Human Resources Committee on May 12th, 2009

[Phyllis Mockler-Caissie]

Because this is not a government process only, I don't want to speak for myself, for my department, or for the New Brunswick government, but what I'm hearing throughout--and because we've made a lot of contacts--is that perhaps there could be an agency established. Maybe there's already an organization that is doing great things by looking at establishing indicators, monitoring, continuing to look at that “What was Said” document, and asking where we need to put the money and our efforts to address those needs.

The community foundations are phenomenal. They are doing so many things within their own communities. All of the things I heard about throughout this process are being done, and they're being done in small ways, tailored to individual community needs, which I think is important.

If we all ask what the global objective is for the province, and if at the community level everybody is working towards that same objective, then things can get done. We all work together to do just what you're saying, which is to look at the programs that exist. If they're not having any benefit and are not needed any longer, then let's get rid of them. Let's move our money—all of us, all of the entities in the sector—to where we can make the biggest difference in improving people's lives and reducing poverty.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to move to our last round of five minutes for questions and answers.

I'm going to start with Mr. Savage.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I have a bit of a comment. First of all, you're all fabulous. I really appreciate the work each of you does.

Nova Scotia recently released its anti-poverty strategy. After it had been promised before the last election three years ago, it came out just before this election. I think the people who are working on it, and who we met yesterday, are very good. Anti-poverty advocates look at it and say that it's pretty thin. It talks about $155 million of direct investment, $81 million of which is transferred from the federal government to the provincial government.

Sometimes when we talk about poverty we get these false choices. I heard you say--I think you were referring to somebody else--that maybe we shouldn't invest in adult literacy, that maybe we should invest in early learning and child care. That's a false choice. We should invest in both. We can't write off tens of thousands of New Brunswickers and Nova Scotians who didn't have the opportunity to have early learning and child care. In the Atlantic provinces, as across Canada, we desperately need investment in literacy.

I hope that when you produce your report, what you've heard goes to the next step. We've heard about Frank McKenna and how he made a lot of investments in bringing jobs to New Brunswick, and that the best social program is a job. We all know that. We all need training.

But it seems to me that we have to directly invest more money in what we call the social infrastructure of the country. We don't treat people well enough. Somebody told us this morning--and I don't know if this is true, but this is what I wrote down--that a single person on welfare gets $290 a month in New Brunswick. You can increase that by 1%, 2%, 10%, 20%, 30%, or 40%, but I don't think it makes any difference. It seems to me that we have to fundamentally re-evaluate how we treat and marginalize people who live in impoverished circumstances.

I don't know where we need to be. Tony and I talk about this a lot. Tony refers to himself as an old soft lefty. He's not that old. He is a little bit soft and he's a bit of a lefty; we agree on some things. I would be much more inclined to say that we need to have some corporate tax breaks, that you have to provide a solid foundation in the economy. I believe that. But I also believe that we have to spend money on people. We can't fall into this trap of false choices.

Ed spoke about gearing student loan repayments to income. Well, the problem with that is that you never get rid of your student loan. If you're being charged an interest rate, all you do is offset it. It shows the fundamental broken-down part of the system, in my view, which is that we need more grants, non-repayable grants, for students. For those who can afford it, they can pay it back, but let's maybe get rid of the interest rate. Why do we need that? For the amount of money it costs, I don't think it makes a lot of sense.

I don't really have a question. I had a bunch of short snappers earlier. I just really appreciate the work you guys are doing. I do have one question.

Lillian, you mentioned that you were losing a student who was going to work with you. Is it the Canada summer jobs program that you guys use?

[Lillian MacMellon]

We normally get two from the federal program. We always got two from the provincial program, but we were told this year that we would only get one from the province.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

And you will get two from the federal program?

[Lillian MacMellon]

We have not heard from the federal program yet.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Well, I certainly encourage you to call your MP, because that work has been done now. That is a great program. I think the government put an extra $10 million a year into that, which I think is a start. In my view, the Canada summer jobs program is a $100-million-a year project that produces 35,000 to 40,000 jobs for students, but it also helps your organization and lots of others. To me, that's the kind of thing that really helps two groups that have not been as much front and centre during the recession as others: students and not-for-profits, which are putting stuff together with bubble gum and toothpicks and scraping and saving--and you're going in to help with the work.

I've offered that before to the minister. I offer it to the parliamentary secretary: it's a recommendation at no charge double the Canada summer jobs program and make sure we support it.

I just want to say that you guys are very inspiring because of the work you do in the community. I thank you for that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're now going to go to the last questioner of this round.

Ben, you have five minutes, sir.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll get right to the point.

Mr. LeBlanc, I believe that your sixth recommendation was on transportation in rural communities. I'm from rural Ontario, so as a former director of the United Way in Huron County, I can understand the issues. Could you give us a little more information as to what that would look like or what you would recommend?

[Miguel LeBlanc]

In the rural communities, the reality is that a lot of jobs are being lost, etc., but at the same time, you have individuals living in their communities and striving, so I think the challenge is how we can develop mechanisms that can provide transportation to these individuals. I think we need to start looking at this area. I'm not 100% sure on what it would look like, but I do think we need to start looking at it.

A lot of jobs are already moving to the urban centres. There may be a process of a sort of car pool for transportation, or something like that, to bring workers into the urban centres and back, within reason, of course. I'm not suggesting that they need to drive two hours to go to a job and come back, but I think we need to start looking. In the northern and eastern parts of New Brunswick, a lot of people are suffering, and there's increasing poverty.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you for that.

I have one question to Mr. Glauser.

One experience I've had with affordable housing so far involved zoning issues within municipalities. We've heard of many different theories or best practices on where affordable housing should be placed. Can you share with us some of the best practices you've experienced for zoning and for educating residents about some potential Nimbyism in their backyards?

[Gary Glauser]

Nimbyism seems to never go away. One thing we've been trying to do in New Brunswick, which has been successful across Canada in varying degrees, is called the inclusionary zoning method. Let's say you have a subdivision of a certain size. The municipality will say that a certain percentage of that subdivision will be affordable housing. But to try to get that moving, we've been told in New Brunswick that the planning act has to be changed to give municipalities the power to do that. To address the whole NIMBY issue, we think the inclusionary zoning model makes sense.

Groups in New Brunswick have had some success engaging community members and neighbourhoods by basically extolling the benefits of affordable housing and showing that affordable housing, when put into a neighbourhood, can raise the standards of that community. We've tried to debunk some of the myths associated with affordable housing, such as myths that say the community will suddenly become a ghetto, or whatever.

We had a dentist, and a small affordable housing project was put into his neighbourhood, right next door to his office. We had him interviewed by the local paper. He said that after some reservations he welcomed the entrance of that project into the community. It's been very well run. I think that's the key. The projects have to be managed properly, with the people in the projects being provided the supports they need, and it goes from there.

The other thing is getting local councils and the local mayor on the same page in terms of wanting an affordable housing project, as opposed to fearing it.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

That's definitely one of the themes we've had, the coupling of ideas and thoughts.

I have just one last thought to Phyllis on the student loans. Along with Mr. Savage, I was very surprised that it was the number one issue. Again, you can only report on what you hear.

We talk about literacy. I feel that financial literacy is one of the areas where the least amount of education is provided to our students, especially for someone who's never had any debt and is coming out of university with, say, $30,000 worth of debt.

We did some debt counselling for some of our employees and young graduates. You would be surprised and amazed at the number of young graduates who end school with a debt of $30,000-plus, but who, the very first thing, go out and buy a new or nearly new vehicle. When the debt repayment starts to kick in, they have no idea how to pay for what they owe.

One suggestion I would have is that the minute they graduate, if we haven't educated them at all, the last thing we should do before they venture off into this world is provide them with an idea of how to budget.

[Phyllis Mockler-Caissie]

What I gave you was just the tip of the iceberg. There were so many causes, and the lack of education in itself came out as number one, if I were to quantify those causes. Then it became very hard to distinguish between what was said more times than others, because they all sort of fell along. We know that poverty is very complex, and it's not about just one thing. It's about social well-being.

I was echoing other remarks when I asked where we should put our money. Over and over again, it also came out that within our education system many young people today and many young adults have no idea of how to manage money. It's time to put life skills education back into our public school system, because they're not getting it. They often find themselves in that situation because we haven't prepared them. So we're also telling our school systems to get that back into the curriculum.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today. You are on the front lines, and we appreciate what inspirations you are and the ideas you generate for us as we look at the study of poverty. Thank you once again for taking time out of your busy schedules to be here.

The meeting is adjourned.