Market Basket Measure
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By Roy Whyte
CDM May 28 2003
With the release of Ottawa’s new poverty indicator comes some conclusions most of us already know – more of us are poor than ever before. Using the year 2000 as the guideline the findings show that there are more poor in Canada than they first thought. Almost four million Canadians living in a wealthy G8 nation are now to be classified as poor.
Will this change anything? Probably nothing will change although it most certainly should. Poverty groups have been very vocal for years stating that the money available falls far short of the reality of the situation. These new numbers show their warnings to be true.
The “basket†is gauged on the necessary family needs such as food, clothing and shelter. As such 48 different regions were used to correlate the new findings. The findings show some startling finds.
Greater Vancouver heads the list of urban areas with the highest rates of poor in Canada with the cut-off being $27,791 and some 20% overall. Leading the nation in this dubious list is Newfoundland and Labrador at 23.4% of the population falling below the threshold.
The province with the lowest totals was Ontario with some 11%.
What can we expect from our government officials and others regarding the release of these findings? Only time will tell but using past history we should expect little action.
Roy Whyte is the Director of WhiteBark Innovations
and edits Canadian Business News
@ May 28, 2003