Letter to Canadian Children's Rights Council president from:

The Honourable Christine Melnick, M.L.A.
Minister, Family Services and Housing
Government of Manitoba
Room 357 Leg. Bldg.
450 Broadway
Winnipeg, MB R3C 0V8

January 11, 2005

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your recent letter in which you have shared your views regarding child poverty in Canada.

I share your concerns regarding child poverty. The Manitoba government believes that a long-term, comprehensive strategy to eliminate child poverty is required from all levels of governments.

In the last few years, as part of our broader strategy against poverty, our government has addressed many of the issues that contribute to child poverty. Key elements of this strategy include the provision of income supports, affordable and accessible child care, and quality early childhood development services.

We have focussed many of our efforts on reducing the incidence and depth of poverty. Since 1999, our government has increased the income available to Employment and Income Assistance (EIA) participants, both directly by enhancing income assistance rates and indirectly by exempting income from other sources. For example, our province fully ended the clawback of the National Child Benefit Supplement (NCBS) at the end of January 2004. Restoring the NCBS is a significant improvement for Manitoba's poorest families, as it means allowing $13.7 million annually to flow through to Manitoba families on income assistance.

This latest change follows previous enhancements for families on income assistance that help address child poverty, including: increased earnings exemptions for single parents and couples with children to allow families to keep more of the money earned through employment without having their income assistance benefits reduced; increased annual school supply allowances and extension of this benefit to children in publicly funded nursery schools; and extended training supports for single parents with children under six.

An important element of our strategy against child poverty is to provide supports for families during children's early development years. Manitoba continues its leadership in building an innovative and integrated continuum of early childhood development supports and services for low-income children and families. Healthy Child Manitoba is our long-term, cross-departmental strategy to promote healthy child and adolescent development. Through eight government partners and numerous community organizations, we have established a province-wide network of programs for children, youth and families. We have introduced a wide range of services, including parent-child coalitions, prenatal and early childhood nutrition programs, healthy schools initiatives, a healthy adolescent development strategy and FASD (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder) prevention and support programs.

Since 2001, the Healthy Baby program has been providing financial benefits to lower-income pregnant women to help them meet their nutritional needs during pregnancy and community supports to help new moms and their families learn more about nutrition, child development and general health and wellness. The program, the first of its kind in Canada, has assisted over 15,000 expectant mothers who have low incomes. This is in addition to home visiting programs that have helped more than 3,000 at-risk families to provide good parenting. Manitoba is also the only province that universally screens all families with newborn infants for vulnerability to risk in order to offer these support services at the earliest possible opportunity.

In 2002, we announced Manitoba's Five-Year Plan for Child Care. Over five years, this plan will improve the quality, accessibility and affordability of early learning and child care throughout the province. Since 2000, we have increased funding for early learning and child care by over 51 per cent. Some of this funding is intended to directly improve the circumstances for low-income families with children by providing Read More .. subsidies for children. In addition, our government has increased the number of funded licensed child care spaces and has helped to integrate more children with disabilities into our early learning and child care system.

Manitoba also welcomes the announcement of the federal commitment to increased investment in early learning and child care. We appreciate the opportunity to work in collaboration with our federal, provincial and territorial colleagues to further develop the details and implementation plans for a new national child care system. We believe that as a national leader in the child care field, Manitoba is well positioned to use the new federal funding in a variety of ways, including funding more child care spaces. We are committed to further improving the quality, accessibility and affordability of early learning and child care in the province.

While we view all of these measures as important steps in helping to reduce child poverty rates in Manitoba, we are continually examining ways in which we can build on the progress we have made. We are proud of our accomplishments so far but we recognize that there is more to do. Together with other governments, community organizations and individual citizens, we will continue to work towards the important goal of providing supports to low-income families in a manner that helps them live independently and with dignity.

I trust that this information is of assistance in outlining the steps our government has taken toward decreasing child poverty in Manitoba. Thank you once again for your letter and for sharing your views with me.

Yours sincerely,

Original signed by

Christine Melnick
Minister
Family Services and Housing