Child Poverty and the Canadian Welfare State

The increasing scope of child poverty in Canada has been high on the national agenda since at least 1989. This book represents an effort to understand the changes in social policy that normalise the existence of child poverty in a rich society like Canada. Child hunger and homelessness-once considered either sorrowful reflections of an economically impoverished society or shameful reflections of a morally impoverished state-have become commonplace. The increasing scope of child poverty in Canada has been high on the national agenda since at least 1989 when Ed Broadbent, leader of the New Democratic Party, proposed a resolution in the House of Commons to eliminate child poverty by 2000. The resolution passed unanimously and sparked the formation of Campaign 2000, a broad national coalition of non-governmental agencies committed to monitor the government's progress toward that goal. More than a decade later, the September 2001 issue of Maclean's remarked: "Here we are in 2001.and child poverty in Canada is worse, not better." Child Poverty and the Canadian Welfare State: From Entitlement to Charity represents an effort to understand the changes in social policy that normalize the existence of child poverty in a rich society like Canada. Shereen Ismael is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Carleton University. In 2005, 1.2 million children in Canada were living below the poverty level. This represents a 20 percent increase since 1989, the year that the federal government unanimously passed a resolution to eliminate child poverty by 2000. To understand the state of children's welfare, Child Poverty and the Canadian Welfare State reviews Canadian social policy reform, and discovers that the welfare of poor children is a casualty of the war on the welfare state launched by opposing political ideologies. This study surveys the shift from entitlement to charity from the perspective of social policy reform.