Lesley Frank predicted the provincial government would opt to discredit, rather than act on a Statistics Canada report released 10 months ago highlighting Nova Scotia’s rising child poverty rate.

“I’ve been tracking child poverty for 20 years now and it’s a typical response from government to blame some statistical problem,” said the Acadia University sociologist and researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in Nova Scotia. “It becomes almost like a joke to me.”

The February report showed Nova Scotia was the only province where child poverty increased in 2017, jumping to 17 per cent from 14 per cent the year before.

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