Tax fairness and income support

Recommendation 4: Adjust income and disability assistance rates for families with children with disabilities to recognize the additional costs associated with raising children with extra support needs.

Tax fairness and income support

Recommendation 5: Ensure the Canada Child Benefit, in combination with other income measures, raises all families with children above the CFLIM after tax poverty lines calculated through tax filer data and ensure access to this and other federal benefits for families in population groups with higher rates of poverty.

Tax fairness and income support

Recommendation 7: Enhance Employment Insurance to expand access, duration, and level of benefits to reduce inequity for lower-income workers and prevent and reduce child and family poverty, including establishing a minimum benefit floor.

Targeted initiatives for groups over-represented in poverty data

Recommendation 10: Collaborate with First Nations, Métis and Inuit governments and Indigenous organizations to address the factors leading to child and family poverty in order to prevent, reduce and eradicate child and family poverty in Indigenous communities. The federal government must comply with the rulings of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to provide adequate funding for child welfare services on reserve and ensure the full application of Jordan’s Principle for First Nations children. Federal and provincial governments must ensure culturally safe supports and public services are also provided to Métis and Inuit children and to other Indigenous children living off-reserve in urban centres not covered under Jordan’s Principle.

Targeted initiatives for groups over-represented in poverty data

Recommendation 12: Review and enhance supports to grandparents raising grandchildren and other kinship care providers, including Child in the Home of a Relative care providers. Allow grandparents on CPP Disability who are raising their grandchildren to continue to receive the CPP children’s benefit after they turn 65 and remove administrative barriers to receiving the Canada Child Benefit for kinship care providers.

Targeted initiatives for groups over-represented in poverty data

Recommendation 13: Intensify efforts to help immigrants and refugees adjust to life in Canada by enhancing employment assistance, removing long-standing barriers to foreign-trained professionals accessing jobs in their field, making more language training with child care available, and improving employment standards and human rights protections and enforcement.

Lower barriers and improve lives through universal programs

Recommendation 15: Continue to prioritize new early learning and child care investments in 2023 budget and beyond to establish universal access to a system of high-quality, inclusive child care for BC children and families that has no parent fee for low-income families. Create enough licensed child care spaces for all who choose them. Ensure early childhood educators are paid compensation that reflects their education and the importance of the work they do by implementing a province-wide, publicly funded competitive wage grid for positions within the child care sector. Ensure there are adequate resources and support for the implementation of the Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Framework.

Lower barriers and improve lives through universal programs

Recommendation 16: Increase program funding and support for families raising children with disabilities and complex medical needs to ensure they have timely, universal access everywhere in BC to a core suite of early intervention therapies; timely assessments; family respite; inclusive child care; health, medical and in-home supports.

Lower barriers and improve lives through universal programs

Recommendation 17: Increase investment in public health initiatives aimed to support maternal and parental health and healthy infant development, as well as non-barriered, free, community-based programs and services for all families with young children to ensure these supports are available throughout the province and designed to reach families experiencing poverty and other threats to their ability to thrive.

Lower barriers and improve lives through universal programs

Recommendation 19: Contribute funding to establish a universal, cost-shared, healthy school food program for all K–12 students that is respectful of local contexts, connected to community and curriculum, health-promoting and sustainable.