Daily Bread calls for action against poverty

from The Toronto Star

Laurie Monsebraaten
STAFF REPORTER

Queen's Park should appoint an anti-poverty czar, the Daily Bread Food Bank says in its annual report on hunger to be released today for National Hunger Awareness Day.

Without a political minister responsible for making change and measuring progress, it's hard to keep governments accountable for their promises to help the poor, said Michael Oliphant, research director for the food bank.

It's a strategy that appears to be working in Europe.

"It's really important to have a focus – a place where you are gathering information and data and having to account for the progress or lack of progress as you go forward," said Lisa Harker, an adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In 1999, Blair committed the U.K. to eradicating child poverty by 2020 and has set targets his government is committed to meeting.

Harker is in Toronto this week and is scheduled to meet tomorrow with Premier Dalton McGuinty's staff and MPP Deb Matthews, parliamentary assistant to Social Services Minister Madeleine Meilleur.

The food bank's annual report is based on interviews with more than 1,800 clients across the GTA and is the only survey of its kind in Canada. While it shows most clients use emergency food services for less than a year, an "alarming" 10 per cent say they have used food banks for 10 years or longer.

The report's call for a "minister of social inclusion" is accompanied by an update of the food bank's five-point strategy to reduce hunger and poverty.

Since the strategy was unveiled last year, McGuinty has pledged to fight child poverty with a $92-a-month child benefit and a $10.25 minimum wage – to take full effect by 2011. The federal government has also introduced a working income supplement worth up to $500 annually for singles and $1,000 for parents.

In this election year, the food bank is calling for:

The full implementation of the child benefit by 2009;

A commission to set and monitor minimum wages;

A hike in Ontario's disability support to $15,000 from $11,500 annually;

More support for immigrants and affordable housing; and

A federal working income supplement of $2,400.

In the U.K., child poverty was running at about 30 per cent when Blair pledged to tackle the problem, and has since dropped to almost 20 per cent, said Harker.

In Ireland, where a government department co-ordinates poverty reduction, rates have dropped to 5 per cent from more than 15 per cent since the mid-1990s.

In Newfoundland, where Premier Danny Williams pledged he would have Canada's lowest rate by 2016, a cabinet committee co-ordinates strategy and monitors progress.

In Quebec, a 2002 law compels the province to have a strategy and track progress on poverty reduction and social inclusion. Its goal is one of the lowest poverty rates of industrialized nations by 2012.

Ontario needs similar poverty reduction goals and strategies, said Oliphant. "Appointing a minister of social inclusion would show the government was serious."