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The Yukon has outperformed the rest of Canada when it comes to food security and social assistance benefits, according to the latest Poverty Report Card released by Food Banks Canada.
But it received failing grades for its poverty rate and its legislative performance on addressing poverty.
The territory received a D for its so-called legislative process index, partly because of its plan to phase out rent control, said Richard Matern, the research director at Food Banks Canada.
In places with little to no rent control, “you see a big spike in food bank usage,” Matern said.
“One of the key drivers of food insecurity and food bank usage is the cost of rent and the pressures that that cost has on people’s budgets.”
The Poverty Report Card examines how poverty is experienced across Canada and assesses how well the effort to reduce it is going at each level of government.
The Yukon received grades ranging from B+ to F.
An F for poverty rate
The report rates provinces and territories’ performances in areas such as unemployment rates, experience of poverty and material deprivation and provides policy recommendations.
The lowest grade the Yukon received was an F for its poverty rate.
The most recently available data from 2024 puts the Yukon’s poverty rate at 11.8 per cent, 0.9 percentage points above the national average.
Where the Yukon scored more modestly was in the area of food insecurity, where it received a B.
According to Food Banks Canada’s most recent data, 15.5 per cent of Yukoners experience food insecurity.
That is among the lowest of all jurisdictions, Matern said.
“But we have to consider too … the limitations of data collection,” he said.
“So if you go to the smaller communities, northern communities, Indigenous communities, they face substantially higher rates of food insecurity than the rest of the country.”
A few indexes, such as material deprivation and the experience of poverty, saw the Yukon receive incomplete grades due to limited data, the report showed.
The Yukon was graded more highly than other regions on several indexes.
Its unemployment rate was given a C+ for sitting at 3.9 per cent, the lowest rate in Canada.
The territory received a B when looking at social assistance as a percentage of the poverty line.
In most of the country, incomes on social assistance are far below the poverty line, according to the report.
But in the Yukon, social assistance provides nearly three quarters of the income needed to lift people up to the poverty line and 89.1 per cent when it comes to disability assistance.
“However, that’s still a low bar,” said Matern. “There’s still more work that needs to be done.”