Welcome, everyone, to the 28th meeting of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 from 9 to 10:30 a.m.

Today, the committee is in Montreal as it begins a tour across Canada on the issue of poverty. In the Atlantic provinces, we went to Halifax and Moncton. Today, we are in Montreal, and in a few days, we will be in Toronto. In the fall, we will travel to western Canada and the far north. This is the start of our tour.

Our goal is to hear from Canadians, especially the people on the ground, on the issue of poverty. Obviously, it is important to know about the problems that exist, and you are the people who know the most about them, but we would prefer to hear your recommendations about the role the Government of Canada could play in addressing this problem. This is important to us.

The committee's analyst, Mr. Kerr, is taking notes. The ultimate goal of this meeting and many others that have taken place in Ottawa is to prepare a report that will be approved by all members of the committee. Once that report has been prepared, it will be tabled in the House of Commons and submitted to the Minister of Human Resources, who will have to respond to it within a prescribed time frame.

We have a number of groups with us. Around the table are representatives of all the parties in the House of Commons: for the government, Mr. Lobb and Mr. Komarnicki; for the official opposition, Ms. Maria Minna; for the Bloc Québécois, Ms. Beaudin; and for the NDP, Mr. Mulcair. I understand that Mr. Lessard will be joining us later. As vice-chair of the committee, I am a member of the Liberal Party of Canada.

The first part of the session will end at 10:30 a.m. This is how we will proceed. I will call one group at a time, and you will each have five minutes to read your brief. If two people are going to read the brief, you will have to share your five minutes. Once everyone has finished, each political party will have seven minutes to ask questions and hear answers. Once that is done, we will start another round where each party will have five minutes.

On our list, we have Ghislain Picard of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador, Mélanie Gauvin of the group Au bas de l'échelle, Mr. Lafrenière and Ms. de Sève of the Centrale des syndicats du Québec, Ms. McLeod and Ms. St-Martin of AGAPE, and Claude Piché and Normand Pépin of the Centrale des syndicats démocratiques.

According to my list, we are going to begin with Mr. Picard of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador. Again, welcome to our meeting.

9:10 a.m.

Chief Ghislain Picard Chief, Assembly of the First Nations of Quebec and Labrador

Thank you very much.

[Witness speaks in his own language.]

Madam Vice-Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, good morning.

We submitted a copy of the brief from the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador. I will not read it, as I would prefer to talk more about the context in which we are making our representation to your committee this morning.

I would like to begin by saying that I feel somewhat helpless. This is not the first time I have represented the first nations of Quebec and Labrador before a standing committee or a commission of the National Assembly of Quebec. We are becoming increasingly weary as we make representations in the appropriate forums and we see that, in the end, very little is done to change the situation of the communities we represent.

It was in part for this reason that, last fall, the chiefs I represent took a fairly hard line that nonetheless reflects the helplessness I spoke about earlier. Our aim is to act rather than react, which we no doubt have done a bit too often in the past. The chiefs clearly indicated that we have the mandate to try to move things along more quickly and to present the federal and provincial governments with a situation that might force them both to address the grievances we have been sharing for too long.

Moreover, what I am saying is backed by various reports that have been drafted and updated more than once. The Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, described the housing situation in first nations communities as follows:

Many First Nations are facing a housing crisis. Unless action is taken quickly, the already unacceptable housing conditions are only going to get worse, with population growth on reserve that is twice the Canadian average.

This is just one of many examples that show that there are urgent needs in the communities we represent. Of course, I speak only for the first nations of Quebec and Labrador, but it is clear that the situation across the country is similar.

The Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador consists of some 40 chiefs in these two regions and is supported by various commissions. The Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador Health and Social Services Commission and the First Nations Human Resources Development Commission of Quebec are certainly the two commissions with the most direct interest in the issues that concern us.

In October 2006, with the help of civil society in Quebec, the Government of Quebec and the Government of Canada, we organized a socio-economic forum whose main objective was to shed light on issues pertaining to socio-economic conditions in our communities, including housing, education, health and many other areas.

We brought together more than 500 participants for a three-day meeting designed to call directly on the governments and civil society in Quebec to find ways to deal with the situation described in the brief that was submitted to you.

Clearly, two years later, despite our periodic attempts at making progress reports, we have to admit that we are still very far from our objectives. One of the messages that was conveyed at the socio-economic forum was that, to find a way to deal with the situation of the peoples and the communities we represent, it was necessary to improve the prospects for those communities over 10 years. That meant creating 10,000 jobs, building 10,000 new homes and graduating at least 10,000 new students in our communities.

According to demographic data, our population is much younger than the overall population of Canada. Individuals under the age of 25 account for approximately 40% of our population, but only 30% or 31% of the population of Quebec.

You have received specific recommendations concerning areas such as health, employment and training. I will not take the time to list the recommendations. I could certainly answer any questions you might have about our position. In our brief, we have taken the trouble to quote from reports by the federal government and the Government of Quebec that confirm that the first nations we represent are among the poorest of the poor. I will conclude on this note, because we can never say often enough that the human development index ranks our communities 70th, while Canada as a whole ranks 8th. There is therefore a huge difference between the quality of life that Canadian society as a whole enjoys and the quality of life in the communities we represent.

9:15 a.m.

Liberal

The Vice-Chair Liberal Raymonde Folco

Mr. Picard, seeing you takes me back a number of years.

We have received a brief from Mr. Picard in both official languages. I believe everyone has a copy, and we will take note of it. Thank you.

I now give the floor to Mélanie Gauvin of Au bas de l'échelle.

9:15 a.m.

Mélanie Gauvin National Spokesperson, Front de défense des non-syndiquéEs, Au bas de l'échelle

Good morning. First, I thank you for inviting us, and I must say that unfortunately, we did not bring a brief. We were invited to participate only at the end of last week. If necessary, we would have no problem sending in a document.

Au bas de l'échelle is an organization that defends the rights of non-unionized workers. We have two main areas of interest. The first is providing information to individuals who have problems at work. We offer various information services over the telephone and also offer information sessions on the Quebec Labour Standards Act to individuals who have filed psychological harassment complaints. We also provide information to people who are in the middle of a mediation process. Our second area of interest is getting involved politically and participating in public consultations. We have published a number of legal analyses, and also educational materials on labour laws.

As part of these consultations, we would like to draw your attention to two important issues that could be factors in poverty: nonstandard employment and minimum wage. First, I will talk about labour casualization as a cause of poverty. By labour casualization, I mean the increased number of types and statuses of jobs, or people who work part time, on call, who have contract or temporary jobs, people who work from home or for a temporary help agency—any job that is not stable, generally full time, and indeterminate.

In 2008, 37% of jobs in Quebec and in Canada were nonstandard. Why do we call these jobs nonstandard? First, they generally offer lower wages. Second, they also offer less stability and job security, they offer limited or non-existent access to benefits and training, and, to a degree, they complicate the right of association and the right to collective bargaining. There is a difference in the way regular, permanent employees of a company are treated, and the way the others, who have unstable employment, are treated.

I would like to throw out a few figures to give you some examples. For non-unionized employees, the average hourly wage for a permanent employee is $17.51, while the average hourly wage for a short-term employee is $13.32. That is a difference of 24%. In the business sector, there is a wage gap of 40% between full-time and part-time workers. In public administration, there is a difference of 35%, and in the manufacturing sector, a difference of 33%. For workers hired through temporary help agencies, the gap is even wider. People who are hired through temporary help agencies earn 40% less than permanent employees. That is why we are calling for the necessary changes to the Quebec Labour Standards Act to ensure that everyone is treated equally, and to restrict the increase in numbers of casual jobs and to limit the advantages that companies gain by offering these types of jobs.

We called for the same thing during consultations in October 2005, on the reform of Part III of the Canada Labour Code, and we will soon be making similar recommendations in the discussion paper on the Canada Labour Code labour standards review.

So that we can ensure that everyone is treated equally, the Quebec Labour Standards Act and the Canada Labour Code need to establish that an employer cannot provide working conditions to an employee that are inferior to those provided to workers doing a comparable job for the same company, for the following reasons: if this person usually works fewer hours per week; if this person was hired through an employability program or measure covered by legislation; if this person is a temporary, casual or on-call employee; if this person was hired through a temporary help agency; or if this person works outside the work building. We are also calling for companies to pay wage compensation that is proportional to the loss in benefits to which other employees of the company are entitled.

Recently in Quebec—and it is similar in the other Canadian provinces—we have seen some employers that try to reduce costs and increase flexibility, and end up creating inequalities based on the type or status of the job, which can make it difficult for people to access decent jobs, and explains part of the problem with poverty among workers.

Another important part of access to decent work is the minimum wage to which a worker is entitled in exchange for work done. I will be talking about minimum wage.

Now, the minimum wage—