Employment and labour

Only 9% of all Canadians were considered poor in 2007. It was the lowest rate of low income in 30 years. But that was before the recession hit last fall. We don’t yet have income data for 2008, but, if past experience is anything to go by, poverty rates will go up again as declining economic growth shows up in the numbers. And that’s bad news for women whose high rates of poverty remain unaddressed.

This report finds that the gap between the richest and poorest families in Saskatchewan has increased dramatically over the past generation and has mushroomed since 2000—during the best of economic times. It concludes that for the past thirty years, the richest in the province have secured the lion’s share of Saskatchewan’s economic growth, while those at the lower end of the income spectrum have made few or no gains over the same period. 

OTTAWA—Canada still has shockingly high rates of women’s poverty but the recession seems to have sidelined anti-poverty policies, says a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Women’s Poverty and the Recession reveals even after taking into account government transfers and tax credits, almost one-quarter(24%) of Canadian women raising children on their own and 14% of single older women are poor, compared to 9 % of children.

There is still an air of disbelief in Canada about the severity of the current global recession — now widely accepted as the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s — both as it is affecting Canada and as it is playing out around the world. Perhaps it is because recession came later to Canada and is just beginning to hit hard. Or maybe it is because government leaders and media keep assuring Canadians that we are in good shape to weather the storm and the worst will be over "soon."