National group urges poverty reduction strategy for P.E.I.

NIGEL ARMSTRONG
The Guardian

The National Anti-Poverty Organization wants the P.E.I. government to develop a poverty reduction strategy and make it at least a top-five priority.

“We need to change our attitudes and beliefs around poverty and the nature of poverty, the causes of poverty and what can be done about it,” Rob Rainer, executive director of NAPO, said during a visit to Charlottetown this week.

“Seeing an improvement on the wage side is only one part of the overall solution to poverty. There has to be other things outside of just wage increases. There is a whole gamut of things that need to be considered by governments, from child care to housing, labour standards, disability supports.

“Here on P.E.I., clearly a big issue is rural public transportation, helping people get around who would otherwise find it difficult to move around. There is a role for government to show leadership there in investment.”

P.E.I. needs to follow the lead of Newfoundland and Labrador and create a “pretty robust” provincial anti-poverty strategy, said Rainer. Ontario and Nova Scotia are working on their anti-poverty strategies, he said.

“In Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, they have a vision of eliminating poverty but their shorter- term vision, roughly 10 years, is to move from the province with the highest percentage of people living in poverty to the province with the lowest percentage of people living in poverty,” said Rainer.

“If the province here could establish its own targets for poverty reduction, say over the next five or 10 years, then the next part of the plan is looking at the how.

“What are the key measures the province will look to support? It should work with partners, which could be community-based partners, could be the corporate sector, could be the federal government, could be municipal governments and so forth. How can all those interest collaborate to make these measures successful as possible?”

He said the Island seems in the middle of big changes in its economy, plus its relative small size to other provinces makes the challenge of tackling poverty more difficult than in the rest of Canada.

“My sense is that the Island is quite vulnerable to external influences that could make the challenge of tackling poverty here a little more daunting.

“The role for the federal government is even more important when I look at what the provincial government can likely do on its own. We want to see every province and territory come up with their own (anti-poverty) plans but also show linkage into a pan-Canadian approach to tackling this issue.”