Nova Scotia had the fifth-highest child poverty rate in Canada in 2022 and the highest in Atlantic Canada, according to a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The report, released on Tuesday, showed that rate jumped to nearly 24 per cent, representing 41,500 children living in poverty. The report was based on tax filing data that showed 2022 recorded the biggest single-year increase in child poverty in Nova Scotia since 1989 — when MPs voted unanimously in the House of Commons to bring an end to child poverty by the year 2000.
"To me, behind these poverty rates, behind those numbers are real families and they're losing hope," said Christine Saulnier, who co-authored the report. Christine Saulnier is director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Nova Scotia. She is one of three authors of the 2024 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Nova Scotia.
(Gareth Hampshire/CBC) Saulnier, the director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Nova Scotia, is calling for a poverty elimination plan for the province. "Every month, every year that these children are living in poverty, it's impacting them, it's impacting their health, it's impacting their ability to learn as a society. This is an urgent call for our new government.
Let's see us sustain a poverty reduction in this province to a point where we really can end it," Saulnier said. Saulnier said unless there is sustained income support to families, they won't be lifted out of poverty..
