With Ontarians losing jobs, increasingly reliant on food banks, and swelling social assistance rolls, now is the crucial time to invest in an anti-poverty strategy, a new report said on Tuesday.

Campaign 2000 said 317,900 children and youth under age 18 (almost 1 in every 9) were living below the poverty line in 2007, when Ontario was experiencing strong economic growth, adding the current recession means that Ontario’s child and family poverty rate will have since increased.