Okay.
So what can be done? In our analysis of poverty, I believe we must consider four distinct issues: first, how to meet the immediate short-term needs of those in poverty; second, how to meet the long-term needs; third, how to minimize the number of people who will fall back into poverty; and finally, how to prevent poverty from occurring in the first place. Each of these factors is interconnected.
In addressing the short-term needs, when individuals, and in particular families, enter poverty, there are several levels of needs that require attention. While not an exclusive list, the immediate needs of safety, food, shelter, clothing, and children's education must be addressed.
It's not clear that these should be strictly the domain of government. One leading agency in the United Kingdom, having done much research and work on the ground with poverty-fighting groups, has determined that these needs are often best served by grassroots communities who know, understand, and are best able to deal with the local needs of those in poverty and facing other social difficulties.
Addressing the long-term needs is not an extension of the short-term solutions. Ensuring that people and families have a way out of poverty must be the next focus. We do no one any favour by maintaining existing barriers such as the welfare wall, tax clawbacks, and an inability to meet education and training needs. Research in the U.K. has clearly shown that family entrenchment in poverty leads to ongoing cyclical poverty for generation after generation.
In order to minimize the return to poverty, one of the biggest impediments that individuals and families face when attempting to move out of poverty is the welfare wall. While on social assistance programs, certain benefits--such as housing, child care, and prescription drugs--are subsidized. As a person attempts to move out of poverty, these benefits are eliminated, thus increasing the financial needs of the individual or the family, and often resulting in a return to the poverty cycle and/or as a disincentive to work.
In recent years, the federal government has recognized this problem. It has moved towards addressing it through the working income tax benefit--the “WITB”, as it's commonly known--which is intended to lower the welfare wall by compensating people for personal high marginal tax rates. Without this, marginal tax rates for some of these individuals may actually be as high as 50% to 70%.
The key to any of this poverty strategy is education. We expect that young people in high school make good, positive decisions for their lives as they continue on to post-secondary education, trade school, vocations, and careers. I believe it is important that we also explain the statistics of social decisions as well--the importance of relationships and the statistical outcomes of broken relationships; the effect of not completing their education in a 21st century world; the long-term consequences of decisions made today, both good and bad. This is not moralizing; this is being honest about the risk of certain outcomes given their respective decisions. Let the numbers speak for themselves and be widely known.
In preventing poverty, one of the byproducts of the steady erosion of the institution of marriage has been the rise of lone-parent families. In short, family structure and stability plays a large role in the eradication of poverty. Strong, stable married parents are less likely to fall into poverty, and their children are less likely to enter poverty themselves as they approach adulthood.
But one element of poverty that I'd like to highlight is the link to lone parenting. Lone-parent families have, I think, the hardest job in the world, be they moms or dads. Social science research agrees that the demographic group with the highest rate of poverty is the lone-parent family.
Since 1987, Statistics Canada has shown female lone-parent families to have disproportionately higher levels of poverty than other family forms. Measured as “the proportion of people living below the low income cutoffs with a given group”, according to Statistics Canada, children in female lone-parent families have ranged from a 22-year high of 65.7% in 1996 to a low of 32.3% in 2006. While progress has been made to lower poverty levels, in particular in the past ten years, statistics show that almost one third of female lone-parent families continue to live in low income.
For many, a strong, stable marriage is both a defence against entering poverty and the key to exiting it. Our research has confirmed that for unattached women who become single mothers in a given year, the odds for being poor in that year rose 5.8% to over 30%. Conversely, a lone mother who got married in a particular year saw her chances of exiting poverty rise from 29% to 84%. Single motherhood is a reliable predictor of family and child poverty. Reflexively, marriage is an important poverty-fighting institution.
Public officials at all levels have a limited role to play. As mentioned previously, community-based groups often have the best outcomes due to their ability to work with local residents. Public officials need to recognize and support this role.
Furthermore, there is a need to evaluate programs for effectiveness. Rewarding and continuing to fund the organization or voice that is the loudest is not the best way to determine which program should be funded and which ones will not. The problem of poverty is big, it's complex, and it's fraught with competing interests and solutions. We should be looking closely at outcomes and results.
Some positive steps have been taken by the government in the past. I've mentioned the WITB is a step forward in addressing the welfare wall, but it has not yet eliminated it. Continuing to expand this program would make it easier for people to return to the workforce. The elimination of the marriage penalty, tax-free savings accounts, and disability tax credits are all good measures as a part of that process. However, there are several public policy measures that I believe could be taken in order to further support anti-poverty measures.
One of these is family income splitting. In our research, the number one issue that affects families in every single demographic group across the range is finances. Reducing the tax burden on families will greatly assist and control their decision-making within their own family. Several options exist to introduce family income splitting to Canada's tax structure.
The second is married family based taxation. Intact married families fare best in all measurement scales: mental and physical health; personal income; family stabilities; and lower levels of poverty. Government should be rewarding this positive behaviour. We need to create incentives that support family and in turn fight poverty. For many families, the reason they enter poverty is family breakdown. We've made some progress on this front. But while this drop is encouraging, we still have over a third of lone-parent families--specifically mothers--living in low-income situations.
We also need transparency and accountability measures. According to the C.D. Howe Report, "Good Health to All”, just released within the last month, no one knows whether or not many of the federal programs are offering good value for money. It is imperative that we determine if we are maximizing, duplicating, or wasting tax dollars on different programs.
We meed community-based program delivery. As you recall from the presentation by the Right Honourable Iain Duncan Smith, the U.K. experience has been that the local community, faith, and NGO organizations are best able to deliver services that are tailored specifically to the needs of poverty-stricken individuals and families within their community. I believe this is the key to further improvements for low-income Canadians. Further efforts should take place around this issue. The Centre for Social Justice reports have set a high standard to which we can all look for practical solutions and policy.
In conclusion, family breakdown is expensive. It has a high fiscal and social cost within our society. The dollars are truly staggering. At a time such as this current recession, it's in everyone's best interests to find continued cost savings. I invite you all to come next Wednesday when we release our latest report on the cost of family breakdown. The numbers are truly staggering. More than anything, this process helps to restore hope to those in poverty--hope that they will sooner rather than later move out of poverty permanently. Hope should be our inspiration to achieve the goal of poverty eradication.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.