Living Sky School Division trustee Richard Hiebert said at a recent board of education meeting that the presence of poverty is clear, but what to do about it is a matter of debate.
Some commentators, including some at the school board meeting, advocate increased federal and provincial government funding to eliminate poverty.
A federal national poverty reduction strategy was recently announced by the Liberal government. According to an explainer video, the government has invested more than $22 billion in initiatives to “reduce poverty [and] grow the middle class.” A goal of the plan is to “help lift about 650,000 Canadians out of poverty by 2019.”
The plan will also adopt an official poverty measure — the market-based measure.
According to Statistics Canada, the market-based measure is a complex calculation and “measure of low income based on the cost of a specified basket of goods and services representing a modest, basic standard of living.”
Commentators such as Michael Wolfson have noted Statistics Canada have produced low income measures, but have resisted claiming they are necessarily poverty lines. The market-based measure will now be considered a poverty line.
Poverty statistics can take a long time to calculate. According to information released in Sept. 2017, the market-based measure for a single person in a small population centre in Saskatchewan with less than 30,000 people is $19,329. The MBM for families of two is $27,335, three, $33,479 and four, $38,658.
Hiebert said the poverty reduction strategy is a start, but acknowledged efforts by legislators in 1989 to reduce poverty by the year 2000 were largely unsuccessful.
An organization whose writers have commented on poverty is the Fraser Institute.
The Fraser Institute describes itself as non-partisan, though it has also been described as a conservative think-tank.
Commentators often oppose minimum wage hikes, universal incomes and don’t see wealth inequality as a problem.
A recent article called “Ottawa’s going to fight poverty – good! (though they could fight it better)” by economist William Watson commends the government for doing something about poverty (as opposed to wealth inequality). However, Watson takes issue with initiatives governments have already implemented and identitfies politics in the plan’s text.
Campaign 2000 is a well-publicized campaign to end poverty, and is the subject of a recent News-Optimist article. Its poverty measure is low-income measure after tax, and this newspaper reported on July 11, Campaign 2000 found 30.4 per cent of children aged 0-17 in the Battlefords-Lloydminster federal riding live in poverty.
Economist Christopher Sarlo, Fraser Institute fellow, has argued “the measurement of poverty cannot be an exercise in compassion” and advocates a basic needs poverty line. LIM and MBM, he argues, measure income inequality not poverty.
The contrast in different poverty measurements is evident in previous publications by Campaign 2000 and Sarlo. Campaign 2000 previously reported in 2009 nearly one in five children were in poverty. According to Sarlo’s measure, 5.5 per cent of children lived in poor households that year.
Both Sarlo and Watson argue for a poverty measurement, despite arbitrariness in poverty measures, which Watson agreed is inevitable.
