Human Resources Committee on Nov. 30th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

I want to take the time again to thank the witnesses for taking time out of their schedules to be here today. We are going to continue to hear from more witnesses throughout the day. What we got on record is very helpful, so thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I want to thank all our witnesses for being here as we get started back for our second panel of witnesses this morning. I will just quickly go over the fact that we've been looking at this issue over the last year. We've been out to the east and now we're here in the west, and we want to thank you all very much for taking time out of your busy schedules to be here.

We're going to start with Ms. Swanson, and we'll move ourselves across. You have seven minutes for your opening testimony. We'll try to facilitate as many rounds of seven-minute questions and answers as possible, maybe followed by a second round if we have time.

Ms. Swanson, welcome. I believe you're from the Carnegie Community Action Project. We're looking forward to hearing what your thoughts are this morning.

[Jean Swanson, Co-ordinator, Carnegie Community Action Project]

I'm Jean Swanson, and this is April Smith. She is also one of our Carnegie Community Action Project volunteers.

The first thing I want to do is acknowledge that we're on unceded Coast Salish territory and to thank the Coast Salish people for allowing us to be here.

We call our group CCAP. We're accountable to about 5,000 members of the Carnegie Community Centre Association. We work to get better and more housing in the downtown eastside, which is the poorest postal code neighbourhood. It's about seven blocks east of here. We also work to get higher incomes for low-income people and to stop gentrification.

Every Friday a CCAP volunteer group of about 20 people meets for lunch and to work on these issues. The volunteers are homeless. They live in the crappiest housing in Canada, SROs with no bathrooms and no kitchens and plenty of cockroaches and bedbugs, and we also live in social housing. At the end of every meeting we have a moment of silence for someone who has died, and I'll come back to that.

I was just looking at the 2005 Statistics Canada wealth study. It has absolutely stunning information in it. In the six years between 1999 and 2005 the total net worth of Canadians increased nearly 42%, but the poorest fifth actually got poorer in that period by 70%. That was while the richest fifth increased their net wealth by 43%. I photocopied the page from Statistics Canada that says this. If this trend continues, how much will the poor have lost by 2011? How much will the rich have gained? What about by 2017? What nightmare will our society be like if this inequality continues and gets worse?

The other astounding fact from the wealth study was that the poorest fifth--which means us in our CCAP group, among others--have an average net worth of minus $2,400. We have no wealth--we're in debt. The richest fifth have an average net worth of about $1.3 million.

I want to describe our community, the downtown eastside. Seventy percent of downtown eastside residents have low income and are among the poorest fifth of Canadians. CCAP just finished a two-year consultation process with 1,200 low-income people in the downtown eastside. Our study revealed that the downtown eastside is a strong community with lots of amazing assets. We're very accepting and non-judgmental. We have a lot of empathy for people who are suffering. We have an authentic cultural heritage. We put in hundreds of thousands of hours of volunteer work to build our community. We recycle, and we have some great services, many of which we started ourselves, and we work for social justice. We fought for our park, our safe injection site, our community centre, our missing women. Still, 700 of us are homeless and 3,500 live in one-room hotel rooms, and some people have health and addiction issues.

I'll talk a little bit about the history. We've always been poor, but not as desperate as today. Nearly everyone had some sort of housing 30 years ago, and welfare's purchasing power was about $250 a month more than today. Minimum wage was 122% of the poverty line. Now it's about 80%, and it's about 60% for our inexcusable $6 an hour so-called training wage.

In the 1980s a federal-provincial housing program built close to 700 units of good-quality new social housing in Vancouver per year. Now there is no federal housing program, and the new social housing we get is a drop in the bucket compared to what we need.

As in other communities, some people in our community and in our CCAP volunteer group use drugs that are now illegal. We value these human beings and want policies and programs that will save lives and help people to get healthy. We think harm reduction works.

There is another new Statistics Canada report that says poverty is twice as bad as cancer in terms of causing poor health and early death. This report says poverty--and we would say the government policies that cause poverty--is robbing poor people of about ten years of their lives. I have attached an article on that. Our lives in the downtown eastside are proof of this statistic. This is why we have a moment of silence at every one of our meetings. A lot of people in the downtown eastside die.

Our society doesn't know how to end cancer, but we do know how to end poverty.

We need our social programs back. We need a national housing strategy like every other developed country. We need a decent minimum wage of at least $11 an hour. We need a government that will tax the richest 10% or 20% to help fund these programs, and we need to replace the present illegal drug market with a regulated legal drug market based on public health and human rights.

We'd like your help in making our federal government do these things.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Swanson.

We're now going to move over to Ms. Manning, from the Ray-Cam Co-operative Community Centre. Ms. Manning, thank you for being here. The floor is yours for seven minutes.

[Stephanie Manning, President, Ray-Cam Community Association, Ray-Cam Co-operative Community Centre]

Thank you. On behalf of the board of directors, staff, and members of the Ray-Cam Co-operative Community Centre, I would like to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to raise our concerns with you.

I will begin by giving you some background on the Ray-Cam Centre and the community we serve.

The Ray-Cam Co-operative Community Centre is located at East Hastings Street and Raymur Avenue in the Vancouver downtown eastside Strathcona neighbourhood. Founded in 1979 by the tenants of the Raymur Housing Project, the facility has evolved into full community centre status with the assistance of two committed community associations. New immigrants, refugees from around the world, and a multi-ethnic community of all ages are offered a wide range of recreation programs and activities and such services as preschool and day care, a youth room, family support programs, a computer room, a weight room, a dark room, and a full-sized gymnasium. This centre also boasts a diverse team of staff, volunteers, and a strong working committee comprised of area residents.

Vancouver's downtown eastside neighbourhood has a population of approximately 18,000 residents. About 70% live in the Strathcona and Oppenheimer sub-areas within easy walking distance of the Ray-Cam Centre. In 2006, just over 64% of downtown eastside residents were considered low income as defined by Statistics Canada. The vast majority of residents using Ray-Cam's services can be classified as poor. Many are new Canadians, and a number of families are headed by single parents.

The Ray-Cam Centre is located next to Stamps Place housing, formally the Raymur Housing Project, which is owned and managed by B.C. Housing. It is just down the street from MacLean Park senior housing complex. Approximately 5,000 downtown eastside residents live in social housing. The downtown eastside is notorious as a haven for drug addicts and the mentally ill as well as for the street disorder in the community. The vast majority of Vancouver's services community is ghettoized here, and most of the health and social service dollars that flow into the neighbourhood are targeted to deal with those issues.

Local children, seniors, and families are constantly under-resourced, while their vulnerability leads to further victimization by predators drawn to the community. Children in the neighbourhood are in particular need of help. Recent statistics compiled by the B.C. organization First Call demonstrated that for the sixth year in a row, B.C. has the highest rate of child poverty in Canada. The child poverty rate in the Ray-Cam neighbourhood is much worse than the B.C. average. Studies show that disadvantaged children are entering kindergarten unprepared, and that a wide gap in capacity to learn exists between lower- and higher-income children even before kindergarten.

Further research demonstrates that children who lack the skills and support necessary to succeed in school are disproportionately likely to adopt a high-risk lifestyle as they enter their teenage years. According to the RAND Corporation California preschool study, by the time children in poor families are four years old, they have been exposed, on average, to 32 million fewer spoken words than have those whose parents are professionals. Children who would benefit most from a high-quality learning experience are the least likely to attend centre-based preschool programs that develop language and higher-order thinking skills that prepare them for school.

The same study found that of 50 children who have trouble reading in grade one, 44 still have inadequate reading skills in the fourth grade. Over the last nine years, the University of British Columbia's Human Early Learning Partnership has been measuring the school readiness of B.C. children. The project, led by Dr. Clyde Hertzman, clearly indicates that children in Strathcona are the most vulnerable group in the province on every scale.

Worse, each data wave has found increasing vulnerability among children in this neighbourhood. They are now at the highest risk of school failure among groups measured in all urban centres in the province.

To further compound the problem, there has been a recent upward surge in the population of vulnerable infants to six-year-olds living in the Strathcona area. The problems faced by the children in the downtown eastside and Strathcona area clearly illustrate the need for the federal government to address the issue of child poverty and early childhood development.

As difficult as the problems are in our community, we are by no means unique in Canada. Ray-Cam is heartened by the HUMA committee's goal, supported last week by the resolution in the House of Commons, to develop an immediate plan to eliminate poverty in Canada.

In the Ray-Cam area this will entail developing more direct government support mechanisms. Reducing tax rates has little effect for families earning low wages, and none at all for those on social assistance. The current child subsidy program ends up being used mainly to feed children who would otherwise go hungry.

At Ray-Cam, we understand the financial challenges of developing universal programs targeting early childhood issues. While universal access is the long-term goal, for now we believe the government should look seriously at developing programs and policies targeted to Canada's most vulnerable communities to foster equitable development opportunities for children without the family resources to meet those needs.

Low-income residents in the Ray-Cam area face one further challenge that we believe the committee and the Government of Canada must address. Current income assistance programs are a hodge-podge of different supports, each with their own regulations and requirements. The goals of some are undermined by the restrictions imposed by others. Many apply only to people receiving social assistance, often leaving the working poor in worse straits when they achieve employment. Certain issues are not addressed at all, and it becomes painfully easy for families in need to fall through the cracks in bureaucratic programs.

Ray-Cam understands that many of these problem programs are currently administrated by the provinces. Over the short term, we ask the committee to recommend that the government adopt more comprehensive guidelines for goals to be achieved through fund transfers to provincial governments.

Over the long term, Ray-Cam endorses the Government of Canada to eliminate poverty. We encourage the committee to consider a plan that will consolidate and simplify support systems. We further propose that such a plan supports the efforts of individuals seeking education, training, and employment through a graduated assistance reduction plan, one that will ensure families receive full support and encouragement to rejoin and remain in the workforce. Senator Hugh Segal's proposal for the adoption of a guaranteed annual income is an approach that could significantly address this long-term goal.

On behalf of the board of directors, staff, and members of the Ray-Cam Co-operative Community Centre, I would like to once again thank the committee for its work and commitment. The fulfilment of your work will make a significant positive difference to the lives of the families in our communities.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Manning.

We're now going to move to Chief Fred Sampson, from the Nicola Tribal Association.

Welcome, Mr. Sampson. Thank you for being here. You have seven minutes, sir.

[Chief Fred Sampson, Nicola Tribal Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Witness speaks in his native language]

It's an honour to be here in the coastal territory once again, down here in friends' territory.

This was very short notice for me, so I don't have very many speaking notes. Of course, for the issues I'm going to speak on, there aren't a lot of statistics. I'm going to talk about first nations economy and the poverty related to the salmon resource in British Columbia. I'm only speaking specifically for my community, the Siska Indian Band, and it's a member of the Nicola Tribal Association, so I am speaking on behalf of those other seven communities as well. I can't speak for other communities in regard to their relationship to the salmon resource and the economies they derive from salmon in their traditional territories, but I am going to speak very seriously about my area in the Fraser Canyon.

For the last three years we have been very, very hard-pressed to catch any salmon in our community. As a main provider in my community, I fish for extended families, single mothers, and elders. My family alone will harvest 600 to 700 salmon, which is distributed out to community members, single parents, and elders. For the last three years that has been very, very difficult to do. This year alone my family ate one sockeye salmon--one. I got calls from elders and single parents in the Merritt area and extended bands because they had relied on us to provide them with fish, and they haven't had that this year. So there's a huge, huge impact on my community and the fish economy and how that salmon resource supplements their income and their economy.

We worked with the University of British Columbia and we did a project called The Creator's Gifts, looking at the gifts that were here on the land that first nations people utilize. Of course, in our area salmon was one of the predominant ones. Prior to contact, our community was wealthy--very, very wealthy--because of the valuable trade commodity of wind-dried salmon. Fraser-bound wind-dried salmon has been found in archeological digs down in the States, in Ontario, and in Manitoba, so it was a huge, huge trade economy. Prior to contact we were rich.

During the transformative changes when first nations were slowly removed from that fishery and the economy of that fishery, intense poverty began. Even in the current status of where we are today through such cases as the Supreme Court decision on Sparrow and aboriginal peoples' right to make a moderate living from the fish resource, well, it's non-existent. When you look at the statistics, there are no statistics out there on this relationship between salmon and first nations poverty.

We did research on The Creator's Gifts to talk about how much salmon actually gets consumed in our community. Because of the high levels of unemployment--over 90% are unemployed--you're either working on the railroad or you're working in the bush in the Lytton area. Those are pretty well your options for long-term employment, and everybody knows that the forest industry has crashed. The railroads have cut back hugely and have been laying off people, so the economy in my community really has risen, and the need for the fish resource became even more paramount.

We worked with UBC and we went through and talked to all of our households about how much salmon they consumed in a year. If you look at Statistics Canada, I think they recommend three or four ounces per week. Even based on that, each household would have to have a minimum of 64 salmon per person per year. We're not even getting close to that. So now you have people who are on social assistance, who cannot put that high-quality protein on the table. They are then stuck going to the store and buying that low-grade, crappy hamburger and store-bought food--and the low-grade store-bought food. They're buying pasta and rice and potatoes and flour, so they have a really terrible, terrible diet, and it affects their economy.

I guess it's awfully difficult trying to share this with the panel, because there isn't a lot of research being done out there on how this and the lack of salmon relates to poverty in first nations communities. Specifically, as I was saying, once again, I'm talking about my community. Other communities along the coast aren't as impacted as the ones that are inland, because they get a crack at the fish before we do.

I guess I'm asking the standing committee how it can assist first nations so that they are fully engaged and involved in co-management of the salmon resource as it relates to first nations' poverty.

In our community we developed the very first inland communal commercial fishery, and we were trying to increase employment and the economy around our fish resource, but it has failed miserably because there are no fish. This last year we tried to process pink salmon, and of course it was impossible, because our facility is so small. It produces only 30,000 fish, and we don't have the capacity to compete in the big market where they're harvesting millions of these things. That's one of the biggest challenges.

Is there a way this standing committee can assist first nations communities in the replacement of that protein source? I know what they have down in the States. Whenever their returns don't happen the American government steps in and compensates those first nations so that they can have a way to put that protein back on the table. That is certainly something that this province or the Government of Canada should be doing. When the salmon resource crashed, there should have been some way for them to provide resources to first nations people so that they could put that protein back on their table again, however it was done. They do it in other places, and it's something I would certainly like to see this committee do.

That's basically what I came here today to say. I had very short notice, and I can speak directly only to the poverty in my community and its relationship to the salmon resource. Is there any way this committee can encourage government to engage first nations so that they can be fully involved in co-management of the resource, and try to encourage government to find a way to supplement first nations communities when the salmon resource does crash?

Kukstsemc. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Sampson. You were pretty much right on the seven minutes. Thank you very much.

We're going to now move over to the Salsbury Community Society, with Mr. Tim Dickau, who is a board member there.

Tim, welcome. Thanks for being here. You have seven minutes.

[Tim Dickau, Board Member, Salsbury Community Society]

Thank you.

I'm from the Salsbury Community Society. It's an organization that grew out of the Grandview Calvary Baptist faith community in east Vancouver.

I want to tell you a story about Jeff. Jeff is a man who struggled with depression and drug addiction most of his adult life. We met Jeff ten years ago, when he first came to Out of the Cold, our weekly meal and overnight shelter at our church building in east Vancouver. Jeff slept overnight and we started to get to know him better. He returned the following week.

About two months later, some folks who were participating in the Out of the Cold shelter invited Jeff to live with them in one of the community houses that had started. We have six of these houses in our neighbourhood where people live together and seek to welcome others to live with them who are poor or vulnerable, like Jeff. As Jeff became part of this supportive community his abilities started to come to life.

However, Jeff had many barriers to employment and struggled for a couple of years to find work. Jeff was one of the reasons that we started Just Work, an organization that develops social enterprises, including businesses in pottery, gardening, catering, and repairs. Jeff eventually found meaningful work and employment through both the gardening and catering businesses, and his life is in a very different place today. Jeff has come to life, you might say.

I think Jeff's story illustrates what we have discovered at the Salsbury Community Society. Through a supportive community that offers emergency help, long-term housing, employment, and resources, transformation can happen in people's lives and in our neighbourhoods.

Through the Salsbury Community Society, an umbrella organization that brings together seven different initiatives offering housing, employment, and community support to the poor and the vulnerable, over the last ten years we have seen that if these resources are available for people, if they have the opportunity, a change can occur. With a budget of just under $1 million for Salsbury, very little of which comes from any government source, we've seen the possibilities when these resources are available.

We've become convinced of two things. One thing is that the federal government has a greater role to play in developing homes and employment for those with barriers to meaningful work. We've had to rely on private funding for most of these ventures because there's very little public funding available. Secondly, we need to be investing in communities with a track record of welcoming those experiencing discrimination and developing resources that lead to transformation. Some of those groups have already spoken today. We believe the federal government is the only body in Canada to bring this comprehensive, big-picture view to reducing poverty and homelessness in Canada.

As a society, we've noticed that we seem to be afraid of the costliness of restoring people to the Canadian family. We're afraid that somehow it will cost too much in our own lives. This is especially true in times of economic uncertainty. In many ways, as a nation, we've lost our sense that people who are poor and homeless are part of our corporate identity. Sadly, this is often true in churches, government, and society, sometimes even within our own work.

As a follower of Christ, I believe that social justice should be one of the core goals for all of us, including government, and that providing adequate resources and opportunities for our poor lies at the core of this vision. What it takes to put people at the centre, to welcome people of all kinds to the heart of who we are in Canada, without qualification, is really important. Choosing to help only those who “deserve help” and leaving behind those whose barriers we may disapprove of is prejudicial and not biblical.

I'm also standing here today to represent StreetLevel. Salsbury is one of 11 members of StreetLevel, the national round table on poverty and homelessness. StreetLevel is a self-commissioned, self-directing partnership that was created in June 2003. It's composed of experienced leaders of significant Canadian Christian organizations and programs from across the country that work among our nation's poor and homeless. They're dedicated to addressing systemic sociological, economic, cultural, and spiritual defects that contribute to poverty and homelessness in Canada.

We've put forth four proposals for the federal government. I want to focus on two of those proposals today in the short time I have.

One proposal is that we believe the time has come for the Government of Canada to establish a national poverty reduction strategy. We appreciate the steps that have been taken by this committee to put forward the motion to Parliament. We believe it needs an array of measures, targets, and timelines that are very concrete. I hope this committee will move that to the next step, and I hope they will see social enterprise as a key aspect of that national poverty reduction strategy.

Secondly, we believe the Government of Canada, in cooperation with the provinces, territories, and indigenous communities, must establish a national housing strategy. We must establish a national housing strategy with clear targets and timelines aimed at ensuring that every resident of Canada has access to housing that is safe, healthy, dignified, and truly affordable. We've seen the difference that housing makes in people's lives. If we don't have housing, I don't see how we're going to be able to reduce poverty in Canada. We're really looking for leadership from our federal government to establish a national housing strategy.

I think Canadians need and want to hear a vision from our federal leaders. We need to hear that the federal government and all parties unanimously believe in creating a legacy of justice for all Canadians. We need to hear this commitment not only in words, but in budgets, programs, and polices that demonstrate this commitment to justice. We need the federal government to engender a sense of solidarity with other levels of government, and other sectors of society, to build a legacy of justice.

We're convinced that addressing issues of poverty and homelessness ought to be a top budgetary and policy priority for the federal government at this time, and we hope you will ensure that this takes place.

Thanks for hearing my submission.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Dickau.

We'll move, as we always do, to the members of Parliament and start with our first round of seven minutes. I'll turn it over to Mr. Savage for the first round.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, and thank you all.

A number of you have referenced the resolution that came to the House of Commons last week on the twentieth anniversary of the parliamentary declaration of intent that child poverty should be eliminated by 2000. I think it was an important resolution to bring to the House, and it reflects the work of this committee. If we're going to establish a report that is all the things that it needs to be, and there's lots of advice from people like yourselves who see people and live the experience, and we've got lots of advice from other people who are sort of expert in this area, then it does have to be a meaningful report. It can't only be a declaration that we have to do something. I think we have to make some specific recommendations.

One of the issues that has to be addressed is the issue of taxation. I want to read you something that the Minister of Finance read into the House of Commons, I think around the time of the budget a couple of years ago:

Every dollar saved from lower interest payments will be returned to Canadians through personal income tax reductions. More money staying in Canadians’ pockets, and less money lost to interest payments. That’s our Canada.

Mr. Chairman, I hear it at the hockey arena, I hear it at the coffee shops, I hear it from people on the street: “taxes in Canada are way too high”. Is that your Canada? Is that what you think? I've got to tell you, we have had some success in reducing taxes over the last number of years, but it hasn't improved the lives of people living in poverty very much, I don't think. So I'd like to ask Stephanie, or perhaps Jean, do you think taxes in Canada are too high?

[Stephanie Manning]

I don't think reducing taxes has much effect on people who are earning low incomes, low wages, or on those who don't have any income at all. Reducing taxes really doesn't help them. If you don't have the money to begin with, reducing taxes isn't going to make any difference, because there's no money to tax.

[Jean Swanson]

I agree. But people who are poor do pay their landlords' property taxes; they pay GST and PST and things like that. It's not that they don't pay tax. But this whole idea of having to keep lowering taxes is really disastrous to people who have low income, I think.

The other thing that goes with that is that if you increase taxes, you have to increase it on everybody equally, which is not true. I think we have to start looking at people at the upper end who are getting massive increases in wealth and income in proportion to people at the lower end, who are losing, and start hitting them.

I see Ed Broadbent came out with something saying that people who earn over $200,000 should be taxed for child benefits. If you increased their taxes by only a little, it would mean almost $4 billion that could be put into a child benefit. This idea that we have to keep reducing taxes is an extremely dangerous idea, because it undermines the whole basis that we can have a good social, universal thing that promotes solidarity among Canadians, and it moves towards privatization, where low-income people always get the worst end of the stick.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Broadbent was specifically referencing Barack Obama, who has increased taxes on the highest level in order to pay for some of the programs, including health care.

You referenced before, Ms. Swanson, that the average income of the wealthiest share of families with children increased by more than twice as much as did family incomes for the poorest tenth of Canada's population. I just reference that.

The federal government has two reasons so far for not wanting to have an anti-poverty strategy. One is the cost, and I'll get to that. The other reason given was that it was a provincial and territorial jurisdiction. And this is the reason they rejected the UN Universal Periodic Review recommendation that we should have a national anti-poverty strategy. But we know there are specific areas where the federal government can do something. And the provinces that have an anti-poverty strategy are all calling for the federal government to have its own anti-poverty strategy in coordination with them. So I think we definitely need to have an anti-poverty strategy, and we have to look at how we allocate all of our resources.

Mr. Dickau, thank you for your presentation. One of the things I think we've missed in the last number of years is the great work the faith communities do in poverty reduction, some in small ways and some in larger ways. But in my own community, there are churches that do food banks or do clothing. And they don't think of themselves as advocates for poverty reduction; they just think of themselves as living out the word of God as they see it. They don't think they're activists.

It seems to me there are a lot of people across the country who believe in poverty reduction and who would have a lot of influence if they all came together and coordinated with anti-poverty agencies, social agencies, government, faith communities, the police, the schools, hospitals, everybody. I think the role played by faith communities is going to be increasingly important as we go forward.

[Tim Dickau]

Yes, I appreciate that.

One of the concerns for us of the privatization of religion in our country is that the social vision for our country, a vision for justice, a right of arrangements and opportunities for everyone, is not talked about as much. And I think one of the roles the federal government can have is to bring that social vision to life.

To get back to your question about tax dollars, a lot of the complaints about tax dollars come when they perceive the federal government does not have a social vision, does not articulate clearly a vision for justice for all Canadians. And when that is articulated clearly and pursued with passion by the government, I think there will be fewer complaints about taxes and that people will be more willing to give their taxes with some sense of hope they will be used well in Canada. I think that really is the role the federal government has to play.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have, Mike.

Mr. Martin, seven minutes, please.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much.

And again, as I did in the last round, I want to apologize on behalf of Libby Davies, who's not here this morning. She wanted to be here, but she is in Ottawa because of other things that are pressing. She wanted me to extend her greetings and apologies. Don Davies was going to be here as well, but he was called back too.

We're coming to the end of what I think has been some really good work by this committee, looking at what we might recommend to the federal government by way of a federal role in a national anti-poverty strategy. The only piece we have left that we have to dig into a bit further--and certainly as a result of listening to some of the presentations today--is the question of aboriginal poverty and how to deal with that. As was mentioned this morning, it's the canary in the mine in terms of how we manage our resources.

I want to say it's nice to see you again, Jean. I appreciated your book of a few years ago on poor-bashing, and I appreciate the work that you continue to do.

A couple of the things I would put on the table for consideration by the committee in terms of a report, keeping in mind that we're looking at the federal role here, are income security, housing, and social inclusion. You mentioned Hugh Segal's calling for a guaranteed annual income or a basic income. There's a lot of movement happening, not only in Canada but also around the world on that, based on the inherent value in every human being. They should have a basic income they can count on at regular intervals.

Maybe you could share with us a few thoughts on these, if you wouldn't mind. I think we know that we need a national housing strategy. We had one. We had the Canada assistance plan that provided some guarantee of income to people, and that's gone. There's a newly evolving social enterprise sector happening, more aggressively in other parts of the world and in Quebec, but not in the rest of Canada.

Perhaps we could start with you, Jean.

[Jean Swanson]

The housing strategy is absolutely key. It needs to build 20,000 to 30,000 units a year across the country. I think cities can provide the land, but the feds and the province have to do the rest.

On social inclusion, we're having a lot of problems with that phrase on the downtown east side, because it's being used to mean that low-income people should include richer people and be driven out of their community. So I'm really dicey with that term because it can be used to mean whatever the user wants it to mean. But by social inclusion, if you mean including... I don't know what you mean by social inclusion, actually.

In terms of the guaranteed income, we haven't discussed this at our CCAP volunteer meeting, as it's just me now, but I totally agree that everyone should have an adequate income and that's a basic human right. I have absolutely no problem there—everyone should have it. But there are so many versions of guaranteed income out there that to say we want it without saying which version, I think, could be extremely dangerous. For example, a lot of people say they want a guaranteed income to be paid for with a flat tax. A flat tax is extremely regressive. A lot of people say they want a guaranteed income that would simplify the whole array of social programs, as Stephanie said, which in one way would be good. But if people are using that to say everyone gets a $5,000-a-year guaranteed income, and seniors are now getting $16,000 so they get a reduction, that would be a problem. Right?

There's a great report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives that goes through the various things you have to look out for with guaranteed income.

Another thing is whether it would be used to force people to work at very cheap wages because they have the supplement and don't need the wage to survive.

You have to look at all those factors before you say you want a guaranteed income. You have to say you want a guaranteed income that is adequate, that is paid for by progressive taxation, that doesn't cause anyone to lose money, and all of these things.

What do you mean by social inclusion?

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Getting back to what Tim had to say, maybe you can share with us your concept of the social economy and including everybody in the community in various ways.

[Tim Dickau]

My positive note of the idea of social inclusion is that people have access to resources and the opportunity to participate, no matter who they are or what barriers or struggles they have. So in our community, that has especially meant people struggling with drug addiction and homelessness, that they are included in our business ventures and in our decision-making as a neighbourhood. I think those are some of the concrete ways of describing social inclusion.

[Chief Fred Sampson]

Social inclusion almost sounds like a first nations concept. In my community, I was raised by my grandmother and grandfather and they basically told me that as a leader you are only as strong as the weakest person in your community. I think that kind of captures what social inclusion is. In a community, everybody has to be treated and respected the same way.

In regard to the housing, in our community right now we can't build any more homes because we don't have water and we haven't had adequate water for a while. Right now, we run on a reservoir system that provides 70,000 litres of water to our community and yet it takes 80,000 litres of water just to extinguish a house fire. So we're below even the basic needs for water in our community, so we can't build homes. We have 320 members in our band and more than half of them live off the reserve because we don't have any housing. And it's inadequate housing as it is. We've got people all crammed and living together in a house. Some of the houses are extremely old. We have mould problems in our communities. We have leaky roofs in our community and yet there's the perception out there that first nations people get free homes and get the best homes in their communities. It's just not true.

Even to this day there are a lot of my community members who want to come back home, but we cannot build them homes because we don't have adequate water. So certainly housing is a real issue in our community.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Tony.

We'll move over to Ms. Cadman for seven minutes.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Sampson, where did you say you're from?

[Chief Fred Sampson]

I'm a member of the Nicola Tribal Association. My community is right in the Fraser Canyon, just nine kilometres south of where the Thompson and Fraser Rivers meet in Lytton. We're right on the Trans-Canada Highway, yet it's almost as though we live in isolation. We have no high-speed Internet in our community, and yet we have fibre all around us. We've been told by the department and the federal government since the year 2000 that we would have high-speed Internet. We still do not have high-speed Internet in our community. We don't have telehealth.

We don't have high-speed Internet for our children to reach into that big, broad world of education. They go to the high school and they're on dial-up. My son says it takes 45 minutes for him to get online, and he gets 15 minutes computer time. How much is that impacting him, and how much is that restricting aboriginal children in my community to keep them in poverty? These are very real things in my community.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

If the government put a ban on fishing salmon for a year or two to build up the stock, to get them healthy again, would the first nations abide by it and cut back on their personal consumption to help the stock rebuild?