Saturday, March 16, 2019 ~ BC.
~ West Shore Voice News
BC’s First Poverty Reduction Strategy will be announced live on Facebook on Monday March 18 at 10:30 am (Pacific).
The announcement will be made by Shane Simpson, Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. The event will be livestreamed from the Options Early Years Centre in Surrey.
One of the first actions taken by the new NDP BC Government in 2017 was to eliminate fees for adults seeking to complete their Grade 12 diploma, and to increase monthly disability payments by $100 per person.
The BC Budget includes elements for moderating the price of housing BC (especially major urban centres), and there is a 10-year, $30 billion plan to increase the housing stock with an emphasis on increasing the supply affordable housing units and a range of partnered arrangements to make land available for multi-family housing.
The poverty rate in BC is among the worst in Canada. “Too many people are struggling to make ends meet, earn a living wage, or find and keep affordable housing,” says the BC Government on their poverty reduction information page. “Too many families are suffering without basic necessities, relying on food banks, going hungry or sending their children to school hungry.”
Among other things, BC is studying a basic income approach to reduce poverty. The Province appointed an expert committee in July 2018 to understand how offering basic income to eligible people could reduce poverty in BC and help break the cycle for people who are struggling to get by.
In an online input process held November 15, 2018 through March 15, 2019, “basic income” was explored. Basic income was defined as “income payments provided to eligible people unconditionally by government. Basic income can be delivered through direct payments to people or through the personal income tax system.”
Prior to that, between October 30, 2017 and March 31, 2018, the BC government
conducted a comprehensive public engagement process to ask British Columbians
how, as a province, poverty and inequality could be addressed. Key themes that came out of the full report include that indigenous peoples and persons with disabilities are twice as likely to live in poverty. Other key groups experiencing poverty include refugees, immigrants, people of colour, single parents, women, and LGBT2Q people. Discrimination makes it more difficult to escape poverty.