Social Support for Families (Youtube)
Dr. Amber Gaszo explains that for many parents using welfare and government support often have to share food and caregiving with other people, just to get by. Total welfare benefits provide incomes that are below poverty line (Gaszo, 2025, 5:14). As a result, people often turn to non-profit organizations for additional support. Dr. Gaszo emphasizes the layers of support in peoples lives, and how each individual’s circumstances are complex and unique. Families work together to manage poverty, different family members and generations work together to manage an individual or whole family unit’s experience of poverty. Due to the adversities experienced, people often have several sources of informal and formal support. Individuals experiencing poverty may draw on informal sources to fill the gaps of formal support; an example of this is utilizing services at a local non-profit while also receiving welfare benefits. Developing a robust network of social support is essential for people living on low income. Networks developed are incredibly complex, and show resiliency and ability to move forward. Government should make adjustments to income policies and support programs to better support service users (Gaszo, 2025).
16×9 | Generation Poor Documentary (Youtube)
Global TV journalist and anchor, Carolyn Jarvis, explores the devastating conditions of poverty across Canada in this 2014 short documentary. The film shows a family based in Saint John, New Brunswick, consisting of a single mother and three children. There are alarmingly high levels of poverty in New Brunswick; three out of every ten kids are poor (Jarvis, 2014, 1:18). The children in this lone-parent family are the fourth generation of their family to grow up in poverty. Their mother, Crystal, makes minimum wage. New Brunswick has one of the lowest minimum wages in the country (Jarvis, 2014, 3:24). For many children experiencing poverty, schools are a safe haven. Schools across the country offer various versions of programs that offer food (such as a breakfast club) and sometimes clothing to low-income students.
The documentary also follows a single father family, that immigrated to Toronto from Mexico. In Toronto, 29% of children live in poverty, many of them are from immigrant families (Jarvis, 2014, 14:15). The single father in the documentary, Alfonzo Perez, was a lawyer in Mexico before immigrating here. He brought his family to Canada after a controversial case he worked on threatened his family’s safety (Jarvis, 2014, 26:59). To work as a lawyer in Canada, he would have to undergo the involved process to become accredited in Canada as a lawyer. As a result, he resorts to working numerous minimum wage jobs. This is common for immigrants to experience as most regulated professions require credentials to be transferred via domestic licensing exams and governing bodies.
In 1989, Federal NDP Leader Ed Broadbent of introduced a House of Commons motion to commit Canada to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000 (Jarvis, 2014, 22:01). All parties endorsed the motion, however, in 2014, when this film was made. The rate of child poverty was still unchanged (Jarvis, 2014, 22:42). There continues to be a political failure in ending child poverty and poverty across all demographics. Despite the drop of poverty in 2020, the rate of poverty continues to remain alarmingly high for a wealthy country.