For two years, researchers from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Raise the Rates Coalition followed BC residents living on welfare. The study, Living on Welfare in BC: Experiences of Longer-Term “Expected to Work” Recipients (in PDF), found:

• Day-to-day life on welfare is mainly about survival;
• A link between welfare rules and homelessness;
• Welfare rates are too low
• Too many people are being cut off welfare;
• Too many people were inappropriately categorized as expected to work;
• Too many women were staying or returning to abusive relationships or the sex trade to survive and;
• Only a small percent of participants left poverty.

Read more on the CCPA page, Living in Poverty in BC and in an article on the Tyee, "Poverty Built into BC's System".