Human Resources Committee on May 11th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'd like to welcome everybody. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we're going to continue our study of the federal contribution to reducing poverty in Canada.

Here we are at our first meeting on the road, in Halifax. I want to thank all our witnesses for being here today. We're looking forward to hearing what you have to say. I also want to welcome to the committee Megan Leslie, who doesn't need welcoming to Halifax, and the rest of my colleagues who are here today.

We're going to get started. I believe you each have a five-minute opening statement, and then we'll just go around. We have an hour and a half, so we have lots of time to ask questions. If your opening statement happens to be a little bit more than five minutes, I think we'll be okay with that.

We'll start with Andrew Waugh, who is here from Nova Scotia Legal Aid.

Welcome, and the floor is yours.

[Andrew Waugh, Barrister and Solicitor, Nova Scotia Legal Aid]

Thank you.

Good morning, honourable members.

I would like to take this opportunity to speak to you about poverty as a human rights violation and about concrete actions the federal government can undertake to ensure that Canada complies with its international human rights obligations and ceases to violate the rights of some of its most vulnerable and marginalized citizens.

As you are likely aware, Canada is a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It imposes fundamental legal obligations on Canada, including a duty to ensure that all citizens enjoy the right to social security, which includes the right to adequate social assistance and the right to an adequate standard of living. Currently Canada is in violation of both obligations.

For many years, the federal government reported to the United Nations that the conditions in the Canada Assistance Plan were the cornerstone of Canada's implementation of its obligations under the covenant to ensure that people living in poverty had an adequate standard of living. However, since the repeal of the Canada Assistance Plan in 1996 and its replacement by the Canada health and social transfer, the United Nations has been very critical of the lack of conditions imposed by the federal government on its social transfers to the provinces.

The Canada health and social transfer imposes only one condition on the provinces with respect to social assistance: there can be no minimum residency period as a prerequisite to eligibility for social assistance. Otherwise, the provinces are free to establish whatever type of social assistance scheme they wish, including those that violate rights contained in the covenant. This stands in stark contrast to the conditions the federal government imposes upon the provinces with respect to the health transfers via the Canada Health Act.

In 1998, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights criticized the government for its hypocrisy in ensuring basic human rights by attaching standards to health care, while at the same time stripping away basic rights to social assistance. At that time, the committee wrote that Canada

did, however, retain national standards in relation to health, thus denying provincial “flexibility” in one area, while insisting upon it in others. The delegation provided no explanation for this inconsistency. The Committee regrets that, by according virtually unfettered discretion to provincial governments in relation to social rights, the Government of Canada has created a situation in which Covenant standards can be undermined and effective accountability has been radically reduced.

In 1998, the committee also specifically recommended that Canada consider re-establishing a national program, with specific cash transfers for social assistance and social services, that would include universal entitlements and national standards.

In its most recent review of Canada's compliance with its covenant obligations in 2006, the committee once again expressed concern that federal transfers for social assistance and social services to provinces and territories do not include standards in relation to some of the rights set forth in the covenant, including the right to social security. The committee also urged the state parties to establish social assistance at levels that ensure the realization of an adequate standard of living for all.

It is clear what Canada must do to fulfill its legal obligations under the covenant. Covenant standards must be adopted with respect to social transfers to the provinces.

Subsection 36(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982, created a constitutional commitment jointly on the provinces and the Government of Canada to provide, inter alia, essential public services of reasonable quality to all Canadians. Accordingly, subsection 36(1) can readily be seen as both a constitutional source of and a vehicle for the government to establish covenant standards with respect to its social transfers to the provinces.

Finally, it is important to keep in mind that the standards being discussed would not be national standards dictated by Ottawa, but would be international standards contained in the covenant ratified by 160 countries. The standards would reflect shared worldwide values rather than those having their origins in Ottawa.

There is no excuse, in a country like Canada, which prides itself on respecting human rights, both domestically and internationally, for these rights violations to continue unchecked. The current economic downturn means that more and more Canadians will be forced to rely on social assistance. They will endure further indignities due to the inadequacy of social assistance rates across the country.

Canada's next review of its covenant obligations before the UN committee is in June 2010. It is my sincere hope that at that time, Canada will be able to tell the committee of its success in living up to its covenant obligations, which are owed to all Canadians.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Waugh.

We'll continue right along. Ms. Ross, you have five minutes.

[Rene Ross, Executive Director, Stepping Stone Association, Community Coalition to End Poverty in Nova Scotia]

Thank you.

The Community Coalition to End Poverty in Nova Scotia was officially formed in 2007 with the goal of a collaborative, comprehensive, and effective poverty reduction strategy for Nova Scotia that would loosen the undeniable grasp that poverty has on the livelihood of all Nova Scotians by providing immediate, intermediate, and long-term sustainable change. The coalition includes non-government organizations and individual advocates working to end poverty and create equality. On October 17, 2007, on the international day for the eradication of poverty, CCEP Nova Scotia—as we are now known—launched the framework for a poverty reduction strategy for Nova Scotia.

We anticipate that throughout your travels and work studying poverty, this will be thematic. You will hear about the widening gap between the rich and the poor, the choice between heat and eat, and the challenges in our rural areas versus the challenges in our urban cores. You will hear about malnourishment, slumlords, addictions, child apprehensions, lost jobs, the lack of affordable housing, and the mother who cannot go to work because she has no child care. You will hear about poverty.

The federal government should not rest contently in looking for ways to contribute to the elimination of poverty. Rather, we must all accept that the federal government is a critical cornerstore in the collaborative elimination of poverty. It is time for the provincial and federal governments to stop sloshing the duty of responsibility onto the other when both have an equally crucial role to play.

Current income assistance rates in Nova Scotia hold individuals and their families well below the poverty line. Income assistance rates in Canada are abhorrent. Nova Scotians are struggling with utility bills. They are struggling to provide the nutrition they know their children require. They are struggling to keep their homes warm enough to be livable. They are struggling with their health as poverty creates emotional, psychological, and physical stressors. Tens of thousands of Nova Scotians are struggling for basic survival today, in Canada, in 2009. We all know there are many in this province who are more vulnerable to poverty due to factors such as gender, age, race, skin colour, ability, sexual orientation, criminalization, socio-economic class, and geographic location within the province, as well as status as a migrant indigenous person or refugee. The factors that pull more women than men into poverty are rooted in gender bias and discrimination against women. This is illustrated through the reliance on income assistance, child and family responsibilities, and the earning gap amongst women, to name but a few.

For single mothers, their primary responsibility of raising a family presents significant challenges to furthering their education and to securing meaningful employment. We must continue to remind ourselves that poverty is policy-created, created by an era of poor-bashing, disempowerment, and discrimination. People who live in poverty feel as if they themselves are being blamed by society for their poverty. They are being judged as lazy, immoral, and incompetent and are consistent targets of suspicion of fraudulent and criminal activity. People believe that going out and getting a job is the solution to their problems, that this is easy to do, and that those who do not do this are simply lacking the energy and motivation.

Policies such as strict welfare-to-work mandates and invasive monitoring both reinforce and are reinforced by such perceptions. It is a sad state of affairs in our province when our job as advocates of relaying the causes and consequences of poverty becomes easier because those who never dreamed they would be faced with these insurmountable challenges soon will be.

Honourable members, it would be impossible for a group such as CCEP to ignore the elephant in our room today. For a group that was founded with the intent of creating a poverty reduction strategy for the province, it may appear our work here is done. After years of lobbying, holding marches, going to ministerial meetings, hosting community workshops, and then waiting for nine months of no follow-up from the government to community about the status of the poverty reduction strategy, mere weeks before an anticipated election call the provincial government has told us that now we have a poverty reduction strategy.

Now we, as advocates, are trying to determine where the federal funds are coming from, which money is old and which money is new. There are a few targets in this strategy but no benchmarks. We are trying to determine what the role of the Canadian government will be in all of this. Will it be on board? To be honest with you, criticizing something that we have lobbied for, for so long is not easy. It's as if you asked someone for a piece of cake and they passed you a bowl of flour. It's a start, but you do not have the other ingredients, you don't know when and if they are coming, and you don't want to give the flour back because who knows if you will get it next time and if and when that next time will be.

Honourable members, here are the recommendations from CCEP, who work with and represent people living in poverty. This is what we need from you. We would also like you to review our recommendations in more detail from the framework that was provided to the clerk.

We want the provision of universal access and better funding and coordination of policies, programs, and services.

We would like you to create, foster, and sustain social policies and programs to enable families and individuals to meet their basic needs and empower them to participate fully in society.

We would like to entitle all residents to a livable income, decent working conditions, and employment benefits.

End the broken promise that is child poverty. Establish a comprehensive, accessible, coordinated early childhood development strategy.

Help us to become a better educated population. Help us, the advocates, the front-line organizations who are working on the front lines of poverty and the community, to communicate the true causes and consequences of poverty.

And just to follow up, it was very challenging to do this presentation, a five-minute brief for you today, simply for the reason that we know you've heard it all before. We know you've heard all the stories. We know that in your jobs as members you understand what is really going on. Unfortunately, these stories and these realities don't seem enough for action from provincial or federal governments, and we would like you to act.

Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Ross.

I'm just wondering, for the benefit of the members who are not from Halifax, if you could tell us a bit about the Stepping Stone Association and what you guys do.

[Rene Ross]

Stepping Stone is a not-for-profit organization that provides support to the street-based sex workers in Halifax. We are almost 20 years old.

We work from a harm reduction model, and we are the only organization of our kind in Atlantic Canada. We work with approximately 115 former and current sex workers per month, and we were founded following the murders of three street-based sex workers 22 years ago. Their murders remain unsolved today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much for the hard work you do.

Not to minimize what you said earlier, but I would venture to say that not all members of Parliament know this issue as well as you'd probably hope they do. While much has been discussed over the years, I think there was an article in Maclean's indicating that almost two-thirds of members of Parliament have been here less than five years. So I appreciate the fact that you're probably frustrated with this message, but I can assure you that it's an important message to continue to get out and to continue to educate people about.

I realize some members know a lot more. Our good friend, Mr. Martin, who encouraged the study, has been a champion for poverty for many years, and it was his encouragement to the rest of this committee that made us decide we should do this.

I appreciate your patience and hard work, but I would say that education continues to be an issue that we need to work on all round. I appreciate your being here to work on the rest of us who need a little more information on this. So thanks, Mr. Ross, for being here. We look forward to the question and answers portion.

[Rene Ross]

Thank you very much. I would also like to extend our gratitude to Tony for helping to do this.

It is our hope that with this increased education comes collaboration amongst non-profit groups, community agencies, and those working in government, because it is our shared duty to relay the causes and consequences of poverty to Canadians.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Ross.

Now we are going to move to Claudia Jahn. You are from Community Action on Homelessness. If you could talk a bit about what your organization does before you get into your presentation, that would be great.

[Claudia Jahn, Program Director, Community Action on Homelessness]

Certainly. First I would like to echo Rene's comment by thanking you for being here. There's a lot of criticism sometimes that so many reports have been written about poverty and not much action follows. I actually appreciate every standing committee coming to Halifax, because it is sometimes important to talk about an issue again and again, and I see that we are making some inroads. The subject of poverty is all of a sudden on every agenda. If you look to the United States, you see that all of a sudden mayors and politicians are being elected on the basis of their poverty and homelessness agendas. This is a huge success. I really would like to thank each one of you for coming here.

My name is Claudia Jahn. I'm the program director of Community Action on Homelessness here in Halifax. We administer and share a delivery model with Service Canada, the homelessness partnering strategy.

You are here to examine the federal contribution on poverty in the country. I can speak for my area of expertise, which is homelessness and the homelessness partnering strategy, which is actually working very well. I must say there are lots of compliments for this program. For the last ten years it has been not only the only program in the country that addresses specifically homelessness, but it is distributed in consultation with the community and it's praised for its innovative model.

Behind every successful program are people. The people in Ottawa and here at the local level, all Service Canada representatives, are working very hard to keep this program alive and to keep it going. Everybody knows that to make it successful, time is of the essence. Everybody knows that individuals are affected by this program. That is why everybody feels very passionate and is working hard to make it work.

There are some points of criticism in regard to the program. One of them is the short-term nature of it, which makes strategic planning impossible. Here in Halifax we cannot plan for the next two years. Since the province is not at the table with us in regard to homelessness, it is impossible for a non-profit organization to plan for the future.

The existing provincial bilateral affordable rental agreement doesn't go deep enough to really address the needs of the most vulnerable population, the people who are depending on social assistance or low-income wages. The provincial program is intended for market rents, which are not attainable for the population we are talking about. It's crucial for us that the federal government stay involved and take the leadership on the homelessness issue.

I'm hoping the federal government can lead the negotiation with the province and encourage all the partners to come on board and solve this problem in partnership. Moreover, our organization looks into the needs of the people living in shelters, which we have currently done by interviewing 158 individuals in the shelter and service system. We identified that there are so many needs that it's really a complex need, and other departments have to come on board. It is not only the Department of Community Services that has to address the issue, but the Departments of Health, Justice, and other sectors as well.

As Rene stated before, poverty is created and maintained by policy and by programs. We see certainly that different areas are affected. Adequate income, adequate housing, and adequate support: these are for us the solution to addressing homelessness on a national level. For my area, for Community Action on Homelessness, it is therefore important to create suitable housing for everyone in need here in the city, providing support systems.

Probably 85% of individuals living in the shelter system suffer from mental health issues. So there is a high need for support services and different degrees of support services.

Coming back to the homelessness partnering strategy, I would like to add, as I mentioned before, that the short-term nature of the program has to be looked at. The allocated funds are certainly not enough. We received just over $3 million over two years. It has been the same amount for the last 10 years. And the administrative burden on the non-profits to apply to and report on this program are just too high.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Before we get started again, Andrew, I would note that I had asked everyone else to explain what they do, and I think I understand what legal aid is, but why don't you talk a bit about what you're involved with.

[Andrew Waugh]

I practise in the area of poverty law, which is sometimes difficult to describe. I guess I'll basically describe the areas of work I generally am involved in. I represent people with respect to social assistance, residential tenancies, Canada Pension Plan appeals, and human rights complaints, and basically anything where people living in poverty come into contact with the justice system and don't fall under the regularly provided legal aid services in family and criminal law.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to have a couple of rounds of questions. The first one will be seven minutes of questions and answers.

We're going to start with Mr. Savage. Apparently, you're close by as well, or you're from the area.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

First of all, I welcome committee members to Halifax, which is one of the largest suburbs of Dartmouth here in Nova Scotia.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Beautiful Halifax, Megan.

This is the first travel we've done on this committee, just to set the context. We started this study over a year ago and spent some time defining poverty and looking at market basket measures and LICO, and then we looked at what other countries have done. Some have had some good success. We also looked at the provinces who have had anti-poverty strategies in place for some time, notably Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and now Ontario, and most recently, of course, Nova Scotia, which has introduced an anti-poverty strategy, as I think Rene mentioned. So we've done that.

We didn't have any meetings from June until about February, because of the election and all of the fun and games in Parliament after the election and just before Christmas. We've picked it back up and decided to travel. This is the first meeting we're having here in Halifax.

I appreciate that you've come out. I know that you've spoken before. I know Claudia has spoken to a Senate committee on anti-poverty. She's appeared before another Senate committee with Catherine Callbeck, I think. I've certainly been to lots of forums where I've heard a combination of you speaking on this issue. So I know there is a certain sense of fatigue from people who have been dealing with this for a long time.

But I'm very pleased, Claudia, to hear you say that it's good to talk about this. I think it is. I think I can say for this committee that there is a serious intent that we can produce a report that we would be proud of and that would say, these are the ways Canada can reduce poverty over the next few years--and then of course it's up to political will. But it's important that we put a stake in the ground, and that's what we're trying to do.

I referenced the anti-poverty strategy that was unveiled by the provincial government just in the last little while. I wonder if any of you have had a chance to have a look at it. Obviously it hasn't had a chance to work its way through in any way, but I wonder if any of you could give me your thoughts as to whether it's heading in the right direction, and if it is, what's good about it, and if it's not, what is not good about it.

[Claudia Jahn]

I would like to comment on the affordable housing part. I'm also a member of the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia.

We examined the Nova Scotia poverty reduction strategy with regard to affordable housing, and certainly it doesn't go far. It basically sounds as though it's just an introduction of existing programs, and as we all know, the existing programs are not really working, looking at the numbers. We produced the Community Action and Homelessness community report card on homelessness, so we have the numbers of existing affordable housing units in the province and how many were created over the last 10 years, and this surely indicates that it's not enough.

The poverty reduction strategy, in my opinion, is not a strategy. It doesn't have any targets. It doesn't have any money behind it. Even from other provinces charging the strategies.... There is already a lot of criticism coming out in the discussions I'm taking part in.

This is a ten-year plan. We should be really mindful that we are dealing with people and people's lives, and they cannot take ten years to solve a problem. At a conference in Calgary one author really got me thinking. We are doing all this work, and we were all happy to have a strategy, but we have to stop sometimes too. Are we doing the right thing, or are we just following a model from the States, which sounded so exciting--the ten-year plan to end homelessness, the ten-year plan to end poverty? Some of these things are like slavery. He said slavery wasn't ended by saying, “Okay, 25% of you stay on for a while, 10% I release this year, and in five years 25% more will be released, and it will be ended.” We have to make a decision ourselves. Do we want to end poverty? Then it has to end right now, not in ten years; it has to end now.

This is my criticism with the ten-year plan in general. Our poverty reduction strategy for Nova Scotia seems to me to be a cut-and-paste from existing programs. That's all it is, so it's really a piece of paper. As long as there is no passion and money behind it, if we want to end this, it's just hot air for me.

I feel strongly. Everything is, of course, money-related, but here in Halifax, for instance, we're looking at over 200 homeless people, while 1,200 individuals accepted the shelter system in the last year. Let's say 240 people are living in the shelter system. Shouldn't we be able to solve this problem and create 200 units of affordable supportive housing? We are able to do that. With a national housing strategy with the right money behind it, we would be able to solve this in two years.

We don't need ten years and we don't need a poverty reduction strategy. We should be more pragmatic. That's my opinion.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

First of all, I want to mention that Merlin Watt has joined us. He organized a small informal meeting last night that Tony and I were able to join. We had some people there who are living in poverty. We've had people who were working on it. It was very useful, so thank you for putting that on last night.

I want to talk about housing a little bit further, then, since we're going into that area, which everybody we've met with has identified. Mike Kirby from the Mental Health Commission indicated that as a priority, it would be number one. Number two would be that the social infrastructure in Canada is not designed for people with mental health issues, episodic-type illnesses. We heard from the Canadian Association for Community Living and the Canadian Paraplegic Association that housing is a key priority.

You all have some understanding of this and some expertise in this. I know I'm getting short on time and I'm sure we'll pick this up later, but let me ask you a specific question: if we're going to support housing, what is the federal government's role?

It needs to support housing, and the government has indicated $1 billion for social housing, but it was very quick to say that this is not a long-term strategy, but a short-term one. It's a long-term need, obviously. Is it in construction of housing for people who have specific challenges, whether mental health issues or addictions? I was going to ask about the role of subsidies for existing housing for people to get into, but rather than go over my time right away, maybe I'll come back to that, Chair, and somebody else may pick up on that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Madame Beaudin, you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you very much and thank you for being here today.

Ms. Ross, you talked a lot about non-profit organizations and local initiatives which are very important to reduce poverty. In what ways could the federal government help these non-profit organizations who work on the front lines? I come from Quebec. You may already know that in Quebec there is a parent act respecting antipoverty.

I really have two questions. This parent act represented an exceptional mobilization of the civil society; it was a partnership. I have a question about the help the federal government can give to non-profit organizations but also on the issue of your antipoverty strategy. Have you been involved, as a local partner, with this strategy? Were you contacted? Do you wish to be involved to define, as you were saying, more precise targets? Has the civil society been involved from the start in the drafting of this strategy?

[Rene Ross]

Thank you very much for your question. Welcome to Nova Scotia.

The Community Coalition to End Poverty in Nova Scotia actually represents a multitude of groups, organizations, health boards, the Dalhousie Legal Aid Service, and front-line service organizations. CCEP is a large group from across Nova Scotia.

Our framework for a poverty reduction strategy was developed in collaboration with them and their voices at the front lines with people living in poverty. That is one of the very important jobs we in the non-profit organizations do: ensure that their voices and their needs are at the forefront, because they know best how to improve their lives.

Our collaboration within the community is there and it is strong. When we talk about a framework for poverty reduction at the provincial and federal levels, we have spent years having marches, rallies, and workshops--long, three-day workshops. There have been countless hours of work by some advocates. We actually have five pages worth of recommendations for the federal government that have been clearly thought out, debated, and discussed for years.

There are a lot of immediate things the federal government can do. We need the federal government to increase its investment in the Canada social transfer. That is paramount.

We need a supportive housing policy that will promote housing retention and stability. We need to have available funds prioritized for non-profit-housing providers. These are just a few of the many things the federal government can do.

As I said, I am the executive director of a non-profit organization. We all work very closely together. In our organization, we see everything: addictions, mental health, family breakdown, violence, and crimes against the individuals we work to support. We support 115 people, the most marginalized in society, with a few staff and funding that has remained at the same level for 15 years. This is not just at our organization. This is for women's centres and transition houses. We need that kind of support to be better able to do our jobs. We also need the provincial and federal governments to step up and help to take responsibility for this, because over the years, we've continually felt that it is, “Go to the non-profits, go find a charity, go to the food banks.” A lot of responsibility has come down on us, and we are just being weighted down and weighted down.

To go back to the poverty reduction strategy, the community has done this work, and has been doing this work for years, and has sat in countless meetings. Again, we really need to have the political will. We have studied at length Quebec and have looked towards that model. I will say that there are a lot of things in Quebec right now that we're a little envious of. Let's just say it that way.

Thank you for the question.

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

Do you want to add something, Ms. Jahn?

[Claudia Jahn]

Yes. I would like to add something in regard to housing and homelessness. The federal contribution is helping here, of course, but what we need is a bigger investment. Demonstrated by the huge successes that these kinds of initiatives bring, led by the non-profits, it is just remarkable. We are just opening 20 units of supportive housing in a complex here in Halifax in the next couple of weeks, whereby individuals who are currently housed in the shelter system will move into these units and where we will have support for the upcoming years. If we could just have more of these, it would alleviate so much pressure on the system. It would just be remarkable.

We might be able to build housing like this every two years. We have five priorities in our community plan, including the construction of new development, renovation of very old housing stock, some money for programming, and a small margin for research. That's all we've had for two years, and we never knew if we would get it, which makes it really difficult.

So for me it's really an easy answer: we just need more money. The non-profit sector knows what they have to do very, very well, and they know what's needed, so we don't have to examine this any more. Working in a shelter, they know the needs of the shelter residents.

Thank you for your question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. That's all the time we have now.

We're going to move to Ms. Leslie.

Welcome again. You have seven minutes.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the warm welcome, since I don't normally sit on this committee.

I'd like to extend official greetings and welcome all of you today to the riding of Halifax.

Thanks to the committee for coming here today.

Welcome to Mike, who is in the riding with the best view in all of Canada: a view of Halifax.