Thank you.
Good morning. I thank all of you for this opportunity. I have not brought another shopping list of policy preferences, you may be pleased to hear.
The Ontario Coalition for Social Justice brings together provincial organizations, unions, and community groups to promote social and economic justice in Ontario.
As you're probably aware, the Ontario economy is being rocked by a global recession on top of years of global restructuring. Many people in the province are coping with layoffs, part-time work, and temp agencies and are finding themselves working longer for less. The middle class is shrinking as jobs are being exported, downsized, and contracted out. The wealthy get wealthier. More and more people fear that they're just a couple of paycheques away from eviction and hunger, as poverty moves from the margins into the mainstream.
It's a sad but true fact that the people of Ontario need the federal government to help us cope with the current economic crisis. That's not just because our manufacturing and forestry sectors are being hard hit. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government had to assume new responsibilities for social relief when municipal and provincial governments were unable to cope.
As a case in point, the poverty reduction strategy announced by the Ontario government was largely dependent on spending by the federal government. The centrepiece of the strategy is a promise to increase the Ontario child benefit over the next two years, contingent on federal government support.
According to Professor Dennis Raphael, the author of Poverty and Policy in Canada: Implications for Health and Quality of Life, there are four key factors that determine the incidence of poverty: the level of minimum wages, the level of social assistance benefits, regulations that facilitate workers being able to organize and obtain collective agreements, and the availability of affordable child care.
Professor Raphael points out that the McGuinty government has not made it easier for low-wage workers to organize and has not raised the minimum wages from social assistance levels or provided the affordable child care we need. So not only is the Ontario government's poverty reduction strategy dependent on money from the federal government, but it states that it cannot meet its goals without a growing economy, when help is actually needed now more than ever.
Poverty is measured in relative terms. It's really about how income is shared among people. It doesn't require an economic miracle or a rich economy to share more equitably. People who are adrift in a lifeboat can share what little they have, but that would require the well-to-do getting relatively less so that others might get enough. As our economy continues to crash, I think this lifeboat analogy seems more and more appropriate.
That's why your work is so important. We're counting on you to lend your support to the calls for the reform of the employment insurance system and the overhaul of the Canada Pension Plan. We need the federal government to help all those people who are losing their jobs during this recession, people who have paid their insurance fees on the expectation they'd be insured if they were laid off. Imagine if a private insurance firm took their fees and failed to deliver. There'd be a scandal and heads would roll. The same expectations apply. During an economic downturn, we expect more of our government, not less.
Previous governments have met the challenge in times such as these, here and elsewhere. This is a rich country. We have spent billions to sustain the financial sector and the auto industry. People in poverty deserve as much or more attention. It's not enough to set targets and timelines or to offer more spin than substance. We need the federal government to help people move from poverty to economic security.
I just want to take a second to warn you about what I think is a policy pitfall. Everyone is calling for a comprehensive approach and reminding us that there's no one solution, but I fear that the desire to be inclusive of all possibilities is blinding us to the reality that some approaches achieve better results than others.
I think Hugh Segal made a wonderful point out at the Calgary social forum when he said that there's a belief out there that poverty has a thousand different causes, and we have a tendency to invest a little bit in reducing each cause, with very little net impact. This dissipation of effort occurs for a variety of reasons, which I've identified here but won't read. The bottom line is that even though I've worked for years and years in community development, I would not recommend a community-based approach to poverty reduction.
There are a few stories of successfully reducing poverty using such a place-based approach, perhaps, but such successes are few and far between. They're dependent on the leadership of a few outstanding individuals, a few socially conscious corporations, and supportive municipal governments. Such successes cannot be expected in all communities or even most communities. They do not offer a stable or sustainable model that can be counted on to continue when a few charismatic leaders lose their energy or resolve. A community-based approach didn't manage to reduce poverty during the Great Depression of the thirties. In fact, the federal government had to step in when the municipalities, local churches, and charities across the country found themselves overwhelmed and incapable of handling the relief effort.
But enough of being negative. Let's take a look at what does work. The Nordic countries offer the least poverty, the lowest inequality, the best health and social indicators, and the most productive and prosperous economies in the world. Sweden has strong communities, and they rely on their municipalities to deliver the most comprehensive social services imaginable, but they do not rely on them to finance these services. Local communities cannot guarantee that everyone enjoys high wages and high employment rates. Only strong central governments have the power to stand up to the large corporations and ensure social justice for the citizens.
The Ontario Coalition for Social Justice is a proud sponsor of a forthcoming documentary, Poor No More, in which Mary Walsh takes some ordinary Canadians to Europe to see how they reduce poverty. The film poses this question: if they reduce poverty, why don't we? Allow me, as executive producer of the film, to share a few of the insights I've gained from a recent trip to Ireland and Sweden.
We were prescient to focus on the working poor, given that the best single indicator of the number of people living in poverty in a nation is the number of people earning low wages. Or put the other way, nations that tolerate a high percentage of low-paid workers are more likely to have high poverty rates. Here in Canada the group with the highest risk of poverty is the single people of working age, with over 30% being in poverty. In fact, 25% of Canada's workforce are employed in low-paying jobs, one of the highest percentages of low-paying jobs of all the advanced economies. That works out to nearly five million people. One of the most startling quotes in the film was to hear the former Minister of Social Services in Sweden testify that they have no working poor in Sweden.
I probably don't have the time to recount the essence of the Swedish model, the essence of the Irish model, and what I saw there.
Do I have another minute, or less?