COMPARED with many other developed countries, Canada has had a good financial crisis. Its banks and public finances are sound, and the economy recovered quickly and strongly from recession, even if the pace is now slowing. But there is one sense in which Canada does less well. When it comes to child poverty, it ranks 22nd-worst out of the 31 countries in the OECD, a rich-country grouping. More than 3m Canadians (or one in ten) are poor; and 610,000 of them are children.

The problem is a chronic one. Back in 1989 Parliament unanimously supported a resolution to eliminate child poverty by 2000. Having failed, the politicians last year approved a woolly resolution to do better. This week they were rebuked by Campaign 2000, an activist group, which reported that child poverty is now as bad as it was two decades ago. Earlier this month Food Banks Canada, an association of charities, reported that 900,000 Canadians rely on food handouts, up by 9% on last year. Many are among the country's 300,000 or so homeless people.

All this is despite long periods of steady growth over the past two decades. But only a third of the poor are in jobs. The rest are mainly single mothers, disabled people, aboriginal Canadians and immigrants. In the 1980s and 1990s these groups suffered cuts in welfare payments (which are too meagre to keep someone above the country's de facto poverty line) when governments, both federal and provincial, cut public spending to restore fiscal health. One of the keenest slashers was British Columbia, which despite being one of the richest provinces has one of the highest rates of child poverty (10.4%) after taxes on family income. Critics of such policies say that children who grow up in poverty forfeit the chance to prosper as adults, or to become productive workers.

Half a dozen provincial governments, including those of populous Ontario and Quebec, have launched poverty-reduction programmes; many include attempts to prod or help people back into work. Newfoundland, helped by royalties from oil and mining, has cut its poverty rate in half (to 6.5%). Earlier this month, a House of Commons committee urged the federal government to adopt a national strategy. The response of Stephen Harper's Conservative administration was that the best long-term strategy to fight poverty is “the sustained employment of Canadians”. That is certainly a necessary condition, but is it sufficient? Both the government and its critics might ponder why it is that growth seems to bypass so many.