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Child Poverty Rate

The rate of children under 18 in Canada hit a 17 year high in 1996 says the national Council on Welfare.

• 68% increase in number of children living in families needing social assistance 1989-1995.
• $7.1 billion is the estimated amount of money it would take to lift all poor Canadian children out of poverty.
• Poor children are twice as likely to repeat a grade before turning 11 compared with those who aren't poor.
• Babies born in poverty are twice as likely to die before becoming a month old compared with those not born into poverty.

  Poverty Defined

  A Toronto family of four with an income of $32,238 or less is classified as living in poverty according to Statistics Canada. The poverty income of Canadians varies according to the size of their communities as follows.

What's on line? Want to learn more? Check out these sites.
         National Anti-Poverty Organization
A non-profit organization fighting poverty in Canada.
         www.napo-onap.ca
                  Human Resources Department Canada
The federal government department responsible for youth employment and welfare. 
         www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca
                  The Students Commission
         www.tgmag.ca

$245.7 billion : total economic cost of alcohol and drug abuse.

• includes substance abuse, treatment, prevention and health care costs.
• reduced job productivity and earnings.
• costs to society such as crime and social welfare.

 
+50% of estimated costs of drug abuse were associated with drug related crime.
20.4% : lost productivity of victims and incarcerated perpetrators of drug-related crimes.
19.7% : lost legitimate production due to drug-related crime careers.
18.4% : Federal drug traffic control, property damage, police, legal and corrections sear.
14.9% : resulted from premature deaths.
14.5% : lost productivity from drug-related illness.
10.2% : health care expenditures.
 
Americans spent $57.3 billion on drugs.
$38 billion : cocaine
$9.6 billion : heroin
$7 billion : marijuana
$2.7 billion : on other illegal drugs and misuse of legal drugs.

This estimate includes illicit drugs and other drugs taken for non-medical purposes. It does not include nicotine.

Racial Stats

Girls have a higher commitment to bilingual goals for Canada.
Commitment to bilingualism is stronger among subjects with higher educational and 
occupational goals. The commitment of French Canadians to bilingualism was significantly 
higher (20%) than that of anglophone counterparts --JohnStone 1969

French/Indigenous are viewed less positively than their English counterparts.

" Stereotyping is understood to be a manifestation of prejudice" --Zieger 1989

When a large group of Black/West Indian were asked 59% said they personally experienced discrimination and those who haven't,agreed that discrimination according to race did occur in society

28% intimated that discrimination most likely occurs in school settings. --1975 Ramharan

22% to 59% increase in the number of teens who perceived racial discrimination to be a serious concern in Canada.

Young women are more likely to express concern about cultural minority, than their male counterparts.

Students from smaller communities have developed negative racial attitudes even though they have probably experienced less contact with individuals from minorities, in comparison to their urban counterparts.--Biby & Portesky 1992

Youth

• There are 3.7 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24 in Canada--about 14 percent of the population.
• Young people in 1993 were 18% unemployed, higher than the national average of 10.0% for 25 to 54 year olds.
• Young people bore the brunt of job losses during the recession, and their participation rate fell from 70.2% to 63.3% in 1993.
• Youth made up 16.6% of Unemployment Insurance recipients and received approximately 2.5 billion dollars in benefits.
• Average benefit claim was $203 a week with 20% of the claimants having dependents of some sort
• Youth currently represents 21% of all social assistance cases.
• 1/2 of the youths not in school or the labour force in 1992 were woman with children. Most common source of their income was social assistance.
• three quarters of those under the ages of 25 who receive UI have no post-secondary education
• 45 percent of all jobs created between 1990 and the year 2000 will require more than sixteen years of education and training. Currently we have a 30 percent high school drop out rate across the country.
• Approximately 30 percent of young people go directly into the job force after high school with no related or post-secondary training
• Although youth make up 14 percent of the population, they also make up 21% of the social assistance cases.

Adults and Jobs

• There are less and less permanent full time, nine to five jobs for adults.
• Up to 85% of all jobs today are in small and medium sized businesses and most are part time and /or temporary in nature or require workers with increased skills and knowledge. As well, more and more adults are becoming self employed.
• In 1993, 60% of all jobs created were part time. This accounts for 17.3 percent of all jobs, up from 12.5% in 1975.

Things we need to do to provide a good social program:

• improve assessment and counselling and employment services to help Canadians adjust more quickly to the changing conditions.
• improve programing that helps adults go from one program to another.
• improve incentives and support those that want to start their own businesses.
• support partnerships between governments industry and educators to create education and training skills development systems that respond to the needs of the current and future labour markets.

Women and Social Security

• Women have separate problems in the work force than their male counterparts. They still do most of the unpaid work of the society (ie homemaking) but will make up over half of the work force by the year 2000.
• 64% of university undergraduates are women today, although they have less participation in high-tech and scientific fields
• Women make up only 4% of all apprentices
• Women, on average, still earn 30% less than men.
• In 1989, 31% of women in the labour force held a non standard job (ie part time, temporary etc) while the number for men was at 16%.
• Most of their jobs are part time or temporary, they occupy most of the lower paying jobs.
• If women have children they have a much lower employment rate.
• When couples break up, the standard of living of the mother and children usually drops significantly, while the father's generally improves.
• Women have stress problems about twice as often or as severe as men.
• There is an intense lack of affordable child care and high demands on their time hinders women's ability to enter, re enter or remain in the labour force to secure their own and their children's future.