Half of all First Nations children live in poverty,

Half of all First Nations children live in poverty, reads a headline on the Behind the Numbers blog, a commentary on social, economic and environmental issues from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a non-partisan progressive voice on public policy. It goes on to then give four other reasons why politicians should be paying attention to Indigenous families and children in this election, if that first one alone wasn’t enough. When you head into the centre of the country, the blog reads, in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the number of Indigenous children living in poverty jumps to 60 per cent, and it suggests that efforts to combat these “appalling” rates need to be focused in the Prairie provinces. Number 3 reason is that Indigenous children trail with every measurement taken, in educational attainments, water quality, infant mortality and homelessness, among other things. And then the blog tells us that there has been no increase in funding for social program on reserve since 1996. That’s 20 years without considering need or population—20 years. Finally the writer, David Macdonald, senior economist, says a $1 billion investment will solve all these problems. Find it through providing families work, or inject it in other ways, he writes, and then all Indigenous children will be lifted out of poverty with the additional income. Issues solved. By the way, 12 per cent of non-Indigenous children in Canada also live in poverty, more than double of children who live in poverty in Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden, where the rates are five per cent.