B.C. Teachers' Federation. The BCTF Web "Social Justice" link on the top page. This in turn will lead to a link for "poverty" where you will find the "Child Poverty in British Columbia Report Card" complete with colourful graphs and links to other organizations that are involved in "Campaign 2000." This student resource, "Poverty: It's Local, It's Global, and It's All Connected", is also on the Web site -- click on "Lesson Aids," at the top page.
Campaign 2000: End Child Poverty in Canada is a cross-Canada public education movement to build Canadian awareness and support for the 1989 all-party House of Commons resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. Campaign 2000 began in 1991 out of concern about the lack of government progress in addressing child poverty. It is non-partisan in urging all Canadian elected officials to keep their promise to Canada's children.
Canadian Council on Social Development is probably the most comprehensive Canadian anti-poverty link. The CCSD is a non-profit organization dedicated to serving the needs of children, families, and communities through its extensive programs and policies. Here you will find links to research services, publications and on-line documents, statistics and information, just to name a few. This would be a good starting place for anyone interested in obtaining key information about poverty in Canada.
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. OCAP's mission is to educate people about poverty and poor-bashing. It also seeks to empower the poor. This activist organization has many innovative programs that assist people living in poverty in Ontario. It is also lobbying for the elimination of poverty in Canada. This site reflects the efforts of the Kitchener-Waterloo Chapter and thus it is primarily targeted to those living in the area.
Poverty Watch Ontario is a joint initiative of the Social Planning Network of Ontario, Ontario Campaign 2000 and the Income Security Advocacy Centre. These organizations have partnered since early 2008 to promote a cross-Ontario community dialogue on a poverty reduction strategy for the province. SPNO, C2000 and ISAC, along with other provincial organizations and local networks, are helping and supporting the participation in the consultations of low income people and all community stakeholders in a poverty-free Ontario.
PovNet provides up-to-date information about welfare and housing laws and resources in British Columbia, Canada. It links to current anti-poverty issues and provides links to other anti-poverty organizations and resources in Canada and internationally.
Winnipeg Harvest is a community-based food bank that also ensures that other food banks throughout Manitoba have an adequate supply of food. It has several innovative programs aside from the food-distribution program. This site also contains links to facts about poverty and other Canadian food banks.
Class Action inspires action to end classism and extreme inequality by providing change-makers with tools, training and inspiration to raise awareness, shift cultural beliefs about social class, build cross-class solidarity, and transform institutions and systems.
Rabble blogs are the personal pages of some of Canada's most insightful progressive activists and commentators.
Race Files exists to take complex constructs about race and make them understandable. They use analogy, pop culture and personal narrative to create a language for the daily experience of dealing with racism that helps to name daily experiences of race and racism, and invites cross-racial solidarity.
TalkPoverty.org—a project of the Center for American Progress—is dedicated to covering poverty in America by lifting up the voices of advocates, policymakers, and people struggling to make ends meet.
Wealth for the Common Good is a network of business leaders, high-income individuals and partners working together to promote shared prosperity and fair taxation. We are “the 1 percent” that wants an economy that works for everyone. Our membership includes entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, school teachers, engineers and elected officials of all backgrounds and from all over the country.
Northern Ontario First Nations are Battling an Oral Health Crisis
TVO
Charnel Anderson and Madalene Arias | May 16, 2018
Walking a day in the shoes of someone in poverty through the Ottawa Poverty Challenge
CityNews
Davyn Barrie | May 14, 2018
'You Feel Ashamed': Despite Tighter Rules, Struggling British Columbians still Embrace Payday Loans
CBC News
Liam Britten | January 15, 2020
Opinion: We can Reduce the Poverty Gap by Making Work Pay More
Financial Post
Don Drummond, Inez Hillel, and Andrew Sharpe | August 18, 2020
Exploitation, Abuse, Health Hazards Rise for Migrant Workers During COVID-19, Group says
CBC News
Kathleen Harris | June 08, 2020
Opinion: Freeland's Historic New Job a Win Amid Women's Pandemic Losses
The Star
Heather Mallick | August 18, 2020
How Poverty Changes the Brain
The Atlantic
Tara García Mathewson | April 19, 2017
Kids in Foster Care Endure Long Separations, while the Rest of Canada Reopens
Global News
Allison Martell Reuters | May 26, 2020
'No Space on the Paper': Our Poverty Challenge Continues
The Kingston Local
Jamie Swift | April 25, 2021
Canada's 'Welfare Wall' Traps People With Disabilities
Huffington Post
Sherri Torjman | July 28, 2017
Them That’s Not by Silva Basmajian and Christene Browne
National Film Board of Canada | Montreal, 1993
This video puts a human face on the statistics relating to women and poverty. Closely monitored to ensure that they are conforming to all rules and regulations, the women featured in this video must accept having their rights and privacy violated. We share through their eyes, their voices and their experiences, what it feels like to be poor and to raise children under the scrutiny of an unsympathetic welfare system.
Ojigkwanong: Encounter with an Algonquin Sage by Lucie Ouimet
National Film Board of Canada | Montreal, 2000
William Commanda, whose Algonquin name is Ojigkwanong, was born on the Maniwaki reserve in Quebec in 1913. The story of his early life is a familiar one: the loss of native culture, numbing poverty and escape into alcohol. In 1961, Commanda, then chief of his reserve, was terminally ill. He had a vision that would transform his life and those of his people. Imagining a Circle of all Nations, his first gesture was to reconcile the Algonquins and Iroquois. Since then, he has devoted himself to the reconciliation of peoples and cultures.
Life Under Mike by James E. Motluk
Guerrilla Films | Toronto, 2000
Mike Harris of the Ontario Conservative Party, served as premier of the province from 1995 to 2005. He called his platform “The Common Sense Revolution”, which cut welfare benefits by 21.6% and removed benefits for 500,000 Ontarians.
No Place Called Home by Craig Chivers and Peter Starr
National Film Board of Canada | Montreal, 2003
No Place Called Home follows the Rice family over the course of a year as they move in search of affordable housing. Just as the family’s circumstances are looking better, things turn sour when the landlord threatens eviction.
Unexpected
National Film Board of Canada | 2008
This 16 min. film explores bias in the form of a dialogue between homeless young mothers and health care professionals who deliver their babies.
Failing Canada's First Nations Children
Global News | 2016
Canadian kids from isolated communities are forced to move away from their families – just to go to school. This experience drives many to commit suicide
Four Feet Up by Nance Ackerman
National Film Board of Canada | 2008
In this personal documentary, award-winning photographer and filmmaker Nance Ackerman invites us into the lives of a determined family for a profound experience of child poverty in one of the richest countries in the world. 20 years after the House of Commons promised to eliminate poverty among Canadian children, 8-year-old Isaiah is trying hard to grow up healthy, smart and well adjusted despite the odds stacked against him.
Poor No More by Deveaux Babin | 2012
Poor No More is a Canadian feature documentary about the working poor.
The film, hosted by comedian and actor Mary Walsh, deals with issues like affordable housing, welfare and the cost of education.
Where is Home? by Dan Berdusco | 2016
“Where is Home?” is a documentary film focused on homelessness and the complex social issues facing the city of Lethbridge, Alberta and many other communities across Canada. The film presents unique perspectives from many individuals, including members of the homeless population, municipal government, law enforcement, service providers, doctors, educators, health professionals, as well as members of the local business community and the general public.
Generation Poor by Global News | 2014
25 years ago, the Canadian government vowed to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000, but today not much has changed. 16x9’s Carolyn Jarvis talks to the most vulnerable kids about what it’s like to go hungry in a land of plenty.
Neighbourhood Deliveries by the National Film Board of Canada | 2005
The city of Kanpur in India and Montreal's Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhood may be thousands of miles apart, but filmmaker and activist Feroz Mehdi doesn't have to pedal far to get from one to the other. To film this documentary, he gets a job making deliveries on a three-wheeler for a convenience store in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, one of the city's poorest areas. It's a neighbourhood he knows well. And so begins a fascinating cinematographic journey that reveals another facet of the poverty that stretches from Quebec to the Indian continent.
Salvation by the National Film Board of Canada | 2002.
There is an army in the city's mean streets and its foe is poverty and human misery. Salvation is about front-line workers serving the needy under the umbrella of the Salvation Army, offering a glimpse into the hearts and minds of people on both sides of the street.
Paid to be Poor
The Current
Anna Marie Tremonti | September 19, 2014
Canada's Gig Economy is Changing the Future of Jobs
This is Why
Niki Reitmayer | August 2017, 2020
The Rabble
Podcasts
Popaganda: The Best Things in Life Are Freelance
Bitch Media
Soleil Ho | December 6, 2018
Almost half of millennials do freelance work—that is, they work as contract laborers, often in fields like writing, design, and computer programming—and the majority of those workers are women. The idea of ditching the office, the 9 to 5, and the butthead coworkers can be so tempting, but is this life all it’s cracked up to be? How do you find community when you don’t have to go anywhere to do your job? And what are your rights as a freelance worker?
Family Dollar(s)
The Impact by the Vox
Dylan Matthews | February 5
Natasha Razouk wants to give her 7-year-old the best possible life. She buys big boxes of fresh tomatoes at Costco, and she gets her daughter warm boots, a good coat, and school supplies each year. But all that is expensive. Natasha’s daughter grows out of clothes quickly, and she needs books and health care and day care. That’s why the Canadian government gives every parent, including Natasha, a little money each month — a few hundred Canadian dollars — to help cover the cost of raising a child. It’s called the “child benefit.” In 2016, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised it would lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty. Now, a number of US presidential candidates have signed onto a similar proposal. In this episode, we see whether the Canadian child benefit delivered on Prime Minister Trudeau’s promise. We find out how that money changed Natasha’s life and her daughter’s. And we look at what US presidential candidates can learn from our neighbors to the north.
Blais, Francois. Ending poverty : a basic income for all Canadians, Toronto : J. Lorimer, 2002.
Political scientist François Blais offers a bold new proposal to assist the poorest and most disadvantaged in our society: a guaranteed basic income, or allowance, to be paid to every Canadian citizen.
Capponi, Pat. Dispatches from the Poverty Line, Toronto: Penguin Canada 1997.
Unemployed, long past the end of her benefits, Capponi finds herself once again not just working with the poor but joining their ranks. In the winter of 1996, she began a journal of the effect that conservative fiscal and social policy was having on people like herself. In Dispatches from the Poverty Line, she continues her account of life at the edge of a society that is quickly unravelling its social safety net. She adds a human voice to the statistics we read about daily, revealing the values and sensibilities of our country’s poor and their feelings about themselves and those around them.
Capponi, Pat. The war at home : an intimate portrait of Canada's poor, Toronto: Viking, 1999
This is 'travel writing' from the bottom up -- an angry, stinging moral challenge to those of us who go to bed full and wake up without terror.
Cohen, Erminie Joy and Petten, Angela. Sounding the alarm : poverty in Canada, Saint John NB, Private press, 1997.
A no-nonsense essay on the failure of governments to provide for the poor.
Hurtig, Mel. Pay the Rent or Feed the Kids: The Tragedy and Disgrace of Poverty in Canada, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2000.
Many of these stories are as heart-rending as the comments from politicians and their corporate supporters are callous. Pay the Rent or Feed the Kids challenges all Canadians to re-examine the society we are living in and to demand changes for the better.
Kazemipur, Abdolmohammad and Halli, Shiva S. New Poverty in Canada: Ethnic Groups and Ghetto Neighbourhoods, Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing, 2000.
Kazemipur and Halli examine ethnic and neighbourhood poverty in Canadian urban centres. To define neighbourhood poverty, they apply the term Spatial Concentration of Poverty (SCOP) to identify neighbourhoods within urban areas that have extreme poverty rates. The main focus of this work is to build a comprehensive picture of how Canadian cities have been impacted by the process of neighbourhood poverty.
McKeen, Wendy. Money in their Own Name: The Feminist Voice in Poverty Debate in Canada, 1970-1995, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
McKeen's book is a timely contribution to discussions of both feminism and social policy. There are two key underlying issues raised in the book: first, what model for social policy should feminists be putting forward? In other words, what constitutes a "women-friendly" social policy? Secondly, what strategies should feminists develop to advance such a model? In order to address these questions, McKeen examines Canadian feminists' efforts to influence federal child and family benefits in the period from the early 1960s to the 1990's.
McQuaig, Linda. The Wealthy Banker's Wife: The Assault on Equality in Canada, Toronto: Penguin Canada 1993.
McQuaig argues that the concerted attack on our social programs is really an attack on equality in Canada – by those who disagree with the very cause of equality.
Mettrick, Alan. Last in Line: On the road and out of work…a desperate journey with Canada's unemployed, Toronto, Key Porter Books, 1985.
Story of jobless, transient Canadians during the economic downtown of the 1980's. Describes a way of life from which there is no exit, for ordinary people forced into poverty and doomed to unemployment.
Swift, Jamie and Power, Elaine. The Case for Basic Income. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2021
In these pages, Jamie Swift and Elaine Power bring to the forefront the deeply personal stories of Canadians who participated in the 2017–2019 Ontario Basic Income Pilot; examine the essential literature and history behind the movement; and answer basic income’s critics from both the right and left.
Swift, Jamie. Wheel of Fortune: Work and Life and in the Age of Falling Expectations, Toronto: Between the Lines, 1995.
Analysis of the changing world of work, and critique of the long-term implications of the 'new economy' for working people. Draws on experiences of workers in two Ontario communities.
Wallis Maria A. and Kwok, Siu-Ming eds., Daily Struggles: The Deepening Racialization and Feminization of Poverty in Canada, Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2008.
This collection is valuable in pulling together a range of readings in critical political economy and the racialized labour market. It presents a useful feminist political economy approach to issues of racialized inequality in Canada.
Westhues, Anne ed., Canadian Society: Issues and Perspectives, Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 4th edition, 2006.
This collection includes several articles about poverty in Canada The editor is professor of social work at WLU.
Yalnizyan, Armine. Canada's Great Divide: The Politics of the Growing Gap Between Rich and Poor in the 1990s, Toronto: The Centre for Social Justice, 2000.