Evidence of meeting #38 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was peel.
Chair, Peel Poverty Action Group (PPAG)
Fifty per cent of the population of Peel region is immigrant.
Chair, Peel Poverty Action Group (PPAG)
I'm not sure. There are 300,000 South Asians among that group as well as a large number of black people from the Caribbean. They are talking to us about the problems they encounter with getting jobs, holding jobs, and all the things that go with the constant put-down, I think, of being a person of colour.
Executive Director, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI)
That has been the growth in Peel, and it will continue to be the growth in Peel.
Chair, Peel Poverty Action Group (PPAG)
That's right. We get 30,000 new people a year, and most of them are immigrants.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Adam, you had suggested we could eradicate half the poverty by 2020. I find it alarming that we would have to wait that long. Obviously the people Debbie is talking for want it done today or tomorrow. They don't want to live in poverty anymore.
How do we pick and choose who the 50% will be who will be lifted out of poverty and who the 50% will be who won't? We've heard a lot about the deserving and the undeserving poor. Maybe you could talk to me a little bit about that. Is it impossible to solve poverty quickly?
Executive Director, Ontario Association of Food Banks (OAFB)
It is not impossible to solve poverty quickly. It is obviously a matter of political will and how we would achieve that. We have looked at other jurisdictions, other countries that have been able to reduce poverty over a certain period of time. Given that we're going through a period of significant economic downturn, so that, as I said, half a million more Ontarians will be living in poverty over the next two years, I believe that a reasonable target for poverty reduction is to cut it in half. You can actually commit to that. You can look me in the eye and say to all these people that we'll do that in 10 years, and that is possible. It would absolutely be possible to do that if there were unanimity amongst all parties and there was a commitment from everyone. It is hypothetically possible that we could eliminate poverty by 2020 as well, but the strategy we've put together with our organization would lead us to believe that we can cut it in half by 2020.
In terms of your question of who, we believe we target the deepest. We target where poverty hits us the hardest. If you look at a place like Sandy Lake First Nation, which is as far from here up north as we are from Miami, we're not going to be able to eliminate poverty up in Sandy Lake in 10 years. It will take a generation. It's going to take not just this committee, but the government. It will take the commitment of a generation in order to reduce poverty in Canada, in order to eliminate it. So I'll be 50 years old before we will be able to put our line in the sand and say we've done it. It is a tremendous commitment, I believe, just to be able to say that.
That's my response.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
David, I didn't hear your presentation. I apologize. But I did see the movie that you put together, and there was a strong emphasis in that movie on the need to allow more people to organize their labour and negotiate collective agreements, and that would lift a lot of people out.
Could you speak a little bit about that? We haven't heard much about that yet.
Co-chair, Ontario Coalition for Social Justice (OCSJ)
In country after country around the world, unions have not just improved their wages and working conditions and won pensions and other benefits for their members; they have helped to introduce social programs like medicare, child care, and affordable housing. Research shows that the stronger the labour movement, the more generous the benefits. We can see in Sweden what labour can achieve, when over 80% of the workers belong to unions, even the managers at McDonald's who we went in to visit. We show this in the film.
It's also interesting to note, Tony, that in many European countries there's a history of government working closely with business and labour, but how well those partnerships work depends upon who is in government and whether labour has any power. In Ireland we saw a government that had been collaborating closely with business while labour got short shrift. In Sweden there is a longer history of cooperation between the unions and their party in government, and consequently both the workers and the employers then profited from investment in labour skills and improvement ...[Technical difficulty—Editor].
I mentioned earlier that politics matters. When business was booming in Ireland, working people enjoyed high wages and a reduction in poverty, but now that the economy is in serious trouble the Irish are ready to dump the government that left them so vulnerable and without a strong safety net or a health care system. In contrast, the social partnership in Sweden has been threatened when Swedish business leaders invested outside the country where they could pay lower taxes and lower wages. That is their Achilles' heel. Now with an election looming, it remains to be seen whether the Swedish people will re-elect the current government, which puts more emphasis on individual achievement and free enterprise, or chose a government that provides them with more security in times of world economic chaos. The fascinating thing is that even though their government changes back and forth, there is a strong consensus in that country in favour of the welfare state. They haven't diminished the welfare state.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you very much.
We're now going to move over to Mr. Lobb. You're going to have the last question in this round. The floor is yours for seven minutes.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Thank you very much.
Mr. Spence, 320,000 Ontarians per month are provided food by your group. I wonder, on the food that is provided, does your agency have a mandate on the percentage of the food you provide that might be Canadian?
Executive Director, Ontario Association of Food Banks (OAFB)
That's a very good question. We do not have a mandate on the proportion of Canadian food we provide. The majority of food that we distribute is from the corporate manufacturing sector and is manufactured in Canada. Given the rapid increase in demand for our services, which, as I said, has been 20% over the past year, as well as the significant precipitous decline of food manufacturing in the province—we've lost 10 food manufacturers in the past 16 months alone—we have been forced to reach out to local farmers in Ontario. They have been extremely generous in doing so, and we'll continue on that path in order to meet the excessive demand that we face.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Let's say over the last five years, where would your median range be? Would it be 320,000, or is it less than that?
Executive Director, Ontario Association of Food Banks (OAFB)
In between 2005 and 2008 it was relatively stable at about 320,000. In the past 12 months to 18 months it has increased. We've had food banks in Hamilton indicating an increase of 26%. Thunder Bay is up 36%. Cornwall is up almost 40%. As soon as the recession hit, it became a significant challenge; and it is across the board, not just in those towns like Oshawa and Windsor. It is everywhere.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Ms. Douglas, my dad grew up in a very poor rural family. By all definitions of today, he would have been very much in a poverty family. His family was able to rise up and put their children through school, and everything was a success story. In my riding, if you are in Bruce County in southwestern Ontario, it is very much comprised of a strong immigrant component of definitely Dutch and German origin, and they have tremendous work ethics, similar to most immigrants who come into this country.
I wonder, beyond some of the issues you've addressed today, and given the strong work ethic of our immigrants, have you any ideas about promoting investments for small businesses, for self-employment, that you would consider beneficial? Obviously there is definitely a tremendous issue with affordable housing, but moving beyond that, is there anything your group can see that would provide funding or should provide funding to try to stimulate the growth of self-employment?
Executive Director, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI)
Yes, it's not only about self-employment; it's also about supporting small and medium-sized businesses. We know they are the largest employers in the country. Micro-financing is an idea that we should be looking at as government and encouraging in our financing institutions. It would help people to set up their own businesses, to become self-employed, and to hire other people.
One of the things I don't want us to miss in this conversation is the link between all of these things. We have to link poverty to race, to youth, to women. What are the strategies that have worked in other jurisdictions? What are the strategies that we have successfully used in the past? It's about political will. We have to rethink who we are as a country. Micro-financing is a great idea for increasing low-interest loans. I think we need to pay attention to racialized communities being the last hired and the first fired. We need to look at things like employment equity at the provincial level. We need to look at things like contract compliance at the national and provincial levels. Those are the ways that we can ensure the greatest participation for the most vulnerable in our economy.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Many of my friends' parents and grandparents who immigrated to the area talk about the tremendous difficulty of learning English when they moved here. I wonder if there's more we can do as a government to help our immigrants learn the language.
Executive Director, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI)
In Ontario, the investment in language training has been maintained, although our current national administration has just removed $90 million from the sector in Ontario. We're most likely not going to see that money come back. Part of the challenge is the timing. It's not enough that you have to be a landed resident to be able to access services. We're encouraging citizenship, but once you become a citizen, you can't access funded programs.
We know that 50% of refugee claimants get status, but until they become landed residents, they can't access service. Meanwhile, we're leaving out Canadian citizens who may have been in the country for three or four years. They can't access language services, because they've become Canadian citizens. At the same time, we're encouraging citizenship. So there's a disconnect between what we say we want to happen and the support we give to our words.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Ms. Toth, has Peel implemented a plan for future development that requires, say, 10% of new development to be for affordable housing?
Also, the Province of Ontario, with their Green Energy Act, has taken away a lot of the zoning measures for green energy. Do you have any thoughts on that? If local municipalities are not willing to mandate affordable housing, would it be appropriate for the province to zone for it?
Chair, Peel Poverty Action Group (PPAG)
That's an interesting approach. Some research has been done on practices elsewhere. In Britain, for instance, major developers are required to build a certain amount of affordable housing when they get approval to build a housing estate. I think something like that has also been done in Vancouver, and I've been told that it's practised in California. No report on this has been made to council, as far as I know, but it's certainly something to be investigated. If it involves a change of powers, that's something else to look at. It sounds like a good idea to me.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you very much, Mr. Lobb.
I thank the witnesses. We appreciate the work you're doing on the front lines. We always want to thank you for that, and we thank you for your contributions today.
Go ahead, sir.
Bloc
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Mr. Langille, you said with good reason--and I think everyone shares this view--that poverty has a colour, poverty has a gender and poverty has an age.
However, you did not say anything about taxes. Don’t you think taxes are linked to social class? Can you elaborate on taxes and their relationship with social classes?
Co-chair, Ontario Coalition for Social Justice (OCSJ)
I think taxes are a major means of redistributing wealth, and they're critical. The people who are advocating for tax cuts are those who are really resistant to income redistribution. If we're going to have any reduction in poverty in Canada, it will only be through having a strong, progressive, and fair tax system. I think that's the most important point to make today. Without the resources we can't do the job.