Editor: Your article Child poverty in B.C. at ‘crisis’ level (The Times, Dec. 2) continues to promote the misleading agenda of First Call BC Child Advocacy Coalition.
This group uses misleading statistics to promote their cause.
Like most other “poverty” groups they us the Statistics Canada Low Income Measure “LIM” as a measure of poverty.
It is not a measure of poverty. It is a measure of low income. There is a huge difference.
The LIM is defined by Statistics Canada as follows: In simple terms, the LIM is a fixed percentage (50 per cent) of median adjusted economic family income, where “adjusted” indicates that family needs are taken into account.
What this means is that approximately 25 per cent of Canadian families fall in the low-income category.
The percentage of poor Canadians cannot change if this measure is used because by definition it determines that people earning half of the median income are poor.
If people at the bottom end of the income scale all were to earn more, then the median income would go up, but using this Statistics Canada definition a similar percentage of people would continue to be defined as “poor.”
In the Township of Langley the median household income is about $100,000 per year (2006 data adjusted to 2015).
Using this number someone with a family income below $50,000 is in the low-income bracket.
It is correct to say a family earning below $50,000 may be poor. They are not living in poverty.
It does not matter what the government does, there will always be 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the population who are poor.
We all need to help those less well off than ourselves but throwing around misleading statistics does not help.
David Nielsen,
Walnut Grove