The Ontario government is investing $300,000 into a poverty research project in Huron and Perth counties.
Deputy Premier Deb Matthews announced the funding for the University of Waterloo-led project at a news conference in Stratford on Thursday.
Officials say the web-based tool will help researchers develop real-time and neighbourhood-specific data, in order to help charities and lawmakers better deal with poverty in their communities.
Professor Don Cowan, who also works as the director of the University’s Computer Systems Groups, spoke at the event held at the school’s Stratford campus.
"The data we have right now is at such a high level, that we can't differentiate schools, where as we hope we can,” Cowan told CKNX News after the media conference. “One of the ideas of this is ‘community-level data’ as opposed to Statistics Canada data. StatsCan data is fine, but it sometimes hides things, like when there’s one postal code, but one postal code could cover most of a county.”
Cowan says his team hopes to have ‘something to show’ from the project by Christmas.
Data from the project will be used province-wide.
The project is the first of several to be funded by the Ontario government's new $50-million Local Poverty Reduction Fund.