Human Resources Committee on June 12th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Bevin, for that follow-up.

We're now going to move to Mr. Lake from the Conservative Party for five minutes.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I'd like to start by thanking you for taking the time today to meet with us this way. I think it's been a great discussion, a great way to do it, and we saved the taxpayers of Canada $70,000 by doing it this way. I think that's important for us.

It's interesting when you take a look at the jurisdictions. I know Tony asked a jurisdiction question. I would note that our challenges are interesting. For example, the distance from one border of Canada to the other side of Canada is almost the same as the distance from Dublin to New Delhi. So we're very different in terms of the jurisdictions we're representing. Of course, here in Canada we have 10 provinces, all equal partners. Obviously, most of the provinces are constitutionally responsible for most of the areas that impact poverty.

You were touching a little bit on the jurisdictional issue, and I know that someone referred to all levels of government being involved. Is there an entity, a jurisdiction within Ireland that is not national, that has significant areas of responsibility that would be comparable to or even more than the national government in terms of most of the areas we talked about?

[Gerry Mangan]

No.

First of all, we're very conscious of the difference in scale between Ireland and Canada. We come up against that, needless to say, in the European Union as well, where we'd have 80 million Germans and 56 million U.K. people and so on. Sometimes we're conscious that what might work in Ireland would have to be reworked for it to work in larger countries.

But in terms of the jurisdiction within the Republic of Ireland--and there's another jurisdiction, of course, in Northern Ireland--it's a country with a population of four million. It's relatively small, and it would fit into a small corner of Canada, probably. I think the next area down would be local authorities, but they wouldn't have near the level of jurisdiction. Most of the major programs like health, income support, and employment support would be administered at a national level, but they'd have a local presence. But responsibility, virtually, would lie at the national level without any intermediate levels of responsibility. In that respect we would be a bit like the United Kingdom, quite a centralized country.

I know in the Scandinavian countries in particular, what they call their municipalities have a significant degree of responsibility for social services in particular, but that wouldn't apply in Ireland to the same extent at all.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I mean that in no way to diminish the accomplishments you've made there, because they sound significant.

You've obviously been involved in this process for a long time, so maybe you could speak to some of the challenges you've had along the way. Obviously, the whole issue is a big challenge, but what are some of the things you may have learned over the course of that time that you didn't expect to learn? When you're talking to different politicians who are trying to make decisions in their own countries, what might we be able to learn without making the same mistakes?

[Gerry Mangan]

I suppose one of the major difficulties—and it is an ongoing one—is to get departments to adopt a wider perspective. Government departments or ministries are still largely focused on their own area of responsibility. This has a silo effect, as we often refer to it here, whereby they see their main objective as achieving the right outcomes in their area. So it's a matter of trying to guess a cross-cutting approach among departments when looking at dealing with people who are in poverty. That applies at both a national and a local level. That's why we have introduced this life cycle approach, to try to get people focused on outcomes that require cross-departmental cooperation and integration, and so on. I think that has been one of our greatest challenges.

I think it's also fair to say that there's always a tension between the economic perspective and the social perspective. On the one hand, people always say, and quite rightly so, that economic development is paramount. But at the same time, we need to try to convince people that you can promote economic development through the social dimension as well. It's a bit of a more long-term objective. One of the problems with social supports is that they can take a while to bear fruit—or to be seen to bear fruit. If you want to invest in children, for example, it could be 20 years before you see the fruits of that. But what is very obvious is that if you don't invest in them, you can see the fruits today of lack of investment in the past. So there is a need for a longer-term perspective. Of course, that also arises in relation to the aging of the population and the need to make provision for people down the road, as the population in Ireland is aging as well.

I suppose these are the things: the need for a cross-cutting perspective, a more long-term perspective, and to see the advantages economically of social investment. It's happening, but it takes a while for it to sink in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

[Kevin O'Kelly]

Mr. Chair, could I just make two quick points to Mr. Lake?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay, be very quick, if you could. Thanks.

[Kevin O'Kelly]

One thing that I think is important that we haven't mentioned at all this morning is what Gerry talked about, the National Action Plan for Social Inclusion, 2007-20016, a plan that we have had in place since last year. In Northern Ireland, they also have a similar document called Lifetime Opportunities. In both of these documents, there is similar text committing us to tackling poverty and social exclusion on an all-Ireland basis. We're working towards that; we do some work with Northern Ireland on tackling some of the issues, in particular, around the rural poverty that might result in the border regions in Ireland. That's an important aspect that we haven't mentioned already, but which I think is important.

On your second question, I suppose one of the interesting things we've learned is that one ministry or department will do something that leads to a poverty trap, which then needs to be tackled by another department, such as the Department of Social and Family Affairs. For example, about two or three years ago, the Department of the Environment allowed local authorities to introduce waste charges, without studying the impact that would have on low-income families, who very often have more waste because they have more children and they don't have the facilities to get to Bring centres, or whatever. So sometimes things happen in one area that have an impact on people living in poverty, which then need to be addressed on a whole-of-government or joined-up government approach.

Another one would be lone parents, as Gerry has already mentioned. Certainly, there are a lot of unemployed people trying to get to training centres, but the Department of Transport may decide to allow the national transport company to cut back on transport services, because of commercial reasons in some of the rural areas, which cuts off people living alone. In fact, another department that looks after community development has had to introduce a second transport system to compensate for the national transport company stopping services.

So you have situations where you do something in one area that has a knock-on effect or impact on people living in poverty, and it needs to be addressed in another way. It's a matter of trying to get all of these things to work together and to have a joined-up government approach to dealing with all of the very complex issues around poverty.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Kevin.

Gerry, I think you originally alluded to the purpose of your office to help coordinate all of these other organizations. That seems to be one of the key measurements here, the fact that you work with so many different organizations, trying to deal with all of the holes that come up or potential conflicts, and therefore to be able to see a problem and to be able to keep everyone coordinated. It's been very interesting.

We're going to move now to the next round.

We have Mr. Lessard, from the Bloc, for five minutes again, sir.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was struck by the fact that you have two basic measures of poverty. Correct me if I am wrong. On the one hand, you have the consistent poverty rate, which guides you and allows you to know where to intervene. On the other hand, you have the life cycle framework, that you use also, which is a concept with which we are not so familiar. It is rather interesting. It seems to me it allows you to track the evolution of poverty from childhood to old age, as well as the number of people who manage to escape from it.

If I understood you correctly, you are tracking this on the ground. If so, how do you do it? Let us take the example of a child whose parents have been able to provide him or her at some point with a better income or better living conditions. This individual will evolve later in life. Is he or she going to fall back into poverty? Is this what you are trying to track? Over the last ten years you have been able to put into place not only support for the poor but also methods to analyze the results. Could you tell me how you do that follow-up?

[Gerry Mangan]

First of all, in very general terms, I suppose we learn from our experience and from the experience abroad what are the various changes needed in terms of child development. The concentration is clearly on child care, but good quality child care, particularly if there are problems with low parental education, or whatever.

One of the key phases in a child's life is the very earliest phase, in terms of their capacity later on to be successful in school and employment, and so on. That's generally accepted. So it's child care and early childhood education, and whatever. Then, of course, you need to support the family with income support and other supports, such as parenting, and so on.

So those, if you like, are the supports. But in trying to track that.... And I know you have this in Canada as well, as we've learned a lot from your longitudinal surveys and studies, and so on, which have enabled you to track child development and the impact of various influences.

My colleague Tim's institute is involved in that, so I might ask him to respond to that, and also on the consistent poverty measure.

[Dr. Tim Callan]

I think the consistent poverty measure is, very clearly, the main focus of the strategy as it stands. As for the tracking of progress, there is, as Gerry says, a particular new cohort study that will track 10,000 Irish children, I think it is, from close to birth, and then come back at key points in their careers—and also track a cohort of nine-year-olds, similarly. So these will provide interesting insights into policy as a new and exciting area for us. As Gerry says, you've already done some work in this area.

But in terms of what you can provide in regular annual pictures of where policy has got you to, it has to do, again, with these snapshots provided by the Irish element of the EU-SILC, which will be the main components that are used.

[Gerry Mangan]

Just to come back, although it's not entirely related to your question, we have a similar study going on with older people as well. The aim is to try to, again, track their development and see what were the various influences that had an impact on them, both positively and negatively.

In terms of the term “consistent poverty”, we understand what it means, but it's not an immediately understandable term certainly to people not from Ireland. I think you may have mentioned “persistent poverty”. Persistent poverty clearly would be poverty that continues over a period. Consistent poverty is really basic poverty, people who are lacking in goods and services that are reckoned to be basic necessities of life in the country.

We will send on a list of those to you, but that's what it is. It's essentially people who are really suffering basic deprivation. It serves to highlight or it enables us to prioritize what our policy measures should be. People often say it's harder to deal with relative poverty, but actually, it's harder to deal with basic poverty, because you're dealing with a diverse group of people with very fundamental needs. That's the priority we've set ourselves.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much. That's all the time we have.

We're now going to move to Ms. Dhalla, from the Liberal Party, for five minutes.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you very much for a lot of the insight that you've provided in terms of the plan you've developed. I know many of us around this table were extremely interested to hear from you. You have a great reputation here in Canada for all the work you've done, as individuals and as a nation, to combat poverty.

I have a couple of questions.

First, in reading some of your information in regard to your strategic plan, originally when you set out, I believe you had a goal of reducing poverty, to 9% to 15% in 1977 and 5% to 10% in 2007. Then you went on to revise that to reducing poverty to 2% to 4% in 2012 and eliminating it by 2016. Could you perhaps discuss with the committee what led to that transition or those changes in targets?

I know one of the changes you spoke about was the shift in lone-parent families, where lone parents, especially females, were initially staying at home, and then there was that transition made into the workforce.

What were some of the other factors that led to that change in target, and how did that evolve?

[Gerry Mangan]

In terms of the change in target, I suppose when the targets were set initially it demonstrated that we didn't really fully understand the level of poverty there was, the level of basic poverty. Then when we got up-to-date figures a few years later, we discovered, actually, that we'd made a lot more progress than we had realized.

As I mentioned, there was a lot more prosperity in Ireland, so we felt we could be more ambitious in setting targets to try to reduce poverty. In fact, we were going to eliminate it by 2007. But then, unfortunately for us, from a policy perspective, a new way of measuring poverty was introduced with this EU survey we mentioned. That showed, using different methods, that the level of consistent poverty was actually higher than we had previously believed it to be. So we had a topsy-turvy type of experience in relation to that. But we're now satisfied, clearly, that there's a solid basis, because it's the basis that's used EU-wide. Therefore, in light of that, we set new targets, which to some extent were higher than they had been before, but which were solidly based on a new way of measuring it.

In terms of how we're going to achieve this, from these surveys we know who the groups are that are experiencing basic poverty. We know who are vulnerable and we know why they're vulnerable. Therefore, the whole strategy is designed to target the needs of those people. A major group of them would be families with children, particularly lone parents but also larger families. As far as we're concerned, we look across to other countries that are much more successful in this regard, and we know they tackled it through putting in proper child care, education, training--all the methods I described earlier.

We know there are also long-term unemployed, a small group but still sizeable enough, and the same process is involved there. We have mentioned that we will take older people out of poverty by substantially increasing basic pensions. Then we'll tackle smaller groups, such as the homeless, such as people who were formally institutionalized, such as people who suffering from addiction to drugs, alcohol, and so on.

Migrants are a new and key priority, people who come from other countries. We're trying to ensure that they're integrated, that they're not ghettoized. We try to learn from perhaps mistakes that other European countries made, because of the fact that clearly we have learned how to deal with it.

So these are just examples of how....

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

I have a quick question before the chair tells me my time is up.

First, could you provide us with an example of some of the other countries you think have both achieved success in eliminating poverty and had great national strategies?

Second, with regard to the definition of consistent poverty that you use, could you provide us with some of the 11 benchmarks you have identified? That would be extremely helpful.

Last but not least, you've talked about some of your national goals and your vision; you have talked about the analysis you've done and having clear objectives, measures, and benchmarks. How have you translated that vision to a local level to ensure there are local grassroots community-based solutions?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Gerry, there are never any quick questions around here, but do your best. We're over time, but just do your best in terms of answering as quickly as you can.

Thanks, Gerry.

[Gerry Mangan]

Well, I think what I will do in relation to the first two questions is supply you with the information in terms of other countries and the benchmarks and whatever.

In terms of locally based solutions, at the local authority level we have social inclusion units coordinating the activities of local authorities, and they are also part of a county development process whereby they're trying to achieve both economic and social development. They work very closely with non-governmental organizations and in relation to community development. We could supply you with plenty of information on that too; it would be impossible to describe it very quickly for you, but we can supply that information, and I know my colleagues will assist in that respect.

[Kevin O'Kelly]

Chair, could I make one very quick point around trying to reach the targets, the issue raised by the last member?

We're under no illusions; meeting these targets will be extremely difficult. We have two particular challenges. The first is the downturn of the global economy and the impact it will have on the Irish economy, which is a very open economy in international terms. We won't have the resources we've had over the last 10 years to direct towards tackling poverty.

The second point is that we're trying to reach these targets in an expanding population. Our statistics office estimates that in the next eight to 10 years, the population will increase by about 20% to well over 5.2 million, and to reduce poverty in an expanding population will in fact be a major challenge for us. We're not under any illusions about that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Kevin.

We're now going to move back to the Conservative Party. We're going to start with Mr. Brown, and if we have some time, we'll have Mr. Wallace.

Go ahead, Mr. Brown, for five minutes.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today. Through modern technology we have the ability to do this.

In fact, you just hit on one of my main questions. We all know the challenges the global economy is having right now, especially in light of energy prices, and we know that not many countries are going to be immune from any potential downturn. Should there be this period of likely economic difficulty ahead, how will your government ensure that the progress achieved over the past 10 years with respect to poverty is maintained and that continued progress is made to reduce poverty between now and 2016?

[Gerry Mangan]

I think one of the things we have learned through the process is that there will always be very substantial resources devoted to combatting poverty and social exclusion. I think we'd be confident, hopefully, that we'll be able to maintain in real terms the resources that are currently available; the degree of improvement will be affected.

People often ask me what will happen to the targets. I say the targets will be met, but it might take a few years longer to meet them because of the slow-up in resources. Our economists--again from my colleague here at the institute--are predicting that the economic downturn we're currently experiencing will not last too long and that the basic fundamentals of our economy are sound. I certainly hope they're right, from our perspective.

In this instance, we believe the process will work to ensure that the resources that are there will continue to be managed more effectively. I've been around a good while; I've seen ups and downs in terms of economic development, and I often say the downturns provide opportunities to get rid of wasteful practices, to get rid of schemes that aren't working particularly well, and to have a leaner--meaner, if you like--system going forward, so that when the economy lifts up, the new funds that can then flow in will be used to better advantage.

I think that irrespective, in a way, of what happens to the economy, there is always a need for proper management, setting goals, setting priorities, and setting realistic targets to get the best return from what you're applying in terms of resources, personnel, and so on.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

A little earlier it was said that the lights went on. What exactly made the lights go on to decide to tackle poverty?