VANCOUVER—The B.C. government is aiming to reduce the province’s poverty rate — the second highest in the country — with a new strategy to lift 140,000 people out of poverty and cut the child poverty rate in half over the next five years.

On Monday, the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction put forward the province’s first poverty-reduction strategy called TogetherBC, which outlined six goals to guide initiatives in the next five years.

Those goals include making housing more affordable, increasing child care supports for families, improving income assistance, expanding access to education and training, creating more opportunities for people and investing in social inclusion.

“Over the next several years, our expectation is — and this includes capital and operating dollars — about a $4-billion investment,” said Minister Shane Simpson.

He acknowledged that the poverty-reduction strategy includes initiatives that have already been announced. Those include the minimum-wage increase to $15.20 by 2021 and the B.C. Child Opportunity Benefit announced in the provincial budget in February that boosted the benefit for families to $1,600 per year for one child, increasing to $2,600 for two children and $3,400 for three children.

The government promises to release progress reports every Oct. 1 outlining the strategy’s progress. An “independent” advisory committee — including people from Indigenous communities, advocates, experts and those with lived experience — has been assembled to advise the minister.

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“Having a plan is a big step forward to being able to really shift the dial on poverty in B.C. and significantly improve people’s lives,” said Iglika Ivanova, economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

But she is “disappointed” there wasn’t a bigger hike to income and disability assistance than the $50-a-month increase for those with disabilities announced in the B.C. budget.

“A single person on income assistance with the $50 will get $750 a month; that’s not very much in B.C. This person would still have an annual income less than 50 per cent of the poverty line. So people on income assistance don’t just live in poverty. They live in extremely deep poverty.”

Based on statistics provided by the ministry, the poverty line for a single person in rural B.C. is $19,000. For a family of four, it’s $38,000. In Vancouver, the threshold starts at $20,000 for a single person and gradually increases to $40,000 for a family of four.

According to an article written by Ivanova and co-author Seth Klein for the CCPA’s website last year, 12 per cent of British Columbians lived below the poverty line in 2016, while 4 per cent lived on social assistance in the same year.

“About half the poor are either the ‘working poor’ or their children, while the balance is mainly seniors relying on federal Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement,” wrote Klein and Ivanova in the article.

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The BC Poverty Reduction Coalition outlined additional gaps in a press release on Monday, including “better access to good food for families, enhanced investments in affordable transportation and improved income security, including assistance rates.” The coalition noted that some of these were priorities during the province’s consultation process but argued those priorities have not been met by the new strategy.

The strategy was developed through community consultations across B.C. over five months with more than 8,500 people, including people from First Nations, businesses and non-profits, according to the provincial government.

Simpson said the province used the “market basket measure” to determine the poverty line. It’s “based on the cost of a basket of goods and services that individuals and families require to meet their basic needs and achieve a modest standard of living,” according to Statistics Canada.

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