UBC researcher adds to growing data on physical cost of being young and poor

By Tom Sandborn
Published: January 6, 2009 TheTyee.ca

Growing up in poverty can physically harm a child’s brain development, suggests a new study co-conducted by a University of British Columbia researcher.

Add that to a growing stack of findings that child advocates are using to argue the B.C. government needs to do more to tackle child poverty in a province that trails the rest of Canada in that category.

UBC pediatrician Tom Boyce worked with colleagues at the University of California and Stanford to measure how differences in a child’s family socioeconomic status determine differences in neurological functioning in the pre-frontal cortex — the part of the brain associated with executive functions and reasoning.

Their resulting study, to be published in MIT’s Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, found that poorer children’s pre-frontal cortexes were more likely to exhibit signs of damage or “altered” functioning identified with shortened attention spans and other learning problems.

Child and youth advocates say the new research is consistent with other studies finding that poverty sickens kids and impairs their development.

A study recently released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information reveals that low income Canadians are at elevated risk for mental health hospitalization, diabetes and childhood asthma.

Half of the turkey consumed in British Columbia each year is consumed during the Christmas season.

BC has 56 turkey producers who generated $41.9 million in turkey sales in 2007

BC is pretty self-reliant when it comes to turkey. We import less than 2% of the turkey we produce domestically.

British Columbians are the third largest turkey gobblers in Canada (behind Ontario and Quebec). We consume twice the amount of turkey that Albertans do.

Relish the Thought

12% of the cranberries being served on tables around the continent this holiday season came from BC, and more specifically from 88 cranberry farms in the Fraser Valley, where the mild climate and wet flood plain provide ideal growing conditions for BC’s top berry crop.

Although the packaging doesn’t show it, BC’s cranberry producers, like Barnston Island’s Opus Cranberries, are major suppliers to Ocean Spray Cranberries.

The Fort Wine Company in Fort Langley has shown that cranberries also make excellent wine.

Holiday Ham instead of Turkey?

BC’s 175 pork producers raise about 300,000 hogs/year. Yet between 70 -75% of the pork eaten in BC is imported.

An Eye for an Eye

Serving russets or nugget potatoes this holiday? In fact, British Columbia produces 35 different varieties of potatoes.

The largest field vegetable crop in the province, BC produces 71,000 tonnes of potatoes annually. But we import 107,753 tonnes (worth over $59.3 million) each year, mostly from the US (Washington State and Idaho).

72% of BC’s table potatoes are grown in the Fraser Valley.

While BC is a net importer of potatoes, we are a net exporter of seed potatoes. Known as “Spud Valley”, the Pemberton Valley’s rich volcanic soils enable it to produce the largest variety of seed potatoes in the world, providing potato farmers around the globe with BC seed potatoes.

Apple or Pumpkin Pie?

In 2002, just 11,000 acres of orchards in the Okanagan, Similkameen and Creston Valleys produced $72.3 million for the BC economy – and a billion apples. BC produces 30% of the apples grown in Canada.We consume only 25% of those. The average British Columbian eats only 75-100 apples/year – far less than the apple a day recommended to keep the doctor away.

That means that BC exports about 75% of the apples we grow. Yet we import a lot, too. Our biggest competitor for our own and international markets is Washington State which, although they have similar climate and growing conditions, produces up to 20 times the amount of apples that BC does.

If your holiday pie is pumpkin instead of apple, chances are the pumpkin was grown in the USA. Although BC produces approximately 3 million pounds of pumpkins annually, most of those are the large stock used for Hallowe’en jack-o-lanterns. Canada imports the vast majority of pumpkin used for human consumption.

Holiday salad?

Although Canada produces 78 tonnes of lettuce a year, we import 305 tonnes. Most of our imports come from the US, and predominantly California (the “1,000 mile Caesar salad”).

In 2001, 659 acres of BC farmland produced 6.1 million pounds of Brussells Sprouts, representing $2.4 million in farm gate receipts.

BC grows 50 types of vegetables and 90% of the province’s vegetables are grown in the Fraser Valley.

In 2002 BC fresh & processed field vegetable production was worth $32 million, while our imports were more than 10 times that or $332 million.

The US represents 80% of all fresh field vegetable imports and 85% of processed field vegetable imports to BC, and California alone makes up 72% of that. Global warming and domestic water consumption are causing severe water shortages in California that are expected to significantly affect agriculture.

Global food shortages in 2008 saw riots and conflict around the world. BC has experienced some increases in food prices, but not as much as Washington State, where prices rose 15%.

Although the food security crisis has not reached BC’s marketplace yet, we are vulnerable. Less than 5% of this province’s land base is suitable for agriculture.

Between 2002 and 2007, BC lost 10,200 acres of farmland from its Agricultural Land Reserve, with most of those losses from the Fraser Valley where rich alluvial soils combine with a mild climate and long growing season to provide the province’s best agricultural productivity. Of the 7.500 acres added to the ALR during this same period, most of the lands were of lowest soil ratings and were located in northern parts of British Columbia, which has colder climate and a shorter growing season.

Thousands of additional acres of farmland were lost to “non-farm uses” including roads and highways, port and airport expansions and country estates.

The Ministry of Agriculture’s British Columbia Food Self-Reliance Report (2007) indicates that BC will need 240,000 additional acres of farmland near urban centres (for irrigation) and 1 million acres of rangeland to meet the needs of our population by 2025.

Let’s make 2009 the year we draw a hard edge around the ALR.  Happy holidays everyone.

Directors

Farmland Defence League of BC

First Call’s annual BC Child Poverty Report Card was recently released. From the media release:

The Olympics are nearly here and British Columbia is still trailing all other provinces with the worst child poverty rate, according to the latest Statistics Canada figures in the new BC Campaign 2000 Child Poverty Report Card.  This shameful distinction has been held by BC for five consecutive years.

The BC child poverty rate was 21.9 percent in 2006 – up from 20.9 percent in 2005 and well above the national child poverty rate of 15.8 percent.  The depth of family poverty is staggering:  average incomes for families with children living in poverty were more than $11,000 below the poverty line.  Over half of BC’s poor children lived in families where the adults worked the equivalent of a full-time full-year job or more.

“The 2010 Olympics is only 14 months away.  Unless the government acts now, the fulfillment of the promise to make BC the healthiest jurisdiction to ever host the Olympics is in serious doubt,” said First Call Provincial Chairperson Julie Norton.

The report card is available for download from http://www.firstcallbc.org/economicEquality-whatsNew.html.

BC Local Level Data on Income and Poverty

Campaign 2000 also released the national report card on child poverty today, which is available at www.campaign2000.ca.

Ways to take action:

·       Join our Facebook group: No Olympic Medal for BC’s Lead in Child Poverty Rate

·      Write to your MLA and MP to let them know that child poverty is an important issue to you, and name some of the solutions mentioned in the report card.  Find out how to contact your MLA and MP.

·      Write a letter to the editor of your local paper emphasizing the child poverty rate in BC and the solutions.

A recent court ruling that allows the homeless to camp in parks may have come just in time for Tammy Carlow. The Richmond woman is officially homeless, and two of her children are now in foster care as a result.

“I’m living day by day right now,” says the single mother of three, who has been living out of a two-bedroom motel room in Tsawwassen with her 17-year-old daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend since being evicted from her Richmond home in July.

Meanwhile, in recognition of Homeless Action Week last week, Rich Coleman, the minister of Housing and Social Development, issued a press release that stated his ministry has spent $13 million in Richmond on affordable housing. Most of that was on rent supplements, which are available only to seniors and the working poor, not welfare recipients like Carlow. “We know that breaking the cycle of homelessness requires more than just housing, so we established the Homeless Outreach Program, which operates in 47 communities,” Coleman said in a press release. Again, that does little to help Carlow. The outreach programs are available in seven locations in Vancouver, but none are available in Richmond, according to the ministry’s website.

How Carlow ended up homeless is a long story, and she admits to being at least partly to blame for her own predicament. “Of course I’m responsible for some of it,” she admits. Carlow has been evicted twice in recent years. She blames others — neighbours and landlords — for the evictions. Regardless of who is to blame, her 12-year-old daughter and six-year-old son are now paying the price — living with strangers. “In order to stabilize my kids, I put them in Family Protection Services,” Carlow said. “They needed to be stable. I just didn’t want to put them through any more.” At the end of July, Carlow and her kids were evicted from the three-bedroom four-plex she rented in Richmond at $1,200 per month. She admits she was late paying her rent twice.

Prior to that, she had been living in subsidized housing but got evicted, she said, because her neighbours did not like the fact she sometimes let people who were not authorized to stay in the complex at her place. Carlow’s two children still go to school in Richmond. Living out of a hotel in Tsawwassen made it tough for them to get to school. So, Carlow voluntarily put her 12-year-old daughter and six-year-old son into foster care. It is supposed to be a temporary measure. She is supposed to get her kids back in a couple of weeks, but as that deadline looms, she still has no prospect of finding a place for her and her children to live. The problem isn’t just the money — it’s the lack of affordable housing, Carlow said. “There is no housing and no one wants to take a single mom with kids,” she said. “It’s just not there.” Carlow also has a dog, which makes it even tougher.

Even people with decent jobs are finding it hard to find affordable housing in Richmond, which has a rental vacancy rate of just 0.7 per cent, according to the most recent statistics from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Given the current market, landlords are unlikely to rent to someone on welfare when they can rent to someone with a full-time job. Asked why she doesn’t find a job, Carlow said she went back to school to become a pharmacy technician, and worked for about a year.

But she said no one wants to hire someone with large gaps in their work history. And even if she did get a job, she said entry-level jobs do not pay enough to cover the daycare costs she would incur. “I make more sitting on welfare than I did going to work,” she said. She adds her doctor has advised against working due to the stress she has in her life.

People who are homeless or hard to house often have poor life skills, which are often complicated by emotional issues and or addictions. “There are reasons they’re homeless,” said Mary Phillips, who co-chairs the City of Richmond Poverty Response Committee. Getting people like Carlow back on their feet first requires getting them stabilized, which is hard to do when they are either living on the street, out of cars or in motel rooms.

There is currently no homeless shelter for women and families in Richmond. One has been proposed, and the City of Richmond has committed $500,000 towards it.However a federal grant that would have helped kick-start the project was turned down last spring, city hall sources say. “Her (Carlow) story does illustrate the need for a women’s and children’s shelter, but also the transitional housing that goes after that,” Phillips said.

David Reay, a city council candidate who also co-chairs the Poverty Response Committee, said various levels of government appear to be passing the buck on the proposed women’s homeless shelter. “The ETA is one year after everybody gets their act together,” he said. “So that means any time within the next five years.”

Richmond - N.I.M.B.Y. to Y.I.M.B.Y. is all about perspective

Richmond’s Affordable Housing Week Poster

More information about Homelessness Action week