Campbell turns back on kids
TIMES COLONIST JUNE 27, 2009 What is Premier Gordon Campbell thinking? The province, according to Statistics Canada, has had the highest rate of child poverty in Canada for the past six years. The problems are increasing as more people lose their jobs.
Yet Campbell has refused to meet with the Representative for Children and Youth to discuss ways of improving the lives of poor children.
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond asked for a joint meeting with Campbell and NDP Leader Carole James. The situation is urgent, she said, and should be above partisan politics. The leaders should co-operate on plans to make things better for children at a tough time.
James said yes. Campbell refused even a meeting.
The representative should discuss child poverty with the legislative committee on children and youth, he said.
But the committee hasn't met in seven months, as the premier knows. It won't likely meet again until the fall, when new members are named.
And it has no power or authority to do anything about child poverty anyway, as the premier also knows. No B.C. legislative committee can direct the government. Most are, unfortunately, inactive and ineffectual. (The education committee last met in 2006; the health committee in January 2007; the aboriginal affairs committee has been inactive since 2001.)
Campbell's response is simply a dismissal, a brush-off. The plight of children living in poverty is not a priority for the government.
After six years of the worst rate of child poverty in Canada, it should be. There are plans to address climate change, for example, with timelines, targets and accountabilities.
But there are still no comparable plans -- or any real plans -- to address child poverty.
Or to deal with the current crisis. In just the past four months, the number of children living on welfare has increased 8.9 per cent. Income assistance rates are punishingly low.
A single mom with two children who is considered employable by the ministry -- the kind of person swelling the welfare ranks as jobs vanish -- receives about $650 a month, plus up to $660 for accommodation. (Where can a family of three live in this region for $660 in rent?) That's $150 a week for food, clothes, transportation, birthdays, everything for three people. That's the equivalent of a full-time, minimum wage job. And it's not enough to support two children.
Children deserve a fair chance in life. The premier's refusal to work co-operatively on that goal is a rejection of the one in seven B.C. children living in poverty.