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Your LOCAL Media since 1918! Volume 106 Issue 07
www.tofieldmerc.com
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
Several factors influencing Alberta’s dismal poverty picture Jana Semeniuk Staff Reporter
In a report published Sept. 26 by Food Banks Canada, Canadian provinces have been graded on a Poverty Report Card, for the first time showing how their efforts to reduce poverty compared to other provinces across the country. The best performing province was Quebec who earned a B-, while the worst performing province was Nova Scotia which earned an F. Alberta scored a D which was just below Canada’s overall grade of D+. Tofield Ryley and Area foodbank board chair Dawn Arnold said Alberta’s low grade was not surprising. “Because the food banks can only do so much to end hunger and address food insecurity,” said Arnold. “You can only serve those who will come (and) there are so many out there who, for whatever reason, pride or inability to get to a food bank, don't come. But when they fill out these surveys it shows.” The public opinion data used for this report was collected from 4,292 adult Canadians via an online survey by Discover by Navigator on behalf of Food Banks Canada between March and April of this year. In Alberta,
356 online surveys were completed. According to the provincial governments’ website, approximately 400,000 Albertans are estimated to be living in poverty including one in 10 children. According to Community Food Centres Canada, the poverty threshold in Canada is just over $25,000 for a single adult household. Additionally, the province’s population has grown from just over 4.5 million in 2022
to nearly 4.7 million in July. Meanwhile, four categories that contributed to each provinces’ final grade on poverty were; experience of poverty, poverty measures, material depravation, and legislative process. Alberta scored a D, D-, D- and C respectively. According to the report, one of Quebec’s contributing factors to its top performance in the country is its social assistance program.
“The social assistance system in Quebec performs much better than in other provinces and people are largely more satisfied with it than people in other provinces are with their systems,” stated the report, adding that Quebec residents spend 12.4 percent of their household income on food related costs compared to 11 percent nationally. Although Alberta’s rates in these areas were not in-
cluded in the report, information on its political landscape was. The current UCP government was criticized in the report for ‘rolling back some of the social spending introduced by the NDP government’. Meanwhile, Alberta’s minister of seniors, community and social services Jason Nixon said in a statement there is information not taken into account in the report. “This report does not include any of Alberta's affordability measures including the $600 affordability payments, over $26 million in food bank funding over the last few years, and the highest AISH benefit in the country at $1,787,” he said. “We are leading the country with supports for Albertans.” Some recommendations made for the Alberta government in the report were to raise the minimum wage to $17 per hour and index it to inflation moving forward, adding that currently 20 percent of all food bank recipients’ main income is through employment. Other recommendations included increasing and indexing income assistance programs, and expanding temporary rental assistance benefits to all Albertans waiting for affordable housing.