Campaign 2000’s annual report card shows 38 per cent of Indigenous children on reserves live in poverty, as do 42 per cent of female lone-parent families. One in three children of recent immigrants lives in poverty and income inequality is growing, the report says. “This is a crisis for the 4.8 million Canadians who live below the poverty line, as well…
With Fiji as the president and official host of COP23, this is the first time that a low-lying small-island state has led the UN climate talks. Yet despite the urgent calls for action from nations vulnerable to climate-induced extinction, many world leaders, and certainly the global media, have turned a blind eye. The Canadian government would…
The working poor continue to make up an overwhelming majority in Canada’s poverty statistics, a fact that has helped make the fifth annual Chew on This! campaign the largest ever. On Oct. 17 — the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty — 80 groups in more than 30 communities across Canada called for a…
In the first week of October TransCanada announced it would no longer pursue the Energy East oil pipeline that would have carried unrefined product from Alberta and Saskatchewan to New Brunswick. Reaction was swift, predictable, diverse and loud. For their part, environmental campaigners gleefully claimed success. It is hard to know what Christian leaders may have thought. They were…
An Anglican bishop, along with a coalition of leading anti-poverty and housing advocates, has urged the federal government to adopt a “rights-based” approach in its upcoming National Housing Strategy and poverty reduction strategies. “We come together today to send a clear and consistent message to the federal government regarding the need for a rights-based approach…
What does poverty look like in Canada in 2017? Ask yourself what images immediately come to mind when you consider who is poor in Canada today. Perhaps for many of us, the urban poor, sleeping homeless on the streets of major cities, come immediately to mind. But if you take a few minutes to read…
Canada is continuing to leave people with disabilities in poverty, says a report released Thursday by Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ). The faith-based organization’s annual report on poverty trends shows people with disabilities are more likely to be living in poverty than other Canadians. More working adults are joining the ranks of the impoverished, the report…
In today’s political and social climate, differences are often viewed as risks. Those that seek asylum become security threats warranting suspicion. People who speak a different language, or come from a different country, are seen as “other”. In the process, values like hospitality and kindness can be choked out, as concerns over the integrity of…
It’s sad that Christians quoting “the poor you will always have with you” rarely follow it with the intended injunction, “therefore, you shall open wide your hand to the needy and to the poor.” By separating these phrases, we may prevent ourselves from hearing and acting on the best sense of the intended teaching of…
After a surge of asylum seekers over the summer, Canada’s refugee policies will be the top concern for many faith-based groups when Parliament resumes Sept. 18. For Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ), a Christian social justice think tank, care for refugees is among their top priorities said CPJ executive director Joe Gunn. “This is an area…