Human Resources Committee on March 12th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That would be great. Some of the members would like to see that information.

Thank you once again for taking the time.

We'll take a few minutes to switch our witnesses.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I want to welcome the Honourable Deb Matthews, Minister of Children and Youth Services, Minister Responsible for Women's Issues, and chair of the Cabinet Committee on Poverty Reduction. Thank you very much for taking time out of your very busy schedule to be here today.

Maybe this is not much of a segue, but your government has just funded an organization called Pathways to Education that we're going to be hearing from. I think they have done some amazing things. I want to thank your government for funding them. I think they're doing a great job.

I know you're going to talk to us a little more about some of the strategies your government has been trying to look at in poverty reduction, as we as a federal committee in HR study the whole issue of poverty.

I will give you the opportunity to make some opening remarks, and then we'll go around the table and go back and forth with some questions on what you are trying to accomplish in Ontario.

Welcome. The floor is yours.

[Deb Matthews, Minister of Children and Youth Services, Minister Responsible for Women's Issues, and Chair of the Cabinet Committee on Poverty Reduction, Government of Ontario]

Thank you very much, Chair.

First of all, I want to say thank you so much for inviting me here today. I'm very excited about the strategy we've tabled and embarked upon in Ontario. I'm delighted to have the opportunity to speak to the committee about what's in the strategy, how we got here, why we're doing it, and how we're going to move forward to achieve the success we are determined to achieve.

I want to start by saying that I was happy to see in the budget that there are some initiatives that will directly improve the quality of life and the standard of living for kids living in poverty. The increase to the WITB will directly help low-income families. Thank you for that. The housing initiatives are, of course, very helpful. The increase in the CCTB is also appreciated. I will talk a little bit more about that a little later in my remarks.

I want to start by talking about why we embarked upon a poverty reduction strategy. We are all elected people in this room, and we know that the issue of poverty is one that has been raised by a solid and committed, but small, group of people, particularly among faith-based organizations and social justice organizations, for a long time. They have been making the moral argument, what I call the moral argument, that to have the levels of poverty we have in this country, in a country as rich as the one in which we live, is simply not morally acceptable. That is as true now as ever before. But what has changed a little bit is the economic argument. There is now a growing understanding that we can't afford poverty. Poverty is too expensive.

I don't know if you've seen the Cost of Poverty report that was recently released by the Ontario Association of Food Banks and Don Drummond, chief economist at TD. It makes the argument that poverty costs every household in Ontario an average of $3,000 or close to $3,000. That's the cost of poverty. So it's not just about them; it's about all of us.

The other kind of economic consideration is a demographic consideration. As our population shifts, we need to make sure that every child who is born in this country or who comes to this country--everyone--is given the opportunity to achieve his or her full potential. We need all people at their best. So we have now both a moral and an economic imperative to really address poverty and to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to achieve his or her full potential.

That's really what has motivated us to embark upon what some people say is a topic on which you'll never win. They say that poverty has always been with us. If you think you can make a dint in it, well, good luck to you. But we look at our seniors and at the progress we've made in seniors' poverty. We know that the rate of poverty among seniors is now at around 3%. That has come down enormously over the past many years, because government decided that we needed to act on it, and we did act on it. The success we've had with seniors we can have with other segments of the population living in poverty.

I want to say that this was an issue that was really pushed hard by the women's caucus. It was the women in our caucus who made it our top priority. And when the women's caucus decides that their top priority is poverty, then we will act on poverty, because we don't stop until we're done. So it was the women's caucus. But then it was embraced, I have to tell you, by the entire caucus, and particularly by our leader, and thankfully by our finance minister, because that matters.

So what did we do? We had a line in our campaign platform before the 2007 election that committed us to developing a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy, with measures and a target. We committed to building on the Ontario child benefit, and we committed to working with our stakeholders to develop that strategy.

I was given the enormous opportunity to lead our poverty reduction strategy. We had a cabinet committee--it's now transformed--that was 15 members. We recognized that this was not something that one ministry could do on its own.

We all have a role to play in the reduction of poverty. The inter-ministerial nature of the work goes through every initiative in our strategy. It really is at the foundation of what we're trying to do. We have to work together in a more coordinated way.

One of the most difficult decisions we had to make was where to start. If your job is to reduce poverty, where do you start? We knew we had to start somewhere. We had to refine our scope.

So we started with kids. We started with reducing poverty and increasing opportunity for kids. We did this for the very good reason that the evidence is abundant and very clear that you get the best return on investment when you make it as early in a child's life as possible, as early in a person's life as possible, even prenatally. The return on investment is much greater the earlier you start.

We wanted to start with kids, and that's what we did. Our strategy addresses all people living in poverty, but the initial focus is on reducing child poverty in this province.

We embarked on a consultation strategy. I travelled around the province. I met with groups of people. We tried to get as broad a community representation as we could. Most importantly, we wanted to hear the voices of people living in poverty. We wanted to hear from those who weren't known to be part of the poverty community--business, police, others who had a stake in reducing poverty but weren't already part of the conversation.

I think the most important thing we did was to listen. And we did listen. We engaged MPPs from all sides of the House in poverty reduction consultations in their own communities. That in and of itself was very important. MPPs from across the province started to understand poverty, to understand the reality of poverty in their own communities. Even though we as elected people are as close to our communities as anyone, there are still stories that members needed to hear about how poverty impacts their communities.

We had wonderful participation in the consultation. We had a website that listed questions that we were interested in hearing feedback on. We had over 600 submissions from organizations and individuals to our website. We had people meeting around kitchen tables, around boardroom tables. They embraced the opportunity to participate in the development of a strategy.

I think one of our great successes over the course of our year was that the conversation changed. When we started talking about poverty reduction, it was a somewhat acrimonious conversation. There was deep distrust between those who were concerned about poverty and government. We worked hard to build a strong sense of trust. People who had been protesting on the front lawn of Queen's Park were now inside, sitting around the table, figuring out how to move forward on it.

There was a wonderful transformation of the tone, so much so that when we released our strategy in December, there was overwhelming support for it, even amongst those whose initial focus was not child poverty. I think that was a good year.

What's in the strategy? The title of our strategy is Breaking the Cycle. Our real focus is on breaking that intergenerational cycle of poverty, so that kids growing up in poverty are given the opportunity to be successful. It's about more money in the hands of low-income families. People made it very clear in our consultations that if you want to reduce poverty, that means more money in their pockets.

So the strategy is to be $1.4 billion annualized when fully implemented; $1.3 billion of that will be an income transfer, through the Ontario child benefit, directly into the pockets of people living in poverty.

I want to give you a quick example of what the strategy means. When we were elected in 2003, a single mom with two kids, working a full year, full time, would have had an income of just over $19,000, only a couple of thousand dollars more than she would have had on social assistance. When this strategy is fully implemented, her income will have gone up by more than 54% to over $30,000—the same woman with the same kids, still working a full-year, full time, minimum wage job. The difference between trying to make ends meet on under $20,000 compared with over $30,000 is enormous. It means more stable housing. It means better food. It means the kids aren't going to move from school to school as frequently. It's going to mean that the kids will have an opportunity to participate in some activities outside of school. It will make an enormous difference in those kids' lives, opportunities, and success.

That will actually be achieved even without more federal investment than is already planned. The big movers behind this are the increase in the minimum wage and the Ontario child benefit.

So for that group we will see success. Those kids will be moved from well below the poverty line to nicely above the poverty line; it's not in the lap of luxury, but it's above the level of poverty.

It's about money in your pocket, but it's also about a full range of programs to promote academic success and moving into work, into employment. So it's about before school, after school, and pre-school programs. It's about summer jobs for kids.

The strategy very much takes a community-based approach, so we have initiatives in it to help communities develop capacities to determine their own strategies. We don't expect communities to develop strategies that actually increase income, but we do expect communities to develop strategies that increase opportunities for social engagement, and we've seen some wonderful examples of that already.

We have some targeted programs aimed, in particular, at a group of kids for whom I know we can do far more: the kids who are wards of the crown. They are remarkable, wonderful kids who just need the opportunity to achieve their potential. They are kids who, by definition, have experienced severe trauma, and we need to do a better job for them—and we're doing that.

We have a section in our strategy called “Smarter Government”. We heard everywhere we went that there was a lot of money wasted in the delivery of service for people, that services were difficult to access, that we had a lot of work to do to get our act together to make sure we spent our money on initiatives that actually improved the well-being of people in the community. We know we have some difficult work ahead of us on that, but we are committed to doing it.

Part of our strategy is legislative. We've introduced legislation—in second reading now—which will make this the first of a series of poverty reduction strategies. It will mandate that future governments renew a poverty reduction strategy every five years. It will commit those governments to transparency, that is, to measuring and reporting annually on their progress.

We are committed to measuring our progress. We've identified eight indicators, three of which are income-based and three of which are education-based, because we know that the best protective factor against poverty as an adult is education. So we want our kids to be doing better. And we are committed to reporting on those indicators every year. We have set one target; the target is to reduce the number of kids living in poverty by 25% over the next five years.

That will improve the standard of living of all kids living in poverty and lift 90,000 kids, including those I talked about earlier, up and out of poverty altogether. In order to achieve that we all need to work together, and that is another foundational principle of our strategy. This is not something the Province of Ontario can do on its own. We need everyone working together with the same objective.

We are very explicit about our request to the federal government, and very pleased, as I said, with the increase in WITB. On the target indicators, there are two things we're asking the federal government to do. One is to increase WITB to $2,000 a year. It's now up to over $1,600--thank you for that very much. We're also asking you to increase the NCBS by $1,200 a year. If you do those two things, and if we do what we're undertaking to do, and the economy.... We're very clear that we need a certain economic growth to make this happen, but they are reasonable assumptions in our model. If we all work together, we can achieve this; we can do it. And we lay out how it can be done.

There are also some other initiatives that don't relate to the target but certainly affect poverty and well-being that we are asking the federal government to come to the table with, to be part of.

You are probably all familiar with the inequities in employment insurance. That is a very serious problem for us, an increasingly serious problem. An unemployed worker in Ontario receives on average $4,600 less than an unemployed worker in Alberta or anywhere else. That's not okay. It's not fair. It's time to fix that.

We need a renewed commitment to early learning and child care. This is extremely important. If we want kids to do well, they need to have that early learning. If we want parents to work, we need to have child care. We need a renewed commitment to early learning and child care.

We need to work together on housing, and we have seen some very promising steps there.

We need a targeted commitment to improve the quality of life and well-being and the opportunities of aboriginal peoples. We really need to get back to doing what we need to do so that aboriginal kids growing up are given the opportunities to be successful.

I'm going to close there and throw it open to questions. I'll leave it with you there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Minister.

We're going to start. The way we work here is to have seven-minute rounds of questions and answers. Everyone will get a chance, all parties, and then we'll move to five-minute rounds after that.

[Deb Matthews]

It sounds like a boxing match.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Exactly, although this committee has worked pretty well together, so there is not too much boxing--not yet, anyway.

We're going to start with Ms. Minna. You have seven minutes.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming, Minister. I'm very proud to have you here, as I have followed your career for some time, if I may say that at this committee. I know that your commitment to these issues has been longstanding, so I'm very proud to see that you're actually in a position now to make some of those things happen.

By the way, the women's caucus in Ontario pretty much reflects the women's caucus in the Liberal Party nationally in the sense that the last platform that called for a national poverty strategy was from our women's caucus as well. So we are in sync in that sense.

I want to ask a few questions. A lot of what you've said is excellent, and I'm so glad the province has taken this direction. We had the Caledon Institute here earlier this week. One of the things they mentioned--among the ones you have just mentioned, such as housing and employment insurance, of course--was social infrastructure, in terms of looking at healthy communities, recreational and artistic programs, things that create a healthier environment for children in poor families and communities. You're talking about children, and I'm wondering if that's an aspect you have looked at.

Maybe you can do that one quickly, and then I have a couple of other things.

[Deb Matthews]

There's no question that social infrastructure is essential to the health and well-being of a community. We heard over and over, everywhere we went, that access to services was very difficult for people living in poverty. Everybody expressed it in a different way, but the idea of a community hub, a place located in their neighbourhood where people could go to access services....

We believe schools are a natural place. We want to use the infrastructure we already have because they're everywhere. They're located in every community and they're underused. So after school, in the summer.... We believe schools have a very important role to play, partly because they're already there, but also because for a lot of families growing up in poverty their sense of what a school is isn't necessarily positive. There's a reluctance to be part of the school community. When it's time for their kids to go to school, the kids pick up on the fact that school might not be a friendly place. The more we can bring community into schools, the better off we think kids will do in school.

Schools are part of the solution, but of course we need more social infrastructure. Schools can't do it all, but we think schools are important.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I have three other areas, very quickly. One is the national child benefit, as you referred to it. Again, most social activists and anti-poverty groups have suggested to bring that up to $5,000; you said $2,000. I've got a couple of questions. Is the $2,000 in Ontario because of your contribution?

[Deb Matthews]

The WITB we want to go to $2,000.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Okay, got that.

[Deb Matthews]

And we want to increase the NCBS by $1,200, an increase of $1,200, which would take it to—

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Which would go to about $4,000-something.

[Deb Matthews]

Yes.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Okay. So you're close to the $5,000. I just wanted to clarify that. I think I got that wrong.

The others are the early learning and education program and the early years program. Obviously, I think most of us have accepted the fact that zero to three is very fundamental and zero to six is very important to children. Quality early education and child care programs are absolutely necessary. What would Ontario need to make that happen in terms of being able to provide an early education child care program to every child who needs it? What would it need from the Government of Canada? What kind of partnership?

[Deb Matthews]

What we would need immediately is.... What we did when the agreement was cancelled is we took the last payment, divided it by four, and stretched it over four years. That four years is coming to an end a year from now. If we do not get that $63.5 million, it will mean the closure of spaces and the cancellation of subsidies. We are now in the process of quantifying what that means. Every community delivers child care, so it's different in different communities, but it is.... We're really very excited—

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

In your view, how critical a piece is this to the reduction of poverty strategy?

[Deb Matthews]

It is enormous, for the reasons I mentioned earlier. One of the measures we are going to be tracking is the early development indicator. That's the readiness to learn. We know that kids who are exposed to early learning do better on EDI scores than those who aren't. We know that families living in poverty don't have the opportunity to engage their kids in those things that enhance their ability to learn once they arrive at school.

So increasing the EDI scores.... The correlation between socio-economic status and EDI is as clear as can be. Getting those kids off to the best start possible is very important for their whole success. We know if kids arrive not quite ready to learn, every year that passes they fall further and further behind. Some of you may have seen the Toronto Star. The Toronto District School Board released its grade 3 scores I think a couple of weeks ago, based on socio-economic status and income in the neighbourhood. There is a clear correlation. Kids living in poverty are not doing nearly as well, even at that early age, and we know EDI as well. We need to be investing in those kids because we are going to be counting on them as we get older.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you very much.

My time is up. I'll see if I can sneak in at the end.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I don't know if you're bilingual, but the next questions will be in French. I'll give you a second to get set up.

Madame Beaudin, you have the floor, for seven minutes.

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

I want to thank you and welcome you.

I thank you very much for what you said about prevention which is an important component of your strategy to reduce poverty, especially with very young children, up to the age of five.

Would you be able to provide us with some examples of best practices or local initiatives that have had more impact than others?

[Deb Matthews]

I'll respond in English. I apologize.

Thanks to the federal funding, we started the Best Start Hub program in the province of Ontario. They were pilot programs, and we've been unable to move forward with them for financial reasons.

There's a wonderful example in Hamilton of a Best Start Hub centre. It's a very vibrant, exciting place to be. It's in a low-income neighbourhood, where kids can come and be part of child care, or the parents or caregivers can be there with their kids in an environment that is productive.

Public Health comes in. They do well baby checkups. They do prenatal education for high-risk pregnant women. They do postnatal child development programs. They do a range of services that really are all about building on the capacity of the parents. Let's never forget that parents are the most important influence in a child's life. They are supporting parents so they can be the best parents they can possibly be, and they are providing other community supports, professional community supports, where they're needed.

We can do that all in one location where parents are comfortable, where they know where to go to access the services they need. Some of the screening that's done there is hearing, vision, development screening, so we catch the kids as soon as possible and get them into whatever the kids need so they can achieve their potential. It's all happening in one place, in the community, in an environment that's very, very welcoming. It's a great model.

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

You said that this program has not been extended because of a lack of funding. How was it funded?

[Deb Matthews]

We're continuing to fund some of them and we would like to have a lot more.

In my own community of London, the local municipality and school board, plus some other provincial and probably federal programs, are coming together in a hub to provide supports for families in low-income neighbourhoods. This is happening spontaneously in some places, because providers are increasingly understanding that we need to coordinate our services best and look at it from the perspective of the people accessing the services, as opposed to our silo government approach.

There are some good examples of where the community is coming together, but I think there's potential to do far more of it.

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Would I be mistaken in stating that, ideally, our government should be active in those fields of responsibility in the case of child benefits and family support, for example, and that, at the same time, on the ground, at the community level, we should maintain some type of recurrence of funding in order to allow those people who are in direct contact with families and children to continue their work?