Last week, Statistics Canada released an updated Market Basket Measure (MBM) which is Canada’s official measure of poverty. The MBM uses local data on things like food shelter and transportation and determines a threshold that would give an individual or family a modest, basic standard of living. If your income is less than the MBM, you’re considered to be living in income poverty or under the poverty line. Using this threshold, the government of Canada has established targets for reducing poverty – their current goal is to reduce the poverty rate by 50% from its 2015 level.
Statistics Canada prices the MBM for 53 different geographic areas.
Calgary’s MBM was the second highest in Canada. This means that basic necessities in our city cost more than every other major city in Canada with the exception of Vancouver. Below are the top five cities and their MBM threshold in dollars.
