Thank you.
I'm hearing impaired. Can people hear me? Good.
First of all, thank you for having me here. I'm very pleased to be here.
The South Etobicoke Social Reform Committee is a group of people who live or work in the Etobicoke-Lakeshore area. There are people who represent LAMP Community Health Centre as service providers in various ways. South Etobicoke Community Legal Services is represented, as well as Toronto Public Health. There are other people on the committee who have lived in poverty, have experienced poverty, and volunteer their time to actively advocate on behalf of people living in circumstances of poverty and for its eradication. We have belonged to the 25 in 5 Network for Poverty Reduction, which is working with the provincial government to establish some plans for poverty reduction.
In our own community, we have organized, for instance, a speak-out in the last provincial election for people in poverty to speak out on their issues. We've organized forums on a variety of issues, including raising the minimum wage, things like bedbugs, things that affect lower-income people or the issues that lower-income people have to deal with.
That is who and what we are and what we do.
We've established six major planks for what we feel is the federal role in poverty reduction. The first is housing. We would like to see permanent funding and increases for the homelessness prevention initiative and the residential rehabilitation assistance program. We think these should be permanent. They are good, effective programs.
Second, we'd also like to see some increase in funding to deal with our local issues. We'd like to have increased funding for local initiatives in building and maintaining housing that is not only affordable but is supportive for those people who need it: seniors, people who are disabled, etc.
Third, like everyone else, we seriously need reform of employment insurance. We've seen quite a bit of deep and persistent poverty in our community over the years, long before this current economic recession began, and we feel that the fact that somewhere between 20% and 25% of the members of our communities are eligible for employment insurance is a chief cause of poverty. That is for a variety reasons. One of the major ones is the reality of the current labour market. Most jobs that are available fall into the category of precarious employment. They are part time. They are unstable. They are insecure. They are through temporary agencies. People are self-employed, etc. That is the kind of employment that is available to people when they lose jobs.
Certainly there is a lot of industry in the South Etobicoke area. We've been gradually losing the industrial base since the middle of the 1980s. I'm not exactly sure of the numbers, but one of the most recent things to happen was that 450 jobs were lost in a plant in Long Branch that made the best spark plugs in the world, apparently. They decided to move to Mexico because it was cheaper. These were well-paid, unionized, stable, secure jobs, and interestingly enough, most of those workers lived in the community as well.
We also believe there should be the creation of a national child care plan. We saw this looming before the election in 2003. We would very much like that back. We don't think that either the national child benefit supplement or the universal child care benefit is making up the difference for, as we say, a national, accessible child care plan for everyone at any income level. This is good for children for all kinds of reasons, which Laurel Rothman has already set out. Furthermore, it provides parents with the ability to get out and work as they need.
Also, it is very important that we ensure access to post-secondary education and training for all Canadians. This is for the immigrants and refugees in our neighbourhood. There are a number of them--new Canadians. A large proportion of our community is new Canadians. It's for youth who don't have parents who are able to put them through post-secondary education. It's for people in mid-life, mid-career who need upgrading, who want to make transitions for whatever reason. People should not be prevented from accessing those opportunities, whether they are on social assistance, employment insurance, etc.
Lastly, it is very important that there be funding strategies for public transit within and between the municipalities. The TTC is mostly supported by the residents of Toronto. It has become hugely expensive, and it is a huge expense in the lives of lower-income people, whether they are working or on social assistance. It is $2.25 a trip. It's an enormous proportion of people's incomes, and it is a necessity. We need to be able to get around for daily reasons, to get to work. Young people need to get to school, particularly high school students. You need it to go buy your groceries, to get to your medical appointments, etc. This is a fairly spread-out suburban neighbourhood. We know of people who can't afford to get around as much as they would like, just to take part in social and community life.
These are the major issues that we feel the federal government should be promoting.
I want to go back to housing a little bit. I know I'm going over my time here, but we feel the model of these programs, where the federal government is giving money to the municipalities to distribute among community agencies, is a very good and effective model for a funding process. This really works because people in those community-based agencies know the needs. The municipalities, even a large municipality like Toronto, know the community service sector. They know where things are good. That really works. It's very local; it's very community-based. This is both cost effective and effective in terms of the results that are brought about in those kinds of programs.
I'm going to end here. I just want to say that overall we need to establish timelines, targets, and methods of evaluation. This does require cooperation by all orders of government.