Canadian society is stratified by class, race and income, a direct challenge to our comfy belief that we are an egalitarian country
Canada is home to 6.9 million children, 1.2 million of whom live in poverty. Thatās 18 per cent.
That number is bad enough in itself, but it becomes even more disturbing when you consider that, within the subset of 478,000 indigenous children in the country, 182,000 live in poverty. Thatās 38 per cent.
Of course, these numbers from a new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (entitled Shameful Neglect: Indigenous Child Poverty in Canada) tell us something we already knew: Indigenous children live in far worse conditions, economic and otherwise, than non-indigenous ones.
But no matter how inured we become to that grim reality, the numbers are worth pondering because they are a sharp reminder that, even in a country such as Canada that takes pride in its multiculturalism and diversity, a personās health status is profoundly influenced by his or her racial/ethnic identity and geography.
Slicing the CCPA data in various ways to examine it from different angles reveals the following range of poverty rates among Canadian children:
āIn First Nations living on reserve, the rate is 60 per cent;
āFirst Nations living off reserve, 41 per cent;
āFirst Nations with āstatus,ā 51 per cent;
āNon-status First Nations, 29 per cent;
āInuit, 25 per cent;
āMĆ©tis, 23 per cent;
āImmigrants, 32 per cent;
āVisible minorities, 22 per cent;
āNon-immigrant, non-racialized (read: Caucasian), 13 per cent.
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