Emergency financial assistance from governments helped reduce the poverty rate by almost half in Quebec during the first year of the pandemic.
The proportion of Quebecers who live below the poverty line fell from 8.9% in 2019 to 4.8% in 2020, experts have found based on statistics released at the end of March. All Canadian provinces saw a marked improvement that year, but not on the scale of that seen in Quebec, which took Alberta’s title as the province with the lowest poverty rate.
This result is all the more remarkable given that at the same time, the economic crisis was widening inequalities in market income, observed at the beginning of the week the political scientist from the University of Montreal Alain Noël in an article in the review Policy Options. This means that this gain is attributable to the “exceptional redistributive effort” of governments.
One thinks in particular of these “temporary programs not very well targeted” which were the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and the Canadian Economic Recovery Benefit (PCRE) from the federal government. But probably not only, since Quebec has done better than the others, noted the expert.
In these statistics, the poverty rate corresponds to the proportion of the population that lives with a disposable income lower than what is called the measure of the consumption basket, which corresponds to the cost of a basket of goods and services ensuring a level modest basic living. This poverty rate had already been falling steadily for at least five years in Quebec, thanks in particular to the strength of the labor market and the introduction of a more generous Canada child benefit. But the pace of this decline sharply accelerated with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Spectacular”, but…
“I have never seen such a spectacular reduction in poverty! It is to wonder if we should not wish to have pandemics more often, ”joked Friday Michel Fréchet, professor of sociology at Laval University and speaker at a symposium devoted to the effects of the pandemic on the poverty organized in Montreal by the Quebec Observatory of Inequalities.
The gains have not been of the same magnitude for all groups in society, notes the professor. While the poverty rate has more than halved among families (from 5.2% to 1.9%) and those under 18 (from 6.3% to 2.3%), progress has been proportionately twice as modest among single people (from 24.6% to 16.9%).
“All of this, of course, might just be temporary. A flash in the pan that went out at the same time as the PCU and the PCRE. But will this success prompt governments to reconsider the generosity of current social safety net benefits? asks Michel Fréchet.
These data on the poverty rate, however, do not say everything about the effect that the pandemic has had on the most modest Quebecers, underlined the researcher at the Quebec Observatory of Inequalities Sandy Torres during the symposium on Friday. “First, not everyone was eligible for the CERB,” she noted.
In a survey conducted last summer among the bottom 40%, two-thirds of them reported problems with mental health, personal finances or physical health, among others. These issues were particularly common among 18-24 year olds, LGBTQ+ communities, people with disabilities, and minorities. A third said they live in isolation.
“We are not all equal in the face of isolation, underlined Friday Julie Nicolas, head of research at the Observatory of Autonomous Community Action. It’s one thing to be caught up in your single family home with a small garden. It’s another to be in a 1½ without a balcony. »
In the field, 9 out of 10 community organizations reported an increase in psychological support and helping relationship needs, and more than two-thirds noted an increase in basic needs (food, housing, etc.). The fact that governments, employers, schools and just about everyone have relied heavily on information technology during the pandemic has not helped families who lacked the proper IT tools and services.
Sympathy deficit
It is not certain that the pandemic and the spectacular fallout from emergency financial assistance programs will convince the entire population to do more for the most disadvantaged from now on, said Professor Normand Landry, holder of the the Research Chair in Media Education and Human Rights at TÉLUQ University.
Before the pandemic, it was only politicians who garnered less sympathy from the general public than people on welfare, he found in his research. During COVID-19, social assistance recipients able to work arrived at 11and and last in rank of groups deserving of government assistance, according to Quebecers, behind large corporations.