Healthy Child Development

Basic Needs

• One in six children in Canada is living in poverty.
• More than 300,000 children rely on food banks.
• A two-child family with both parents working full time at minimum wage still lives below the poverty line in a Canadian city.
• There are two million full-time workers paid poverty level wages.
• More than 700,000 households are in severe housing need (this figure represents more than the number of households in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick combined).
• Half of Canada’s social assistance recipients are families with children.