Dear Province of BC:

You can't keep the motto of "Best Place on Earth" if you also have Canada's worst child poverty rate for five years running, with no plan of tackling that problem. You have to choose: the "Best Place on Earth" motto or the highest child poverty rate. You can't (honestly) have both.




(Here is the most recent CBC news report about it, although it's pretty sparse in data. And here's the website for Campaign 2000, which has the provicial child poverty report cards for everyone. And here's the National Report Card for 2008, which has the full story. I'm putting all of this here, because in the response to the sparse CBC report, and in the fact-light alternative-news article I also found, some try to make this into a deliberate smear on the BC provincial government in anticipation of the upcoming provincial election. Uh, it's actually part of a national study that's done on a yearly basis, and BC's been exceeding the national average since two years before this government was elected.

Also, I heard the full report on the radio, and Chris has been looking up the data, and it sounds like BC's dubious honour actually has very little to do with the high homeless population on the West Coast, but rather it has quite a bit to do with the ridiculously high cost of living paired with low wages. It also has a lot to do with the incredible cuts that the current "Liberal in name only" provincial government made to pretty much everything that helps children, all while invoking the Bogeyman of the Previous NDP Government. "We haaaave to cut all these teaching jobs! Your old government was NDP and they spent too much! We haaaave to cut the welfare rate! Remember the NDP! Please don't look at the actual numbers!")