Thank you, honourable chair and committee members.
Campaign 2000 is a pan-Canadian coalition of organizations working to end child and family poverty. I want to start by thanking you for inviting me to appear again today. I spoke about our priorities for budget 2023 back in February of this year, which I know resonated with the committee because we saw many of them in your report from March. It was really unfortunate that those recommendations didn't make their way into the federal budget.
Earlier this year, Campaign 2000 released its annual report card looking at the situation of poverty in Canada using 2020 data—so the first year of the pandemic, when large swaths of the economy were shutting down. We saw a historic drop in the rates of poverty and child poverty. Our analysis showed that this was almost all attributed to the $102 billion in new federal transfers that went directly to individuals and families in the form of emergency programs like the CERB and the one-time top-ups to existing programs like the Canada child benefit.
Using the low-income measure, more than 314,000 children were lifted out of poverty that year. Without any of those pandemic transfers, the child poverty rate would have ballooned to nearly 21%. Without any government transfers at all, more than one-third of children would have been in poverty in 2020. We know that income transfers to families and individuals work.
Those temporary measures have all ended. Inflation has raised in ways we didn't anticipate. We have a housing crisis. There are barriers to accessing the new system of child care. Data released last week from Statistics Canada showed, unsurprisingly, that poverty rates have risen and are projected to reach prepandemic levels.
Unfortunately, we're going backwards, and budget 2023 doesn't do much to mitigate this. We have the temporary grocery rebate, which will provide some minimal but temporary relief. There is an expansion of a small automatic tax filing project for vulnerable people, but that's going to take another three years to achieve. There's a commitment to do consultations about vulnerable non-tax filers, but there are no clear timelines around that project. We're really worried that the budget allocates over 53 million new dollars to double down on pandemic benefit repayments. I've been in front of this committee several times talking about the challenges around CERB repayments and low-income individuals and families.
In budget 2023, it says that “ESDC and the CRA have adopted an empathetic, people-first approach to support...people facing issues with repayment. They also have the discretion to negotiate a suitable resolution depending on the factors and conditions of a case to reduce any undue burden.” I have not heard any experience that would be characterized like this, and I'm going to share three quick stories that I've heard just this week.
A gentleman out west who had back surgery was bedridden, and he had repayment letters sent to him that he didn't understand. He called the CRA and was told multiple times to go in for an appointment, which he physically was unable to do. He ended up having his medical EI garnished and his tax rebate held back. He calculates that the federal government has now taken $800 more than what they said he owed.
There is a mother with two adult sons with disabilities. One was asked to verify his self-employment income. His receipts and invoices were not being accepted by the CRA. His accountant doesn't know why. They can't get any information from the CRA, and his mom is really worried. His mental health has deteriorated so much that he's on a suicide watch. Through our legal clinic partners, we have been hearing this week that they're no longer able to establish repayment plans of five dollars a month for clients who are on social assistance and who clearly can't afford anything more.
We know that there are scores of these cases going through the federal courts, which is a further waste of resources. When you look at those cases, you can see that the judges want to do something to help people, but they're legally tied. There's no wiggle room. They say that they're unable to help. We know that there's a statute of limitations on debt recovery—that was discussed in the AG's report last year—but these efforts are causing a lot of pain and a lot of hardship. They are not only using up federal resources but using up precious community and personal resources. We really think it's time to retire the CERB debt, as any business would, and implement a CERB amnesty.
We need, dare I say, a sustained elimination of poverty through robust income security measures: supplementing the child benefit with a low-income supplement for families, the implementation of the federal disability benefit, the enhancement of the disability benefit for children and a benefit for working-age individuals regardless of their earned income.
Our pre-budget submission to you has many recommendations on our planks of income security, making work decent and a pathway out of poverty around child care, housing and public health. I won't go through those because you have them, but I do look forward to—