Child-poverty in Manitoba worst among provinces; Tory cheques, tax breaks miss mark, report says

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This article was published 14/02/2023 (984 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An affordability package from the province meant to serve low-income families failed to substantially improve the rate of child poverty, which is among the worst in the country, a new report argues.

The Social Planning Council of Winnipeg released the Campaign 2000 report on ending child and family poverty in Manitoba Tuesday. The national coalition originally launched in 1989 with the goal of eliminating the problem in Canada by the year 2000.

One in five children — nearly 65,000 — were living in poverty in Manitoba, based on tax filings from 2020, the report states, adding it is the highest child-poverty rate of all Canadian provinces and is more than seven per cent above the national rate.

The report tracked statistics to 2020, when the rate declined — there were 35,000 fewer children below the poverty line that year compared to 2015.

2023 Poverty Report

 

The authors argue that the improvement occurred in 2019-20 largely as a result of income-support programs such as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit offered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that the funding has ended and many recipients have been asked to repay what they received, low-income families in Manitoba are struggling now, more than ever.

“We know that we’re going into an election, and we know we’re going to have a government say, ‘Hey, look at the poverty rates; we’re doing great,’” Social Planning Council of Winnipeg executive director Kate Kehler said Tuesday.

“No, we’re not, and we could have been doing much, much better.”

The report also contains analysis of Progressive Conservative government’s Manitoba Family Affordability Package, which mailed cheques to families with children with net household incomes less than $175,000 and seniors with net household incomes less than $40,000 in October. The $87 million program also increased the basic amount for Employment Income Assistance recipients by $50 a month.

Families received $250 for their first child and $200 for each additional child, regardless of household income level under $175,000.

The program is estimated by the report’s authors to have lifted only 2.6 per cent of children above the low-income measure. However, had it been targeted specifically to families below the poverty line rather than including families above it, child poverty would have been reduced by 10 per cent and been nearly four times more effective at lowering the rate, the authors noted.

Of the 152 low-income families used in the report’s sample, only four would have been lifted above the poverty line under the Family Affordability Package as it was presented by the province, said Sid Frankel of Campaign 2000’s national steering committee.

The province’s education property tax rebate could have also been better directed to address child poverty, the report authors said, arguing that the $349.9 million program disproportionately benefits higher-income households, while the Education Property Tax Credit has been reduced.

“The federal programs are uniform, they’re the same throughout Canada, and that means that the Manitoba government is not doing as well as most other provincial governments,” said Frankel.

For example, the most a low-income family using the Manitoba Child Benefit can claim is $420 per child yearly. Comparatively, the top benefit for a similar program in Alberta is $1,128.

Among the recommendations in the report is for the province to lobby the federal government to declare “CERB amnesty,” and axe further attempts to receive repayment from people who received the benefit. If that were to happen, the report calls on the province to resist the temptation of garnishing income support and other benefits by counting that money as income.

Wiping the slate clean would be cheaper for the federal government than further punishing those who took advantage of the funding, the report argues.

“The cruel joke is that for those families who received those benefits, they’ve already likely fallen back into poverty, and we’re very likely to see the rates increase this year,” Frankel said.

Families Minister Rochelle Squires said she would be considering every recommendation in the report, including calling for CERB amnesty.

“The more money we can allow Manitobans to keep, we know that that’s going to significantly impact, positively impact, those low-income families,” she said.

The report also calls on provincial parties campaigning in the fall election to have specific, detailed poverty-elimination plans with timelines and deadlines.

“The Social Planning Council was critical of the previous NDP government because their poverty-reduction strategy… didn’t have a target or timeline. The current government came up with a target and timeline, (but) unfortunately, it was incredibly weak,” Kehler said.

Squires said the province is putting forward initiatives that will work to serve Manitobans in need in the upcoming 2023 budget.

“Does more need to be done? Absolutely. And we will take a targeted approach at ensuring we’re helping lift all children out of poverty,” she said.

— With files from Danielle Da Silva

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca