Thank you.
My name is Daniel. I am really honoured and excited to say that my boss, Dr. Hutchinson, asked that I come and speak here. I'm not a professional in any way, and I have no degrees of any kind, but I have a perspective that's mine, and I'm going to give it to you for free, sort of.
Let me start with this. I'm going to give you some answers to the questions, which I read over several times, but I want you to remember a perspective more than anything else, because I'm a voice.
I'll tell you of a place that exists in many cities.
It may change in location and size, but these places really exist.
Most people turn their eyes and try to ignore this place.
What is this place?
It is the place of the homeless.
Who am I to say that most people try to turn their eyes?
My name is Nobody.
I heard a mother say, in response to her child's inquiry, “Mommy, who is that man?”
“Nobody, dear. He's a homeless man.
That's a poem I wrote from experience. From 1978 to 2003, I was a homeless man on over 70 different streets in a wonderful country we call Canada. So I'm quite well aware of poverty at a level that most people aren't.
Poverty exists on many levels. Dr. Hutchinson saw me. He was a man himself who came up from a homeless perspective. He spent some time back in the 1980s on the streets living under a bridge.
I've been advocating for nine years, since I determined that I wasn't going to be homeless any more and that I was going to make a difference about the image of homelessness and poverty in Canada. From that point of view, I've been working for nine years for this very day right here. Along the way, I rallied a meeting, and all the people who needed to be at the table were at the table to talk about the issue of homelessness in the Region of Peel, where I'm dear to. At that point, he saw me there, and that was the first time we really got to know each other. He offered me the position of outreach coordinator for homelessness and anti-poverty initiatives, and that set me on fire.
He sees potential, and that's the whole purpose of what I do. I want to give hope back to a community that in a lot of ways has lost hope. For you guys, the question was to precisely put your point of view, and this is my concise point of view. You need to ask three questions. The first question is, are you receiving adequate food? The second question is, are you receiving adequate shelter. And the third question is, are you receiving adequate clothing. With those three questions in mind, you're going to ask another question: has it been getting better or has it been getting worse? You can base those three questions on the economic, social, and cultural rights and freedoms act, section 11.
Those three questions being asked, what you want to do is form a committee of front-line service providers. I mean front-line service providers--front line--not the funders and not the managers. Managers always have to be in charge, of course, but I'm talking about front-line workers, the ones who are on the beat who deal with poverty on the street. Then you want to get service providers, front-line service providers, and recipients and bring them together. Bring these two communities together in a focus group across Canada. I'm talking about ten provinces and three territories. I'm talking about a focus group, an outcome-oriented focus group.
When those questions are answered and you come to conclusions, there's a format for a focus group that you can use called ORID. I won't go into it, but with that focus group in mind, you take the questions on a national level. You come up with some answers, and then you put some teeth and some legs into what you're doing.
You may think it's just something that I'm dreaming, an idea that can't be done. I'm not a professional. That's why I'm not trying to come at this from a professional point of view. But I'll tell you why I think this can be done, and it's a fact that I'm proud of. They had deemed me for long-term institutionalization with little hope of recovery: “It doesn't look like he'll ever stop being a homeless man.” That's where they left me. And this is where you find me today, standing here with good voice.
I have a little bit of a reputation behind me. I've worked hard to get here. I'm standing here and I've said my piece on what I think needs to be done. The government needs to get a hold on this. Poverty hurts. It hurts a lot. When you say “adequate” this, “adequate” that, we have to remember that we have to get down to where it meets the road. We have to take the people up there, give them some hope, give them some inspiration.
This is a community of people that everybody seems to have forgotten—those in poverty, those on the street, those with mental illness, those in mental housing places, those in jails, those on reserves. When you think of all those places and all those people, including native people, with just a little bit of financial stability from government sources, with moneys coming in on a regular basis, with a focused outcome group, with some teeth on the front lines, I think in six to ten years we could bring poverty down to a very significant level in Canada.
That's not a political point of view, that's mine.
Thank you.