How to end child poverty: Tax the rich - The Globe and Mail

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Opinions

Ed Broadbent

How to end child poverty: Tax the rich

Why have others nearly wiped out child poverty, but Canada has not?

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Ed Broadbent

A ll nations have myths about themselves. Canadians are not exempt. Looking to the south, we regularly proclaim our moral superiority: While Americans are out for themselves, we share and care.

Well, once upon a time, we did. But no longer. More rapidly than almost every other country among the wealthiest members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, we are becoming deeply unequal. Who knows? We may even catch up to the United States.

Nothing better illustrates this reality than the two-decade trend in child poverty. Twenty years ago today, all parties in the House of Commons voted for a motion to abolish child poverty by the year 2000. Reform was in the air. Just a few days earlier, with Canada playing a leading role, the United Nations had adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

We thought an 11-year agenda to virtually overcome child poverty was quite plausible, and the 1990s did turn out to be one of the very best decades in economic growth. According to the trickle-down soothsayers in politics, the media and the academic world, we all should have benefited. Instead, 20 years after the motion was passed, Canada's level of poverty is virtually unchanged.

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