"Poverty really affects a lot of people," said Tasha Lackman, president and CEO of Centraide of Greater Montreal, a charity that funds community organizations fighting poverty and social exclusion.
While annual poverty rates have hovered between 10 and 12 per cent since 2020, the study released Thursday found that financial hardship affected a much larger share of the population when measured over several years.
Using Statistics Canada data that tracked people's circumstances over several years, researchers found that 14 per cent of adults experienced poverty for at least three years, while another 12 per cent lived below the poverty line for one or two years.
Lackman said escaping poverty can be difficult because even seemingly minor expenses can become major obstacles.
She pointed to families struggling to afford public transit fares so their children could participate in educational activities, or adults unable to cover transportation costs to attend job interviews or get to work before receiving their first paycheque.
The study found that persistent poverty was particularly common among immigrants, affecting 22 per cent of recent immigrants and 20 per cent of those who had lived in Canada for more than a decade.
Poverty has also become a longer-term problem for seniors. Among adults aged 65 and older, the proportion who spent seven or eight years below the poverty line rose from one per cent between 1992 and 1999 to 11 per cent between 2016 and 2023.
Xavier St-Denis, a professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique and the study's author, said Canada has been relatively successful at reducing poverty among seniors through programs such as Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement.
However, significant wealth inequalities remain, he said, particularly among seniors who reach retirement with little savings and do not own a home.
The report recommends increasing government benefits, particularly social assistance payments, to help reduce poverty.
Single adults under 65 are especially disadvantaged compared with seniors and families, who receive greater government support.
In Quebec, a single adult without health-related employment limitations can receive $845 a month in social assistance, compared with $1,014 for someone with qualifying health-related limitations, according to the provincial government's website.
The report argues that neither amount is sufficient to escape poverty.
St-Denis said concerns that increasing benefits would discourage employment have not materialized in the case of government support for families.
"Benefits increased without having a negative effect on mothers' participation in the labour market," he said, adding that the payments had a particularly positive effect on reducing poverty among single mothers.
Lackman also emphasized the importance of social housing, saying the study found that people living in neighbourhoods with more social housing were less likely to fall into poverty.
She welcomed the focus on homelessness by the Parti Québécois, which won Quebec's Oct. 5 election and is preparing to form a minority government. Its leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, has pledged to make reducing homelessness a priority.
"We need to make sure our politicians and society in general understand the urgency of the situation when one in four people has experienced poverty," she said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2026.
By Stéphane Rolland | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
