Photo courtesy of campaign2000.ca
A new report on child poverty indicates Saskatchewan’s Aboriginal children are among the hardest hit in the country, and the situation will get worse before it gets better unless there is a major political will for change.
The Aboriginal population is the fastest growing segment of the population, but it is also the youngest and the poorest. The latest report by an anti-poverty lobby group — Campaign 2000, indicates that 69 per cent of on-reserve children live in poverty.
The overall Aboriginal child poverty rate is pegged at 58 per cent, while the provincial child poverty average is 24.6 per cent, which is the second highest rate of all the provinces behind Manitoba.
One of the contributors to the report, University of Regina researcher, Miguel Sanchez, says the numbers are shameful.
“They tell us that this is unacceptable, that the Indigenous children’s reality is a shameful neglect,” he said.
Fellow U of R professor, Paul Gingrich, also worked on the report. He says a lot of the child poverty is hidden out of the cities, particularly in the province’s north. He hopes reports like this one bring it out in the open and motivate decision makers.
“In the end it will require some strong political will on the part of our elected representatives to really begin to tackle it,” he said.
Campaign 2000 released its findings across the country today. Nationally, the overall poverty rate was 14.4 per cent. Saskatchewan was just above the national average at 14.8 per cent, however when it comes to First Nations children, Saskatchewan scored near the bottom of the list.