Why are the BC Liberals so totally graceless and so uncaring? Would it really hurt to have one person in the Campbell government act as an advocate for the poor, as a fighter against poverty?

The B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition released a report that shows 167,000 children - one child in five in B.C. - were living in poverty in 2002. Similar reports were released across Canada as Campaign 2000 drew attention to all party resolution of November 24, 1989, "to achieve the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000."

The national report showed BC as the third worst province in 2002 with 19.6% of children living in poverty compared to the national average of 15.6% (data from Statistics Canada's Income Trends in Canada, 2002). The national report said "On the fifteenth anniversary of the Canadian Parliament's vow to end child poverty, 1,065,000 children, or nearly one in six of Canada's children, still remain in poverty. Not only is Canada's record on child poverty actually worse than it was in 1989, Canada's rate of poverty jumped for the first time in 2002, following five straight years of decline."

Rather than showing concern for those living in poverty, British Columbia's Human Resources Minister Susan Brice, responded by saying the statistics are "outdated"; she went on to claim that the 2002 figures are the result of the 1990s' and that economic growth in the past two years has lifted many from poverty. Brice and her Campbell colleagues appear to live in the land of "Denial".

One of the saddest things about Brice's hardhearted response is that it demonstrates no understanding of poverty. Many of the poor are not people on welfare, but are people in the kind of low-paying, not family-supporting jobs her government encouraged when they broke contracts and contracted out cleaning and food services. It is true that mean spirited changes to welfare have not helped, but 72% of poor children live in families where at least one person worked for part of a year; 22% of poor children live in families where at least one parent worked full-time in a full-year job. Of course, life is even harder for children living in families that depend on welfare. The report cites the National Council of Welfare's recent report, Welfare Incomes 2003, where it states: "A single parent with one child on welfare in BC had a total income of $13,673 - or $11,072 below the poverty line for Vancouver. A couple with two children had a total welfare income of $18,086 - or $19,167 below the poverty line for Vancouver."

Recommendations made by the BC Campaign 2000, the B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition, include:

Notice that 4 of those 5 recommendations deal with labour standards rather than with welfare policy. BC's Human Resources Minister would have people believe that tens of thousands of people have left welfare and have gone into good jobs. Appearing on the Rafe Mair show with guest host Shiral Tobin on November 24, she referred to average hourly wages in BC. If she had looked at all the data, Brice would know that according to Statistics Canada, in 2003 19% of British Columbians had average hourly wages of less than $10 per hour. Brice can make all the claims she wants to about higher paid jobs, but that doesn't do any good for the 1 in 5 British Columbians who are in low paid jobs, or for the 1 in 5 BC children who live in poverty.