Helping Low Income Families and their Children

May 1, 2007

Fewer British Columbians need assistance:

  • The number of children and families dependent on income assistance is the lowest since the 1980s.
  • One in seven children (135,000 – almost the population of Abbotsford) lived in families on income assistance in the 1990s. This represented more than 10 per cent of the child population.
  • By February 2007, the number of children who were part of families on income assistance had dropped to less than 32,500 – or approximately three per cent of the child population.

We are providing more services to children:

  • Full dental and optical services for children in low- to moderate-income families through the Healthy Kids Program. Currently, 67,000 children access this program.
  • Doubled the School Start-up Supplement in September 2006 to help families on income assistance cope with costs of purchasing school supplies. This program currently helps over 22,000 children.

We are providing more help to low-income families who need it:

  • We eliminated provincial income taxes for all people earning under $16,000 per year.
  • British Columbia has the lowest provincial income taxes in Canada for the first two tax brackets – benefiting all lower and middle income wage earners.
  • 730,000 British Columbians – equivalent to six times the population of Kelowna – pay lower or no income taxes.
  • A family of four earning $30,000 now pays $1,364 less in provincial income tax and MSP premiums than in 2001.
  • The MSP Premium Assistance threshold increased by $4,000 – meaning a family of four with an income less than $29,000 does not pay for MSP.
  • Raised the Rental Assistance threshold to $28,000 – helping more than 20,000 families become eligible to receive up to $563 a month to help with their housing costs.
  • We increased the out-of-school child care subsidy rate benefiting an estimated 13,300 children and 10,000 families with children aged six to 12.

There are more jobs in B.C. than ever:

  • B.C. has created approximately 360,000 jobs since December 2001, leading Canada in job creation.
  • In April 2007, B.C.'s unemployment rate was 4.4 per cent, one of the lowest rates in decades.
  • More than 50,000 income assistance recipients have been placed directly in jobs through government employment programs since 2001.