Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the committee for inviting me to be with you today.
Before I begin my remarks, I just wanted to remind the committee members that Canada does have at least one great success story in the field of poverty reduction. When I began my career over 30 years ago, Canada had the highest rate of poverty of any western country among its seniors. Our poverty rate among seniors was higher than it was in the United States in the late 1970s. By 2000 our seniors had among the lowest poverty rates of any western country. In this particular instance we rival good old egalitarian Sweden. My reason for pointing that out is that we've demonstrated we can do it. The big question is whether we can duplicate this kind of success among other disadvantaged groups in Canada.
I think we certainly know what needs to be done, but we don't always know how to do it. By that I mean there are real, practical problems of coordination. One of the issues I'll turn to at the end of my remarks, if there is time, is an issue that I think is of interest to this committee, the problem of federal and provincial jurisdictions.
The first point is that there's no single magic bullet that you can use to fix poverty or to bring poverty down. You need a whole complex of institutions, a family of policies all working at the same time. Among these, the single biggest weapon in the war on poverty is employment. Having a job is the most effective guarantor of escaping poverty. I might also mention that the psychologists are puzzled sometimes by the fact that having a job is probably the single best predictor of individual psychological well-being and happiness. It matters more than your salary, for example.
Canada's done middling well on the employment front, but not nearly as well as we could or should. Male employment rates have actually fallen in Canada since the 1980s. We now have a lot of good comparative research that indicates the most successful countries in recent decades are those that have invested heavily in what are called active labour market policies. Now, active labour market policies can be a complex topic, but the simple notion of it is that if people can't find jobs, then governments create institutions to bring jobs to people and to provide the training that enables people to find employment.
Countries like Denmark and the Netherlands really began to take the right to work and the right to employment seriously in the 1990s. These programs have made a huge difference. In contrast, Canada's investment in activation strategies has been rather modest.
Achieving high levels of employment, of course, also requires good public services, including health, education, and public transport. All of these things are connected. Today it also requires good child care programs. In 1990 single mothers in Quebec had the lowest employment rate of any province in Canada. By 2000 Quebec single mothers had the highest employment rate of any province in Canada. The explanation is fairly simple: highly subsidized day care services.
Employment is the key, but not if wages are low. I have another little fact for you. Along with the United States, Canada enjoys the ignominious position of having the largest share of low-wage jobs in the OECD. The OECD estimates that about 22% of Canadian full-time employees are in low-paying jobs. In continental Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, the numbers are around 15% compared to our 22%. In the Nordic countries, those numbers fall to 7% or less. As a result, Canadians face a high risk of being among the working poor.
I have some comments in my notes about strategies to deal with that situation, both long term and intermediate term, but I'll pass over them in the interest of time.
I could go on and mention other policy areas that are essential to licking the poverty problem--housing is an example--and I said little about specific target groups, such as aboriginals.
Is that my time?