VICTORIA The B.C. government should index welfare payments to inflation to help improve its dismal standing as a rich province with too many poor people, according to a Queens University professor who has studied the problem.
The B.C. Progress Board, an advisory group of business and academic leaders appointed by Premier Gordon Campbell, has found in its latest benchmarking report that B.C. remains second among provinces for economic growth, third in real disposable income per capita, and first in health outcomes and environmental quality.
The glaring exception is B.C. is ninth in the measure of social conditions, including the proportion of the population living below Statistics Canadas poverty line.
The fact that one in 10 British Columbians lives on the economic margins for extended periods of time stands as a pressing policy challenge, says the latest report.
The board commissioned a study from Statistics Canada that identified employment, not immigration or demographic factors, as the key factor in the low-income problem. Then it commissioned Dr. Keith Banting, a public policy specialist at Queens University, to recommend solutions.
Since the latest rankings are based on 2005 data, B.C.s situation may already be improved by the strong job growth of the past two years.
But Banting says the federal and provincial governments have to do more than just direct able-bodied people to get jobs.
Banting suggests that the federal government create an earned income tax benefit to help work pay, and distribute EI benefits in a more even-handed way around the country. He says B.C. should restore cuts to its child care subsidy and student aid programs, and index income assistance payments to inflation.
B.C. government has restricted welfare for able-bodied male recipients and left rates low and static for a decade, while the federal government has reduced Employment Insurance benefits, sparing only chronically high-employment areas in eastern Canada.
The B.C. government has taken some steps that dont yet show up in the B.C. Progress Board surveys.
A $40 million rent subsidy program announced in October provides payments to working families earning under $20,000 a year, extending a similar program aimed at pensioners.
Campbell has also promised that the shelter allowance for income assistance recipients will be raised by an unspecified amount in the provincial budget to be tabled in February.
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