New housing strategy could cut into child poverty rates, groups say
OTTAWA — About 450,000 children are in families that depend on social assistance to pay the bills and the vast majority live below the poverty line, says a new report that hopes to prod the federal government to take additional steps to alleviate child poverty.
The report from an anti-poverty coalition released Tuesday marks one of the first estimates of children living on government benefits.
The figure plays a key role in Campaign 2000’s annual report on child and family poverty, which suggests that increased, targeted federal spending on child care and housing could help lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.
The federal government has allocated about $39.3 billion, plus about $17.5 billion more in tax breaks, on helping low-income Canadians in the current fiscal year. Absent that spending, millions more Canadians could fall below the poverty line, the parliamentary budget office says in a new report of its own.