Human Resources Committee on May 11th, 2009

[Tanis Crosby]

Thanks, Paul.

One of the key solutions we've found is supported housing. It integrates individuals who've experienced homelessness into communities so that housing doesn't become ghettoized. One of our programs is called WISH. It has been recognized as a best practice nationally by CMHC and received a national program recognition award from YWCA Canada. It's one of only two in Canada.

We help women who are leaving the shelter system by providing them with their own apartments. We provide financial trusteeship and management. We provide them with life skills development and 24-hour assistance. We give them the tools they need to be successful and independent. Of the 24 women we have in the program right now, eight are now volunteering. Three will be attending post-secondary education. Individuals who have been in this program have told us that this has saved their lives. We have women who have been on the streets in every major city in the country who are able to rebuild their lives, who are able to seek treatments for addiction and mental health problems. It is helping women who have been homeless to gain the independence they deserve.

One of the challenges for this project, though, is that it's not sustainable. We're running at a loss. We're making up the difference with fundraising revenue. And in this climate of economic instability, we're not certain that we can raise the difference this year. So it's an innovative practice that has no funding agreement tied to inflation that allows us to pay people what they're worth. It's managed by Wanda Hill, who is incredibly passionate.

And this program needs to happen for men, which is why we've been working with the Salvation Army diligently since 2007 to try to get it going for men. But there's just no funding.

So innovative solutions exist that incorporate best practices, that provide people with the opportunity to link in and be integrated within the community and become independent, but they're not appropriately funded.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move on to Madame Beaudin. You have seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much.

I would like to thank all three witnesses for being here today. I was smiling when you were talking about Centraide. I come from Quebec and, as you might know, I worked for Centraide. I like to say that I worked, amongst other things, on the initiatives which were launched under the 1, 2, 3 GO! program, which were funded by Centraide. The initiatives, which took place at the neighbourhood level, were for newborns and children up to the age of five years old.

Let me give you an example. Say we decide to put a playground for very young children, ranging from newborns to children of five in a neighbourhood, but that the speed limit for cars around this playground is 70 kilometres an hour, we would have to work with the municipality to bring down the speed limit. We would also have to inform people living in the area about the fact that the playground will be mostly for very young children. We would have to work at three levels if we decided to go ahead with this type of project. We would have to inform the community as a whole, we would have to make the people living in the neighbourhood aware of this new playground, and we would have to work with people as far as the physical environment of the playground is concerned.

I also appreciate the 211 service. You are right: it is great that the information is immediately available to people, rather than people being told that they have to find the information as best they can. Other services provide information pertaining to the municipality. Community and neighbourhood organizations can quickly provide people with this type of information.

We also talked about best practices and interesting local initiatives. In order to determine which measures worked best, I put a question to people who appeared before you. In Halifax, there is a particular phenomenon. Indeed, according to statistics, the poverty rate seems to have gone down for men and young people, but it has not fallen much for women. Why do you think this is? Do you have an answer to that?

[Tanis Crosby]

Where to begin? I wish I knew the answer to that. I'm going to talk about Spryfield, because this is an example of community mobilization.

The YWCA was a partner with United Way in Action for Neighbourhood Change on local solutions. I think this will highlight some of the policy barriers. In Spryfield we were part of Action for Neighbourhood Change. We heard from the community that they needed child care. Last year, we secured from the province a local child care expansion grant of $1.4 million. It took two years to develop. We secured the funding, and we wanted to build a child care centre. Spryfield has the highest number of low-income single mothers in Nova Scotia, yet it has no licensed child care. So how do you support single mothers in accessing work and school when there's no child care? We saw that as an opportunity. Yet now, when we're on the cusp of developing this child care centre, one of our greatest challenges is making sure that those who need it most can get access to it, because of the way portable subsidies are instituted in our province.

We want to develop a federal poverty reduction strategy that will create meaningful, marked change. We need to look at the alignment of the provincial policies and how that translates on the ground. I know a single mother of four in Spryfield who can't go to work because she doesn't have child care. She's now divorced and doesn't have any support. For her to go to work, she would need to have an income of probably $40,000 a year to pay the child care, because our child care subsidy maxes out at $400 a month. So she doesn't have the ability to go to work. All of those barriers need to be systematically removed.

I think local solutions are best, but they need to be joined with things like non-profit-owned child care. We need subsidies for child care that are linked to the community, not just to the centre. We don't have subsidies for the child care centre in Spryfield. How do you make sure the child care being developed is accessible to those who need it most?

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

Shouldn't the government fund existing initiatives? You know what your community's needs are. You would like to have more childcare centres. So shouldn't the government support existing initiatives?

Early childhood centres help kids who otherwise would not have been reached. I experienced this in Quebec, and more particularly in my riding of Saint-Lambert which is close to Longueuil. Kids who otherwise would have stayed home, and yet who would have benefited from being helped to prepare for school, received the support they needed in these early childhood centres. They start going to these centres between the ages of eight or twelve months. Parents can even drop off their kids on a part-time basis or if they call ahead of time. So when a parent is at the end of his or her rope, at any time, they can call and drop off their child. This allows the childcare workers to help both the child and the parent. If you help the child but not the parent...

Isn't this the type of thing that the government should support?

[Tanis Crosby]

You know what you're talking about.

Absolutely, yes. We secured the child care expansion loan for Spryfield because of federal funding, but in the community of Spryfield there is still no child care centre. So this community with the highest number of single mothers in Canada, central Spryfield, has no child care centre. When we build the child care centre, because of the way the provincial funding is set up for subsidized child care, there's no way we can be assured that the child care spaces we create are going to reach those who need them most.

How do we align provincial policy around access to licensed child care that will advance a national poverty strategy? I think we need to look at a national child care strategy. We need to look at the Quebec model. Quebec has encouraged and facilitated the growth of non-profit care. You don't have a situation such as exists in Nova Scotia, where you have a high-needs community that has no child care centre. We ought to be able to assume that child care centres exist where there are areas of need, but that doesn't happen in Nova Scotia. There's a disconnect between where child care centres develop and where the need is. Where the centres develop and how high-need families get access to spaces is also a significant policy concern.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to move to Mr. Martin, who has the floor now.

You have seven minutes, sir.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much. There's a lot of good information here. I have just a few comments and then a question.

I was struck, Bob, by your story of the heart transplant patient who ended up homeless. That's the second story of a similar nature that I've heard in two days here. A woman came forward last night who's here today. Her name is Deborah. She had breast cancer and she ended up homeless too.

Is this a trend that's beginning to happen in the country? It's really, really disturbing, and I need to know.

Across the country over the last two years, we've been meeting with people in different communities who are struggling with the issue of poverty. A lot of them are like you and are working really hard. They're very committed and passionate about the work, but you know, they have greying hair and they're getting older and getting tired. They're wondering if there's ever going to be any support coming from above to help continue this work or to pass it on to somebody else. It's just difficult, difficult, difficult; nevertheless, the effort is being made.

That takes me to Paul.

Your initiative, in my view, is to rebuild communities to make them places where people can participate, play, be safe, and all of that. It's about building neighbourhood capacity.

I ran into a program in Thunder Bay where they have some very desperate aboriginal poverty. It's just unbelievable, particularly in the winter. People come in from remote communities looking for something, but there's nothing, and they end up sleeping on the streets at 40 below zero, with little food. They've begun using the building neighbourhood capacity funding under an urban aboriginal strategy from the federal government to actually build neighbourhood capacity. It's an interesting program that's just getting off the ground. They're very excited about it. It's had some success, but again, it needs more money. As a matter of fact, because the money was cut back, they've lost some of the really good programming that they were able to do.

So there is good stuff happening out there.

I just wanted to mention this whole question of the poorest of the poor being women and how, over the last 10 to 15 years, as it seems to me anyway, we've put in place disincentives as opposed to incentives for people, or we've tried to use the stick instead of the carrot.

Do you remember the story of Kimberly Rogers in Sudbury, the young woman who decided to go back to school and get off welfare? She went to college not knowing that the government of the day had changed the rules such that you couldn't be on welfare and also collect student loans. She applied for a student loan and got it, got caught, got charged, and was found guilty. She was assigned to house arrest. On the hottest day of the summer in August 2002 or 2003, she and her unborn child died in her apartment. It was just tragic. Not only are governments capable of doing some wonderfully great things for people, but they're also capable of putting policies in place that can actually kill people.

Having said all that, if you were us and looking at a national strategy to deal with poverty, where would you begin? Anyone?

[Robert Lundrigan]

I believe it's the partnering. Tanis can tell you how many people they're serving across Canada. They have first-hand information. I believe we have that with the Salvation Army and the United Way projects. It's not only the three of us; there are many across the country. You have to find a way to dialogue with us, specifically on the level of asking what we need.

On any given day, we have 40 men in our men's shelter in Halifax. There are upwards of 80 others in another shelter that simply provides them with a bed. In our continuum of care, we would like to move those people through ours because we provide three meals a day, we'll take them to the doctor, we'll sit in the emergency room because that homeless person thinks he's invisible. He knows he has cancer, but if somebody doesn't speak for him he will never get to see the doctor. We would like to move more of those people through.

We also have candidates who are re-employable. We have a gentleman right now who has been living in the woods for three years. He has skills, a job ethic, a work ethic, and now he has a job but he cannot support himself. If the only reason we do it is because it's the right thing to do, to get this 27-year-old man back into a productive job, then we have to do that.

To go back to your question, I believe you have to have a dialogue with a number of partners across the country and ask what they need to move more people from a shelter bed to a job, to be self-sufficient. We don't have to discover America again. The map is already here. We simply need to open the pages and ask the Salvation Army, “What can we do?” Ask the United Way “What can we do?” Ask the YMCA-YWCA, “What can we do? Tell us what you would do today to move some people back into affordable housing and back into productivity, or least be able to care for themselves.”

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Each of you represents what we would refer to as the NGO sector, the non-government sector. I know in the United States there's a huge push, started by President Bush--it didn't work very well because there were no resources with it--and now it's supported by President Obama: the faith-based initiatives, where they throw money to community groups to actually do some of the stuff that government would typically do, or what you would expect government to do.

Are there any thoughts on that?

[Tanis Crosby]

We already do band-aid service that is required by the provincial government. As service providers, both Robert and I provide services that would otherwise be mandated by the government. We do it less expensively and we do it because we're able to raise funds from the public to bridge the gap.

The problem is that we're reaching a perfect storm. Demand, funding, capacity to secure revenue, everything is merging. At the same time, an estimated 60% of the non-profit executive directors are going to retire in the next 10 years. As a result, we have significant issues as a sector in our ability to respond to the need that is increasing and our ability to deliver the service with diminished capacity for resources from government and also to secure additional fundraised revenue. I think we're reaching a critical mass in terms of the non-profit sector and its ability to provide those critical services that we rely on in Canada to reduce and alleviate poverty.

I think that underscoring a poverty reduction strategy needs to be how to ensure that the sector that's delivering those critical support services for people who are impacted by poverty can be sustained. I can't underscore that enough. We are at a critical impasse. My organization six years ago had $156,000 in core funding. We now have zero. We've tripled the number of women we serve. We've reduced our overhead by 50%. We're at a very critical impasse; the funding is project-based and it runs out. What we need to be doing is delivering to people who need us the most, not scrambling to write the next project grant.

I find it interesting and a touch sad that recently, on May 8, a call for proposal was put out by HRSDC for the social development and partnership program, and one of the priority areas was strengthening the voluntary sector. Again, this was project funding for non-profit to get funding on how we can strengthen the sector. What I need to strengthen my sector is funding, so that I can deliver the service. It is not project funding that will end in three years when women who are homeless and hungry are knocking on my door; they need critical service now.

We have solutions. We have proven solutions. As Robert said, I could build a 12-storey two-bedroom apartment building tomorrow and put single mothers in it and allow them to go to university. If I had subsidies, I could fill a 57-space child care centre in Spryfield with only subsidized parents, so those parents could access education and work opportunities and get off income assistance. Those solutions exist at community. We have barriers in accessing funding and policy to support good funding that will solve the right problems.

[Paul Shakotko]

I wanted to echo what Tanis and Robert were saying. You ask a very large question, and I can only answer it in three ways.

The first one is that I'd look for the strengths of those organizations that are already doing work on the ground. You have three here; there are many more out there. There is a lot of great work going on. Let's build on that. Although we can't touch on it in a short little meeting like today, there's a huge opportunity for you to dialogue with other NGOs out there that are doing good work. We certainly open our door to having that conversation as often as necessary to get the needle moving on the poverty agenda.

The second one is that even though it's a crisis right now, I think whatever you do needs to focus on the long term. We've been around the table long enough that short-term solutions in some cases do more harm than good in the long run.

The third one is let's take some risks. The place-based work that has such great impact in Halifax was a risk taken by the federal government four or five years ago to launch Action for Neighbourhood Change. It was worth the risk and I think the return on investment is quite significant. So the third one is to take some risks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks.

Thanks, Tony. Thanks, Paul.

Mr. Komarnicki, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I may not use all of my time, but I certainly am well familiar with your organizations and do ring the kettle every year. I think it's important for us to become engaged and involved in the community.

With respect to the United Way, both the cities of Weyburn and Estevan, Saskatchewan, are in my constituency. Estevan, in particular, met or exceeded their goal 25 out of 26 years running, and they've involved the community through an all-nighter. It starts and it goes through until Saturday noon, and they've done very well. They've also engaged the community in a significant way to get behind what they're doing and they've supported the organizations that way.

One of our presenters mentioned that the federal government perhaps could look at encouraging donations to organizations like yours by providing a far greater writeoff for donations than we do now. They made this one suggestion. Do you have any thoughts on that particular issue in terms of getting the money coming in not from government but from the public on that side? Any thoughts?

[Tanis Crosby]

Yes. I imagine Canada is certainly advocating for that, and I think that could be one part of the strategy. But I want to underscore that additional philanthropy doesn't necessarily lead to social justice, and we do need to work at the underlying conditions. Even if we were to, say, offer tax incentives that would increase individual donations in Canada by threefold, will women still earn 71% of what men earn? Will aboriginal women still experience the greatest depths of poverty in our country? These are complex, interrelated issues and they're not easy to solve.

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

I appreciate that they need to be addressed and I'm not taking away from that. Given that and tackling that, this is another suggestion that might actually bring more dollars to your organizations. Is that something you're agreeable to or not?

[Tanis Crosby]

Certainly I think it's one piece of an overall strategy, but I wouldn't see that as the silver bullet.

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

Okay, does anybody else want to make a comment?

[Robert Lundrigan]

For our centre on Gottingen Street, which houses 40 homeless men and up to 20 addiction recovery individuals, plus for our street assistance, our donors subsidize us now to the tune of $400,000 a year. So anything we can do to stimulate donors...because we're provincially funded for the other part, which is less than one-third of the actual operating costs.

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

People feel good in giving, and we want to encourage that. If you can encourage people to do that, I think that's a good thing.

Having said that, the other aspect I've been hearing is that a lot of times the programs we design with the funding we have put out a call for proposal that's very specific. It doesn't necessarily match the need on the ground. The dollars going out there aren't necessarily going to those who need it most, but they are going somewhere to meet a particular need. So a lot of organizations are applying to the call for proposal and meeting that need when really they should be getting funds there.

When I look at what we've been doing over the years, I see that a certain maturation has taken place, and a lot of organizations like yours have the infrastructure already in place. It has been on the ground for a long time, and they are able to deliver because they have a delivery system in place for those who need it most. Maybe we need to rearrange our thinking, saying that the dollar should go to where the people on the ground or the NGOs say, “Here's what our need is; design something to meet that need, so the dollars can go that way.” Do you have any thoughts about how we can improve what we're doing in terms of our grants, our call for proposals, and all the other things that come from the Government of Canada and the Department of Human Resources? We'll just go and work our way through it.

Go ahead.

[Robert Lundrigan]

One of the frustrating things with the last two calls for proposals was that we felt we were in competition. We felt we were in competition for those funds because our idea, particularly one for just over a million dollars, was for a mental health housing project. For the Salvation Army, the criteria that we would have to operate under, compared to what another local organization would have to operate under, would be significantly different. Our accreditation standards and those kinds of things operate that way.

We feel that the call for proposals is almost like this: can you find somebody who's the low bidder? Not necessarily does the low bidder always have the best program, so--

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

Just as you're saying that--I know you want to share--I know that you want to get away from that area of competition, because what you've said is that it's the two, one, and one; the need is the same and you need to be able to channel that through various organizations and providers so that it's not a competitive thing, but more of a cooperative partnering thing. Maybe we haven't dialogued sufficiently to see what's out there, but the last thing you want to do is create competition between organizations for providing services.

[Robert Lundrigan]

That's why Saint Leonard's Society, the Y, and the Salvation Army have partnered right now to move forward on more support of housing: because we don't want to be competing with each other. If a call for proposal were to come out, we're going to have to scratch our heads and do it jointly--

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

And ask, “Can we get together?”

I think there were some other comments along the way there.

[Paul Shakotko]

I'll just add to that. If I could make a recommendation on the calls for proposals, I know that some of our organizations chase the funding, so the programs switch annually depending on where the funding is. When you're doing this ping-pong back and forth, one minute they're chasing program funding for early years, and the next year they're chasing funding for youth strategy. You can see what's going to happen, which is that they're going to start chasing funding for seniors' strategies. What happens is that this ping-pong nature doesn't allow the work to be longer term and doesn't allow it to be innovative enough to really sink in.

Perhaps you can make a call for proposals that allows those organizations that have been doing this work for a long, long time to have a little bit of innovation and a lot more flexibility, let them target the outcomes, and let them report on their outcomes.