Anita Khanna: Canada and Poverty

anita khanna: The report was authored by a coalition of poverty and immigration advocacy groups who say impoverished children and women living in precarious situations after arriving in Canada are being made more vulnerable by being denied access to this financial help, according to Vancouver Courier. Children who are in families who have immigrated to Canada recently have various other barriers related to race and language ... and poverty rates are higher and disproportionate among immigrant families, said Anita Khanna, national co-ordinator of Campaign 2000, an advocacy organization dedicated to ending child poverty in Canada. If Canada is truly committed to fighting child poverty it must reverse this discriminatory approach and take steps to ensure that all children in Canada can thrive and succeed. To see this exclusion from this poverty-fighting benefit is a real equity issue and one we wanted to highlight in hopes of change in lowering child poverty rates for families. Expanding access to these families would cost government an additional 30 million a year in a program that pays out more than 20 billion annually, the coalition estimates. Rough estimates based on preliminary data suggest about 3,000 families are excluded from the Canada Child Benefit based on their immigration status. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.