BC backslides on targeted measures to eliminate child, youth and family poverty
For immediate release - Tuesday, February 17th, 2026 - Unceded Coast Salish territories
Right out of the BC Budget 2026 lock up in Victoria, here is the CFE's take on BC Budget 2026. BC’s 2026 budget marks a backslide for the Province on its important commitment to tackling child, youth and family poverty in BC. A lack of evidence-based innovation in Province-led policies and programs to tackle poverty, a pause to BC’s $10-a-day child care system expansion, and no increase to the BC Family Benefit and income and disability assistance rates worsen poverty for the 149,370 children and youth living below the poverty line across BC as the cost-of-living continues to rise.
In 2024, the Province’s Social Development and Poverty Reduction Statutes Amendment Act paved the way for the new Poverty Reduction Strategy which aims to reduce overall poverty by 60%, child poverty by 75%, and senior poverty by 50% in 10 years. Budget 2026 provides little to impact gains and reduce poverty towards these important targets.
Budget 2026 brings a welcome lift of $330 million to ChildCare BC to stay-the-course with existing services, yet fails to boost wages for thousands of underpaid, undervalued child care workers across the province.
The Centre for Family Equity applauds a commitment in the budget to focus on expanding child care spaces on school grounds. We recommend that the Province expedite the provision of before-and-after-school care at every elementary school in BC to meet existing provincial needs. For all families struggling to access the labour market, and lone parents in particular, who are raising over 50% of all children and youth in poverty in BC, before-and-after-school care is vital to sustained economic inclusion and thriving.
The Centre for Family Equity is alarmed to see a one-year ‘pause’ in the completion of BC’s $10-a-day child care system through what is being called a stabilization period. Quality, universal, $10-a-day child care for BC, promised in 2018, is one of the most crucial, evidence-based poverty reduction levers to ensure all parents and caregivers can work and children thrive in safe, quality care.
We welcome a promise in the 2026 budget to bring more equity into the existing $10-a-day system following rigorous advocacy from many, including the Centre for Family Equity. We must foreground that the most effective way to address inequitable access is to fulfill BC’s commitment to a robust, province-wide $10-a-day system. In line with the Province’s revamped focus on equitable access, we advocate for sustaining and expanding existing policy through the Affordable Child Care Benefit which ensures families below the poverty line access zero-fee child care in $10-a-day spaces. We strongly recommend this vital equity measure is upheld within BC’s $10-a-day spaces and expanded now to all child care spaces and programs in BC to ensure a ramp to economic inclusion for thousands of at-risk families while expediting the completion of BC’s universal $10-a-day system.
The Centre for Family is disheartened to see only funding to support service increases and nothing towards a much-needed boost to income and disability rates, and a lack of impactful policy and program innovation to address poverty reduction within the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction (SDPR). The Centre for Family Equity recommends a policy and program approach within SDPR more robustly focused on support for economic inclusion including access to education and the ability to attain earnings as a ramp to employment, rather than focusing on the deficit of poverty and stop-gap charitable measures to solely address the symptoms of poverty such as food insecurity.
Centre for Family Equity welcomes a long-called for investment of $475 million through the new BC Children and Youth Disability Benefit, which provides direct funding for 12,000 families with children with disabilities. However, our recommendations to address disability justice for families foreground the negative impact of existing income caps, low disability rates, and punitive earnings exemptions, which cement poverty for families where one parent lives with a disability on Person with Disability assistance (PWD). Rather than addressing accessibility and inclusion, these existing policies drive families into the trap of precarious work outside of meaningful economic inclusion. We strongly recommend that the Province builds on recent promising shifts to the spousal cap by allowing all parents accessing PWD to retain their provincial income regardless of the working income contributions of their partner in the same household and remove the household earnings cap that currently guarantees poverty for children and youth raised in these families.
To address worsening income inequality impacting families below the poverty line, CFE recommends the Province much more boldly increase taxation of those in the highest-income brackets to raise much-needed revenue to support poverty reduction in BC.
According to the 2025 First Call Child and Youth Poverty Report Card, BC stood at 16.7%, which translates to 149,370 children and youth living in households below the low-income threshold and an increase of 1800 children, with an alarming increase in depth of poverty for all family forms below the poverty line.
Media inquiries
Please text or call Viveca Ellis, CFE exeutive director -
Cell: 604-366-1008
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