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London ridings have poor showing in national child poverty report

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Two London ridings are running among the highest rates of child poverty in Southwestern Ontario, eclipsed only by a Windsor riding that ranks as one of the worst in Canada, a new report suggests.

With less than two weeks to go until the federal election, the report by Campaign 2000, a national coalition of 120 anti-poverty groups, puts into stark perspective the numbers of children living below the poverty line, crunching data for each of the 338 ridings up for grabs in the Oct. 21 election.

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In an election campaign that’s featured billions of dollars in new spending promises by the political parties, the figures paint a sobering picture of the extent of low-income kids.

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With 27 per cent of its children living in low-income households — 6,800 kids in all — London-Fanshawe ranks highest in the London region, followed by London North Centre where just more than one-quarter of the kids fall into the same category, according to the report.

(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

Windsor West, at 33 per cent, has the 15th-highest rate in Canada, the report indicates.

On the campaign trail, London-Fanshawe NDP candidate Lindsay Mathyssen said she’s noticed “a huge recognition that poverty is at crisis levels.”

“People know that poverty affecting our community has raged out of control,” she said. “We know it has long-term effects on kids when we talk about nutrition or we talk housing or education. That affects the long-term economic welfare of our community.”

London-Fanshawe and London North Centre, respectively, are running the 15th- and 23rd-highest rates of low-income children in Ontario ridings and are among the bottom 16 per cent in the entire country, according to the Campaign 2000 report, which was produced with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-leaning think tank.

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The information in the report is based on 2017 Statistics Canada figures and tax returns. It measures the proportion of children by riding in low-income households, a figure that varies on family size. For example, the low-income threshold for a single parent with one child is $33,250; for a two-parent household with two children, it’s about $47,000.

Ridings had an average of 19 per cent low-income children across the country.

“Child and family poverty exists in every single riding in the country — even in the ridings with the lowest poverty, there were still about  1,000 children (living in poverty),” said Lila Sarangi, national co-ordinator of Campaign 2000,.

“Given Canada’s wealth, that’s unacceptable. So we want to hear from every candidate in every riding and from every party to hear what their platform is to end child and family poverty.”

Peter Fragiskatos, the Liberal candidate in London North Centre, said the answer is creating — and hanging onto — more jobs for London.

“I think we explain it by looking at the difficult economic transition London is making — a manufacturing-based economy that has evolved and continues to evolve, as the decline of traditional manufacturing takes shape,” said Fragiskatos, the riding’s MP in the last Parliament.

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He noted a federal investment helped London to land a massive new processing plant being built by Maple Leaf Foods that’s expected to employ nearly 1,500 people.

Mathyssen said an NDP government would make the wealthiest Canadians pay more taxes and put that into services such as health care, universal pharmacare and childcare, and build 500,000 units of affordable housing. The NDP would also look at establishing a national basic income.

“It’s about tackling systemic issues,” she said.

Don Kerr, a demographer who teaches at King’s University College in London, said the Campaign 2000 report is “consistent” with what he’s noticed in recent years.

“With the last census, we found that the city of London had some of the highest child poverty rates” among major metropolitan areas of Canada, he said.

While it’s “reasonable” to say the expansion of the child tax benefit has helped and “we have made some gains,” he noted, “you would think we would have done better in our city.

“I think it’s an indicator that a lot of young families are still struggling.”

HRivers@postmedia.com

OTHER AREA RIDINGS

Percentage of low-income children

Brantford-Brant: 20.3 per cent

London West: 19.1 per cent

Chatham-Kent–Leamington: 19 per cent

Sarnia-Lambton: 17.6 per cent

Elgin-Middlesex-London: 15 per cent

Lambton-Kent-Middlesex: 13.5 per cent

Huron-Bruce: 13.2 per cent

Oxford: 12.4 per cent

Perth-Wellington: 12 per cent

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