Thank you.
Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to address this committee.
My name is Harriett McLachlan. I'm deputy director of Canada Without Poverty, and I'm joined today by Canada Without Poverty's executive director Leilani Farha, who is also the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.
CWP is a non-partisan, not-for-profit and charitable organization dedicated to ending poverty in Canada. For nearly 50 years, Canada Without Poverty has been championing the human rights of individuals experiencing poverty, and since our existence, the board of directors has been made up entirely of people with a lived experience of poverty.
This committee should know that although I'm an educated professional, I lived for almost 35 years in poverty, 19 years as a single parent.
Canada Without Poverty has long called for a national anti-poverty strategy to be secured in legislation. As members of this committee may be aware, United Nations authorities—for example, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—have urged Canada to secure in legislation its efforts towards the rights to an adequate standard of living, housing, and food.
We support the entrenchment of the Opportunity for All strategy within Bill C-86 as critical to the fulfillment of Canada's international human rights obligations.
While the strategy and legislation reference the sustainable development goals, the target and timeline invoke the minimum threshold of a reduction in poverty by 50% by 2030. The reality is that when we only commit to reducing poverty, we create opportunity for some and not opportunity for all, especially those who are the most marginalized.
For a country as wealthy as Canada, which should be leading other countries in the implementation of the SDGs, we are disappointed that the legislation does not commit to the spirit of SDG 1, which is to end poverty.
I'll pass it over to Leilani.