A new report from the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton reveals disturbing trends that make a mockery of the city’s motto “The Best Place to Raise a Child.”

The most glaring trend is how poverty is disproportionately affecting the city’s most vulnerable people. Visible minorities, seniors, children, youth, natives, immigrants and the disabled, are all excluded from what we consider to be normal social interaction because of the city’s 18 per cent poverty rate. Still more troubling is the embarrassing fact that each group has higher poverty rates than the provincial average. Even though the report looked at census figures from 1996 and 2006, those troubling figures are not likely to go down when 2011 census information is released next year.

But poverty is only one of the demographic transformations that is influencing how the city will develop. The document confirmed the ever present spectre of systemic discrimination and racism as factors as to why the city’s visible minorities and immigrants remained locked in a cycle of poverty. They are, along with the community’s native population, seniors and disabled, isolated from Hamilton’s decision-makers.

Evelyn Myrie, the new executive director of the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, says it’s time the emotional issues of discrimination and racism are discussed within the community as factors that perpetuate poverty and contribute to being socially excluded from city-building discussions.

During the 2007 municipal election, the report, Hamilton’s Social Landscape, showed the lowest voter turnout occurred in areas where poverty is at its extreme, such as in the lower city.

As the document points out, “lower voter participation among residents struggling on low incomes created a negative feedback loop: our city’s most vulnerable aren’t represented at the tables where policies that affect them are discussed and civic and political leaders don’t hear their voices when making decisions; those on the margins feel the political system does not reflect their priorities and they become more disenchanted.”

But Hamilton is facing even more debilitating democratic changes, according to the report.

For instance, the city’s growth rate has slowed, compared to other similar-sized cities, such as Windsor, London, Ottawa and Burlington. When the province released its Places to Grow planning blueprint a few years ago, Hamilton’s population was expected to boom by more than 660,000 people by 2031. Yet according to new demographic data from the province’s finance ministry, Hamilton’s population is projected to grow by only 20 per cent from its current 505,000 population.

The slow growth rate is compounded by the city having the second largest proportion of seniors in its population, second only to Burlington and higher than both the provincial and Canadian averages. The city, though, has the second smallest proportion of young children among six municipalities surveyed.

Officials hoped that the city could bolster its lost population through immigration, but between 1996 to 2006 Hamilton’s immigration grew by only 1,000 people, to 16,560, the second lowest among the cities surveyed and below both the provincial and Canadian averages.

Over the last few years the city and its community groups have attempted to address the city’s changing demographics. But is it enough? Granted the survey is a snapshot of this city at a moment in time. More crucial will be the results of the 2011 census, which are being collected this year, with the information expected next year. Chances are,though, the results will confirm that Hamilton remains on a rocky road of demographic transformation, without a plan on how to save its population from destruction.