Evidence of meeting #42 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 toronto.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Thank you very much.
Mr. de Jong, as you know, and as I have already mentioned, we heard this morning from Mr. Shapcott. He informed us that one quarter of all Ontario residents currently cannot take advantage of affordable social housing.
You always talk about affordable housing. Does that mean you are disregarding one quarter of the population because they do not earn enough to receive assistance from Habitat for Humanity Canada?
Vice-President, International Programs and Strategic Partnerships, Habitat for Humanity Canada
I wouldn't say leaving behind; I would say Habitat for Humanity plays an important role in the housing continuum.
In case you don't know what that includes, it ranges from emergency shelter, to transition housing, to non-market rentals, to market rentals, to affordable home ownership, and to market ownership. We're focused on the affordable ownership portion of the housing continuum. That is our niche.
Our role is to help those people who could move into home ownership to do so, to move out of rental housing. That frees up scarce rental housing. They move into a situation that in the long term will be much better for them because they'll be building equity and will have a more stable home environment and better security.
We're not leaving the others behind, but we are creating space for others in the scarce rental housing supply.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Do you have programs for single persons, for persons who have no source of income other than their old age pension? Do you provide assistance to women with children, and single women? What is your target population?
Vice-President, International Programs and Strategic Partnerships, Habitat for Humanity Canada
Our priority is households with children, including households headed by single parents. We don't often reach out to single people or seniors. We have limited capacity in terms of the number of housing units we can provide in a year, and we feel that we really want to focus on the families with children.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Thank you.
Earlier, Ms. Agnew, you spoke about the cycle of poverty. Can you explain this concept to us?
Member at Large, Socio-political Affairs, Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario
It's the idea that once people become impoverished, it's very difficult for them or their children to get out of poverty. Unfortunately, you end up seeing generations of people who have been living in poverty, with poor housing, low income, and low educational levels.
Coordinator, Voices From the Street
I would just quickly add something about housing.
In 2007 I lived on $7,200 a year. Those were my benefits from the Ontario disability support program. In 2008 I became employed after living in poverty for 13 years. Last week I bought a condo here in the city.
So there are different opportunities for people who are single, of low or modest income. In 2008 I made $41,000. There are opportunities available, and we need to expand upon those opportunities for everybody to have a chance at owning a home.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you, Michael, for sharing that. That's good news.
Mr. Martin, you have seven minutes, sir.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
I echo what the others have said. We really appreciate your taking the time to come today and to share with us and help us in this work that we do.
First, Avvy, you remember the employment equity program in the early nineties. Was that helpful?
Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
Do you mean the provincial one?
Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
Well, it was very short-lived, because it was introduced by the NDP government, and before it even had a chance to prove its success, it was repealed by the Progressive Conservative government that came in 1995. We never actually had a chance to test the employment equity program. But certainly the federal employment equity program has been very helpful.
It's interesting, because if you look around, even the premier of the province and our mayor talk about how Toronto has such a diverse population, and they look at some of the workplaces to show the diversity. They often refer to the banks and to telecommunication companies. All of them are regulated federally, and, therefore, they are subject to the employment equity program. To me, that is an illustration of how useful the federal employment equity program has been. At least at the front-line level, the workforce has become more diverse.
It hasn't done much at the top echelons of some of these corporations, which are still basically white male-dominated, but for the lower management level and the lower level of the workforce, the federal employment equity program has made the workplace more diverse.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Okay.
Michael, I know that you wear probably a few hats, including the one you're wearing today. You're with Canada Without Poverty?
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
And you launched a week or so ago a campaign called Dignity for All. Could you share a little bit of that with us?
Coordinator, Voices From the Street
Sure.
As Mr. Martin said, I'm a director with Canada Without Poverty. It's a national organization that works for the elimination of poverty in Canada. We've started a campaign around the use of the word “dignity” and how that relates to people who are living in poverty. It's one of the things that people in poverty don't have; it's stripped from you when you become poor. “Dignity“ is a word that people can understand. Often it's hard for people to understand words like “stigmatization”. They really don't know what that means. But for people to know about what the facts are around how poverty affects people and how it damages communities....
I live in Regent Park, which is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Ontario. I see racial discrimination every day around people unable to find jobs in this country simply because of the colour of their skin.
For me, that is a point around dignity. There's no dignity if you come to a country as an immigrant and you find yourself totally closed out of Canadian society. You lose your dignity when your credentials aren't recognized in this country. You lose your dignity when you can't afford to buy food for your family.
Those are the things that we want to bring to the attention of Canadians, because Canadians do not understand poverty. They do not understand the damage and the cost of poverty, the cost that every day all of us as citizens have to pay.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Wayne, a couple of years ago I did a tour across the country talking to people about poverty, listening to people talking about poverty. When I got to Victoria, there was a fairly active and energetic group of people trying to build affordable housing. In fact, they had the money for the housing but they couldn't afford the land.
Is that a problem across the country, or is that particularly specific to Victoria?
Vice-President, International Programs and Strategic Partnerships, Habitat for Humanity Canada
It is a big problem in Victoria and Toronto and other major cities, but really it is the biggest problem that all of our 72 affiliates across the country face, even the rural ones. Affordable land is the biggest obstacle.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Is there anything you've looked at that we could do to fix that?
Vice-President, International Programs and Strategic Partnerships, Habitat for Humanity Canada
We're always looking for below-market or donated land, of course, including from the surplus federal real property homelessness initiative, SFRPHI, which is under HRSDC. It has been some years since we've been able to access suitable land from that program, because a lot of it tends to be institutional land, not suitable for Habitat partner families. But we also work with the provinces and the regions and the municipalities to try to obtain below-market land or, ideally, donated. That's a constant struggle, because that is, as I said, the largest obstacle that all of our affiliates face.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Theresa, before you came we had a panel that included a woman who spoke about the impact of poverty on her health. It's not an obvious thing that you see. When you think of poverty, you think of housing and not having enough money and not participating in the community. You don't always connect the two. She said that it was because she wasn't able to afford healthy food any more, particularly after the government in 1995 in Ontario reduced welfare by 21.6%.
Is that a regular occurrence in some of the work that you do?
Member at Large, Socio-political Affairs, Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario
Food security is a huge issue for many of the people I work with, and now there's such a demand on the food banks in Toronto. It's overwhelming to hear people's stories. Many people, for example, know that they're allowed to go to the food bank only so many times a month, so they learn where else they can go to get accessible food for their families. Often things like formula for infants are not available in the food banks, so people will resort to other alternatives to feed their children. What we also see is that the parents are not getting adequate nutrition in order to feed their children. These are some of the stories that I certainly hear.
But the other thing I'm hearing a lot about is people who've gone off their medication because they can no longer afford to buy their medication and they don't fall into a category where they can access drug benefits. And believe me, we use every which way to get people medication. We use the Trillium program, the Ontario disability support program, compassionate drugs, and donations from pharmaceutical companies to help people access medication, but what we really need is a publicly funded, publicly controlled national pharmacare program that people can access and that is less about the profit for the pharmaceutical companies and more about people accessing drugs.
We had a situation recently with a client who had mental health issues but she had been stable for a long time and was working. Then she was laid off from her job, and that meant she couldn't afford the medication that she used for her mental health illness and she ended up being hospitalized because of that.