Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The National Council of Welfare is very happy to present this brief on a topic that is very closely linked to its mandate.
The National Council of Welfare is an independent advisory body to the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development on matters of concern to low-income Canadians.
My remarks will summarize our written brief, which has further details and statistics that may be useful to you. I should also note that the brief was completed prior to the program cuts. I'll address some of those implications in my oral remarks.
Our research and analysis clearly indicates that the issue of employability needs to be seen within a framework of poverty reduction. Today there are almost five million people living below the poverty line. There are 1.3 million adults on welfare, and 3.1 million low-income workers and their families, plus 16% of senior citizens, live in poverty. Many of the 1.1 million unemployed are part of this group. Low-income rates for aboriginal peoples, recent immigrants, visible minorities, and female lone parents far exceed the Canadian average.
This situation carries a high economic cost in terms of the forgone productivity of millions of workers. It also presents an enormous current and future cost to social services, health care, and justice systems, as well as an untold human cost.
So the first overall point we want to make is about poverty generally. The National Council of Welfare has been championing the need for a national anti-poverty strategy in which the federal government would take a lead in setting targets, timetables, and actions. We will be launching an online questionnaire in October to ask Canadians what they think.
The United Kingdom and Ireland have adopted such anti-poverty strategies, and, closer to home, so have Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Within this overall context and specific employability issues, the council supports the federal government using its leverage in the reform of the Canada social transfer. This transfer provides billions of dollars for post-secondary education, social assistance, and other services, and it could be used to secure needed changes.
I'll now focus on five specific areas. The first concerns the lack of participation of those millions of low-income people in the job market at a time of growing shortages. Aboriginal peoples and recent immigrants are experiencing very high rates of poverty and a very bad employment and employability situation, yet these are the very people we need to fill the gaps in our labour market resulting from Canada's aging population.
Many people, including women with children, especially lone parents, Canadians with disabilities, and seniors, are ready to take on paid work if they can access child care and the necessary accommodations they need to participate. These investments are not cheap, but neither is the status quo, and the right investments will have a large return. We can't expect all people who are unemployed and on welfare to immediately move into available jobs, as some people seem to think. Such an expectation defies reality. If you're living far below the poverty line, even looking for a job and getting to interviews is a costly struggle. Moving for a job is completely unaffordable.
Therefore, to get as many people as possible to effectively participate in the labour market, we have a number of recommendations.
First, reform the EI system so that it covers the vast majority of the unemployed, as it used to, not just the current 40% or so, and raise both social assistance rates and the levels of assets and savings that welfare recipients can keep.
Our second issue we refer to as the “low-wage wall”. Behind that wall, too many workers are trapped in poorly paying jobs with few benefits. About 35% of the workforce, 40% for women, are in precarious and contingent work. Moving beyond the minimum- and low-wage jobs that do not allow a decent standard of living means raising the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour; raising tax exemptions for low-income workers; ensuring health and other benefits are available to workers in non-standard jobs; and increasing minimum vacation days per year to twenty, which is the standard in Europe, from our ten.
The next area of focus is education and training--I believe others are going to speak to this as well--before and after job entry and also as a lifelong continuum. There's been a slowdown in college and university entrance growth. This needs to be turned around, as does increasing entry into apprenticeship programs.
The OECD has noted that 53% of Canadians aged 25 to 34 have a university degree or college diploma. That's well above the average. But since 1995, the enrollment rate in Canada has gone up a mere 1%, and the OECD average was 51%. Our recommendations on this issue include allowing people on welfare and employment insurance to pursue full-time post-secondary education and trade certification without losing their benefits, and lowering fees and increasing grants for post-secondary education to allow more students in low-income families to attend.
Since I'm running out of time, I will ask people to refer to our brief for more information on literacy, which I know is going to be addressed by others.
The fourth area deals with recognition of specific needs. A one-size-fits-all plan will not work. So to meet the needs of women, aboriginal peoples, and others that we've mentioned, this can be done through measures such as--and I must take a moment to emphasize this--quality, affordable child care. This means spaces and infrastructure--there's simply no way around this in complex, industrialized societies. Other measures include workplace anti-discrimination campaigns; recognition of foreign credentials; and a national disability strategy.
The final area of our presentation is critical for creating jobs, providing services that communities need, and providing on-the-job training to those who need it most. So it has multiple benefits, but it's one that has suffered in the cuts just announced. Through the social economy initiative, the federal government invested $23 million in Quebec, which generated another $30 million from the Quebec government and other sources. Funding for this kind of work is no longer available anywhere else in Canada. The NCW therefore recommends restoring funding so that social economy and community economic development programs are possible across this country.
Thank you.