Human Resources Committee on Feb. 26th, 2009

[Frank Fedyk]

That was introduced in budget 2007, and the information is collected through the--

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

With all due respect, Mr. Fedyk, the business proposal was in the very first budget the government brought in on child care. And over a couple of years, there were no real specific results. It's not that new a program. Are there results at this point?

[Frank Fedyk]

The Canadian Revenue Agency, CRA, collects the information with respect to tax filing. This is a benefit that employers--

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

The department wouldn't track child care spaces. It's a program of your department.

[Frank Fedyk]

It's administered through the CRA. The businesses file the application for the credit of up to $10,000--

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

But the policy side would be at--

[Shawn Tupper]

Yes. CRA is implementing the actual measure. We did, consequent to the minister's appearance here, approach CRA to determine whether data was currently available. The government spoke to the creation of that tax benefit in its first budget, but it did not become active as a tax measure until the 2007 budget year. Consequently there is insufficient data for CRA to be able to release, because it doesn't have a sufficient accumulation that it can protect privacy.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Okay. I'm going to make a qualitative comment here. It wasn't working before. I think that's why we don't have the data. It wasn't working.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay, we're going to move now to the next round.

We have Mr. Cannan, sir, five minutes.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to our witnesses for the information.

I know it's a very challenging topic and it's one that has been studied for many years. With respect to my honourable colleague across the way, for 13 years they had a chance to deal with the issue, and it continues to spiral out of control.

We've been investing, as you indicated, over $13 billion to help children. As a grandfather of a two-year-old, I appreciate the opportunity for my daughter and the father to make a choice in child care. Other Canadians appreciate that opportunity as well.

I also acknowledge that we have the intangibles. Some of the subjectives are hard to point out. As you indicated, you don't necessarily know who receives the benefit. It's a very difficult task to pin down.

Maybe I'm just expounding on my question: why doesn't Canada have an official measure of poverty?

[Frank Fedyk]

I think Sylvie answered that as well. Because poverty is so complex and there are so many diverse needs of the population, it's difficult to have one measure that would address all the issues. There are the advantages of the various suites that we talked about. We want to do trends, and the LICO is the best in terms of monitoring that. There are international comparisons, LIM, and the market basket measure, which gets at the regional differences.

There are also benefits to looking at it from a holistic point of view. Those three measures focus on income, and our European colleagues are looking at material deprivation, which Sylvie also highlighted. It gets at the quality of life and one's interactions and involvement in society.

For those reasons, I think most countries have not adopted an official poverty measure.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

For the past three-plus years I've been a member of Parliament, but prior to that I spent nine years as a city of Kelowna councillor. I worked with our social planning and housing committee, and I worked with all levels of government. We've invested more money in homelessness and affordable housing than any Canadian government. We still need all levels of government coming together, and we're working toward that strategy.

As I mentioned, for three-plus years I've been a member of Parliament. During that time I've been working on the international trade committee. We're trying to provide economic opportunities for Canadians across the country. As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all ships. We're trying to give opportunities through skills retraining. Education, as we know, is the greatest opportunity for any individual to help themselves through to the opportunities that present themselves for future employment. There could be a variety of other issues, from mental health to medical issues. We're trying to coming up with a complex, holistic solution.

You mentioned 1979. If we go back to the early eighties and the early nineties, when the trade agreement was put into effect, and look at the correlation between how Canadians have fared over the last, say, 20 years, and....

You say in here that 80% of Canadians did not experience low income from 1999 through 2004. Is it reasonable to expand from this that for the last 20 years, 20% have been poorer than, or not as well off as, the other 80% of Canadians?

You also mention the fact that 40% went over one year. Is that the trend? Then you mention five years. Have you gone back even 15 years prior to that?

[Garnett Picot]

We would like to do that. Unfortunately--

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

How about even another five years prior? Or did you just need five for the sake of your study?

[Garnett Picot]

We need, in order to do that, longitudinal data, which means we need to be able to track people for at least six years. We didn't have such data in Canada back in the seventies and eighties, so we cannot move those numbers back.

I think the general point of those numbers, though, as opposed to the exact trend, is that most Canadians don't experience low income. A substantial number do over a long period of time--20%--but relatively few experience persistent low income. That's much lower, around 4% or 5%.

But no, we don't have a time series.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

How do far back does your information go, then?

[Garnett Picot]

To the early nineties. We could do the same numbers back to 1993.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

That would be interesting, because that's basically when NAFTA kicked in. We could see the economic impacts.

[Garnett Picot]

Yes.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Cannan.

Now we're going to move to Madame Beaudin, for five minutes.

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning to our witnesses and thank you for being here. I am a new member of Parliament and I've been doing a lot of reading since I was elected. I would gladly spend two hours speaking with you, but I only have a few minutes allocated to me.

For the last 10 years, I've been working on the ground to reduce poverty in my region, in Longueuil, Quebec. To build a strong societal project, we must invest in our most valuable resource, children. When dealing with poverty, we must place particular emphasis on reducing child poverty, particularly for children five years and under. We also have to work with their parents. This has to be done through a partnership. We must set aside available resources in the community so that policy makers' action plans are all complementary to one another, and moving in the same direction. We need to take common action. That is what I used to do under a local Quebec initiative called 1, 2, 3 GO!, that has been in existence for the last 10 years. This measure produced results in our community and allowed us to provide support and resources to parents.

I know that poverty is not just about economic insecurity. There is also intellectual poverty. There are so many factors that are significant. Many of the documents that I have read highlight many local initiatives. Therefore, we need to finance local initiatives and work with young children. This leads me to tell you that sustained funding, to my mind, must be a priority. Politically, there has been no sustained funding, as there has been a lack of a long-term vision. Nonetheless, recurring funding is an essential element if we want to effect change in the lives of families with young children.

One issue of particular importance to me is homelessness. I would like to know more details about the investment you are making in the Homelessness Partnering Strategy (HPS), which replaced the national homelessness initiative. I would like to know more details about this program. Building housing units for the homeless is one thing, but you are just as aware as I am of the importance of funding training for resource people. Building housing units is one thing, but if we do not have any resources to help people, not much can be gained at the end of the day.

I would like to hear more details about homelessness.

[Frank Fedyk]

Yes. The homelessness partnership is our main vehicle at HRSDC for supporting community-based groups. There's funding for 61 communities, and the government renewed that initiative in September 2008 and is providing approximately $135 million a year for the next five years.

I don't have the details by community in terms of the funding available, but we can provide that in terms of what communities receive.

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Perfect, thank you. The program was therefore extended for five years.

[Frank Fedyk]

That's correct. It was last September.