Report finds 1 in 6 P.E.I. children below the poverty line in 2023

New data shows the province has the lowest in Atlantic Canada, but concern grows as the number begins to rise. Maria Sarrouh reports.

CHARLOTTETOWN -- About one in six children on Prince Edward Island lived below the poverty line in 2023, according to a new report that argues progress is moving too slowly for many families.

The 2025 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty on P.E.I. puts the child poverty rate that year at 16.7 per cent, down less than one per cent from 2022. But the number of children living in poverty rose to 5,060, up from 5,000 the year before, which the authors say is due in part to population growth on the Island.

For longtime advocates like Mary Boyd, a co-author of the report and director of the McKillop Centre for Social Justice, the latest figures are frustrating.

“It’s a snail’s pace. It’s not right,” Boyd said. “There’s a lot of people suffering out there.”

Across Atlantic Canada, the report says child poverty rates were also largely unchanged. P.E.I. still had the lowest rate, followed by Newfoundland and Labrador at 21.6 per cent and New Brunswick at 21.9 per cent. Nova Scotia had the highest rate in the region at 22.7 per cent.

It also breaks down the numbers by family type and age. The report puts the child poverty rate for one-parent families at 38.3 per cent. For children aged zero to five, it says the rate was 17.6 per cent in 2023, up slightly from the year before.

Boyd said the numbers show why addressing this problem should be treated as a priority.

“It’s disgraceful,” she said. “And we’ve called it disgraceful because somehow poverty is on the back burner.”

‘Could be doing more’

Without government benefits, the report estimates 35.1 per cent of children on P.E.I. would have lived in low-income households, more than double the measured rate. Additionally, it says the province is very dependent on federal government transfers.

However, the report warns those “necessary and essential grants” are declining in value. While government income supports reduced child poverty on the Island by 52 per cent, their effectiveness fell by 3.7 percentage points.

“Government support does work. It is decreasing poverty. We need more of it,” said Christine Saulnier, director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ (CCPA) Nova Scotia office.

She added that Ottawa’s supports tend to outpace what provinces provide, but P.E.I. “could be doing more.”

Saulnier pointed to higher wages as one priority area. Currently, the province’s minimum wage is $16.50 an hour and is set to rise to $17 on April 1, 2026. The CCPA’s living wage estimate for P.E.I. is $22.77 an hour.

“If you’re earning less than the living wage, then you are struggling,” Saulnier said, adding the income assistance system itself has barriers, requiring families to jump through “lots of hoops.”

Other supports include the P.E.I. Child Benefit, which she says is a “very good mechanism” but is set “far too low” – the third lowest in the country.

For families with a net household income up to $45,000, the report says the benefit provides $360 per child annually. For households earning between $45,000 and $80,000, it provides $240 per child.

The authors are calling on the province to triple those payments, arguing it would bring the benefit closer to what most other provinces provide.

They also claim that the provincial government is not on track to meet its legislated targets under the P.E.I. Poverty Elimination Strategy Act. The strategy aimed for a 50 per cent reduction in child poverty from 2018 to 2025 and completely eliminating childhood food insecurity by the same year.

In an email to CTV News, a spokesperson for the Department of Social Development and Seniors said the province will not know whether it met the Act’s targets last year until Statistics Canada releases 2025 estimates, expected in spring 2027 because of a two-year reporting lag.

The spokesperson also noted different methods: the Act uses Statistics Canada’s Market Basket Measure and Household Food Security Survey, while the report card relies largely on the Low-Income Measure after tax and tax filer data.

Under the Act’s measures, the spokesperson said poverty on P.E.I. for all people including children moved down from the 2018 baseline to the most recent available data in 2023.

The department said P.E.I. has scaled up income and food security measures since in recent years, pointing to increased social assistance and Assured Income rates, a provincewide school food program and ongoing funding for food banks and community meal programs.

More provincial report cards are expected next week, along with a national report.