By Owen Charters, President & CEO, BGC Canada

February 20, 2024

We love the success stories. We love to see and hear stories of the one kid who made it despite all odds. But I have bad news: the statistics tell us that kids don’t make it—at least, they don’t become success stories. Often, they can’t break the cycle of poverty in a generation.

I recently visited a BGC Club in a low-income neighbourhood. It got me thinking about the communities we serve across the country. So many communities and families have limited access to secure housing, childcare, nutritious food, and consistent meals.

The lowest decile of Canadians had an average after-tax income of $12,700 in 2021. Think about that—the AVERAGE household income was $12,700 per year. That same year, the low-income cut-off for a family of 3 in the largest cities across Canada was $34,555.

Here’s the problem—upward mobility is hard. Income inequity is growing. You often hear that the gap between rich and poor is growing. In 2021, the average income of the top 1% of earners in Canada rose by 9.4% to $579,100, and that of the bottom 50% of earners decreased to $21,100. The effect of that is hugely detrimental to low-income families trying to get a leg up. The tools they need to access to build a new life and prosper are increasingly out of reach.

Housing prices are up. Feeding your family costs more (have you paid for groceries lately?). Daycare, before- and after-school care, is exorbitantly priced in most provinces. How can you go to work when you need to be home for your kids? How can a family make $12,700/year and pay for rent, food, and clothes?

I looked at the kids in our Club in that after-school program. They were doing what kids do—some were snacking on yogurt, some were hard to settle down and listen to instructions—but they were typical kids. Happy, mostly. Unhappy when their friend accidentally poked them in the eye. Teasing each other. They looked comfortable – used to the routine of the Club. Engaged. And I wondered if there was a future engineer, future politician – maybe a mayor amongst them. Maybe a writer. A teacher, doctor, professor. A nurse, truck driver, app developer. An entrepreneur, a small business owner. A chef.

They don’t need to be astronauts, prime ministers, NHL superstars. In fact, the odds are they won’t be. And the odds are also against them for the more modest wish list too – that’s what is really scary. Temptations for fast riches that come with gangs, the need to drop out of school and work in menial jobs to pay the bills. Lack of opportunity. Beaten down until there’s no ambition. Seeing the challenges around them that seem insurmountable. Some will make it – they will be exceptions in the statistics.

Opportunity Changes Everything

Some good news: we live in a country with good social support. We enjoy better social support than many other developed countries. And we generally have better inter-generational mobility than other developed countries, too. This gives these kids a chance. And our Clubs boost their odds. Kids can see real opportunities in BGC Clubs—real-life examples of what’s possible—seeing options. Getting support to build skills they’ll need to make it to where they want to go—guiding them away from the choices that could distract or destroy them.

The Club staff were focused and frustrated trying to corral these kids into activities. But they were dedicated, and they cared, no matter what. They know each kid. These kids will be saved. They’ve got a safety net reaching out to them from the school, the Club, and our country’s fraying social safety net. It won’t be pretty, and it’s definitely not easy.

The good news is that 69% of BGC Club alumni claim that the Club saved their life.

The stories of BGC Clubs aren’t inspiring because we foster a few superstars – our Clubs are inspiring because they do the daily, hour-to-hour, week-to-week, year-to-year work that gives kids a chance to be something more than what they might see in front of them today. Because BGC shows them what could be on their horizon and how to get there. They can be a success story on their terms. Maybe we didn’t always go so far as saving their life, but we gave them the skills and opportunities to live a life.

Read more:  

• Hidden poverty in Canada
• A BGC alumni story
• A Club is a Clubs is a Club?

By Owen Charters, President & CEO, BGC Canada

May 2, 2023

On my way to the office every day, I pass by an apartment building. It seems innocuous. Lots of green space. Near a ravine. Seems reasonably well-kept (from a distance). Not far from the subway.

It’s actually part of a complex of apartments, all in a park setting. The area is called Crescent Town. Our West Scarborough Club is at the edge of Crescent Town.

Interesting sidenote: the actor Kiefer Sutherland grew up there. His parents didn’t have much money at the time (being actors—but look how that turned out for them).

This type of apartment building was part of a post-war boom in urban design and planning, and can be found all over Canada. Toronto has a multitude—almost 1,500—most of them in suburbs. They’re old. They need constant maintenance. Their systems are usually inefficient.

So, what’s of note about these buildings? They’re quiet, and as I said earlier, innocuous. I spent the first two years of my life in one at Jane and Finch, in Toronto. They were supposed to be the hallmark of modern living. But they aren’t anymore—they are part of a different way of living.

Canada has lots of pockets of poverty, and what’s surprising is that they are so hidden away. When we think of poverty, we think of run-down houses, cars well past their prime in driveways. Neglected neighbourhoods. That’s not actually the picture of poverty in a lot of Canada—it’s more how Hollywood depicts poverty.

Poverty lives in apartment buildings like Crescent Town. Not far from Cresent Town is Teesdale, a group of community housing high-rises with even more significant challenges.

I used to volunteer door-to-door for a federal politician in Thorncliffe Park, a very high-density neighbourhood in Toronto filled with these apartment buildings. The faces that answered the doors of these apartments were the face of modern poverty in Canada. Polite. Often women. Mostly recent immigrants. Not very keen to open the door to someone who was carrying a clipboard and looked like they were from the government. And usually with cleaning supplies in one hand—the apartments were mostly spotless. And full—there was often more than one face peering around the door frame.

Their lives are tough. These apartments are at the edges of transit accessibility. Infrastructure is lacking. In 2017, the average household income across Toronto Community Housing (which owns many of these apartments) was just over $17,000. Let’s put that number in perspective again: the LICO (low-income cut off) is a calculation of how much income a family of a certain size requires. If their income drops below this threshold, the family struggles significantly to pay for the essential necessities of life—shelter, food, etc. The LICO for a family of four in the same year was $39,701.

And the amplifying factor is that Toronto is creating neighbourhoods of poverty that are increasingly isolated from the rest of the city. From United Way’s A Tale of Two Torontos: “in 1980, there were only five very-low-income neighbourhoods and in 2015, there were 88.” The 13 highest priority neighbourhoods in Toronto are characterized by a density of post-war apartment towers.

Sadly, poverty is hidden away and it’s this lack of integration with the rest of community that exacerbates the effects of poverty.

The pandemic has exposed and exacerbated poverty and isolation in Canadian communities. We need to start moving in the direction of more access, more integration, more supports and more BGC Clubs. We need to reduce the isolating effects of poverty. Kiefer Sutherland stars in Designated Survivor, and the title might be more appropriate to him making it out of Crescent Town than his role in the show.

We’ve got some work to do.

Read more:

• A BGC Alumni Story
• A Club is a Club is a Club?
• The root causes of our mental health crisis

July 13, 2020

Dear Prime Minister and Premiers,

As Canada’s largest child and youth serving organization, Boys and Girls Clubs from coast to coast to coast know the importance that school plays in our society. Continued school closures have been, and will be, disproportionately felt by children already facing intersecting and systemic barriers—children from low-income families, children who don’t speak English or French as a first language, racialized communities who’ve already felt the worst of COVID-19, children with special needs, and children without access to technology or the internet. These are the young people our Clubs serve across the country during out-of-school hours. Yet we know there can’t be out-of-school time without kids being in school.

We are calling on all levels of governments to work boldly and creatively to maximize in-school education this fall.

 As you know, having children out of school exacerbates existing systemic issues, including:

• Mental health and social isolation: Over the last four months as school were closed, children and youth had very limited interactions with teachers, mentors, and classmates. This isolation is already having significant negative consequences. Kids Help Phone has seen a 55% increase in conversations about isolation, a 49% increase in conversations about anxiety and stress, a 47% increase in conversations about substance abuse, and a 23% increase in conversations about self-harm. Parents are also concerned about their children—a recent Statistics Canada survey on parenting during the pandemic found that almost three-quarters of participants were concerned about their children’s opportunities to socialize with friends, and more than half were concerned about their children’s loneliness and social isolation.
• Abuse: Home isolation has left many children and youth trapped in abusive settings and isolated from caring adults working in schools and programs that can identify this abuse and alert authorities. As stress and tension in families rise, so does abuse. Kids Help Phone has seen a 33% increase in conversations about emotional abuse since COVID-19 began, a 34% increase in conversations about physical abuse, and a 31% increase in conversations about sexual abuse.
• Food insecurity: Many children and youth across the country no longer have access to healthy meals and snacks, as food security programs run at schools and out-of-school programs are either no longer operating or doing so at greatly reduced capacity, leaving many families food insecure.
• Summer learning loss: During normal summers, when kids are out of school, students lose one month of learning on average. Children from low-income families, however, experience higher rates of learning loss. During the school year, all students have access to libraries, teachers, resources, and guidance counsellors, which is what makes public education “the great equalizer”—but with kids now in a prolonged absence from school, those that don’t have access to tutoring or additional programs end up falling further behind. Approximately 40% of parents are concerned about the school year and their child’s academic success during the pandemic. The longer schools are out, the greater the learning loss for marginalized children and youth.
• Limited childcare options: Access to high-quality, affordable, and safe care was a challenge for families prior to COVID-19 and has been exacerbated by the pandemic. With ongoing physical distancing restrictions, childcare centres can serve far less children than usual, yet the demand for their services is growing and will rise further in September. Asking childcare centres to additionally serve school-aged children during days when they are not in school is less than optimal for learning and will further put financial pressure on families. Our expertise tells us that vulnerable families will be the hardest hit by a shortage of child care. They will have to make the choice between not returning to work so that they can look after their children, or leaving their children in the care of untrained neighbours, family, or friends.

Finally, as a result of the pandemic, provinces and territories across Canada have seen rapid and massive disruptions to their labour markets. As restrictions are carefully lifted and Canada’s economy begins to re-open, many parents can return to work. However, a partial return to in-person schooling in September will create hard choices and negative impacts on these parents, particularly working mothers, which will set back hard won women’s equality by years. Children can’t be left at home alone, which will force those who can’t afford alternative childcare arrangements to drop out of the work force. A loss of income will overwhelm many families, especially single parents and those already struggling to make ends meet.

Our inability to reopen schools will push families into poverty, slow economic recovery, increase demand on government assistance, and deepen inequality. We must make the safe return to school the political priority.

Our goal should be kids safely in school five days a week with available out-of-school programs. Our Clubs believe that a re-opening of the economy without re-opening child care and schools doesn’t reflect the values of Canadians. Yes, there will be challenges and setbacks, but prioritizing the safe re-opening of schools and child care means we are prioritizing vulnerable and at-risk children—and this is a true reflection of our country’s values.

Boys and Girls Clubs would be pleased to connect with governments, experts, and other stakeholders to discuss how we can to support this shift in priority. Opening schools and child care won’t be easy, but it is crucial for kids, parents, and the economy.

Sincerely,

Owen Charters
President & CEO
Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada