FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MARCH 21, 2002

This situation in the past two years was caused by freezes or low increases in welfare rates. Taking into account the cost of living (2.7 percent from 1999 to 2000 and 2.6 percent from 2000 to 2001), these increases actually represented decreases of between 0 and 2.7 percent from the previous year.

The situation of single-parent families is a good illustration of the considerable gap between welfare incomes, estimated average total incomes and poverty lines. In 2001, welfare incomes of single-parent families were at least $5,000 below the poverty line for two-member households living in the largest city of each province, and at least $10,000 below the average income of all single-parent families in these provinces.

"The tragically low level of welfare incomes for these single-parent families would be a little less desperate if governments stopped clawing back the Canada Child Tax Benefit," stated John Murphy, Chairperson of the National Council of Welfare.

"Canadians cannot permit personal human suffering resulting from this poverty, or the non-sense of it from a strictly economic standpoint," states Mr. Murphy. The Council publication The Cost of Poverty, which came out in February 2002, presents a series of examples of how much poverty costs all Canadians. "This system leads to the social exclusion of an important part of the population. What kind of a future do we want to provide for our children?"

Ottawa and several provinces and territories agreed that increases in federal money could be clawed back from welfare families and reinvested by these provinces and territories in other programs for children. A condition of the clawback was that families on welfare would be no worse off, but the report indicates that just the opposite has actually happened.

The effect of the clawback has been to freeze welfare incomes. The report shows that clawbacks under the Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB) unfairly discriminated against families on welfare. Between July 1998 and June 1999, the CCTB benefited only 66 percent of poor families in the country: 79 percent of two-parent families and only 57 percent of single-parent families. Given the fact that most single-parent families are headed by women, the Council considers this treatment to be discriminatory on the basis of gender.

"We congratulate the three provinces-Nova Scotia, Manitoba (for children under the age of 7) and Quebec-that stopped clawing back the Canada Child Tax Benefit in 2001, thus joining New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador," stressed Mr. Murphy. "I would like to see other provinces and territories follow their example!"

Welfare Incomes is a regular report on the welfare rates in each province and territory in Canada. For 2000 and 2001, this report provides estimated welfare incomes for four types of households: a single employable person, a single person with a disability, a single-parent family with a two-year-old child, and a two-parent family with two children aged 10 and 15. The National Council of Welfare has published similar estimates since 1986.

The National Council of Welfare is a citizens' advisory group to the Minister of Human Resources Development.