Because of the challenges associated with enumerating the homeless community, when we seek to grasp the scope of the problem, we must look to the agencies working among the homeless, and to those groups trying to identify the problem on a more local level. The most commonly cited estimate is that there are approximately 250,000 people in Canada who are homeless.
The 2004 Toronto Report Card on Homelessness reports an estimated 32,000 persons in the GTA are homeless. In 1997, Toronto emergency shelters for the homeless took in an average of 6,500 persons each night.  Figures such as this do not reflect those who refuse to stay in hostels or shelters, due to mental illness, safety concerns or other reasons.
The city of Calgary’s Biennial Count of Homeless persons (May 2004) – a snapshot of those staying in shelters or observed on the streets on a given night - counted 2,597 homeless persons.  The City of Ottawa’s Report Card on Homelessness counted nearly 8,700 persons staying in shelters or on the streets. 
Other groups estimate that on any given night in the year 2000, there were, sleeping in shelters or on the street, up to 10,000 people in Montreal, up to 5,000 in Vancouver, and anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 in each of Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Halifax, Saskatoon and Regina.
Canada has no official definition of poverty. The best known measure of poverty is Statistics Canada' s before-tax low income cut-off (LICO), designed to identify those who are substantially worse off than the average Canadian. This measure, used by most analysts as a poverty line, indicates that a family is likely to experience poverty when it spends 58.5 percent or more of its gross household income on food, shelter and clothing. In 1998, 16.9 percent of Canadians were living below the low-income cut off. A greater proportion of single individuals and senior citizens are likely to be living below the poverty line. The Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD) reports that in 1995, approximately 55.6 percent of Aboriginal people in Canadian cities were living in poverty. On average, 59.2 percent of lone-parent families were living below the poverty line.
 The Toronto Report Card on Housing and Homelessness;
 The City of Calgary’s Biennial Count of Homeless Persons, 2004;
The City of Ottawa’s first Report Card on Homelessness
 People with low income before tax, Statistics Canada, on December 1, 2000.
 Kevin K. Lee, Urban Poverty In Canada, Canadian Council on Social Development, April 2000, p. 38.