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November 13, 1996
New report on children signals Canada's successes ...and failures
Ottawa - - At a news conference in Ottawa this morning, the Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD) released a comprehensive new report called The Progress of Canada's Children 1996. The 64-page report draws on findings from Statistics Canada's recently released National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, and a large number of other data sources, to present a composite picture of the social, economic and physical well-being of our children and youth. Among the report's many findings:
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Canadian children and youth are better educated than ever before, but young adults are having difficulty finding work, and their average wages have fallen over the past 10 years.
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Rates of infant mortality and low birth weight in Canada have dropped significantly in recent decades. However, poverty still contributes to increased health risks for 1.4 million Canadian children.
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While the overall health of Canada's children is good, respiratory illnesses among children and youth have increased in recent years. This is likely related to the following: nearly 40% of children under six years of age live in a home where one or more persons smoke regularly; Canada is one of the highest per capita producers of air pollutants in the world.
"There is much we can be encouraged by in this report. By and large, Canada's children are being raised in families that function well. But there are warning signs too. Parents are reporting growing levels of stress in managing their work and family lives. Low- and moderate-income families' earnings are dropping. Schools are cutting back on staff and activities for kids. At every level -- within governments, businesses and families -- we need to think about the impact of our actions on our children's well-being," say report authors Katherine Scott and David Ross, both of the CCSD.
Stephen Lewis, Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, is also honorary director of this project.
"The Progress of Canada's Children 1996 identifies Canada as a country of enormous riches that is still short-changing too many of its children. As a signatory to the Convention, the federal government needs to fashion and enforce better social and economic policies -- policies that put children at the heart of our country's priorities," wrote Lewis in an introduction to the report.
The Progress of Canada's Children 1996 is the first in a series of reports to be produced by the CCSD that will track changes in children's well-being from year to year. The report's goal is to establish reliable indicators of child well-being that will, over time, have the same influence in the public policy arena as such traditional economic indicators as the gross domestic product and unemployment or interest rates.
"We hope that the kind of policy adrenalin now set off by economic indicators can be developed for social indicators such as those in The Progress of Canada's Children. Social indicators are in fact the best predictor of our long-term economic future, because they measure the future health and capacity of our citizens," says Ross.
The project is sponsored principally by the Laidlaw Foundation.
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The Progress of Canada's Children 1996 - Related Material
Canadian Council on Social Development,
309 Cooper Street, 5th Floor,
Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 0G5
Tel: (613) 236-8977, Fax: (613) 236-2750, Web: www.ccsd.ca, Email: council@ccsd.ca
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