CDB and the Poverty Line

We are regularly asked what the poverty line is – and unfortunately there’s no simple answer. Canada’s Official Poverty Line is made up of 66 separate poverty lines, calculated by Statistics Canada, based on the size of the community and uses something called the Market Basket Measure. It’s calculated for a family of 4, and then further calculations are done for individuals and couples. These are the poverty lines in the largest city in each province, calculated monthly:

Province	City	Individual	Couple	Couple & 2 kids
NL	St. John’s	2,248	3,178	4,495
PEI	Charlottetown	2,255	3,189	4,510
NS	Halifax	2,334	3,301	4,668
NB	Fredericton	2,268	3,208	4,537
QC	Montreal	2,051	2,901	4,103
ON	Toronto	2,444	3,457	4,888
MB	Winnipeg	2,233	3,157	4,465
SK	Saskatoon	2,293	3,243	4,586
AB	Calgary	2,478	3,504	4,956
BC	Vancouver	2,480	3,507	4,959
YT	Whitehorse	2,687	3,800	5,373
NWT	Yellowknife	3,035	4,292	6,069
NU	Iqaluit	5,241	7,412	10,482

In the regulations for the Canada Disability Benefit, a lot of the amounts are given annually, so this is the same information, given as an annual poverty line:

Province	City	Individual	Couple	Couple & 2 kids
NL	St. John’s	26,971	38,142	53,941
PEI	Charlottetown	27,058	38,265	54,116
NS	Halifax	28,007	39,607	56,013
NB	Fredericton	27,221	38,495	54,441
QC	Montreal	24,617	34,813	49,234
ON	Toronto	29,330	41,478	58,659
MB	Winnipeg	26,792	37,889	53,583
SK	Saskatoon	27,516	38,912	55,031
AB	Calgary	29,736	42,052	59,471
BC	Vancouver	29,754	42,078	59,508
YT	Whitehorse	32,241	45,595	64,481
NWT	Yellowknife	36,417	51,500	72,833
NU	Iqaluit	62,892	88,942	125,784

If you would like to learn more about the poverty line in your community, you can find it on the Statistics Canada website link here.

Poverty and food insecurity in your riding

Click here for the wonderful resource by our friends at Community Food Centres Canada (CFCC) allows you to gether a number of statistics within your riding. Simply type in your address, and it provides statiscs on poverty, food insecurity, number of households, disability among other statistics. You can download the report. There is also a place to email your MP to tell them that Canada needs better income policies to reduce poverty and food insecurity!