Fact:

Canada produces enough food for everyone to maintain a healthy, balanced diet. It’s not the availability of food but the availability of income to buy the food that leads many people to use a food bank.

Poverty Line – Who Draws it?

There is not an official poverty line in Canada.  The most commonly cited is calculated by Statistics Canada and is called the Low-Income Cut Off. (LICO).

Each year, Statistics Canada uses the Consumer Price Index to measure the average cost of basic needs in Canadian communities.   Basic needs are: food, clothing, shelter

Stats Can compares those figures to the average wages in the same communities

Stats Can has determined that Canadians earning an average income spend 36% of their income on food, clothing and shelter.

If a family’s income demands that they spend 56% of their income on basic needs, Stats Can considers that family to be living below the poverty line.

Winnipeg Harvest and the Acceptable Living Level:

Winnipeg Harvest and the Social Planning Council brought together a group of low-income individuals to establish an acceptable living level in Manitoba (1997; 1999; 2003).  This is a unique and honest analysis of poverty using an evidence-based research approach to determine the real cost of living and raising children. 

The 2003 A.L.L. report determined a family with two adults and two children required $36,995.69 annually to live in Winnipeg.  That jumps to between $62,00 and $64,000 for a family of four to have an acceptable living level in northern communities such as St. Theresa Point and Wasagamack. 

The 2003 A.L.L. Report is available here .

UPDATED February 2006

Sources:  Winnipeg Harvest Inc., National Council of Welfare, Statistics Canada