A report from a national network of organizations called Campaign 2000 says in 2017, over 1.3-million Canadian children lived in poverty.
That’s a decline of less than a half a percentage point from the previous year, leaving nearly 1 in 5 children experiencing poverty and the toll it can take on social, mental and physical health.
National Coordinator for Campaign 2000, Leila Sarangi, says, “Poverty is drawn along equity lines. First Nations, Inuit, Metis, racialized immigrant children, children with disabilities, and children in female-led lone parent families are over-represented in the numbers.”
The rates remain relatively unchanged in Saskatchewan at 27.9 per cent.
The report states that without an overhaul of the tax system, inequitable distribution of wealth and resources will continue to drive up child poverty rates as wealth accumulates at the top, and the rest being left behind during the pandemic.
Campaign 2000 began in 1991 to support the House of Commons resolution in 1989 to end child poverty by the year 2000.