Thank you, Chair.
Hello, members.
I was both honoured and humbled to be part of the deputy minister's staff during 2017, supporting Minister Duclos' consultations and efforts in developing the poverty reduction strategy. This is a historic piece of legislation because it establishes an official poverty line, because it articulates a vision for lowering poverty by setting ambitious yet attainable targets, and because it offers a set of meaningful and measurable indicators that can be used to monitor progress through a national advisory council.
The decision to adopt what Statistics Canada calls the market basket measure as the official income poverty indicator came about through extensive discussion with provinces and municipalities and reviews of their many poverty reduction strategies, through consultations with stakeholders and social policy experts but, most important, through a series of round tables and in-depth interviews with people who have a lived experience of poverty in communities spanning the country.
The market basket measure is the most appropriate indicator to use as an official poverty line because it most accurately captures regional variations and affordability of clothing and footwear, of transportation, of nutritious food, of shelter and clothing, and of other goods and services essential to a basic standard of living. This is meaningful to Canadians in a way that the other available measures are not, and it is appropriate for the purposes at hand—for judging the progress a current government has made by the standards and values of the citizens it represents.
However, it is a statistic that nonetheless has shortcomings, and that is why it is particularly important that the legislation include proposed subsection 7(2), insisting that the official poverty line be regularly reviewed in a non-partisan way by Statistics Canada. This review should be understood to afford the opportunity not only to update the contents of the basket but also to address a host of other limitations building upon the precedent set in the last review of the MBM in 2010.
The official poverty line should be understood only as a headline indicator of monetary poverty and, therefore, an incomplete indicator of the many related concerns of Canadians, whether poor or not. This is why the bill puts forward three sets of four complementary indicators, each covering an important concern.
The first set, referred to as the dignity pillar, supports the official poverty line by putting a focus on the poorest of the poor. It includes an indicator of deep income poverty, of food insecurity, of core housing needs and homelessness, and of unmet health needs. These are most closely tied to the fundamental human rights we all hold. We can judge progress in the official poverty rate only when the lot of the least advantaged, those prone to experiencing long-term poverty, also progresses.
The second suite, called the opportunity pillar, is a suite of indicators of social inclusion and upward movement out of poverty. Similarly, the resilience pillar is a set intended to measure the risk of falling into poverty. In my view, there is still currently some incoherence in some of the statistics proposed in this last pillar, but it is encouraging that the legislation offers the flexibility for revision in proposed subsection 7(2).
The bill proposes two targets: an intermediate target, with poverty being 20% lower in 2020 than it was in 2015, and a longer-term target with it being 50% lower in 2030. The bill states that progress in poverty reduction will contribute to Canada meeting the UN sustainable development goals. SDG 1 is no poverty, and the first two specific targets associated with this goal are to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030 and, by 2030, “reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions”.
If the electoral mandate of a government is roughly five years, then if each successive government committed to lowering the poverty rate prevailing at the onset of its mandate by 20% over the course of its term, the official poverty rate would fall from 12% in 2015 to 9.7% in 2020, 7.7% in 2025 and 6.1% by 2030, roughly half of the 2015 rate.
The successive repetition of this intermediate goal is the implicit contract this bill offers future governments. In proposing the set of targets in proposed section 6 of the bill, the government is making good on its international commitments, offering a national definition of poverty and seeking to cut it in half.
My regret is that the bill does not speak as clearly about extreme poverty. The indicator of deep poverty in the dignity pillar can be used as a national definition of what extreme poverty would mean in the Canadian context. Targeting it would ensure that progress in reducing the official poverty rate can only be celebrated if it is accompanied by progress in extreme poverty.
The deep poverty indicator is an important complement to the official targets because it prevents governments from seeking to lower poverty by simply supporting those households just below the poverty line. After all, the official poverty rate could be lowered by transferring resources from the very poor to the near poor, a perverse sense of progress.
Accordingly, impartial and independent advice on how to continually improve measurement, set priorities and monitor and interpret progress is an important part of this bill and generally this way of thinking about public policy.
The proposed national advisory council is an essential mechanism in promoting a transparent conversation with Canadians about the progress that is made and about the gaps that remain to be filled. It is necessary, but not sufficient. I hope that the council interprets its functions, particularly in proposed paragraph 10(b), as supporting citizen engagement, not simply advising a minister.
Ultimately, the staying power of this legislation will reflect an implicit contract between successive governments, one ultimately enforced through a transparent and ongoing conversation between Canadians, their representatives and their advocates in a way that makes poverty indicators as closely watched as the other social and economic goals this country has set for itself.
This bill is a historic step forward in Canadian social policy. As an academic who has spent the better part of three decades studying and writing about the measurement of poverty both in Canada and in other rich countries, as a former consultant with UNICEF who has reviewed and monitored progress towards achieving past UN poverty reduction targets, but most importantly, as an engaged citizen whose family has experienced the needless indignities of poverty, I give this legislation my unreserved support.