Canada's "shabby" welfare gets worse, National Council on Welfare reports.

OTTAWA -- "Canadian welfare policy over the past 15 years has been an utter disaster," the National Council on Welfare concludes in its latest report, Welfare Incomes 2004. The NCW laments the "shabby treatment" of welfare recipients by federal and provincial governments. "Welfare has long been the neglected stepchild of governments in Canada."

Among the findings are:

* The value of most provincial and territorial welfare and related benefits continued to decline affecting the lives of approximately 1.7 million children, women and men who were forced to rely on welfare.

* Welfare incomes were further below the poverty line in most provinces in 2004 than they were in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

* Total welfare incomes everywhere in Canada were well below the poverty lines once again in 2004.

* The treatment of single employable persons has been "particularly harsh". Losses of 25 percent or more were reported in seven provinces.

The OST credit, the National Child Benefit Supplement have been of value to low income working families but of no value to families dependent upon social assistance because most provinces claw back these amounts when calculating welfare payments. These benefits are favorable for low income working families.

The federal government participates in the welfare system through the Canada Social Transfer, a block funding arrangement to the provinces for welfare and post secondary education. The Council report calls the CST "complex, unintelligible, unaccountable and totally divorced from the real needs of welfare recipients."

The report states that "both the clawback and the current funding arrangements for welfare are blatant and longstanding examples of bad social policy, and bad social policy almost inevitably produces bad results."

The National Council of Welfare is a citizens' advisory body to the federal government that advises the Minister of Social Development on matters of concern to low-income Canadians. John Murphy Canning, Nova Scotia is the Chairperson and Laurie Kilpatrick directs the staff of the Council.