Vancouver Province
Trish Garner and Stephen Elliott-Buckley
May 1, 2012
Two weeks before Alberta's provincial election, Progressive Conservative Leader Alison Redford announced a Plan for Poverty Reduction. Surprising many, Alberta re-elected her party and, consequently, Alberta will now see a plan in place centred around a bold commitment to eliminate child poverty in five years. This leaves only B.C. and Saskatchewan with-out a provincial plan to tackle poverty, even though B.C. has the highest poverty rate in Canada.
The day after Redford's announcement, the B.C. government launched its "community poverty-reduction strategies." In collaboration with the Union of B.C. Municipalities, it selected seven communities to pilot these local plans. This approach has some good features but does nothing to address the systemic causes of poverty and will make little difference to the more than 500,000 British Columbians struggling to get by.
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/business/Guest+column+needs+provincewide+plan+poverty/6545599/story.html#ixzz1te5Hl96X
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