PIVOT Legal Society has released a report, Broken Promises: Parents Speak out About B.C.’s Child Welfare System (in PDF), that finds children are all too often apprehended as the first form of intervention, even when there are safe alternatives. Based on interviews and affidavits from service providers, social workers, lawyers and, in particular, parents whose children are or have been involved with the child protection system, the report depicts a short-sighted, crisis driven child protection system.

The Ontario government promised that the 2007 Ontario Budget would tackle child poverty. This budget introduces the new Ontario Child Benefit which is suppose to help Ontario families with lower incomes provide for their children, whether the parents work or receive social assistance. The program delivers a non-taxable, one-time payment for 2007 of up to $250 per dependent child under age 18. Beginning in July 2008, OCB benefits will provide approximately 465,000 families with payments of up to $600 per child annually. In 2003 the Liberal government promised to end the child tax benefit clawback from families on social assistance. According to an article on Rabble, "No end to Ontario's child tax benefit clawback," the new Ontario Child Benefit program still does not address the clawback.

Code Blue for Child Care, a national campaign to protect child care is accusing the Conservative government of abandoning child care. Code Blue has issued Harper and his government an "F" in three areas: providing universal child care, helping parents balance work and family, and honouring agreements. Instead of going forward with a national universal child care program, the Tories are giving parents a taxable $100 per a month towards covering their child care fees. Read more in the CBC article, "Child-care coalition gives Harper failing grade, calls for real plan." Across BC, child care advocates, labour groups and parents held rallies for child care to protest the provincial government's cuts to monthly child-care subsidies by about $40 per child.

The Manitoba government is giving all families who are getting Employment and Income Assistance, the full federal Universal Child Care benefit. This policy is part of several adopted by the Manitoba government to help low income earners and welfare recipients. Manitoba Family Services and Housing's news release further explains the benefit.

A 150 page StatsCan report examines family income and low income in Canada (in PDF), and StatsCan's 'the Daily' reports highlights of selected sections of the full report.

Rainbow Lodge, a 32-unit transitional housing facility that will provide support to homeless families opened in Calgary. This project will be managed by a Tri-Agency Committee that includes Métis Calgary Family Services Society (MCFS), Aspen Family and Community Network Society and Inn From the Cold Society. Aboriginal families will be the majority of clients who access the facility, though Rainbow Lodge will support all homeless families in the community. Read the press release about Rainbow Lodge or the original concept of the housing project.

The Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration Canada issued a press release of the announcement in February 2005 that most spouses and common-law partners of Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be allowed to remain in Canada while their immigration application is being considered. But some family members are still excluded. The Canadian Council of Refugees' simple two-page document (in PDF) details the problem with the excluded family member rule.

The latest issue of the newsletter of the B.C. Institute Against Family Violence focuses on the connection between family violence and homelessness from a variety of communities - women, youth, immigrants, Aboriginal and rural. The newsletter is available (in PDF) from BCIFV website.

The Ontario Employment Standards Amendment Act (Family Medical Leave) 2004, will provide up to eight weeks of job-protected leave for employees who wish to take time off work to provide care or support for a gravely ill family member at significant risk of dying within 26 weeks. Anyone in Ontario covered by the Employment Standards Act, 2000 – including part-time workers – is eligible to take this job-protected time off work. Read the Ministry of Labour press release.

Statistics Canada has released the low income cutoffs (LICOs) for 2003 and low income measures (LIMs) for 2001, before and after tax. LICOs are income thresholds, determined by analysing family expenditure data, where low income families will devote a larger share of income to the necessities of food, shelter and clothing than the average family would. To reflect the differences in the costs of necessities among different community and family sizes, LICOs are defined into five categories of community size and seven categories of family size.

LIMs, on the other hand, are strictly relative measures of low income, set at 50% of adjusted median family income. These measures are categorized according to the number of adults and children present in families, reflecting the economies of scale inherent in family size and composition.

Manitoba will stop clawing back the National Child Benefit Supplement from individuals on social assistance. The changes, including details of improvements in basic income assistance rates, were announced in Winnipeg. More information is available by reading the Manitoba Government news release regarding the changes and by visiting the Manitoba Family Services and Housing Ministry's page of links to fact sheets related to Employment and Assistance programs in Manitoba.

"My kids are supposed to grow up healthy yet I can't even afford to buy them food." A report by the Community Nutritionists Council of BC and Dietitians of Canada - BC Region, a low income family would need to spend up to 44% of their disposable income on a nutritious diet compared to the average Canadian spending 17%. The Cost of Eating in BC 2003 report (in PDF) profiles the struggles of many low-income families in BC. According to the 2003 report the monthly cost to feed a family of four increased by 9% since 2000 yet the income for the same family on income assistance declined by 6%. The Dietitions of Canada's press release provides an overview of the report.

The Social Planning and Research Council of BC has produced a report on child and family poverty in BC for the B.C. Federation of Labour. The report A Path to Poverty: A Review of Child and Family Poverty Conditions in British Columbia (in PDF) documents how the demise of labour market conditions, employment and labour law standards and low-income support programs will push more low-income families into poverty in the coming years.

StatsCan's publication, The Daily, recently featured a story regarding the release of family income figures for the year 2000. "After-tax income rose for the fifth straight year in 2000 ... At the same time, the number of families with low income fell to its lowest level in a decade, and the low-income rate declined to its lowest level since 1989." Both Read a text version of the StatsCan publication (in HTML) or The Daily report with graphs (in PDF) are available online.