Manitoba launches new poverty reduction plan

The Manitoba government is sharing a new roadmap aimed at reducing poverty in the province.

The Manitoba government has launched a new five-year plan aimed at reducing poverty in the province, noting that it allows for “flexibility and adaptability.”

On Tuesday, the province released a 36-page report detailing how it hopes to tackle poverty among three target groups: children up to the age of five years old, youth exiting the child welfare system, and seniors.

The plan, titled “Pathways Forward”, was developed following input from over 3,000 Manitobans over the past two years, according to Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine, who also serves as a co-chair on the province’s poverty reduction committee.

Under the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act, the province is required to have a long-term strategy with measurable indicators and renew it every five years.

The plan outlines nine objectives, including supporting early childhood education, ensuring equitable access to prenatal and child health services, and ensuring parents have stable homes for children.

“When you’re able to ensure that children are supported again… in their communities, with their families, with the supports that they need, you mitigate a lot of the things that we’re seeing right now,” Fontaine said.

Objectives under the plan also include enhancing education and employment opportunities for youth exiting the child welfare system and supporting financial security for seniors.

The strategy hopes to follow through on the objectives with actions “announced in annual budget documents,” according to the report, though Fontaine said the plan “allows for more flexibility and the ability to respond in the immediate.”

The document also lists actions that are already underway for each targeted demographic.

The province will rely on eight indicators to measure the strategy’s effectiveness, down from 13 indicators used in the strategy created under former PC premier Brian Pallister.

The latest strategy no longer uses the percentage of children in care, literacy and numeracy rates, poverty entry and exit rates, licensed childcare availability and an income inequality metric as indicators.

The 2026-31 strategy adds federal data on food insecurity as part of the indicators.

‘Glaring hole in the poverty reduction plan’: Manitoba Federation of Labour

In a statement, the Manitoba Federation of Labour (MFL), which represents over 125,000 workers in the public and private sectors as well as building trades, said the plan has “some important commitments.”

“However, there is a glaring hole in the poverty reduction plan: no commitment to making Manitoba’s minimum wage high enough for workers who earn it to live on and afford essentials, like rent and groceries,” said MFL President Kevin Rebeck.

The federation cited Probe Research data from last year, which revealed that 72 per cent of Manitobans said the $16/hour minimum wage is “not enough for most workers to get by on.”

In 2023, Manitoba’s overall poverty rate was 10.9 per cent.