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We call on you to recommit to poverty reduction and to closing equity gaps
1. Renew and strengthen Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy by charting a realistic path to meeting our 2030 target. This 50% target should not be met by addressing shallow poverty alone. It needs to address deep poverty, working poverty, poverty legislated by income and disability assistance, and poverty among Indigenous and marginalized groups including racialized, 2SLGBTQI+, lone parents, those with disabilities and their caregivers, refugees, migrants and immigrants, seniors, among others. Elements of this path could include:
- Strengthening existing benefits, including the Canada Child Benefit, the Canada Workers Benefit, GIS and the GST/HST credit, ensuring they are available to those with low or no income, and regardless of immigration status.
- Delivering on promised EI reform and enhancing parental leave to protects newborns from poverty.
- Establishing a national income floor such that combined benefits guarantee dignity.
2. Acknowledge poverty reduction not as an aspirational goal but as an obligation under international human rights law.13 Implement meaningful accountability mechanisms.
3. Implement recommendations related to poverty eradication in the TRC and MMIWG Calls to Action and Calls to Justice.
4. Increase the Canada Disability Benefit so it lifts recipients above the poverty line and expand eligibility beyond the requirement to qualify for the Disability Tax Credit.
5. Set a national target to cut household food insecurity in half and end severe household food insecurity by 2030.
6. Drastically increase investment in non-market, deeply affordable housing. Protect renters with tenancy supports, eviction prevention programs, and portable housing benefit.
7. Offer universal childcare on a $0–$10/day sliding scale model and ensure that service expansion has an equity lens to ensure that low-income children are fully included in the national childcare plan.
8. Expand pharmacare to include all essential medicines and assistive devices, ensuring inclusion for migrant workers, refugees and those with precarious immigration status.
9. Report on progress annually with data disaggregated by socio-demographic indicators.
10. Ensure community engagement and accountability by investing in community-led, localized data collection and poverty reduction planning and creating formal roles for people with lived/living experience in federal consultations and monitoring bodies.
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