The whole picture includes the poor, too

“We have gone as far as we can for now," federal finance minister Jim Flaherty said last week after listing $64 billion worth of corporate, personal and sales tax reductions

approved by the House of Commons. Oh, indeed, Mr. Flaherty?

The federal government's budget surplus keeps getting larger, bringing the year-to-date surplus to $8.7 billion for the first five months of the fiscal year. With Canada currently running that scale of budget surplus there were tax relief treats this Halloween—for those with money. But what about the poor amongst us?

“A modest portion of Canada’s federal surpluses could lift all families with children out of poverty,” Pauline Raven says. And as the principal author of Nova Scotia’s annual Child Poverty Report Card, Raven, who lives right here in Greenwich, knows whereof she speaks. A member of the Campaign 2000 Steering Committee, she would like to urge parliamentarians to make poverty reduction a priority. Obviously Flaherty had other priorities, but he should be reminded that Nov. 24 is one of our saddest anniversaries; almost 20 years since all parties in the House of Commons promised to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. The problem has been tenacious for even longer, so the gap between rich and poor is widening.

We've had a decade of economic growth and prosperity, but almost one out of every six children in Canada still lives in poverty. For Nova Scotia, that means 19,000 children. No wonder Ann Decter, national coordinator of Campaign 2000, says, “it takes a nation to raise a generation,” as she calls on Prime Minister Harper to include in his vision for Canada families who are struggling to survive on low-incomes, part-time jobs and no safety net.

According to Campaign 2000, an increase of Canada’s Child Benefit to $5,100 per year, per child, would reduce the nation’s child poverty rate by 37 per cent at a cost of $5 billion annually. Raven, along with Rene Ross and Lesley Frank her Nova Scotia Child Poverty Report Card co-authors, rate this amount as an affordable investment for a country that tables hefty surpluses year after year. For example, the $5 billion required to increase the Child Benefit is approximately one third of last year’s federal surplus ($14 billion). This year’s surplus looks like it will be even higher.

Based on research that pegs the future prospects of children to family income, Ross has estimated that: “this substantial but affordable investment in families will pay great dividends for many decades to come by helping parents raise healthier, more economically secure individuals.”

Raven says two Nova Scotia parents with two children who work one and a half jobs and live in modest accommodations can run a deficit of $400 a month, even if they have subsidized child care.

So Raven pleads, we have to stop leaving so many people behind.