GTA Children’s Aid Societies and the Social Planning Network released a report on child poverty that shows a huge increase in the number of children living in poverty. The report shows that lack of affordable housing is one of the most significant barriers to breaking the cycle of poverty.

“Greater Trouble in Greater Toronto, Child Poverty in the GTA” reveals that 50 per cent of Ontario’s children in poverty now live in the GTA, up from 44 per cent in 1997. In the City of Toronto, all growth in the number of children living in poverty since 1997 occurred in the inner suburbs, where abysmally high rates of child poverty now surpass those of downtown.

A Miami activist organization, Take Back the Land, has started moving in homeless individuals and families into empty foreclosed homes. Take Back the Land asserts: "that it is immoral to maintain vacant homes for the purpose of profits in the future, while human beings are forced to live on the street today. The madness of such a policy is only compounded when one considers the owners of these vacant homes are not other people, but banks, the same banks receiving billions of dollars in bailouts without having to trade in the foreclosed homes for use by some of the people financing the bailouts. Additional government resources, including police and other government agencies, should not be used to evict low income people from homes in order to maintain vacant structures for bailed out banks to profit from some time in the future."

The New Brunswick government has launched a year long consultation for New Brunswickers, community organizations, business, and the government to come together to create a long-term plan to reduce poverty in the province. One out of every eight New Brunswickers lives in poverty, one in six children in New Brunswick lives in poverty and more then 45% of single mothers live in poverty. Individuals and organizations are invited to take part. They may participate in the various sessions to debate how to reduce poverty; to determine how to implement actions; and to decide how the plan will be monitored. They may forward suggestions by using e-mail, fax, regular mail, or through the website, http://www.gnb.ca/poverty.

People living in poverty in the Great Lakes area may be experiencing a higher level of air pollution in their communities, according to a study released by the Pollution Watch project. The study mapped air release data of toxic pollutants and criteria air contaminants from the federal government’s National Pollutant Release Inventory (2005 data), and income data from Statistics Canada. It looked at the links between pollution and poverty on a regional basis and at a neighbourhood level in the city of Toronto.

The Ontario Association of Food Banks has released an important and timely new report on the economic cost of poverty in Ontario. This is a first for Ontario and possibly for any Canadian jurisdiction, to put a price tag on the cost of poverty. The report finds that the economic cost of poverty in Ontario comes to $32 to $38 billion per year (5.5 to 6.6% of provincial GDP). The report emerges just a couple of weeks in advance of the highly anticipated release of the Ontario government's action strategy on poverty.

A report released to the CBC adds to the concerns over Nunuvut's housing stock by claiming that there will a $155 million dollar funding shortfall for social housing in thirty years. According to the report, social housing accounts for 73 per cent of Nunavut's overall rental housing stock and it is already overcrowded and in need of repair and upgrade. Nunuvut signed an agreement with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. in the late 1990's that has the territory receiving declining social housing funding until 2037.

Campaign 2000 has released the 2008 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty, revealing that 19 years after the 1989 resolution that Canada would resolve child poverty by 2000, one in nine children across the country still live in poverty. The report also shows:

• Canada’s after-tax child poverty rate appears stalled at 11.3 per cent;
• Nearly one out every nine Canadian children lives in poverty;
• A startling 40 per cent of low-income children live in families where at least one of their parents works full-time year round – they’re the working poor;
• Children in racialized, new Canadian and Aboriginal families as well as children with disabilities are at greater risk of living in poverty.

The Edmonton Social Planning Council released a report that shows 1 in 10 children in Alberta live in poverty and this increases to 1 in 8 children in Calgary, 1 in 6 in Edmonton. Children with lone parents, recent immigrants and people of colour and aboriginal children are most likely to live in poverty in the province.

A report issued by First Call, a BC child and youth advocate coalition says that:

• BC had the highest child poverty rate in Canada for the 5th year in a row at 21.9%
• Average incomes for both female lone-parent families and two-parent families with children living in poverty fell more than $11,000 below the poverty line
• Over half of BC's poor children lived in families where the adults worked the equivalent of a full-time job or more

The report recommends that the BC and federal government need to: raise the minimum wate to $10.76, abolish the training wage, raise welfare rates, restore welfare earnings exemptions, create universal access to child care, build more social housing, restore the cuts made to Employment Insurance, and cover prescription drugs and dental care.

The left-of-centre party, Vision Vancouver has won the Vancouver's civil election by a landslide with the promise of ending homelessness. Mayor-elect Gregor Robertson has pledged to solve homelessness by 2015.

"My first order of business is to call an emergency task force on homelessness and to focus on how we get people off the street as quickly as possible in to temporary housing or shelter," said Robertson.

A report by the Saskatoon Health Region looks at poverty-reduction policy and programs in other places to determine how Saskatchewan could lift people out of poverty and reduce the health gap between the rich and poor. The report makes forty-six recommendations and how they were implemented in other jursediction including:

• Set Measurable Goals to Reduce Poverty
  • Reduce poverty in children from 20% to 2% in five years
  • Reduce poverty in all residents from 17% to 10% in five years

  In Ireland, a target was set in 1997 to reduce the percentage of the population living in poverty from 15% to 10% in ten years. Within four years, the poverty rate had already fallen from 15% to 5%. The success observed in Ireland was attributed to the setting of a goal; followed by changes in social programs including increases in social assistance payments, then educational programs and then employment initiatives.

• Ensure No Child Lives in Poverty
  • Parents with children who are on social assistance should have their shelter allowances and their adult allowances (i.e., food, clothing) doubled in order to raise children to the LICO.

  Although every resident is important, the prioritization of children was a key strategy within poverty reduction plans in the United Kingdom, Sweden and Quebec.

In today's Vancouver civil election, the issues of homelessness and social housing are being buried beneath the controversy around a leak of $100 million dollar loan to the financers of the Vancouver Olympic Village.

A promised two percent raise in welfare rates in Ontario will kick in for December cheques but according to an article in The Star this will boost payments to a level recommended in 1988. The two percent increase gives single people only $5 more to spend on basic necessities.

On Halloween, the Downtown Eastside Resident's Association supported a group of homeless campers who had had their camp torn down by the city of Vancouver. The group had lived in tents on the site for several months. The campers went back to the site after some confrontation with the city, by the evening all the campers were given rooms with new beds at the Gastown Hotel.

A new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) analyzes BC's carbon tax for different income levels and finds that the government needs to change the tax in order to ensure people in different income groups pay a fair share.

Much of what is being said about the global economic crisis is coming from above -- from government leaders, the heads of banks and financial institutions -- from those who helped create the crisis. But it will likely be the poor and working poor who be most effected by the crisis. The following stories talk about how it is even more important now for national and international governments to focus on poverty.

A new report from Toronto Public Health links health and income, and shows that people with low income experience greater risk of illness, higher rates of disease and death at an earlier age than people with higher income. The report shows the relationship between income and health in Toronto is not just about the extremes of wealth and poverty. Most of the indicators show a gradient of health relative to income such that health status improves through each income increment.

Twenty-five years ago, Canada was among the first countries to sign the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) treaty. The Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) watched as the UN CEDEW Committee in Geneva grilled the Canadian government on Canada's failure to live up to the treaty. Some of the issues the committee brought up were domestic violence and child custody; shelters for victims of domestic violence; resident permits for victims of trafficking; co-incarceration of young women and young men; social assistance; suicide rates among Aboriginal youth; child death among Aboriginal people; male involvement in the defense of women’s rights; missing murdered Aboriginal women; HIV and AIDS among Aboriginal women; representation of women in the workplace; and availability of legal aid.