Pandemic supports temporarily kept B.C. child poverty rates down: report

CERB and other income supports brought down child poverty in B.C. in 2020 according to a new report, but without those benefits, advocates say they expect more kids will soon be living in poverty.

“The poverty rate in B.C. in 2020 would have been 20 per cent if there had not been pandemic benefits,” Adrienne Montani, executive director of First Call Child and Youth Advocacy Society. “If there were no government benefits…there would have been 153,000 more poor children.”

A new report says the child poverty rate dropped in 2020 because of pandemic income benefits like CERB, but now those are gone.

“Those benefits are now withdrawn or they’re gone. The extra child benefit that was added in gone. So in 2021, 2022, we expect when we get the data that it will be right back up,” she added.

First Call’s 26th annual child poverty report card says over 13 per cent of B.C. kids were living in poor households in 2020, adding up to 116,500 children.

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It’s worse for the people at the margins of that number, the poverty rate for kids in lone-parent families was 38 per cent.

Leona Brown, an Indigenous advisor with the Single Mother’s Alliance, says the financial situation for lone-parent families can get pretty tight.

“As a lone parent, through my experience, I live in a city with no extended family to help with child minding or taking kids to and from school. If I had to work, so even before the pandemic, we were already talking about having to get off welfare or something to find employment, but then there’s only limited employment. Especially when you have children,” she explained.

Montani says continuing income support, and adding more rental housing would make a huge difference, along with raising welfare rates and the minimum wage.

In a statement, Minister Sheila Malcolmson tells CityNews in part, “It was good to see that 2020 marked a record low for child poverty rates in Canada and in B.C. However, today people are facing new challenges with cost of living increases due to global inflation. We are determined to do more, to help people with the cost of living.”

Brown has an idea of what needs to be done and where support needs to go.

“The government needs to think about if there’s a surplus that’s happening right now, maybe putting some of that money towards an increase of welfare, which is one of the biggest struggles of poverty, is finding a home and finding a place to rent,” she explained.