Good afternoon.
I'd like to begin with a very brief introduction of FRAPRU. We are a Quebec umbrella group of 130 organizations that advocate for housing, the homeless, and more broadly take part in the fight against poverty and for social rights.
From the mid-1990s, Canada, as you know, experienced a very long period of economic growth, a very long period of enormous budgetary surpluses, and in some years they were absolutely colossal. It was therefore a period that would have been conducive to a decrease in poverty, and even more than a decrease, it was a period that should have been conducive to the elimination of poverty in Canada. Unfortunately, this is not what happened.
I am not the only one to say so. An OECD report was published last fall, and this is not an organization particularly known for its left-leaning views. Not only did the OECD state that income gaps had increased significantly in Canada, but that only one country had done worse than Canada in this area. The OECD report more specifically addressed the income of the poorest quintile of the population. Their income increased by only 0.2% between 1995 and 2005, whereas the income of the wealthiest quintile, that is to say the fifth of the population that has the highest income, had increased by 2.1%. There was therefore an increase of 2.1% for the richest and 0.2% for the poorest.
In my view, the official policies adopted by successive governments in Ottawa are to blame for this. I will give you only one example, because there are many, but I will give you the one I know best, that of social housing.
In 1993, the federal government completely withdrew from the social housing sector. We know that before then, they were the main contributor of funds in this area. This followed three years of brutal budget cutbacks. In 1993, we therefore withdrew. There was a timid return in 2002, with the provision of funds for what was called “affordable housing”. However, even taking into account what the government put into affordable housing, even taking into account what the Government of Quebec did with its own budgets, the shortfall for Quebec, for poorly sheltered and homeless people in the province who suffered, was 54,300 homes in 16 years. That represents 54,300 people or families who would otherwise not be on the street today, some of whom would not be paying an exorbitant percentage of their income for housing, or would not be living in hovels.
It is not without reason that Canada, on several occasions, has been criticized by UN authorities, particularly the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2006 and by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing in 2007. The United Nations Human Rights Council, again quite recently, during its universal periodic review last March, criticized Canada for its weak performance in upholding the right to a standard of adequate living and also the right to housing.
We were in a sustained period of economic growth and budgetary surpluses. Now, circumstances have changed; there is an economic crisis and we are once again facing a deficit. We must not use these two reasons, the crisis and the deficits, to fail to act to relieve poverty. I feel that these responsibilities not only still exist, they're even greater in such times.
I am almost at my recommendations. FRAPRU's first recommendation is to respect the international commitments that Canada has made in terms of human rights, and particularly social rights, rights which the government and society have agreed to uphold. It seems to me to be the very least we could do to take the various UN committees' recommendations into account. In this regard, I remind you that the Canadian government has still not, after three years, responded to the comprehensive recommendations that were made by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
More specifically, and I believe Ms. Jetté will add to this—we must increase the Canada social transfer to give the provinces and territories the means to increase social assistance benefits across Canada and make it possible to return to the levels we had at the time of the elimination of the Canada Assistance Plan.
I imagine that my time is almost up.