Hello. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to you today.
Campaign 2000 is a non-partisan, pan-Canadian coalition of over 120 organizations working to end child and family poverty. We've been tracking and reporting on federal progress towards ending poverty for over 30 years.
In our submission to this committee, we have made recommendations on how to make the Canada child benefit more powerful, how to get government transfers to low-income marginalized people, including those who do not file personal income tax returns, and more. All of these things are important, but today I am going to focus my comments on the pandemic benefits, which, although not designed as poverty reduction programs, have had exactly that effect.
Temporary emergency and recovery benefits and one-time top-ups to existing income supports significantly reduced poverty and inequality in every jurisdiction across the country. Statistics Canada data shows that those who were more likely to receive temporary emergency benefits were low-income women, indigenous peoples, racialized people and youth, who, for a brief moment, were lifted out of poverty. What that meant was that families could pay rent and put food on the table without stress.
Those benefits are over. Long ago they were spent on basic needs, and families are now struggling with inflation and a pandemic that has not ended. The government is now pursuing these individuals and families for repayments and calling their approach compassionate, but from everything we've been hearing about this process, it's causing real hardship.
We're on a tour of the country right now, meeting with people living in poverty in every province and territory, and we're hearing a lot of these stories.
In Whitehorse, I met a man who has a letter from the CRA. He's first nation and on disability assistance. He can’t find paid work but is a peer leader in his community. He can barely afford his medication right now, but he's being asked to pay $14,000 to the CRA.
In Winnipeg, I met with a young woman who was in the child welfare system. She’s working in a small peer-led organization and told me how she's being asked to repay the CERB. All of her money goes to her rent. She doesn’t have family to turn to and is now really worried about losing her apartment.
In Ontario, I spoke with a woman on the disability support program, which provides $1,228 a month to her. She was told by her caseworker to apply for the CERB. She’s squeezed $200 out of her budget to repay the CRA but simply cannot afford anything more.
Another gentleman, also on that disability program, called the CRA to get more information about his letter and was told on the phone that his disability tax credit would be garnisheed if he didn't enter into a repayment plan right then and there. He was so scared that he did, even though he can't afford it.
There was a public case that went through the federal courts, which I recently read about. It demonstrates some of the unfairness that's inherent in the design of some of these benefits. A woman had applied in good faith for emergency benefits. It turned out that her workers compensation did not count towards the threshold. She ended up being $7.26 short of the $5,000 threshold, which the judge called “achingly close” to being eligible. That's about a half-hour’s worth of additional work at the minimum wage, and she's being asked to repay the CRB in full.
That there are federal expenditures in the form of the government paying CRA staff to pursue hundreds of thousands of people like this who just do not have the money to repay is needless. It's damaging, and it is not a compassionate approach.
Families are still having their Canada child benefit clawed back as a result of receiving pandemic benefits. Over three years, this government will claw back $1.45 billion in child benefits. Our petition on this issue was presented in the House this morning. In it, and in our submission to committee, we outline recommendations for a CERB repayment amnesty—that is, to stop pursuing the repayment of pandemic benefits by low-income people. We include recommendations to repay families for clawed-back CCB amounts in the same way that the guaranteed income supplement was repaid to seniors. We include a recommendation to invest more in the Canada social transfer, with conditions, so that income assistance programs across the country start to advance poverty reduction and human rights commitments.
The pandemic has taught us that government transfers can help to end poverty, and they can do that quickly. There's an opportunity to make a decision that will materially change the lives of people through the implementation of a CERB amnesty. We do hope that this committee will put the recommendations forward.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to answering any questions.