How We Help

• Poverty is not an accident or a by-product, but an inherent and crucial feature of society whose economic structure is grounded in class and exploitation.
• Despite its vast resources, Canada has one of the highest poverty rates among wealthy nations in the world largely attributed to a lack of opportunities, homelessness, growing housing insecurity, and an overall rising cost of living.
• Recent studies have outlined the sheer scope of poverty as 16% of the Canadian population is struggling, 11% is on the edge and a 17.4% child poverty rate meaning parents are struggling as well.
• In addition, there is a lived experience of poverty since 31% of parents cannot afford after-school sports or other recreational programs.
• Most anti-poverty strategies and programs primarily focus on low-income people gaining paid employment and assume this is effective; however, among wealthy nations Canada has one of the highest proportions of low-wage workers.
• Moreover, many anti-poverty strategies do not address that in reality, one-third of families living in poverty had at least one parent working full-time throughout the year and do not account for temporary and other precarious forms of works without benefits.
• Furthermore, single mothers have the second highest rate of poverty among vulnerable groups with high rates of poverty.
• Alleviating poverty requires leadership from all levels of government to work collaboratively but the federal government must play a strong leadership role by committing to a national anti-poverty strategy based on human rights.
• This should be accomplished by building partnerships with emerging associations supporting poverty alleviation to create enabling policies and includes making credit available at affordable rates with the private sector assisting government efforts to obtain credit.

Additional effective poverty reduction strategies include: