“Ensuring that all our children have a strong start in life is critical to Canada’s future. By making children everybody’s priority, we can help to build a better future for our children and for our society” (National Child Benefit, 1). This quote summates and encapsulates one of the greatest travesties of the 20th century as well as providing one of many simple solutions for this global problem. Child poverty, which has existed since the down of written history, has been a social problem for far too long. Tremendous strides have been implemented in the last thirty years in order to remedy this, yet even though there are funds and charities galore, child poverty is still abundant all across Canada. This paper will explore the issue of child poverty in Canada, focusing mainly on how government steps to irradiate poverty are not working, how poverty affects a child's mental health and physical development.

To commence, child poverty has been a hot button issue in Canada since the 1980's. In 1989, Parliament passed a decree stating it would eliminate the poverty that was affecting over 18.8% of children under the age of 18 in the small nation of Canada (McIntyre, 10). This is owing to the fact that since 1973; there had been an unpredictable flux in child poverty statistics, mainly due to economic growth and/or recessions; the main and driving force, behind poverty (Beiser, 3). It was reported in the late 1970's, "government transfers replaced market earnings as the major income source of poor families" (Beiser, 5). In short, government assistance was the main source of income for poor families in Canada. Flash forward only fifteen years. The economy goes through a recession and the very first cut made was to social assistance or welfare (Beiser, 7). Social assistance has been dramatically cut, ergo widening the poverty gap that threatens to engulf so many impoverished families (Roberts, 11). The 'terms and conditions' of receiving such social assurance make it virtually impossible for family's to ascend their stigmatized 'poor' status (Willms, 1). The methods in which the government has been attempting to make to rectify this situation seems almost futile; after all, the government has been trying to solve this problem for over sixteen years and almost no headway has been made (McIntyre, 12).

Moreover, children who come from low-income level families tend to have a hindered cognitive development (Willms, 1). Although most poor families can afford the necessary survival demands, such as food, water and shelter, children living in such conditions suffer from "extremes of mental deprivation, which cause physical or social disadvantages," (Canadian Council on Social Development). Although great deals of impoverished children do not succumb to mental illness and developmental problems, a link has been made from poverty to poor academic standings and social developmental skills (Willms, 2). Children are, "less likely to do well in academic pursuits or engage in extra-curricular school activities… and their relatively poor literacy skills make it difficult to successfully enter the labor market" (Willms, 6). Such social isolation due to either embarrassment or lack of funds to finance extra-curricular activities place a stress on a young child, thus making them conscious of their own seemingly hopeless situation, causing further social isolation (McIntyre, 5). A five year old should not be worried about whether his or her parents can afford to pay the rent; they should be playing with other children their own age, enjoying their youth for children in poverty seem to age far beyond their years.

Also, poverty greatly affects a child's physical development. About 75 616 Canadian families (19.8%) claim to be hungry regularly (McIntyre, 16). This statistic is significantly higher than its 1970's statistic of 17.4% (McIntyre, 16). Studies have documented cases of fatigue, dizziness constant migraine headaches, colds and infections due to hunger (McIntyre, 6). Malnourishment is one of the leading causes of weak academic standings for children aged 11-17 (McIntyre, 12). Furthermore, it has been well documented that children who have been fed, do increasingly better on tests, assignments and school overall, thus making them less susceptible to "drop outs and low-prestige occupations" (Roberts, 13). Consequently, due to the general lack of education, children living in poverty are at a greater risk of "smoking, drug use and unsafe sexual practices" (Willms, 7). The cycle seems to repeat itself in such a situation, for drug use generally leads to dependency and unprotected sex lead to transmission of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted births (Roberts, 20).

This downward spiral seems so easy to resolve, yet at the same time, so very, very complicated. As the National Child Benefit claim: children are our future. If the future leaders, teachers, doctors and lawyers are all suffering from mental, social and physical impairments due to poverty, malnourishment and seclusion, where does that leave us? Everyone in society today should have an equal opportunity at a future in which they are happy, fed and sheltered.

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