Manitoba has highest child poverty rate among provinces, report finds

Manitoba has the the highest child poverty rate among all provinces, with more than one in five Manitoba children living in poverty, according to a new report.

The report, called Poverty, the Pandemic and the Province, shows Manitoba’s child poverty rate is 20.68 per cent, more than seven percentage points higher than the national average.

Only the territory of Nunavut has a higher rate of child poverty in Canada at just over 28 per cent, according to the study released Tuesday by Campaign 2000 – Manitoba.

The 40-page report includes contributions from academics at the University of Manitoba, the Manitoba Child Care Association, Manitoba Harvest and other not-for-profit groups.

1:49 Child poverty report looks at Manitoba’s missed opportunities, dismal numbers

It uses tax-filer data from 2020 and includes an analysis of the impacts of federal and provincial income supports on the health and well-being of children in Manitoba. The authors note the data includes a time when government spending around the COVID-19 pandemic had a “marked effect on child and family poverty.”

“A large investment in temporary benefits such as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) produced a marked decline in poverty rates,” reads a section of the report.

“Unfortunately, given the current soaring costs of food, fuel and other necessities of life due to crippling inflation rates, and with the addition of higher interest rates, we know that today, people are back to struggling more than ever.”

A report released by the same group in December 2021 that looked at tax data from 2019 — a year before the pandemic and the increase in government spending — found three of the five federal ridings with the worst child poverty rates were in Manitoba and said the province’s overall child poverty was 28.4 per cent.

4:19 Pulling families out of poverty

Many of those same federal ridings continue to see high rates of child poverty, according to Tuesday’s report, including Churchill-Keewatinook Aski in northern Manitoba at 39.2 per cent and Winnipeg Centre, where just over three out of 10 children live in poverty.

The report’s authors say poverty is a “driving factor causing many negative health outcomes in children,” especially among Manitoba’s Indigenous population, who “face the greatest burden of poverty compared with all other children in the province.”

“Children living in poverty face worse physical and mental health outcomes compared to their more advantaged peers, and are at an increased risk of having disabilities, chronic health issues, mental health concerns, and weakened social relationships,” the report says.

“In Manitoba, low-income has been linked to several negative child health outcomes including increased risk of preterm birth, child mortality, dental extraction surgeries and suicide.”

5:02 Reducing child poverty in Manitoba

The report makes a number of recommendations to the Manitoba government, including targeting to end child and family poverty in the 2023-24 budget by using federal transfer payments to bring all families above the poverty line.

The authors also encourage Manitoba’s lawmakers to adopt Statistics Canada’s Census Family Low Income Measure After Tax as the province’s official measure of poverty.

Campaign 2000 is a public education movement started following a 1989 all-party House of Commons resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000.

The group includes a non-partisan coalition of more than 120 partner organizations from across Canada working at the local, provincial and/or national level to address the realities of poverty.