Child Poverty Bill
10:41 am
Mr. Timms: No, I would not. Eradication is the appropriate term, because poverty needs to be measured other than by relative income. If we are reducing the proportion of children growing up in households with incomes of less than 60 per cent. of median to 10 per cent. or less, we are not eradicating the phenomenon. However, the Bill carefully includes other measures because, as most people would accept, that one measure does not capture the totality of poverty. We could say that if we have achieved all the targets in the Bill, we have met our goal. That is not to say that there will never be children in households with income of less than 60 per cent. of median income. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of child poverty, which all of us see and which grew rapidly for a while but has been reduced in recent years, would have been eradicated.