The incomes in Table 2 are abysmally low. To demonstrate just how low, we compared them with the estimated low income cut-offs of Statistics Canada for 1999. The results are shown in Table 3.

Each year, Statistics Canada calculates low income cut-offs for households of different sizes living in communities of different sizes. They approximate levels of gross income where people are forced to spend much of their income on food, shelter and clothing.

The National Council of Welfare regards the cut-offs as poverty lines. Like any poverty lines, they have their limitations, but they are widely accepted as a benchmark for judging income adequacy in Canada. Other studies of poverty, especially local surveys using a "market basket" approach, have produced comparable results.

Some provincial governments maintain that the poverty lines are an especially imperfect measure of poverty when it comes to welfare incomes, because the lines are based on pre-tax income and welfare benefits are not taxable. In reality, most of the incomes in Table 3 are so low that there is no difference between taxable and non-taxable income. For example, single employable people in Newfoundland with total incomes of $1,341 were abysmally poor by any standard. Even if they had earned income instead of receiving welfare income, they would have been exempt from income tax because their earnings were so low.

Some provinces and territories also contend that welfare is intended to provide only the bare necessities of life, while incomes at the level of the low income cut-offs are high enough to allow some discretionary spending as well. The National Council of Welfare has no sympathy for that argument. The fact is that the cut-offs already represent very low levels of income. The only "discretion" many welfare recipients have is how to cut back on food when the money starts running short toward the end of the month.

As Table 3 shows, no province had welfare rates consistently closer to the poverty lines than elsewhere. Rates in some provinces and territories, especially rates for single employables, are far below the lines. Welfare incomes which reach only one fifth or one third of the poverty line are unacceptably low and should be raised at the earliest possible date. How anyone manages to live on welfare rates of only nine percent of the poverty line - as a single employable person in Newfoundland is forced to do - is beyond our comprehension. Rates this low cannot be described as anything other than punitive and cruel.

Column 1 of Table 3 shows welfare incomes for different types of households in the ten provinces in 1999. None of the territories is included in this table because they are specifically excluded from the survey used to generate the low income cut-offs.

Column 2 indicates the estimated 1999 poverty lines (the low income cut-offs of Statistics Canada, 1986 base) for the largest city in each province. The poverty gap, or difference between total income and the poverty lines, is shown in the next column. The last column represents total welfare income as a percentage of the poverty line, that is, welfare income divided by the poverty line.

Welfare incomes for single employable people remained by far the least adequate during 1999. Rates ranged from nine percent of the poverty line in Newfoundland to 41 percent of the poverty line in Ontario.

The lowest benefits for single disabled people stood at 42 percent of the poverty line in Alberta. The highest rate was 70 percent of the poverty line in Ontario.

Welfare incomes for single-parent families ranged from a low of 50 percent in both Manitoba and Alberta to a high of 70 percent in Newfoundland.

For two-parent families with two children, welfare incomes ranged from 45 percent of the poverty line in Quebec to 62 percent in Prince Edward Island.