Human Resources Committee on May 11th, 2009

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

No, no, the view from Halifax is Dartmouth.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you to the witnesses for appearing today.

Just so the committee understands my relationship with the witnesses, I've done quite a bit of anti-poverty work with all three of them. Andrew and I worked together on a charter challenge based on poverty, and Rene, Claudia, and I have worked on the Community Coalition to End Poverty and other initiatives as well.

My first question is for Andrew. I'm thinking about the international covenant on social and economic rights and the fact that it says we have a right to an adequate standard of living. I'm thinking as well about the fact that in Canada we don't have a poverty line, that it's a bit of a myth. Folks think the low-income cut-off is the poverty line, but it hasn't been accepted by the Canadian government as a poverty line. We also have the market basket measure, but again, this is not accepted, so there is no official poverty line.

I'm wondering how that plays into the fact that we have to define “adequate”. How would we define “adequate”?

[Andrew Waugh]

That's an excellent point. It's one the committee has mentioned several times, both in 1998 and most recently in 2006, and it has sort of called Canada to task for not having.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

When you say the committee...?

[Andrew Waugh]

I'm sorry. It's the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. That's the committee that parties to the covenant report to with respect to their obligations in fulfilling their duties pursuant to the covenant.

Most recently, in 2006, during Canada's last reporting period, the committee was specifically critical of that point you raise with respect to the fact that Canada has no official poverty line. The committee once again recommended that Canada should establish one.

As you point out, it becomes very difficult for anyone to assess the adequacy of social assistance when you have nothing to assess it against. Currently, as I know you're aware, the National Council of Welfare publishes its welfare incomes report, and I know it always uses LICOs to measure the depth of poverty that people on social assistance are in; that's basically the distance between the low-income cut-off line and the level of social assistance that's offered.

So certainly there are organizations out there assessing the adequacy, but whether or not the federal government can do that is a bit of a mystery, because, as I said, they don't have an official poverty line. So in order to establish standards with respect to social transfers around social assistance, I think Canada's adoption of a national poverty line would be a first step in being able to determine the adequacy of social assistance as offered by the provinces.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Great. Thank you.

I think part of what Madam Beaudin's question was getting at was that we need solutions, so what are some solutions? I think establishing a poverty line is a good first step.

Continuing with solutions, I'd like to ask you a question about jurisdictional issues. When you talked about dedicated funding with strings attached, modelled after the Canada Health Act, that really resonated with me, because that's actually why I decided to run for federal politics. I was hoping you could elaborate a little on the lack of conditions right now for federal transfers and the real need for those conditions.

[Andrew Waugh]

Sure.

The act that brought into effect the Canada health and social transfer basically said that the health transfers to provinces have to meet certain conditions that are contained in the Canada Health Act. If not, funding can be affected.

With respect to the social transfers, as I said in my presentation, there is nothing except the fact that a province can't have a minimum residency requirement as a prerequisite for eligibility and social assistance. That means if someone showed up in Nova Scotia tomorrow, they could instantly qualify for social assistance if they meet the eligibility criteria, even though they've just arrived in the province. That's the only current condition. Obviously, there's nothing there with respect to adequacy.

You mentioned the jurisdictional issue. As you know, provinces have certain jurisdictions and the feds have certain jurisdictions. The provinces are responsible for social assistance. The federal government can't swoop in and start designing social assistance programs in each of the provinces. But what they can do is use their spending power, which they've done with the Canada Health Act and our health care program, to effectively tell the provinces, we want to see X, Y, and Z when you establish a social assistance scheme. That's currently what they are not doing.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

You mentioned that there is currently no condition that social assistance must be provided.

[Andrew Waugh]

No. Technically, a province could choose not to establish a social assistance program. That would probably not last for long. According to the legislation, that could occur.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thanks.

To Claudia and Rene, I want to ask you about housing. The tent city in Toronto, which you probably know about, happened about 10 years ago. When folks were moved out of the tent city, most of them were given housing as part of a “housing first” option. I think about 80% of those folks are still housed, showing that it's not about addiction and it's not about mental heath. We can actually keep people housed by putting them in housing. I know it's a bit radical.

I was hoping you could comment on the “housing first” model as a federal initiative.

[Claudia Jahn]

It always feels like we have to laugh about it, right? Isn't it amazing? We move people out of tents into their house and they actually like it. Come on. Everybody in the shelter system could be housed. Nobody wants to be in a shelter system. Of course, it's absolutely possible. Probably 25% here in Halifax were just evicted, so it comes as a big shock and surprise to them. They could be housed again right away. Maybe we could have even prevented the eviction with some measures.

For the mental health clients, when I talk to each individual for one or two hours, you realize they shouldn't be there. If they had cancer or any other illness, they would be well taken care of. They belong in a hospital bed. They belong in a home. They cannot fend for themselves. We let the most vulnerable people really fend for themselves on the street. That's what we are currently doing. Every resident of a shelter can be housed tomorrow.

[Rene Ross]

Just to add to that, we see that on a regular basis. We have had a housing pilot program for just over a year. The funds came from Service Canada. One of the biggest challenges facing sex workers is the lack of housing. For sex workers, we get them into housing, and that's basic. We get them into housing, which we've been extremely successful in doing. I'd say that our success rate is 80%. But when we're not successful, that's due to the criminalization. Everybody asks why so many street-based sex workers are homeless. It's because they are criminalized. What happens is they get a house, maybe there's another charge that comes back, and they're off to jail for doing what they have to do to survive. Then they come out and their house is gone. That's the only difficulty we have in retention rates with the people we work with through the federal program. Then again, that's another thing we are lobbying for.

We've had an extremely high success rate. As Claudia said, we're actually surprised because it is that simple. The only challenges, aside from criminalization of people in poverty, is the discrimination that happens with some landlords--not all. It's also from society and other residents. Again, that just shows that we have more work to do as a whole with education.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks.

We're going to move over to Mr. Komarnicki. You have seven minutes, sir.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you.

And thank you very much for your insightful presentation. I certainly appreciated hearing from you.

I know--and Claudia mentioned--that we know a significant amount about poverty. It's a question of money in part, and I'm sure it's the case that you could always have more federal dollars. I think it involves more than that. Currently, as you know, under the housing portion of it, we have $2 billion over the next two years, and of course the homelessness strategy has been extended for five years at $1.95 billion. Education is important, as is skills upgrading, and we have $13.2 billion over two years. Of course, with respect to federal programs for families and children, there's somewhere in the range of $13 billion, so there's a lot of money in the pot. You can always use more, but it seems to me that there's also a need for working through the collaborative maze that's required to say how you best use what you have and maybe prevent provinces from clawing back. When federal governments put money in, provincial governments take it back--not all of them, but some of them, depending on their income support programs. So it seems to me it's more than just money, although that is always accepted. The question is whether you can put more in.

I know the federal-provincial-municipal jurisdictional issue is a big deal, and I want to talk about that a little bit, but I'll maybe start by talking to Andrew about the definition again. How would you define poverty, and how would you measure it so that we know what we're dealing with and how we're doing on a year-to-year basis? Maybe you can just address that, and then I'll talk a little bit about the jurisdictional side.

[Andrew Waugh]

With respect to how one measures this, I'm certainly not--

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I'm asking you to define it.

[Andrew Waugh]

You want my definition. Okay, sure. I guess it's anyone who doesn't have the methods to meet their basic needs, where those basic needs would be adequate shelter, adequate food, and certainly clothing. I would also add education in there and the ability to meet their basic needs. That's certainly what the UN has said with respect to adequacies surrounding the right to social assistance contained in the covenants.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

You are saying “the ability to meet a defined set of needs”, and when you say “the ability” what are you talking about there?

[Andrew Waugh]

That would simply mean the resources to meet those.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

So you would make it a dollar figure per person or per family?

[Andrew Waugh]

Certainly there has to be a base level of money that is decided based on whatever measure of poverty we're using, whether it's the low-income cut-off, the market basket measure, or whatever Canada decides on. There needs to be an actual amount of resources that are made available to people, depending on where they live, to meet their basic needs.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

How do you measure what that need level is? How do you define it? How do you measure it?

[Andrew Waugh]

I don't really feel as though I can necessarily speak to the measurement. That would be more for an economist or a statistician, but certainly LICOs are widely used, and I don't see any reason why that couldn't be adopted as a national poverty line, although I know there are critiques of that. As I said, I'm not really in the best position to comment on those.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Then I guess we have to look at the kinds of things that would figure into poverty. You have housing, which is a provincial issue. You may have health, mental health, or drug addiction; those are in sort of a provincial area of jurisdiction. Income assistance is in a provincial area of jurisdiction, so you have the problem of how you work through that to deliver an end product that is acceptable. And because it's a jurisdictional issue, many provinces are very concerned about federal encroachment in areas that are under their specific jurisdiction. I know Quebec, for instance, has its own method of dealing with those issues and delivering them, but how do you suppose that can be dealt with? Currently, it's mostly by federal-provincial agreements, and there are hundreds of them. We're not talking two or ten. We're talking 400 or 500 various agreements expiring at different times, so it's quite complex in that sense. How do you make it easier? What's your suggestion? You have a number of provinces and territories, each with different programs. How do you deal with that in the context of our country, which is a federal system?