Thank you.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I also sit on the National Council of Welfare and the Ontario provincial poverty results table.
The Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction was born out of a concern for our community's poverty challenge. It came together in May of 2005 to understand Hamilton's high poverty levels, to focus the community's attention on poverty, and to begin to find solutions. Initially co-convened by the Hamilton Community Foundation and the City of Hamilton, the roundtable today is a multi-sector 42-member body that has engaged more than 900 organizations and 42,000 individuals in Hamilton in an effort to make Hamilton the best place to raise a child.
A poverty matrix based on Statistics Canada 2001 census data concluded that Hamilton was tied with Toronto for the highest rate of residents living below the low-income cut-off: 20% of Hamilton residents lived in poverty, while one in four children were growing up in poverty. That equals about 100,000 of our residents and 25,000 children under the age of 14.
The Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction developed a change framework that focused on a policy and systems change agenda and identified key points in a child's development in which strategic investments could make a positive difference. These critical points of investment include quality early learning and parenting, skills gained from education, activity, and recreation, targeted skills development, employment, asset building, and wealth creation. In other words, we looked at what a human being needs to be a resilient and contributing member of society from pre-birth to employment.
In driving forward community investments, the roundtable worked with established collaborative planning tables, which are focused on the shared outcomes and impacts for children and their families living in poverty. These critical investment points are built on foundational community supports, each of which requires investment and policy interaction by all levels of government, including municipal. We have focussed on systemic changes that will lead to long-term poverty reduction efforts. For example, we have encouraged enhanced community partnerships with governments, increased flexibility in funding and program delivery, and action-oriented solutions.
The Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction experience proves that a strategic focus on poverty can shift the impact of poverty on a community. By working together, citizens, businesses, governments, and community organizations have achieved the following outcomes: a reduction in the poverty rate from 20% to 18%, resulting in 6,000 fewer citizens living below the low-income cut-off, at a time when other communities experienced rising poverty rates; 175 community solutions leading to increased household and social assets for over 47,000 children, youth, and their families, including increased income, access to child care, increased access to skills training, new employment opportunities, and increased access to housing; over $10 million invested in local poverty-reduction priorities through the Hamilton Community Foundation, the United Way, the City of Hamilton, and, more important, business corporate investments and new investments by the provincial and federal governments; unprecedented media coverage of the impact of poverty, which has helped our community to understand that poverty is not lazy people; and putting the Ontario poverty reduction strategy into effect.
Over the past four years, we've learned a number of important lessons. First, we learned that the problem is complex and multi-sectoral. The solution must include all stakeholders—government, business, not-for-profit sectors, health, education, local communities, and people living in poverty. Essentially, we are all part of the problem; therefore, we must all be part of the solution. We encourage the federal government to establish an interdepartmental secretariat on poverty reduction and a multisector national panel on poverty reduction.
Second, we learned that, generally speaking, we know the solutions to poverty and we have many capable folks who can actually deliver those solutions. There is great evidence regarding the positive impact on individuals, communities, and entire countries of investment in early intervention, affordable housing, education, skills training, new Canadians, urban aboriginal populations, and income security, including emergency supports such as EI. However, for sustained solutions, we must invest these resources and create the necessary policies to reduce and prevent poverty. We must ensure that program investments are flexible and sustainable, that they realize the maximum impact over the long term, and that all programs reflect the uniqueness of each community.
Third, we learned that investments in poverty are essentially the same investments that one makes for prosperity. It is investment in human capital, human resilience, and community resilience. In a world of constant change, what better investment is there? And if poverty and prosperity are inseparably linked, then it is clear to us in Hamilton that it is impossible to have a national economic strategy without having a national poverty reduction strategy.
Unfortunately, we have also found that we have, for all our efforts, had very little impact on the overall poverty rate in Canada for the past four years, other than--I completely agree--for seniors. This is caused by many factors. However, none is greater than our lack of a sense of urgency and how this issue aligns or apparently is misaligned with our values as Canadians. We ask in Hamilton, is poverty the flu or is poverty SARS? If poverty were viewed as we view SARS, it would have been solved a long time ago. The solution and the urgency is not a question of money or knowing what to do; it is a question of values.
Once we have agreed, as we have in Hamilton, that poverty is simply unacceptable in Canada--and if poverty is unacceptable, then child poverty is simply disgusting--then there is no question that we can all but eliminate poverty. We must simply set measurable indicators and timelines to reduce and ultimately eliminate poverty and set ourselves a much higher aspiration than we have currently.
Thank you.