How BC’s New Poverty Reduction Strategy Falls Short
Good intentions aren’t enough to change life for poor British Columbians. We need a road map.
By Rowan Burdge (BC Poverty Reduction Coalition), Anastasia French (Living Wage for Families BC), & Véronique Sioufi (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives)
Originally published in The Tyee on August 1, 2024
Last week the B.C. government released the first update to its poverty reduction strategy since the inaugural plan was released in 2019.
As policy geeks committed to ending poverty in the province, we eagerly read it, hoping to see plans that would let the B.C. government achieve the targets that it set in March to reduce poverty by 60 per cent in 10 years.
Unfortunately, we found it less of a strategy and more of a report card on the work already happening.
Giving credit where credit is due
It’s important to recognize and give credit for the meaningful changes that have lifted many individuals out of poverty and kept others from slipping into poverty over the past five years. The more than 60-page strategy is filled with details on all the good things the government has done.
These include reforms to archaic and stigmatizing welfare rules that delayed and denied access to assistance, the introduction of free post-secondary education for former foster care children, the Get on Board program, which provides free transit to kids 12 and under, improvements in access to legal aid, substantial investments in child-care affordability, increases to the minimum wage and notable increases to the B.C. family benefit and the B.C. climate action tax credit for single individuals.
The list of accomplishments in the report is extensive, and the impact of these changes should not be understated.
Looking ahead
In March, the government announced new targets to reduce poverty by 60 per cent, child poverty by 75 per cent and seniors’ poverty by 50 per cent by 2034. We are glad to see the new focus on seniors’ poverty and attention paid to what will surely be an increasingly pressing issue.
Although we welcome these targets, they could have been more ambitious, in both the short and long term.
There remains no target for reducing deep poverty or focusing on single individuals without children, who represent the largest group experiencing poverty.
Further, the rates for social assistance, though raised incrementally over the past years, remain well below the poverty line and keep people there. People on assistance still have to navigate assistance clawbacks that discourage them from finding paid work that would let them move toward exiting poverty.
Lots of good ideas, vague on detail
The poverty reduction strategy update presents a comprehensive picture of the cycle of poverty, its systemic causes and key interventions and investments to break this cycle. It pays increased attention to important areas for intervention, such as Indigenous sovereignty, food security, issues faced by people with disabilities and the role employment can play in lifting people out of poverty.
The 2024 plan also articulates a strong understanding of some of the systemic causes of poverty. It explicitly includes the need to address racism, discrimination and colonialism as essential components of poverty reduction, which we applaud.
It is an important step for the poverty reduction strategy to state clearly that colonization is at the root of Indigenous poverty. The plan acknowledges that the ongoing violence of settler colonialism is at the core of the persistent and disproportionate poverty rates for Indigenous people. It reaffirms a commitment to Indigenous self-determination and self-government, including Indigenous food sovereignty measures.
It would have been good to see more specific targets around returning land to First Nations, as well as a specific Indigenous poverty reduction plan, given the deepened impacts and higher rates of poverty for Indigenous Peoples.
The plan acknowledges that people with disabilities are more likely to experience poverty. However, until the disability assistance rates are raised, as well as the allowed earnings for people who find some work, most people with disabilities in B.C. will continue to experience deep levels of poverty.
The strategy indicated that the B.C. government is considering removing the spousal cap and indexing the rates for inflation. Both would be excellent if implemented, but more immediate, substantive support for persons with disabilities is needed to tackle deep poverty.
Food security is a particularly pressing issue right now, given the accelerated rates of access to food banks and other non-profit food hubs. Hunger and the cost of groceries remain a challenge for tens of thousands of families in B.C.
The government has used food banks as a tool to address food insecurity, when this is a Band-Aid to a bigger and more systemic issue. The investments in Indigenous food systems, food security and additional non-profit food hubs are critical measures to keep people fed.
We also welcome the commitment to improving transit in rural areas. This not only will make it easier for people to get around but could also save lives, as heard in the report on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
However, expanding the BC Bus Pass Program to all families on social assistance, including income assistance, and expanding the Get on Board program to include teens up to 18 would be an impactful strategy not yet realized.
Further, intercommunity transportation options remain limited, and more must be implemented to address the shortages of public transit infrastructure across B.C.
One of the critical action areas in the strategy points is providing people with pathways to employment. It is vital that any new job from this scheme pays a living wage and provides stability. This is particularly important for addressing the intersection of race, gender, immigration and low wages. One in three B.C. workers doesn’t earn a living wage, and the majority of these are women and racialized workers. We welcome the tying of the minimum wage to inflation. However, B.C.’s minimum wage remains far below a living wage.
We can’t afford to wait
There were several things we were hoping to see in the strategy, specifically a clear plan to:
raise social assistance to the poverty line;
remove earnings exemptions and other clawbacks so that people with disabilities are not discouraged from earning a living wage;
make public transit fare-free for teens and available across B.C.; and
close the gap between the living wage and the minimum wage.
Though the new strategy’s vision and rhetoric are commendable, without these tangible, immediate measures and concrete actions, hundreds of thousands of people will continue to be needlessly trapped in a cycle of poverty, unable to afford the basics for themselves and their families. In a province as wealthy as B.C., poverty is preventable.
This strategy was supposed to be released in the spring when it could have been tied to Budget 2024. Instead, Budget 2024 only included the word “poverty” five times. The strategy was delayed, and now we will cross our fingers that the election will provide some promises to help lift people out of poverty.
The three of us can afford to wait for the next election, the next budget, the next round of consultations.
But people in poverty can’t. Single mothers are struggling today to put food on the table for their families. People with disabilities are struggling right now with paying for care costs. And Indigenous women in the north are risking their lives every day because there is no affordable intercity free bus service for them to use.
A poverty-free B.C. is possible. People in poverty deserve no less.
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