41 percent of families living in poverty are working poor

(CNW) Eighteen years after the 1989 all-party resolution of the House of Commons to end child poverty, the rate is exactly the same, says a new report from Campaign 2000.

Despite a soaring dollar and low unemployment, Statistics Canada data shows the after-tax child poverty rate is 11.7 percent, exactly where it was when all federal parties decided action was urgently needed. (The poverty rate in Greater Sudbury, based on 2001 statistics is 11 percent.)

The 2007 National Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada shows that 788,000 children live in poverty in Canada. A startling 41 percent of low-income children live in families with at least one parent working full-time all year yet do not earn enough to lift their families out of poverty.

The risk of living in poverty is not the same for all children. Poverty hits children in racialized, First Nations and recent immigrant communities much more often.

The report is called It Takes a Nation to Raise a Generation.

Ann Decter, national co-ordinator of Campaign 2000 is calling on the federal government to take action.

"The federal government has the fiscal resources if they don't give them away in general, across the board tax cuts," she said.

 "I want to know my daughter's classmates have enough to eat, every day. I want to know that no child will go homeless in Canada this winter. I want to see all First Nations children living safely beyond the entrapping cycle of poverty," said Decter. "That's what poverty reduction means."

Decter pointed to polling that shows 85 percent of Canadians believe if the government takes concrete action, poverty in Canada could be drastically reduced.

For more information on this report, visit www.campaign2000.ca .

In Sudbury, the local Make Poverty History committee will be meeting Tuesday, Dec. 4; Tuesday, Jan. 8, Tuesday, Feb. 5 ; and Tuesday, March 4  at 7 pm at 30 Ste. Anne's Rd. (Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie building.) For more information, contact Ty Cumming, chapter co-ordinator at 688-6927.