Things are moving quite fast, even too fast, since the federal government’s first poverty
reduction strategy was published
in August, at least for the aspects of this strategy which are problematic. The
unilateral decision to consider the Market Basket Measure (MBM) as “Canada’s
Official Poverty Line” is one of those. It ignores some useful expertise
developed about the MBM over the years, notably by the Centre d’étude sur la
pauvreté et l’exclusion (CÉPE), the institution meant to provide dependable and
objective information on matters concerning the application of Québec’s Act to combat poverty and social exclusion[1], as well as current discussions about the type of living standard
effectively assessed by this measure.
In 2009, the CÉPE carefully recommended the use
of the MBM “as