The Social Planning Council of Winnipeg says Manitoba is the child poverty capital of Canada once again.

In a report released Tuesday, the council stated that nearly one in five Manitoba children lives in poverty and more than 68 per cent of aboriginal children under the age of six in Winnipeg live in poverty.

The latter figure does not include children living on reserves.

The 2009 Manitoba Child and Family Poverty Report Card states that within the past six years nearly 40 per cent of Manitoba children have lived in poverty for at least one year — and that children most likely to live in poverty in the province are in families in which at least one parent has aboriginal heritage.

'Many parents work long, hard hours in low-wage jobs but still can't afford to feed their families. Every child deserves decent shelter and enough food to eat.' —Donald Benham, Social Planning Council

The poverty report card is produced by the SPC as the local partner of Campaign 2000, which is a non-partisan, cross-Canada coalition of more than 120 national, provincial and community organizations.

The 2009 report card is particularly significant because it is being released on the 20th anniversary of a unanimous House of Commons resolution to end child poverty in Canada.

"This goal has not been realized and in Manitoba, child poverty rates remain among the highest in Canada year after year," stated a news release from the Social Planning Council, which noted that Manitoba was also the child poverty capital in 1989, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2001, and 2007.

"No one can blame a child for being poor, nor should their parents be blamed," Donald Benham, senior associate of the Social Planning Council, stated in a news release.

"Many parents work long, hard hours in low-wage jobs but still can't afford to feed their families. Every child deserves decent shelter and enough food to eat."

The report stated that 69.4 per cent of all poor children in Manitoba live in families in which the parents worked the equivalent of at least one full-time job.

"Low wages mean that a job, unfortunately, is not a guaranteed route out of poverty," stated the SPC news release.

The report also makes numerous recommendations to all levels of government, including the creation of a standing poverty committee in Winnipeg.

It calls on the province to ensure all Manitobans receive sufficient income to meet basic needs and it recommends the federal government set an interim target of 50 per cent reduction in poverty among all Canadians by 2020.