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November 4, 2002
The Progress of Canada’s Children 2002:
Ontario Backgrounder
The following are excerpts from The Progress of Canada’s Children 2002 regarding trends that specifically deal with Ontario children and families.
Poverty & Low Income:
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In Ontario, the child poverty rate climbed from 11.5% in 1989 to 16.5% by 1999. (The poverty rate indicates how many children are living in poverty as a proportion of all children.)
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And over the same period, already poor lone-parent families in Ontario got even poorer. (The depth of poverty measures the average amount by which family income falls below the poverty line.) For lone-parent families with kids in Ontario, their household income went from about $7,500 below the poverty line in 1989, to more than $8,800 below the poverty line by 1999.
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We know that in Canada, the number of lone-parent families is rising at a much faster rate than that of two-parent families. Between 1994 and 2000, the number of lone-parent families in Canada rose by 25.8%, and in Ontario, it jumped even higher – by 30.9% – with the vast majority of those families (about 84%) headed by women. We also know that children living in female-headed lone-parent families have the highest poverty rates.
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For two-parent families in the province, their distance from the poverty line improved very modestly – from $9,160 in 1989 to $8,520 by 1999 – but they were still $8,520 below the poverty line.
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And in the city of Toronto, many citizens did not seem to benefit from the province’s strong economic recovery over the latter half of the 1990s. In fact, they were actually falling further behind. By the end of the decade, distress among the province’s most vulnerable citizens was clearly evident in growing numbers of homeless people living in the streets, in rising eviction rates, and hopelessly long waiting lists for affordable housing.
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Almost one in three children in Toronto (32.2%) was living in low income in 1999.
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The low-income rate for lone-parent families in the city rose by 2.3% between 1995 and 1999 – the so-called “economic recovery” years – whereas in Canada, the rate fell.
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And the depth of low income got worse. The median income of a lone-parent with one child went from 29.2% below the LICO in 1995, to a staggering 43.2% below LICO by 1999!
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Over the decade, lone-parent families in Toronto experienced a whopping 18% decline in their already low incomes – from $29,000 in 1990 to only $24,600 by 1999 – a significantly greater drop than the 4% decline for other single parents in Canada.
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During CCSD consultations with community residents and service providers in Toronto, they described the impact that these trends were having on the city’s young people. They cited growing alienation among the youth and a serious lack of progams and services for them. Recreational facilities are lacking, there are increased tensions between the police and members of visible minority groups, and barriers to employment are high and rising.
Education:
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There have been many changes to the public education system in Ontario over the last few years. The group, People for Education in Ontario, surveyed 841 elementary schools in the province, representing about 23% of the elementary students in the province, with schools from 71 of the 72 boards participating. The results of the survey are worrisome.
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24% of the schools needed fundraising efforts to pay for textbooks.
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Waiting lists for special education services had increased by 14%, to 39,700 students by 2001/02.
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The number of schools with a teacher-librarian has dropped steadily, from 80% in 1997/98 to only 59% by 2001/02.
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The number of schools with specialist teachers has also declined steadily over the last five years. In 2001/02, only 44% of schools had music teachers (down from 58% in 1997/98), and only 32% had physical education teachers (down from 41% five years earlier).
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Other professional services for students were also in serious decline. Only 55% of schools had access to psychologists, 56% had access to social workers, and only 24% had access to speech therapists.
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Public education is considered to be one of the main community resources that society provides for its children. And while the vast majority of Canadian children (93%) are in the public education system, enrollment in private schools is growing. Between 1994/95 and 1998/99, enrollment in private schools across Canada rose by 10%, but in Ontario, private school enrollment jumped by almost 20%, from 75,712 to 90,600 students.
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And the use of private learning centres to provide one-on-one tutoring for students is also growing in popularity. For example, the Ontario-based Oxford Learning Centres currently have about 10,000 students in their monthly programs, with fees averaging about $295 for eight sessions.
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The national high school dropout rate among 20-year-olds was 12% in 1999. Ontario’s rate was slightly lower at 10%, down from 17% in 1991.
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Heeding the call for higher education, 719,900 young people enrolled as undergraduate students in Canadian universities in 1999/2000, up 1.7% from the previous year. In Ontario, enrollment in full-time studies was up by 3%, but part-time enrollment was down. But it got a bit more expensive for students to go to university in Ontario than anywhere else in Canada. Tuitions increased by 123% between 1993/94 and 2002/03 for Ontario’s undergraduate arts students, compared to an 85% increase in Canada over the same period.
Community Supports & Resources:
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Children’s communities do make a difference to their healthy growth and development. In a 1999 initiative called “Understanding the Early Years,” information on community resources – such as parks, recreational areas, libraries, preschool programs and parenting classes – was collected in neighbourhoods surrounding three North York schools. When this information was compared with data on children’s development in five important areas – their physical health and well-being; social knowledge and competance; emotional maturity; language richness; and general knowledge and cognitive skills – a clear pattern emerged.
Children living in the neighbourhood of School A, which had plentiful community resources, scored better on those developmental components and they demonstrated behaviours much more consistant with being ready for school than did children from two other North York schools in neighbourhoods with scarce community resources. For example, children in the neighbourhood of School A scored 3 on a scale of physical health and well-being, whereas children in neighbourhoods near Schools B and C scored 14 and 13, respectively. (Note: In this study, higher scores indicate more problems.) And for social competence, children in the neighbourhood near School A scored 4 on a test of social competence, whereas children in the other neighbourhoods had scores of 17 and 21 for that measure.
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A CCSD survey of provincial child welfare departments found that demands for services continue to grow. In Ontario, the number of children and youth living in care rose from 9,868 in 1995/96 to almost 15,000 by 2000/01.
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There were 516,734 regulated child care spaces in Canada in 1998 – or about one space for every 10 children under age 12 who required care. In Ontario, the rate was even lower, with only one space available for about 12 children. Yet the demand for quality child care continues to grow. In 1998, there were over 2 million Canadian children (47%) in some kind of child care while their parents worked or studied.
Aboriginals in Ontario:
Poverty is taking a dreadful toll on the health and well-being of Aboriginal children and it is crushing the spirits of Aboriginal families in urban centres across Ontario. Interviews done by the Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship Centres have detailed the severe impact that living in poverty is having on the day-to-day realities of Aboriginal Ontarians. Even the most basic needs are not being met, and food insecurity has resulted in overwhelming demands for emergency supplies from Friendship Centres. In some cases, the insecurity is so severe that parents have put their children into the care of the Children’s Aid Society. As well, the damaging psychological effects of poverty were mentioned in every interview. Aboriginal youth in Ontario are at risk because of their sexual practices. A study of 255 young people in the province found that some Aboriginal youth are becoming sexually active as young as age 11, and that by age 16, 62% of those interviewed were sexually active, with more than half reporting little or no use of contraceptives. As well, 61% of the female respondents and 35% of the males said they had experienced some form of sexual abuse. While they did not elaborate on the impact this had had on their lives, other data indicate that abused youth are more likely to have unprotected sex, to have more sexual partners, and more likely to be involved in a teen pregnancy.
Health & Safety:
For the first time in a decade, drug use among Ontario youth did not increase in 2001, but the rate is still higher than it was during the 1990s. According to the Ontario Drug Use Survey, the use of ecstasy rose from 2% to 7% of Grade 9 students, and the number of youth who reported binge drinking rose to 25% in 2001, up from 18% eight years earlier. Fear of crime? In Ontario, 76% of youth felt very safe from property crime, and only 6% felt their neighbourhood was not safe from violent crime. Overall, volunteering among young people has declined in recent years, but there are variations across the country. In some provinces – notably Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario (from 35% in 1997 to 28% in 2000) and Manitoba – the rate declined substantially, while it increased in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Almost one in five young volunteers (18%) said that some or all of the hours they contributed were required by their school, employer or the government. More Ontario teens found employment in 2000, with the rate at 46.7%, up from 43.2% in 1999, but still well below the rate of 58.5% in 1989.
The Progress of Canada's Children 2002 - Related Material
Canadian Council on Social Development,
190 O'Connor Street, Suite 100,
Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 2R3
Tel: (613) 236-8977, Fax: (613) 236-2750, Web: www.ccsd.ca, Email: council@ccsd.ca
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