Thank you very much.
Both Wendy and I are from Saint John, New Brunswick. We wanted to give you a joint presentation representing our community, as opposed to giving one from a specific organization.
First of all, congratulations for examining this most important national issue of how to reduce poverty in Canada. The Business Community Anti-Poverty Initiative, which I represent, is a group of business leaders in Saint John who have one purpose, to help our community substantially reduce poverty.
We organized back in 1997 because at the time the poverty rate in Saint John was 27% and one in three children was living in poverty. We started with one business leader who gathered 45 of his colleagues together one evening, and we listened to people who lived in poverty--the real experts. We listened to front-line workers who were trying to help. Their stories and struggles were so compelling that they called us to action.
There were quite a few motivations for us to organize. For one thing, we were really embarrassed that so many children and families, particularly women, were suffering because of our neglect. It was clear that families were trapped in poverty, and they needed help to get out. At the time, no level of government seemed to be particularly focused on reducing poverty. This was perhaps our biggest surprise.
Beyond the obvious devastating social implications, there were serious economic consequences. Our whole city was being negatively affected. There appeared to be a lot of government spending dealing with the consequences of poverty--illness, crime, long-term social assistance, etc.--and there was a lot of charitable community spending that served to help people cope with poverty, but almost no investment in helping people get out of poverty.
As business leaders, we were also looking to the future and our needs for a skilled and ready workforce. In our own backyard were talents that needed to be unleashed. So we started in. The problem, honestly, was overwhelming. For a couple of years we kind of muddled around. We tried projects, but mostly we learned.
In 2000, we were frustrated enough that we said we had to put some focus on this. We undertook a major poverty study to help us figure out what we could do to change this poverty picture in Saint John. The study revealed that in Saint John, single-parent families--women and children--were the majority of the poor. They were trapped in an intergenerational cycle of poverty.
If we could break the cycle of poverty, we could substantially change Saint John's future. The recommendations of the study continued to be BCAPI's guide. We'd focus our work on helping children, teenagers, and young families get out of poverty. We'd focus on community participation, and we'd focus on best-practice solutions.
Poverty reduction is now a Saint John priority. It took us a long time to get there, but we can honestly say that if you talk to any of the leaders in Saint John, they will say that poverty reduction is a priority. We are making progress. In 10 years, our level of poverty has dropped from 27% to 20%, but we still have a long way to go.
We've learned that it takes a whole community helping, and it takes all levels of government working in harmony with communities. We need you, our senior levels of government, to lay the policy framework that paves the way for the changes we all want and need.
We've learned that this work is hard and progress is slow, but we must refuse to fail.
Together, BCAPI and Vibrant Communities Saint John have prepared a brief for you. We didn't get it translated in time, so you'll get it eventually. In our brief, we have five recommendations. Before I turn it over to Wendy, I just want to highlight two of those recommendations for you.
The first recommendation is to make poverty reduction a national priority and engage all federal government departments to buy in and to participate.
As we found out, poverty reduction begins with BCAPI's interest, a commitment to begin, the will to proceed, and the leadership to mobilize action. We didn't know what we were doing at the time, but we committed. I think that's what we're asking you to do—make a commitment to make poverty reduction a national priority. We'll figure it out. And the more we work at it, the better we'll get.
Another recommendation we have for you is that we'd like you to partner with the provinces and communities who are already leading poverty reduction strategies. I sat in a little earlier and I heard that you're already aware of the provinces that have poverty reduction strategies. In our own province that's on the way, and a few other provinces are at this stage.
Vibrant Communities Canada, which Wendy represents in Saint John, has been an excellent vehicle for many cities to get on the bandwagon and understand what it is to lead poverty reduction strategies. These cities, these provinces, these communities—that's where the energy and the creativity is. So if we can join in with what's already going on, we'll just keep improving. There's no simple solution; there's no fast solution. We've just got to get going.
That's our first message to you.