Human Resources Committee on Nov. 30th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I call the meeting to order.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), our study of the federal contribution to reducing poverty in Canada, I want to welcome our guests and say thank you very much for being here today.

Mr. Kube, we're going to start with you, sir. You're with the National Pensioners and Senior Citizens Federation. We want to thank you for taking the time.

We'll give the witnesses seven minutes each to do a presentation and then we'll do some questions and answers based on the time we have allocated.

Mr. Kube, welcome. We'll turn the floor over to you, sir.

[Arthur Kube, President, Head Office, National Pensioners and Senior Citizens Federation]

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I come somewhat with of a feeling of cynicism to appear in front of this committee. As an advocate of many years, I've appeared in front of committees similar to yours time and time again. As a matter of fact, as president of the National Pensioners and Senior Citizens Federation, I know that over the last three years you must have been in receipt of briefs we've submitted, briefs in which we've talked in great detail about the question of poverty.

Poverty among seniors is increasing. It's quite true that when you look at the statistics in terms of seniors' income, it's at a historical high, but, as they say, figures sometimes hide the truth. Seniors' poverty is increasing, especially among women.

I don't have to tell you--it's no great secret, and you know it yourself--that if a spouse passes away and the couple lived on guaranteed income supplements, the income is reduced to half, but the expenses remain very close to the same. Therefore it's no great secret why you'll find that the largest percentage increase in homelessness is now among seniors. I don't have to tell you that if you look at how a nation is judged, it's really judged on how it treats the most vulnerable people in its society.

As I said, we come in front of the committees and we know what has to be done. Basically, what has to be done is that you have to provide sufficient resources for people to meet their obligations to live a relatively normal life. How that is done is very simple: you have to increase income. The way you increase income is basically by increasing the guaranteed income supplement to a level that gives people enough resources to be able to function properly.

We know that every time the government is asked to increase income for people in the lower income bracket, they say, “Well, look at the cost”. But I also don't have to tell you that when you look at federal income as part of the GNP, it's been declining.

If you look at the question of the distribution of taxes, you will find that at one time, in the days of Minister Benson as finance minister, we saw a situation in which taxes were raised on the basis of approximately 44% from individual taxpayers, 44% from business, and the rest from fees and duties. You have given up the value of the federal finances to the extent that you can no longer meet the obligations to the most vulnerable people in our society, and it's just about time for that to stop. It has to be reversed.

Our organization, because we are concerned with seniors, feels that what is necessary is, in the first instance, an increase in the GIS to make sure that between the GIS and the OAS you have sufficient income to meet the necessities of life. Second, we feel that the time has come for a doubling of the CPP, because we have seen a great number of seniors finding themselves in poverty because of the meltdown that has taken place.

We also found out that the seniors who have gone into the market in terms of RRSPs are finding out that the accrued savings they get are only half what they expected, because the other half is used by service fees charged by the operators of these funds. In comparison, the cost of administering the CPP is less than half what it costs to administer RSPs and other securities. Therefore, I really think it's important to do these things.

On the other hand, when we talk about poverty, a lot of people talk about child poverty. Well, you know, when you talk about child poverty, you should be talking about family poverty. For instance, we found out among seniors that the only place the trickle-down theory really works in economics is from grandparents to grandchildren and children. We seniors are being called on more and more, because family incomes have either been static or declining. The pressure on seniors' incomes is becoming greater and greater.

Now, these are some of the difficulties, but let me tell you, I think these things can be overcome. I think what has to also stop is poor people being maligned. The difference between being poor and rich, in most instances, is just plain luck. Therefore, I think we shouldn't look upon it as welfare; it should be looked upon as assisting people who weren't quite as lucky as we were.

Again, I would refer you back to the brief we submitted. It's in your office. It describes in great detail how we feel poverty should be addressed and what is necessary to again bring some humanity into the process.

We go to church on Sunday, or we go to the mosque, or we go to the temple on Saturday and Sunday. On Monday we forget all about it. We forget that we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers. I'm sorry--maybe I'm the oldest here in this room--but I'd better remind you of it.

Mr. Chairman, I'm open to questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Mr. Kube. We appreciate that.

We're now going to move to John Restakis, from the British Columbia Co-operative Association.

The floor is yours, sir. You have seven minutes.

[John Restakis, Executive Director, British Columbia Co-operative Association]

Thank you.

Again, I appreciate this opportunity to address the committee.

Let me start by echoing the comments that my neighbour has shared in terms of the general drift of federal financing of services to the most vulnerable Canadians over the last 20 to 30 years. Our positions on those issues are virtually identical. Something has to be done systematically and fundamentally around how taxes are raised, where they're raised from, and how they're allocated to service the most vulnerable Canadians, including, of course, seniors.

I'm going to be addressing something much more specific targeted to the sector that I represent, the co-op and credit union community in B.C. I know that the committee has already received a deputation from the Canadian Co-operative Association. Some of the figures around the size and scale and constitution of the co-op movement in Canada have been provided, I think, in that presentation, so I'm not going to repeat that, except to say that the co-op movement in Canada represents a very diverse and a very vibrant sector within the Canadian economy. There are some 9,000 co-ops and credit unions operating in Canada, and they employ some 150,000 people across the country.

Thinking specifically about how the co-op sector and the co-op model can be related to the issue of poverty reduction, I want to just address three areas: first, reasonable economic development; second, job retention and employment generation; and finally, service delivery to marginalized populations, including seniors.

Any strategy to address poverty obviously has to take into account the question of employment generation and economic development, and any strategy that doesn't address that is not going to be addressing some of the root causes of poverty, obviously. In the area of regional economic development, what I will summarize in these comments is that it's important to think about and understand how cooperative approaches to regional economic development help strengthen regional economies, generate new employment, and make small and medium-sized firms, which are the bedrock and the backbone of most regional economies in Canada, more productive, more successful, and more able to compete globally.

We have studied in great detail the use of cooperative systems for sharing services and supports to small and medium-sized firms at a regional level. The evidence has been overwhelming that where you have government policies that promote the sharing of services and the cooperation of small and medium-sized firms that operate in the same sector or in the same market, those firms do better, they compete better, they generate more work, they generate more employment, and they distribute the wealth that they create through their enterprises much more equitably than simply ignoring them or promoting a form of development that stresses competition over cooperation. The details of this have been well documented by scholars internationally. Some of the instances that I provide as examples--northern Italy, Germany, and Spain--are indicated in my report.

The second area is job retention and employment generation. In addition to supporting a cooperative approach to supporting small firms, the use of cooperative models for both generating new jobs and using the co-op system to sustain and protect jobs that are already in place, has, again, proven to be very successful. In Quebec, for example, where the co-op sector has been partnering with the provincial government to use co-op systems to generate new cooperatives, the cost for the generation or the protection of every job is a fraction of the cost that is borne by either private or state-delivered systems.

Job creation using cooperative models is more productive and effective, and the co-ops that are generated survive longer than do conventional private sector firms. A 2008 study from Quebec indicates that over a ten-year period, some 64% of cooperatives are still in operation providing employment, providing economic benefit to the communities, compared to some 42% of private sector firms.

As a model, contrary to what many people believe, not only is the co-op model more durable and more successful in terms of survival rate, but also the spinoff benefits for regional economies are greater.

There are a number of reasons for that, and again I indicate some of them in here. But one of the most obvious is that for cooperative firms, which are owned and democratically controlled by their members, the profit motive isn't the only motive for running the enterprise. Creating employment and keeping jobs are at least as important. So for investor-owned firms that look for a very high return on investments, if that high return isn't met they're much more willing to close down a company than for a co-op, where if the rate of return is sufficient to make a living for the company, to keep the enterprise in production but still retain the jobs, that business will be kept open. It will not shut down simply because the rate of return isn't as high as investors would like it to be. That's just a simple economic fact around co-ops versus private sector firms.

The third item in job retention and creation is the question of business succession. One of the major causes for the failure of businesses, particularly in rural communities, is the lack of a successor to usually a family-owned firm. In a report that was recently done by the Fonds de solidarité in 2005, it's indicated that 70% of small and medium-sized firms do not outlast the first generation, and 90% do not outlast the second generation. And 70% of business owners thinking about retirement have yet to choose their successor. It's one of the most common causes of enterprise failure and one of the ones that is relatively easy to address if there is a strategic approach to business succession, particularly the support of employee buyouts for these firms.

Of all the strategies that have been used to save these firms, employee buyouts are by far the most successful, both in terms of saving the firm and in terms of keeping it going over the long term. And again, the details on studies that reflect on this are indicated in my report.

The final area I want to address is service delivery to vulnerable people. We have been doing a lot of research on the use of cooperative models for the provision of social services and social care to people who are unemployed, who are poor, who are living with disabilities, and to seniors and so on. We have shown how social co-ops, which are basically cooperatives that use the co-op model to train and employ people who are marginalized or otherwise not integrated into the labour force, are a key way of not only integrating and reintegrating people into the labour force who otherwise would be left out, but also improving and expanding the quality and the range of services they need to have a decent quality of life.

Social co-ops were pioneered in Italy at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. Today there are about 6,000 social co-ops providing employment to 160,000 people in Italy. And 15,000 of these people are people who are living with disabilities.

Just to give you a sense of the power of the model, those 160,000 people who are employed constitute 75% of the labour force in the non-profit sector in Italy, but social co-ops comprise only 2% of the organizations in the non-profit sector in Italy. So it's a very powerful model, and its impacts have made a fundamental difference both in the quality of life of the people they serve and in raising the standard of living of the people they employ.

Quebec is one area in Canada where a solidarity co-op model, which is basically the Canadian version of social co-ops, has been used to great effect, particularly in the provision of home care services in Quebec. They have been extremely successful, with some 42 or 43 solidarity co-ops in Quebec, and their market share of the home care sector in Quebec is growing.

So those three areas—regional economic development, employment generation and retention, and social service delivery to marginalized populations—are three ways in which the co-op sector generally, and the co-op model in particular, can provide some strategic benefits for a comprehensive poverty alleviation strategy.

I know that the Canadian Co-operative Association has called for a national strategy to address poverty, with measurable targets at all levels of government. We support that position. We also support the inclusion of specifically cooperative models for both economic development and service delivery to people who are vulnerable and need help.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, John. We appreciate that.

I'm now going to move over to Ms. Young, who is associate professor of law at UBC.

Welcome.

[Prof. Margot Young, Associate Professor of Law, University of British Columbia, As an Individual]

Thanks. It's really a pleasure to be here.

As you mentioned, I teach constitutional law and social justice topics, but I've also worked with a number of NGOs on things like poverty reduction strategies and documents to the United Nations about respect for Canada's international human rights commitments. I've also done some work on the guaranteed annual income. I'm not going to talk in detail about all of this, but I'm happy to switch topics during your questions.

I have three points I want to make, which I understand to be a part of a larger conceptual or organizational frame for thinking about the important work that the committee is doing. I want to begin by saying the obvious, which is that there is nothing about poverty in a rich country like ours that's inevitable. It comes from the kinds of choices and policies that get made by the different levels of government. So it's clearly addressable through government policies and choices, and through changing the ones that are currently in play. I would emphasize that much lies within federal jurisdiction that can address this issue.

My first point has to do with how we understand poverty. I would urge you to think of poverty in a wider sense and to understand it as more than a simple lack of financial resources. Of course the absence of resources is an essential characteristic of poverty, and it distinguishes poverty from other circumstances of well-being. But poverty is also marked by a social element—a social exclusion by inadequate access to public goods, to community networks, to resources, and to political capital. It's important to have this fuller notion of poverty.

This fuller notion of poverty is well accepted, and I may well be preaching to the choir here. But there are United Nations documents that consider poverty in the light of limited opportunity for well-being. Poverty means being adequately fed, clothed, and sheltered, but it also has in it an element of deprivation in terms of taking part in the civil, political, and social life of a community. So it's about affordable housing and having meaningful opportunities, in both the economic and the social spheres. You see this definition of poverty at play in Quebec's anti-poverty legislation.

To unravel this ball of yarn that is the poverty problem in Canada, a really important part is seeing poverty as not just a matter of economic status. It is also a social relation, a social status. It's a relative condition, and in a country like Canada, this relative aspect has to be taken into account. This is why the definitions of poverty in circulation that are so purely absolute fail miserably to capture the condition of poverty. They're just so profoundly unuseful--indeed, I think they're insulting--as a single method of talking about the incidence of poverty in our country.

I make these comments because they segue into another observation that I'd like to share with you. This is the key connection between the twin problems of poverty and inequality in Canadian society. I want to spend a few minutes on the importance of inequality and its growing presence in our country. This is a key component of our discussion about how to deal with the problems of poverty.

I want to do this by highlighting some recent work by two British researchers. This work is a smart and thorough gathering of a series of studies, a collection of data from countries around the world. These two researchers, Wilkinson and Pickett, describe what's at stake and point out the prevalence of inequality in developed societies.

As a backdrop to this debate, we know that Canada is one of those nations in which the rate of income inequality between the rich and the poor is growing. Recent OECD reports show that the gap between rich and poor in Canada is growing faster than in most of the 30 other developed countries that were looked at.

Just over a year ago, a leading Canadian economist said that when government backs away from investing in public benefits that help the majority of Canadians, and replaces these benefits with tax cuts that benefit the top 10% of earners, we exacerbate income inequality in Canada. She goes on to say that this is an important piece of the trend towards large inequality in Canadian society.

These two British researchers, Wilkinson and Pickett, whom I just mentioned, show very clearly that the sorts of problems commonly associated with those who occupy the bottom rung of the social ladder—social problems like ill health, violence, poor educational performance in children, and so on—in societies with high inequality are also more common among those who occupy the top rung. Although these problems do have a strong class gradient, being clustered in the bottom socio-economic class, the more unequal a society is, the more those problems are common throughout the socio-economic strata.

They talk not merely about poor health and violence but also about issues such as low levels of trust, mental illness, life expectancy, obesity, educational performance, and so on. These are problems that become large-scale, widespread social problems when the material differences grow between individuals in society.

These two researchers argue that income inequality levels in society are very predictive about the overall social health of a society. One of the ways of improving the social health of a society for all members of that society is to reduce inequality. When you do that, not only is the quality of life improved for those at the bottom, but you improve the quality of life throughout society.

This is the quote with which they end an interesting piece of work:

We have seen that the rich countries have got to the end of the really important contributions which economic growth can make to the quality of life, and also that our future lies in improving the quality of the social environment in our societies.

They go on to say that greater equality is the material foundation on which better social relations for all members of society are built.

Clearly for countries that are still developing there's something quite important about increasing levels of wealth and production, but for countries like Canada, they argue it's obvious from comparative data that the emphasis should be put on reducing inequality. The quality of life for those at the top will also improve with a reduction in general inequality. An important piece when thinking about what kinds of concrete measures should be put in place to deal with poverty is also to factor in what I think is a very cogent concern about inequality as well.

The last set of comments I want to make will focus on the mechanics of developing a poverty reduction strategy. It's obvious from the stuff I've read and from my experiences that this is clearly something that government can and ought to address. I think a couple of key elements need to be put in structurally.

First, I think it's important for the federal government to resuscitate the notion that we can have national standards that have real impacts on the quality of life by use of the federal government's spending power. This is part of Canadian history. It's a key component of how the national government has realized its important obligation in ensuring key national economic citizenship. It's a constitutionally legitimate exercise of federal jurisdiction. It has been a very significant mistake for the federal government to step away from the use of its purse in this matter to ensure, through conditions attached to that spending power, that we do indeed have national standards that will ensure there's a meaningful level of Canadian citizenship granted to everybody across this country.

Second, I think it's important in talking about poverty--and, moreover, in addressing it through what has to be a multi-pronged series of proposals across a spectrum of policy issues--to be sensitive to the most vulnerable to poverty and to talk specifically about who those groups are in Canadian society who disproportionately suffer poverty. We need to speak about aboriginal peoples, about aboriginal women, lone mothers--about women. I work on women's economic inequality, and I'm constantly frustrated by the failure of leaders to say the word “women” when they talk about poverty. We need to speak about persons of disability, recent immigrants, senior citizens, and of course senior women. We don't just collapse our expressions of concern about poverty into this general category of “people” and, perhaps, “children”.

I have a particular concern about speaking about poverty as an issue only in relation to children. Of course it's a key concern. and of course poverty has devastating impacts on children's lives as they grow up to be adults. But children are poor because the adults with whom they reside are poor, and so often those adults are lone mothers who suffer disproportionate rates of poverty. In this province in particular, we're a real leader in the country, if you could call it that, in terms of the incidence of poverty in a number of groups, but particularly in relation to lone mothers. I think the last data I saw approaches 50%.

So that's my second point on sensitivity to the most vulnerable: to name those groups and develop programs to address those groups in a way that's responsive to the conditions and the reasons why those groups are disproportionately living in poverty.

The third point I want to make about the development of the strategy is the importance of accountability measures. Many well-intended plans go astray because there's no tracking of whether they're achieving their obligations.

I know that this debate is taking place specifically in terms of the housing strategy bill that's before Parliament at the moment, but it's certainly an element in any poverty strategy by the government, as has been urged on you by a number of United Nations treaty bodies. Over the years, these bodies have been reviewing--with some quite pointed dismay, I should say--Canada's failure to observe its international human rights obligations in the area of social and economic rights. These groups have emphasized the importance of accountability measures.

I'll end by saying that there are I think two sub-comments on this concern.

The first is that targets and timelines are important. There need to be indicators that are well thought out and that measure the range, the depth, the duration, and the incidence, for example, of poverty. There need to be indicators that are generated or adopted formally so you can track poverty as it occurs in different sectors and dimensions across time. Also, targets need to be set.

I would argue for a timeline that sets a trajectory so that you can track and hold yourselves accountable to progress across that timeline. It's so you don't just have a goal at the end of a certain number of years and no tracking in the time to that goal, so that you end up as we do now, in terms of Campaign 2000, saying at the end of the day, “Oh my God, we really went astray”. If you have a trajectory with interim target points that you hold yourself accountable to, you know much sooner when you're going astray. That's an important piece.

The second piece is that in order for those targets and timelines to be meaningful and for the public to have confidence in them, there have to be mechanisms that hold the government accountable for compliance with those kinds of explicit commitments that are represented by those targets and timelines.

There is a variety of accountability structures that one can employ. I'll talk about a few. One is an annual progress report that's tabled in Parliament, as discussed with the public, and that makes transparent what's happening year in, year out.

Another is a standing committee of Parliament that tracks progress, monitors the plan, helps guide its evolution, and holds public consultation--it's important--with public stakeholders and civil society. Also, it's important that reports or recommendations from the standing committee are tabled in Parliament so that they too are public and transparent.

A public advisory body is another idea. It should be one that's appointed and funded by government and that represents a broad cross-section of civil society groups that are experts in this issue, such as experts on specific targets and sectors of what are the elements of a poverty reduction strategy, and that includes, importantly, people living on low incomes.

Another idea that's used in some jurisdictions is government funding of an independent research council or research office, maybe something like the National Council of Welfare, which produces and, again, makes public--that's an important piece--annual progress reports, benchmark assessments, and study and research on social and economic equality. Also, it would monitor, from this outside expert perspective, the government's progress on meeting the plan's objectives.

There are also quasi-judicial mechanisms, such as putting social and economic conditions or some variant of that into human rights legislation at the federal jurisdiction, or enshrining a right to housing and a right to an adequate standard of living in federal human rights legislation or in some manner that's coherent and consistent within federal jurisdiction.

There is a range of key things that a poverty reduction strategy should include and that would hold the government to the commitments and ensure public confidence, accountability, and transparency in terms of those commitments.

I'll end my comments there. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Young.

We're now going to move, as we have been doing, to questions from MPs.

Mr. Savage, you have the floor for seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much.

Those were really good presentations and there's a lot to think about.

Ms. Young, first of all, you mentioned that you've done some work on the UN, on how the UN monitors poverty and on the recommendations it makes in terms of human rights. You also--correctly, in my view--specifically indicated that much of this work lies within federal jurisdiction.

You'd be aware of the UN periodic review in June on Canada, which recommended that Canada should have an anti-poverty strategy, which was not accepted by the government, with the government saying that it was in fact a provincial and territorial jurisdiction.

So I assume you would suggest that's incorrect.

[Prof. Margot Young]

I think that's just wrong, and I think it's part of the waffling and the shell game our government has played in international fora for years now. One of the difficulties these international treaty bodies have in dealing with Canada is that whichever level of government you're speaking to, it's always the other level that's at fault. There's a complex “blame the other level of government” game that gets played in the Canadian federal state.

I think it's very obvious that there are many measures the federal government can do, and the member countries of the human rights committee that conducted the Universal Periodic Review of Canada are not idiots. They had a lot of submissions before them from various groups in Canada that are experts in the constitutional structure. Indeed, I was part of a coalition of groups that went forward.

There are some clear, obvious areas of federal jurisdiction, like housing. A housing strategy was one of the recommendations the Government of Canada took up from the UPR, and you have that in process. Employment insurance, old age security, the tax structure; there are lots of really smart suggestions for the tax structure that would result in reducing income inequality and would significantly address poverty in Canada. Transfer payments with conditions attached have long been a tradition, but less so under recent governments of Canadian federalism. The national child tax benefit has done quite a bit, actually, to lower rates of poverty in certain groups, but it could do a lot more.

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

While I have you on the UN, there are a number of areas where Canada really isn't living up to its UN traditional obligations, I would think. There's the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; the adoption of the rights of persons with disabilities, but not the ratification. There are a lot of areas where we're falling short right now, it seems.

[Prof. Margot Young]

I have to say it's a phenomenal embarrassment for Canada at the international level and in the hallways of the United Nations. We've gone from being a proponent of human rights to appearing before various United Nations bodies looking at our own human rights performances as a kind of international human rights scofflaw.

I've been working in this area for upwards of 15 years, working on briefs and going to Geneva and New York on a couple of occasions and appearing before United Nations treaty bodies monitoring Canada's performance in terms of its obligations under the convention on women, CEDAW, the economic, social, and rights convention, the civil and political rights convention. And to a committee, they've been aghast, first of all, at our rates of poverty, just aghast that in one of the ninth-wealthiest nations in the world we have this amount of poverty among these kinds of specifically identifiable vulnerable groups. They've been aghast at the federal government's pullback from providing assurances through its spending power, or through employment insurance, ways to address that.

I was actually at CEDAW two sessions ago when the changes to the Employment Insurance Act came up and heard the government representative say they actually hadn't done a gender-based analysis, and yes, they acknowledged it made women's access to EI worse in light of the changes that are still part of the legislation.

I think it's fair to say that every time Canada goes up before an international human rights treaty body, the emphasis is on Canada's failure to follow through with its human rights obligations, particularly in the area of social and economic rights, which is what we're talking about here.

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

Thank you for that.

You mentioned Wilkinson and Pickett. Now, Richard Wilkinson said, and I think this encapsulates a lot, “Social relations are built on material foundations.” That says it all right now. When we talk about social inclusion or social exclusion, that says it all. When people right now in Canada are suffering because they don't have the resources, don't have the same opportunity, it affects everything. He was a great population health guy, Wilkinson; and that's what it's about, isn't it?

[Prof. Margot Young]

Yes, that's right. That is what it's about. I think this book he's written along with Pickett is a phenomenal accumulation of lots of research and data, and shows in such a powerful way the link between the social health of our society for everybody and economic inequality. We're familiar with what happens to people who live in poverty, in terms of the vast range of indicators about their own personal welfare. What they make the case for, I think quite convincingly, is that this spreads up the ladder, as it were.

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

It affects us all.

[Prof. Margot Young]

It's in the interest of those with the most in a society like Canada to decrease inequality because they will be better off in terms of their social indicators as well.

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

Absolutely.

I want to just get a quick question to Mr. Restakis. I come from Nova Scotia, the home of Moses Coady and Jimmy Tompkins. You talk about the cooperative movement, and those were some of the leaders in the country. The Coady institute, of course, still does a lot of this work, nationally and internationally.

I was in Winnipeg a couple of weeks ago and had the opportunity to work with some people who were doing community economic development, like the Assiniboine Credit Union, which is doing stuff that the banks simply aren't interested in doing. It seems to me that the social economy and the work you're talking about in service delivery is hugely important in the fight against poverty.

[John Restakis]

It is. Part of it has to do with increasing the role and the instruments by which a social economy can be more active in addressing issues of poverty: social inclusion, social welfare, and so on.

I think what has happened in Canada, certainly in North America, is that traditionally the paradigm has been one where there's the state on the one hand, the private sector on the other, and those are the two legs on which our economy rests. Well, that's inaccurate. There is also a vast social economy that operates and not only cushions but provides the kinds of social and economic relationships that address a lot of these questions.

The problem has been the decline of government support and participation in economic development and service delivery, anything from health to housing. The strategy has been to offload these kinds of responsibilities or contract them out to the private sector, which has an entirely different logic in terms of how it operates and why it provides certain kinds of services.

The social economy is a sector that has a lot of the kinds of public and social values that ostensibly exist in the public sector as well. I think government needs to understand that in the social economy there is a potential partner in addressing some of the questions of costs, quality of social care, and access to a broad range of social services by simply understanding that social economy organizations have the mechanism and experience to do a lot of this but they don't have the resources to do it. I think a new kind of partnership needs to be established, recognizing the pivotal role that the social economy can play in addressing questions like social inclusion, training, job creation and so on, by re-evaluating the importance of the social economy in the overall structure of the Canadian economy.

That's just a roundabout way of saying that the social economy can be much more effective and powerful, and it can play a more equal role in terms of things like employment generation and service delivery, just as the state does on one hand and the private sector on the other but in a different way.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Mr. Martin, seven minutes.

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

Thank you.

There is a lot of valuable information here. We're coming to the end of our work on this subject, and we need to prepare a report that we will table with government. Hopefully they will act on it and do some good things for people and communities across the country.

I'm trying to get my head around what some of the principles in that report should or could be, and three of the things I've begun to think about and work with are income security, housing, and social inclusion. What we've done, however imperfectly for seniors, in terms of the Canada Pension Plan and the GIS and OAS, to try to put in place a large government program that everybody should be able to tap into and that will be helpful, needs to be improved. We're committed to doubling the CPP and increasing significantly the GIS. I think we could afford that and we could go there. That would lift a whole lot of very at-risk and vulnerable people, particularly given what has happened through this recession to pension plans and RRSPs, etc.

John and Margot, you both mentioned accountability and targets and timelines. I argue with others that we have spent the last 15 years arguing about a definition of poverty and we don't get to solving it because we can't decide what it looks like. Then we talk about “25 in 5”, and that we should have 50%. The question that always pops into my head is what about the other 75%, or the other 50%? What if the government doesn't reach the target, and instead of 25% we're only at 18%? Then we have a whole lot more people we need to...and the inequality that ensues.

Shouldn't we be looking at something we could put in place as a federal government, given the responsibility we have, that will actually lift everybody now--not in ten years, but now?

[Arthur Kube]

We can talk about what these two speakers have said, but let me tell you that the timelines would be very lengthy. I think what can be done is to get sufficient money into the hands of people to raise their quality of life and make life bearable for them. There's no problem with the provinces. The provinces don't object to the increases in GIS and the OAS. That's solely under the jurisdiction of the federal government.

Talking about the international convention and dealing with the question of poverty, how many of these conventions have even been ratified by Canada? Canada says they're under provincial jurisdiction.

My proposal is basically that there is something you can do, something very positive. You say every time, “Well, we should look at the definition of poverty.” But the definition of poverty is very simple: people don't have sufficient resources to live a meaningful life. The only thing is we tend to say that if we give them the money, they're going to go and drink it up or whatever. That's the sort of standard reply you get from some people. I'm basically saying let's see what's happens if you give them sufficient money.

Generally speaking, we know that if income has increased across the board, there has been a better life for these people. There's a relationship, social connections. What's the relationship between social connections and income? It's income. What is it for the question of housing? It's income. What is it for the question of health? It's income.

So move in the areas in which you're able to move. That means increasing the GIS, the OAS, and for the long term to eventually eradicate poverty, doubling the Canada Pension Plan.

[Prof. Margot Young]

I think the problem is just a lot more complex than saying there is one measure that is going to fix it: we can just put more money in everyone's pockets and the issues around poverty will go away.

Importantly, more money in a low-income person's pocket is a piece of the picture, but I don't think that is the only piece of the picture. We run the danger of saying, for example, that really what we need here is a guaranteed income, and we are going to make sure, across the board, that everybody has this certain level of income.

We run a couple of dangers. First of all, we'll run the danger of what analysts have called the “chump change” problem. What is politically realizable and practical about what that level of guaranteed income might be? I bet any level that we could come up with that would be politically possible would leave significant numbers of people still in some pretty dire circumstances.

The second point is that for particular groups of Canadians, they need more than simply more money in their pockets. They do need more money in their pockets, but women, for example, need a national child care program. You will not see women's economic inequality adequately addressed until we have affordable, quality, accessible child care across this country. I think that is clear. Any strategy that is going to address the disproportionate poverty of women has to deal with the resulting paid labour force inequality that comes from women's disproportionate child care responsibilities, and child care strategies have to be part of it.

We won't deal with women's inequality without also changing some employment strategies to deal with the issue of women's disproportionate location in the precarious work sector. A guaranteed income at the levels we could achieve won't fix that.

There are some real dangers in saying we are just going to go with a national payment to every individual and we're not going to recognize that there are other things to deal with. Some needs of some groups are very specific. If you're sick, you can't purchase your adequate health care in the marketplace with a guaranteed income. There's no way. We need to have an effective health care policy across the country. The federal government has a role to play in that through the imposition of national standards attached to dollars. That's clear. That is part of the Canadian tradition.

We can't deal with the needs of education of the low-income, even through the kind of guaranteed income that would be politically possible. We need post-secondary funding. We need a tuition policy.

Some of this obviously lies in provincial jurisdiction, but I mention that only as an illustration of the fact that there are some targeted needs that can't be met by just turning everybody into a market citizen and meeting their needs with a little bit of extra money. And it will only be a little bit of extra money; that's all, I'll bet, that would be politically possible in these times to deal with those needs, with a little bit of extra money in their pocket in the market.

It has to be a multi-pronged policy that looks at the special needs of groups most vulnerable to poverty in Canada and that uses the leverage that the federal government has to change key provincial policies as well. There needs to be some rethinking of the federal imposition of national standards in the area of federal contributions to the costs of income security in provincial programs. We need to return to some national standards attached to money that provincial governments are able to put into their social assistance programs.That's a way of getting extra money into the pockets of those who are poorest in our society, but we do so not just through raising welfare rates, which clearly needs to be done, but also by making sure that provincial welfare programs are actually provided to everybody in need and there is no such thing as a five-year cut-off rule or elaborate labyrinths of eligibility and qualification loss, and so on.

I am concerned about that route, but not because I think a guaranteed income or some universal payment is necessarily a bad idea if it is also conjoined with other program changes. I am concerned about our getting stuck in thinking that this is all we need to do, and that when we do it, we have done it, and here's what is politically possible in terms of the money we can give to everybody. We're still going to see significant degrees of inequality, poverty, and social exclusion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Mr. Martin.

We're now going to move to Ms. Cadman for the final round of seven minutes.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Thank you.

If the federal government adopts a national poverty reduction strategy, do you think a gender-based analysis should be used as a tool in the development of the strategy?

[Prof. Margot Young]

Absolutely. We've taken commitments internationally to have a gender-based analysis to all policy development. It's a condition often of the international aid that Canada gives to other countries, yet we fail miserably to do that at home.

I didn't say so specifically, but I meant to capture that in saying a strategy must be developed with an eye to those groups that are most vulnerable to poverty, and we must talk specifically about women. We must be sure that our strategy addresses the circumstances of women. I think a child care program is a key part of a poverty reduction strategy for women. If we're sensitive to the needs of women, it means we are talking to groups that are representative of those women and that are concerned about women's equality, and we're certainly developing the strategy with an eye to meeting the needs and the concerns of women. Of aboriginal individuals, of persons with disabilities, I would say the same thing.

There is such a long tradition of Canada espousing the importance of a gender-based analysis and not doing it itself that this seems to me to be an obvious point and a clear commitment that the development of the strategy should make.