Human Resources Committee on June 10th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Savage.

Thank you, Minister.

We'll now move to the Conservative Party for five minutes. Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I want to start by saying that I find the conversation with the Liberal member here kind of puzzling, talking about cuts.

I grabbed the budget document from 2008, and there's a chart there talking about transfer payments. I note that in the last full year of the Liberal government, the cumulative transfer payments were about $35 billion. I think in 2008-09 they'll be just under $50 billion to discharge the things the provinces are accountable for. Going from $35 billion to $50 billion--I don't know how you can refer to that as cuts.

I did notice, Minister Skinner, that you mentioned transfers as one of the areas that could be addressed from the federal standpoint. Specifically, were you meaning that the federal government should perhaps be more prescriptive in terms of what transfer dollars should be spent on? Maybe you can elaborate on that a little bit.

[Shawn Skinner]

I'll ask Aisling to respond to you on that one, Mr. Lake, if I may.

[Aisling Gogan]

No, I don't think that was the position that was being expressed.

I guess we have some concerns with moving to a purely per capita-based allocation for transfers, particularly for a smaller province like ours, where we have a smaller population spread out over a large geographic area. It's much more expensive to deliver health services and other social services. So we have a real concern for changes that are proposed to the formula for the Canada health transfer as well as the social transfer, and we have, I guess, concern also about how specific some of those transfers are in terms of allowing provinces to target needs as they arise in their own province.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Ultimately, though, I think it's fair to say that every province is receiving significantly more money in transfers than they were three or four years ago.

I want to now step over and talk a little bit about measurables here. You have a stated goal, I believe, of wanting to have the least amount of poverty across the country compared with other provinces by 2014, I think you mentioned. What specifically is a measurement that you will use to account to your voters as to whether you actually reach that goal?

Minister Skinner, perhaps you could comment.

[Aisling Gogan]

We'll be looking again both at the low-income cut-off and at HRSDC's market basket measure as the two measures that are there to make comparisons among provinces. We're looking at those measures, and they both show similar trends. Obviously we have some concerns with the methodology for the market basket measure, but we're more interested in showing progress than getting too hung up on the methodology. But we're certainly having discussions with Statistics Canada and some of our colleagues at HRSDC about the methodology as well. But mainly we're concerned that we're showing progress both by those and then by some of our more provincially based tracking mechanisms.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

I want to move to social exclusion. There's been a lot of talk about this concept of social exclusion. It seems like a difficult, maybe intangible thing to measure. How do you work that into your measurements of success? If that's one of your stated goals, how do you measure that?

[Shawn Skinner]

First of all, when we talk about social exclusion, we're talking about individuals who aren't able to participate fully in the social or economic activities of society and are thereby not able to reach their full potential. We want people to be able to be the best they can be. We want people to realize their full potential. There are economic as well as social barriers that sometimes prevent people from being able to do that.

So we are attempting to identify, in consultation with our community partners, those economic and social barriers by talking to the groups that are dealing with people who find themselves socially excluded and identified as being socially excluded and seeing how we can then come in with some of our policies in our poverty reduction strategy that would attempt to break down those barriers to allow people to participate more fully in society.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

It seems to me you could have a situation very easily in all parts of the country where someone is socially excluded and yet has lots of money.

I'm still not sure I see how they're related. I imagine that if you address the financial issues relating to poverty, you create opportunities for people to be socially included. But if, for whatever reason, they don't take that opportunity, do you see that as the provincial government's responsibility to enforce?

[Shawn Skinner]

No, this is not something I see as the provincial government's responsibility to enforce. This is about creating an environment where people have the opportunity to participate fully. That means being able to participate to the level at which they wish to participate. If somebody chooses to engage or not to engage, then I would suggest to you that this is exactly what we would want somebody to be able to do, to have the choice to do that. The issue, as we understand it, is that people aren't having the opportunity to make that choice because of the social or economic barriers they face. So we hope to be able to remove those barriers to allow them that opportunity should they wish to take it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have right now. We'll have to maybe follow that up in the next round.

Madame Bonsant, you have five minutes, please.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We talk a lot about poverty, but also child poverty. If children are poor, it is because parents are poor. Yet, poor parents are mostly women. This is why I would like to know if in your province you have solved the issue of salary equity between men and women or if there is still an important gap.

[Aisling Gogan]

Certainly a gender-inclusive analysis has been an important part of our poverty reduction strategy. Unfortunately I can't say that all issues of wage disparities have been resolved, but it's certainly a priority. One of the things we're seeing as we have more and more jobs based in the natural resources sector, particularly in the oil and gas sector, is that as those are male-dominated fields, we're trying to support women and remove barriers for women participating in those jobs. That's an important priority.

You're right, we speak more about poverty generally than child poverty, just to make sure we're focusing on the family context. You're right, children are only poor because their parents are poor. So it's been important in looking at the family context of those living in poverty.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Most single-parent families are headed by women. Many women would like to improve their situation, but they do not have access to a quality and low-cost child care service.

Do you offer them that service?

[Shawn Skinner]

As a provincial government, we do assist parents—single parents, two-parent families—with child care. The challenge we face is the number of spaces available and the areas where the spaces are available in terms of our geographic spread. We're such a big province. Not all areas have regulated day care spaces available. So we need to increase the number of people who are entering the educational field to become early childhood educators, thereby increasing the number available to be employed. And we need to increase the reach across the province for that.

The short answer is yes, we assist people, but we still have some major challenges to overcome.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Someone living in poverty who is going back to work at minimum wage does not have the means to pay for housing and child care.

Do you see more and more homeless women and children in your province?

[Shawn Skinner]

I will tell you that we do. As I said before, we will subsidize child care for people. I just want to re-emphasize that it is still a major challenge in terms of being able to provide adequate child care within the province. And it is something we are working hard to try to overcome.

In terms of seeing more homeless women, we have a small homeless problem, I would suggest, in terms of number, but it is a significant problem, because in the past I don't believe we had any homeless. We're starting to see more homeless people now. Therefore, I believe it is a problem that is starting to grow. We want to be able to respond quickly to that so it doesn't become a much larger problem. But our numbers aren't.... I guess one is significant. I would say to you that we don't have big numbers, but we certainly do have homeless men, women, and young people as well.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

In Newfoundland and Labrador, you have the chance or the misfortune to receive oil royalties. I know that you will pay your debts as any good province does, but do you intend to invest a percentage of these royalties in social programs?

[Shawn Skinner]

A lot of the money we've been able to utilize has been invested in our social programs. Our poverty reduction strategy is not just based on oil revenues. We view the whole pot of money we have as a province, and we use it as we see where our priorities are. Our poverty reduction strategy is a priority.

I indicated to you earlier that we are now at over $100 million annually, and we are committed to this. If our oil revenues drop, we will still be investing the kind of money we're investing today. Our poverty reduction strategy is not tied to our oil revenues. It's a commitment of the government, and we will find the money to make sure we continue to support the commitment we've made.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Thank you, Madame Bonsant.

We're going to move to the Liberals again. You have five minutes, Ms. Dhalla.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you very much for your presentation and for the great vision you've had and the work you've put into developing a poverty reduction strategy.

I know that when it was first introduced in December 2006, you identified five medium-term goals over a four-year period. One of the things we've been focusing on is more of a solutions-based approach to what a national strategy would look like. Instead of talking about some of the research and the numbers, and to actually focus on concrete solutions, could you perhaps identify for us as committee members the greatest challenge you have faced in putting forward your poverty reduction strategy in the province?

[Shawn Skinner]

I'll refer to the goals, Ms. Dhalla, for a second, if you'll bear with me. I just want to give you an idea so the people in the audience will understand.

The goals we identified were improved access and coordination of services for those with low incomes, a stronger social safety net, improving people's earned incomes, increased emphasis on early childhood development, and a better-educated population. Those were the goals.

I'll ask Aisling to speak to some of the things in response to your question.

[Aisling Gogan]

One of the major challenges has been trying to work in a coordinated and integrated fashion--and that's coming from a member of the public service. It's difficult sometimes to work that way; we're used to working within our departmental silos.

It has been a challenge, and it has challenged the way we normally work, but it's been essential to the progress we've made that we try to take the perspective of those who are living in poverty and of what they need and how they need to be supported. This has been one of the major challenges we've faced.

Another challenge is in setting priorities and trying to also look at preventing as well as reducing and alleviating poverty and figuring out the right balance there. If we're not working to prevent poverty, then we'll be at reduction and alleviation forever.

Trying to ensure that we're following best practices and looking at what will really work for prevention has been another challenge, one where we've looked to other countries and also to our own past experience and at academic research to ensure that we're following best practices.

Those have been the major challenges.

[Shawn Skinner]

To finish off very quickly, the coordination of government services has been very difficult, and the ministerial committee has been important in allowing us to coordinate the bureaucracy and be able to respond as we need to respond.