Big cities attracting poverty, Statscan data show, By Heather Scoffield, June 21, 2011, Globe and Mail: “Canada’s biggest urban areas are stuck in a rut of persistent poverty, while mid-sized cities are gaining ground despite the recent recession, new data from Statistics Canada show. The metropolitan areas of Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal have poverty rates far above the national average, details of a report on income in Canada in 2009 show. But Quebec City and Victoria, on the other hand, have seen steady and significant declines in the number of people living with low incomes over the last decade, despite the recent recession. The trends are no surprise to Mike Creek, who works with homeless and impoverished people in Toronto, after spending years in poverty himself. ‘If you stick around in a smaller community and you have that shame (of living in poverty), you become stigmatized. So I think it’s easier for someone to pack up their bags and try some place else,’ Mr. Creek says. Urban centres, he says, ‘provide more opportunities around housing, and job opportunities and services that they may not find in smaller communities.’ Released last week, the Statistics Canada report is the first detailed, national look at what happened to income during the recession…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty