Toronto/IBNS: A poverty rate of one in five single Canadian adults seen among working-age has been unveiled by a newly published national report by Community Food Centers Canada (CFCC).

The report, published last week titled “Sounding the Alarm,” reveals the poverty rate to be three times in single adults in Canada, which is higher than the national average, highlighting that single adults encounter the highest poverty rates in the country.

Relying on low-wage, the report cited. part-time, temporary employment opportunities that lack benefits and stability with many working-age single adults in Canada facing outdated and inadequate social support programs.

Nearly one million working-age single adults are stuck in deep” poverty, according to the report, with an average annual income of $11,700 which is less than half of the $25,252 low-income threshold for a single-adult household, and make up to 38 percent of all food-insecure households in the country with 61 percent of them severely disabled living alone below the poverty line.

Nearly half of single adults (47 percent) live in unaffordable housing compared to 17 percent in other household types and 81 percent of shelter users are single adults with low income.

“The evidence is overwhelmingly clear – through woefully inadequate income support programs and a labour market that creates precarity because of low wages and few benefits, we are trapping people in poverty in this country,” Community Food Centres Canada CEO Nick Saul said in a news release published on Thursday.

To fill the gap supporting working-age single adults, CFCC recommends expansion of the existing Canada Workers Benefit into a refundable tax credit called the Canada Working-Age Supplement to enable poor working-age single adults receive the supplement whether they are attached to the labour market or not.

“Sounding the Alarm illustrates that our governments and employers are leaving working-age single adults behind,” added Saul. “We urgently need a national solution that responds to the realities that people are voicing in this report. If Canada is serious about making life equitable for everyone, then we need to find the political will to create income policies that take people out of poverty – not for a week, or a month, but for good.”

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)