The issue of poverty in Saint John was in the spotlight Monday, when a business group formed to deal with the problem invited Premier Brian Gallant to discuss it.
The premier addressed the Business Community Anti-Poverty Initiative at the non-profit’s annual luncheon.
“There’s really no face. I mean, we have some that live in rural New Brunswick and urban New Brunswick. We have some that are single mothers, some that are children, some that are seniors, some that are students, some that are the working poor,” Gallant said.
“That’s why it’s hard to fight poverty, because there’s really not one single face or place to find it.”
The address took place on the same day the Saint John Community Food Basket officially opened its new location.
“The lack of space is the main factor, and that’s why this facility was so attractive to us, because it’s about double the space that we had at our former location on Charlotte Street,” said food bank coordinator David McCready.
The geographic makeup of poverty in the port city was recently revealed by new research from the Saint John Human Development Council.
It found Ward Three to have the highest poverty rate.
“Almost one in two children are living in poverty. That’s a pretty damning statistic,” said Randy Hatfield, the council’s executive director.
Three of the city’s five priority neighbourhoods are in that ward, so while the numbers are shocking, they shouldn’t be surprising, Hatfield said.
“We know that we have neighbourhoods that have very high rates of overall poverty, child poverty and a large cohort of lone parent families and a lot of people who didn’t graduate from high school,” Hatfield said.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Ashley Blackford
