Private Member’s Statement on Child Poverty- Harry Chase, MLA Calgary-Varsity, Alberta Liberal Critic for Children & Youth Services

Mr. Chase: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Social workers are among the most altruistic and caring citizens in Alberta. Each one makes a deliberate choice to dedicate their life to helping the less fortunate. Today the Alberta College of Social Workers is calling on this government to take real steps to reduce one of the most important problems of our time, child poverty. According to the latest data approximately 53,000 children live in poverty, half of them living in single-parent Alberta families. Keep in mind that this data doesn’t take the recession into account, so the current numbers must be even higher. I’ve heard it’s closer to 80,000 these days.

There are a number of positive steps a truly progressive government could take to alleviate child poverty. For example, they could support the Alberta Liberal plan to provide hot lunch at school for at-risk kids. Hungry children have a hard time focusing on their schoolwork. This step would help address that problem by giving poor kids some of the help they need to succeed at school and, therefore, stand a better chance of escaping the cycle of poverty. This government should also look at the minimum wage. Our current minimum wage of $8.80 an hour is the second lowest in the nation, and it has been deliberately frozen by Canada’s wealthiest provincial government. Over 60 per cent of minimum wage earners are women, many of them supporting children in poverty, yet this government won’t even raise Alberta’s minimum wage a measly 25 cents as recommended by the Committee on the Economy. Another 25 cents an hour doesn’t sound like much to anyone sitting in this Assembly, but to the working poor it can mean the difference between feeding their family or being forced to skip a few meals.

The list of proactive steps that could be taken goes on. Alberta needs far more affordable housing. Alberta’s high school completion rate and the rate of students moving on to postsecondary education must both be drastically improved. Mr. Speaker, all three territories and 6 out of 10 provinces have action plans to reduce poverty. Alberta is lagging behind, and as a result Albertans are falling behind as well. Let’s follow the advice of the College of Social Workers and join our fellow Canadians in ending the cycle of poverty.

AlbertaHansard, March 17, 2011

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Kim Dewar | Community Relations Specialist|albertaliberalcaucus

Phone: 780.422.0506 | Fax: 780.427.3697