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The political storm in Ottawa over-shadowed an important commitment made by the Government of Ontario yesterday - namely the adoption of concrete targets to reduce child and family poverty in that province by 25% over the next five years.
Of all Canadian provinces, Ontario is being hit the hardest by the current economic crisis. That's what makes Ontario's decision to commit to poverty reduction targets both notable and praiseworthy. During the last recession in the early 1990s, government's at all levels made deep cuts to income support and affordable housing programs, resulting in a huge jump in child and family poverty. This time around the Ontario government seems to recognize this was a wrong-headed approach. While there may be short-term savings to government budgets in cutting social supports, there are much larger long-term costs to government and society in taking this short-sighted approach.
To its credit, the Ontario government strategy document points out that it is not only low income children and families that pay an unacceptably high price for living in poverty. We all do. The strategy document points to a recent study showing that the direct cost of poverty to the federal and Ontario governments is between $10.4 billion to $13.1 billion per year (page 5). These costs include foregone tax revenues and extra costs to the child welfare, justice and health sectors.
Many of the proposed Ontario policy measures to reduce child and family poverty are similar to solutions identified in the 'We Can Do Better' report recently released by our organization. They include enhanced child tax benefits, stronger earned income tax credits, more affordable housing, and better child care and early childhood development.
Nor is Ontario the only province to commit to poverty reduction. In so doing, it is following a trail blazed by Quebec and Newfoundland & Labrador. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are also working on poverty reduction strategies.
So if Ontario, facing a set of economic and financial challenges much worse than those in this province, can set firm targets to reduce child and family poverty, surely Alberta should be doing the same.
Details of Ontario's plan are available here: http://www.growingstronger.ca/english/default.asp
More information on the grassroots coalition behind the plan available here: http://www.25in5.ca/
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Sunday, 05 February 2012 
