 report, Black Canadians, racialized Canadians, newcomers immigrants, refugees, Indigenous people, persons with disabilities, and 2SLGBTQ individuals all face higher rates of poverty – low social assistance rates compound the marginalization of these groups and directly contribute to a variety of other challenges including homelessness, poor mental and physical health, unsafe conditions for sex work, food insecurity, and others.
Additionally, none of the poverty measures currently account for the increased cost of living associated with having a disability. According to the Disability Poverty Report Card 2023, people with disabilities typically live 30% below the poverty line and have higher costs. Until we see a universal public pharmarcare program that covers prescription medications, access devices, dental, vision, and free counselling services for people under existing MSP infrastructure, it is challenging to access pathways out of poverty, especially for those who experience multiple marginalizations.
In BC, as elsewhere in Canada, poverty rates are much higher for Indigenous peoples, including Indigenous children. According to the 2022 BC Child Poverty Report, “The overall child poverty rate on 59 BC First Nations reserves in 2020 was 29.2%, more than twice as high as the overall child poverty rate, with at least 3,900 children living in poverty. And the child poverty rate on rural reserves was 33.9%, much higher than the 25.2% rate on urban reserves.” Poverty perpetuates the 2SMMIWG (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Two-spirit Peoples, and Girls) crisis. More measures are clearly needed to create more equity and uphold BC’s commitment to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People’s Act and other human rights commitments.
There are clear policy solutions to these problems. We encourage the BC government to do everything in its power to integrate systemic, bold solutions into the Poverty Reduction Plan 2024, going beyond legislated targets by creating momentous interventions to prevent the needless suffering of people experiencing poverty.
In the government’s consultation this past spring, we released our seven key policy priorities that would profoundly change BC’s social fabric and well-being by largely eliminating deep poverty within five to seven years:
Raise social and disability assistance rates to the poverty line
Transform the province’s income support system, drawing on the BC Basic Income Panel’s recommendations
Address discrimination and stigma by adding social conditions as protected grounds to the BC Human Rights Code
Accelerate a massive expansion of affordable non-market housing
Prioritize targeted Indigenous Poverty Reduction Measures (in line with DRIPA and the TRC Calls to Action)
Make public transit fare-free and create a publicly-owned intercity or inter-regional bus service, and
Close the gap between the living wage and the minimum wage
Our complete submission to the government outlines our rationale for action in these critical policy areas. As a coalition of 80+ organizational members, the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition is further guided by our collective Blueprint for Justice, which outlines key policy interventions that would provide relief to people immediately and re-centre government policy on human rights, access to basic needs, and bringing everyone up to a baseline quality of life where no one in BC is left behind.
In the upcoming year, raising the income and disability assistance rates to the poverty line would have a massive impact on thousands of people who live far below the poverty line and experience deep poverty. Income support and economic security measures are readily available tools that can effectively tackle poverty, and increasing the rates alone would bring thousands of people and families up to a more adequate standard of living, increase food security, support access to healthcare and housing, and many basic, essential needs. With the BC Election year coming up in 2024, now is the time for bold, life-saving, humanitarian solutions to poverty eradication across BC.
Poverty is not inevitable - it is a policy choice, not an individual choice. A poverty-free BC is possible.
We believe that people across BC deserve access to the human rights they have been promised - the right to housing, food, medication, and security – and that these things can be achieved. Systemic problems require bold, systemic, and intersectional solutions, and clearly, the Province’s current poverty reduction plan does not do enough to address the realities people in BC are facing. It takes robust and creative leadership to tackle the complex challenges of our times - and we genuinely believe these goals are achievable with a lasting commitment to human rights and dignity.
