Disability – Prosper Canada Learning Hub

Understanding Systems: The 2021 report of the National Advisory Council on Poverty

Canada’s National Advisory Council on Poverty’s second Annual Report, Understanding Systems, is the first report to provide a glimpse into poverty since COVID-19.

Based on community engagements with Canadians and provinces/territories over the last year, the Council has recommended five broad strategies to reduce poverty in Canada.

The pillars of the strategy are as follows:

Indigenous prosperity
Equity
Dignity
Prevention and early intervention
Income from employment and government benefits

In a recent webinar, three Council members shared what strategies can make the greatest impact. Read more to learn about the key takeaways from the discussion.

How financial empowerment services are helping Ontarians build financial health

Welfare in Canada, 2020

Maytree released the 2020 edition of the Welfare in Canada report. For each province and territory, this report provides data and analysis on the total welfare income that households receiving social assistance would have qualified for in 2020, including COVID-19 pandemic-related supports.

Welfare in Canada is a series that presents the total incomes of four example households who qualify for social assistance benefits in each of Canada’s provinces and territories in a given year.

Welfare in Canada, 2020 looks at the maximum total amount that a household would have received over the course of the 2020 calendar year, assuming they had no other source of income and no assets. Some households may have received less if they had income from other sources, while some households may have received more if they had special health- or disability-related needs.

The report looks at:

Social assistance program eligibility tests for assets and earned income;
How welfare incomes vary across Canada;
The components of welfare incomes in each province and territory;
Long-term changes in welfare incomes in each province and territory; and
The adequacy of welfare incomes in each province compared to poverty and low-income thresholds.

In addition, this year the report includes a new section that looks at the adequacy of welfare incomes in each province over time, an analysis that hearkens back to past reports prepared by the National Council of Welfare. Also, please note that this report measures the adequacy of welfare incomes relative to both the Market Basket Measure (MBM) – Canada’s Official Poverty Line – and the Deep Income Poverty threshold (MBM-DIP), which is equivalent to 75 per cent of the MBM. This analysis will replace the low-income threshold comparisons in future reports. We hope these additions will be helpful for those using the report.

In each jurisdiction, the total welfare income for which a household is eligible depends on its specific composition. For illustrative purposes, this resource focuses on the welfare incomes of four example household types:

Unattached single considered employable;
Unattached single with a disability;
Single parent with one child, age two; and
Couple with two children, ages ten and 15.

Canadians’ Well-being in Year One of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Aboriginal Peoples Survey: Data tables, 2017

New data tables on the labour activities of Indigenous Peoples are now available.

Data are from the 2017 Aboriginal Peoples Survey and include information on labour force status, job satisfaction, skills training, skills that limit job opportunities, job permanency, part-time or full-time job status, mismatch of skills for current job, disability status and disability severity class, by Indigenous identity, age group and sex.

Data are available for Canada, the provinces (Atlantic provinces combined) and the territories.

Overcoming Digital Divides Workshop Series: Framing Paper

Canada’s digital divide has often been narrowly defined as the gap that exists between urban and rural broadband internet availability — Canadian urban centres have significantly greater internet subscription levels at faster speeds than rural communities.(Government of Canada, 2019). The cost of building new internet infrastructure in less developed areas continues to impede equitable access to sufficient internet services.

This series aims to engage people living in Canada, industry, academia and policymakers to advance a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the circumstances that precipitate the conditions that shape digital inequities in Canada. Through expert panel discussions and thoughtful participatory dialogue, the series aims to drive toward innovative solutions to greater digital inclusion across Canada. The series will be presented in six parts, each tackling a specific theme with unique concerns. The series will also build on intersectional connections across themes while identifying new issues and impacted communities.

Social Determinants of Health: The Canadian Facts (2nd edition)

Social Determinants of Health: The Canadian Facts, 2nd edition, provides Canadians with an updated introduction to the social determinants of our health. We first explain how living conditions “get under the skin” to either promote health or cause disease. We then explain, for each of the 17 social determinants of health:

Why it is important to health;
How we compare on the social determinant of health to other wealthy developed nations; and
How the quality of the specific social determinant can be improved.

Improving the health of Canadians is possible but requires Canadians to think about health and its determinants in a more sophisticated manner than has been the case to date. The purpose of this second edition of Social Determinants of Health: The Canadian Facts is to stimulate research, advocacy, and public debate about the social determinants of health and means of improving their quality and making their distribution more equitable.

State of the Child Report 2019

This report's release was part of Child Rights Education Week and also in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). 2019 was declared the International Year of Indigenous Languages by the United Nations.

The report contains an overview of some of the serious challenges facing New Brunswick children and youth, including more than 200 statistics presented in the report’s Child Rights Indicators Framework. A special emphasis was placed on education rights.

Some of the concerning findings revealed in the report include:

nearly half of youths in poverty feel socially excluded;
half of all youths have no one they look up to; and
one in four youths with special needs does not feel that they belong at their school.

Northwest Territories Income Assistance Handbook

The Income Assistance Program provides Financial Assistance to Northerners to help meet basic and enhanced needs. The program encourages and supports greater self-reliance to improve the quality of lives.

This plain language handbook is for people who may want to play for Income Assistance. It provides information on:

The program
Who is eligible
How to apply or appeal

The handbook also contains helpful contact information on the following resources in the Northwest Territories including:

other income security programs
health and medical resources
renters rights
federal disability, seniors, and family supports

Strengthening the Economic Foundation for Youth and Young Adults During COVID & Beyond

The unemployment rate for young workers ages 16–24 jumped from 8.4% to 24.4% from spring 2019 to spring 2020 in the United States, representing four million youth. While unemployment for their counterparts ages 25 and older rose from 2.8% to 11.3% the Spring 2020 unemployment rates were even higher for young Black, Hispanic, and Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) workers (29.6%, 27.5%, and 29.7%, respectively.

The following speakers discuss how to build financial security for youth (16-24) in this webinar: Monique Miles, Aspen Institute, Forum for Community Solutions, Margaret Libby, My Path, Amadeos Oyagata, Youth Leader, and Don Baylor, The Annie E. Casey Foundation (moderator).

Real Money, Real Experts Podcasts

Real Money, Real Experts is a personal finance podcast written and produced by AFCPE (Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education). Their membership community offers a place for financial counsellors and financial fitness coaches to share best practices, solve similar struggles, and access tools and resources.

Recent episodes include the following topics:

Economic Self-Sufficiency: How Financial Professionals Support Individuals with Disabilities
Empowering Communities after COVID-19
Where Race & Gender Intersect: Why the Wealth Gap is Widening and How to Help