Human Resources Committee on Nov. 30th, 2009

[Chief Fred Sampson]

In reality, our member communities through the Nicola Tribal Association have gone to great lengths to protect the identified stocks when they come through DFO management systems. If they say leave the early Stuart salmon alone... I have not eaten an early Stuart salmon in over ten years. I have not eaten one, because we let them go by. This year we faithfully waited, to protect the early-run chinook, to protect the early Stuarts that were going by. We were told that there were seven million salmon coming back in the mid-summer, so I encouraged all of my community members to leave those fish alone, and they listened—they're very concerned about the salmon resource—only to find out that the mid-summer run had absolutely crashed.

Yet all of the other stocks that were doing well this year are the stocks that did not pass through any fish farms. One plus one does equal two. It is very clear. Why are the Fraser-bound salmon stocks crashing while the other stocks did very well this year? It's because none of those other stocks had to pass through the fish farms. It's simple.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

You're saying the fish farms are the ones destroying the stock.

[Chief Fred Sampson]

They're having a huge impact. I'm not saying it's just the fish farms. Most certainly, global warming is an issue; it plays its role. How much pollution plays a role, I'm not too clear. But certainly there is a direct and very distinct link between fish farms and the migrating wild stocks.

This year's crash directly correlates to a study that was done four years ago, in which they went out with little nets and were catching smolts that were passing through the fish farms. Every one of those smolts had up to 20 sea lice on them. That's death. After four lice, it's death. Yet, they pulled out 100,000 smolts, and every one of them was loaded with lice. The biologist said, “They're all going to die”. Now we see it this year. It was predicted that seven million were supposed to come back; it was absolute devastation.

I think there are some huge things that this provincial or federal government can do in respect to how the fish resource is managed. Siska is running an inland communal commercial fishery. This is something we've been saying for over 30 years: if you want better escapement goals or better management targets, you need to start downsizing the ocean fisheries and moving it into the inland, in small-bite fisheries. You can manage the resource, and it will rebuild.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Thank you.

Mental illness and mental health constitute a very serious issue. I'm sure you deal with this a lot in your profession. I would think that it's more prevalent on the streets than anywhere else, due to the fact that these people do not take their medication or do not have access to medication and just go on a continual cycle.

Is there a way of helping these people? I know they closed down Riverview years ago. Would something like that help people who have mental illnesses? Should they go back to an institution to be cared for?

I don't know. Does anybody have any ideas?

[Jean Swanson]

Well, you said “people on the street”. They need housing, folks.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

They need housing definitely, but a lot of them have mental illnesses.

[Jean Swanson]

Listen, I'm 66 years old. I used to work in the downtown eastside in the seventies. In the seventies there were a lot of people who had mental illness, but it wasn't such a big deal then. Why? Well, in the seventies there were places for these people to go. We didn't fight against homelessness, because there was virtually none.

We have a huge issue with homelessness. There are many mentally ill people who aren't poor, and you don't see them on the streets, because they're in their house. Of course we need supports; of course we need a good mental health system, and it needs improvements, of course. But the absolute, basic thing is that you have to have some housing.

[Stephanie Manning]

The housing doesn't need to be centralized in downtown Vancouver and the eastside. One of the problems that's happening now is that it's just being used as a dumping ground for everyone who has a problem, more or less. That's where they're dumping them. It should be in their own communities. Everything shouldn't just be ghettoized down in the downtown eastside, and that's what's happening. There are no services outside of your—

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

So it's just a drop-off place.

[Jean Swanson]

I would disagree with that. We have a bit of a disagreement here on one issue; that is, that we at CCAP strongly believe that current residents of the downtown eastside who want to continue to live there should be allowed to continue there and not be gentrified out.

[Stephanie Manning]

We don't disagree; I agree on that.

[Jean Swanson]

We've done an extensive community consultation process about the future of the neighbourhood, and the average resident whom we talked to in that consultation process has lived in the community for 17 years. So a lot of people are longtime residents.

Stephanie says she agrees they should stay.

There is a danger now that those people are going to be pushed out, because the hotel rooms are getting really high rents, and that's going to create more homelessness. That's provincial, but what you feds could do is... We need a national housing program.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Dona, that's all the time we have, but Tim, why don't you just finish up with a comment?

[Tim Dickau]

Maybe, Jean, you can help me on this statistic, if you know it.

Judy Graves, who's a city housing advocate, referred to a study, and I wish I could remember the details of it, of people who had moved from the street into housing. In a year's time, the number of people exhibiting mental illness dropped considerably. So housing is a key in addressing mental illness. Obviously it's not the only factor, but it's a key factor. It just makes common sense that if we're living on the street, trying to function while on the street and have a healthy life is almost impossible.

So that's just key; it's a starting point, I think, for all of this. That's why we need a national housing strategy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Tim.

I want to thank all the witnesses for taking time out of your busy schedules to be here today.

I'm going to suspend the meeting, and then we're going to change around so that we get to more witnesses.

Once again, thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We are waiting for one individual, but the bulk of our witnesses are here, so we want to get started.

Daryl, I want to welcome you here today, sir.

As you know, our committee has been going across the country talking to people to get specific ideas on which we can base recommendations to the government. We've certainly heard a lot of great information so far, and we are certainly proud to be here in Vancouver today.

Daryl, thank you very much for being here. I'm going to turn the floor over to you for seven minutes, and then we'll continue to work our way back across.

[Daryl Quantz, Member, Chair of the Policy Committee of the Public Health Association of British Columbia, BC Poverty Reduction Coalition]

Thank you so much for having me.

My name is Daryl Quantz. I'm a volunteer board member of the Public Health Association of British Columbia, and I'm also the chair of that association's policy, advocacy, and research committee. I work with the population health team of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. It provides support to our service delivery teams and partners to address the social determinants of health. A significant portion of my role is raising awareness of issues, such as poverty, that affect the health of our populations.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today to speak with you.

Today I am representing a group called the British Columbia Poverty Reduction Coalition. The coalition represents over 200 NGOs--health, community, faith, first nations, aboriginal, and civil society groups--that have been advocating for the reduction of poverty in British Columbia. Our coalition believes that there is nothing inevitable about poverty. Our goal is to see the development and successful implementation of a provincial poverty reduction plan, with targets and timelines for eliminating poverty in our province, similar to what has been done in other jurisdictions across the country and internationally. We have developed and sent an open letter to all B.C. political parties outlining these targets and timelines and policy options, which are based on successful poverty reduction work in other jurisdictions.

As a coalition, we feel that accountability is imperative, and we are encouraging this accountability by recommending the appointment of a minister or a cross-ministerial committee that would be responsible for overseeing targets and strategy.

I know that you have heard this question across the country. From a public health perspective, why, as a nation, should we be concerned about poverty, aside from, of course, the social justice argument, which should be considered?

Poverty represents a significant threat to the health of our population and to the sustainability of our health care system. Study after study has identified the negative impact poverty has on our health. In British Columbia, a report prepared recently by the Health Officers Council of B.C., which represents all the medical health officers in our province, showed that population health indicators were consistently poorer for lower-income groups. Life expectancy alone varies by 15 years, depending on the area in which you live in our province. Rates of chronic conditions, such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, are consistently higher for low-income groups.

Last year I was pleased to see two significant national reports that shared greater insight into the impact of poverty on our health. In the report entitled Reducing Gaps in Health: A Focus on Socio-Economic Status in Urban Canada, medical health officers from urban areas across Canada used socio-economic variables to report on health outcomes. Again, this data revealed higher rates of disease and more use of expensive acute-care services among those in lower socio-economic groups.

In his 2008 report, the chief public health officer of Canada reported on these differences in health outcomes and noted them under the term “health inequities”, a term that is growing in use across the world. In his report, Dr. Butler-Jones noted a variation on a well-known quote, which is that a society is only as healthy as its least healthy members. He emphasized our need to pay attention to the underlying social and economic factors that determine the health of our citizens.

For decades Canada has been seen as an international leader in population health. The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion continues to be a seminal document across the world for health promotion. We have an opportunity to continue this leadership through decisive action to address poverty in our nation.

As a coalition, we recognize that government alone cannot solve this issue. However, government plays an essential role in leading policy direction and in engaging stakeholders to solve this issue, as we are here to do today.

I have a final comment. As a member of various partnerships and coalitions that are advocating on the poverty issue, it is a continual source of frustration when the issue is diverted away from those who are facing poverty and their stories and conditions and towards arguments about exact measures. The low-income cut-off and the market basket measure were both developed to provide a measure of low-income circumstances in Canada. Like any statistic or measure, they are not perfect. That the numbers may be a little more or less is not a justification for inaction. I would encourage the committee to take leadership in affirming the information and methods we do have available.

I'd just like to close by expressing our coalition's appreciation for the committee's efforts. As a Canadian, it makes me proud that we are not only engaging in this dialogue but are also beginning to move forward as well.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Quantz.

We're now going to move to Ms. Montani. She is with First Call: B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition.

Welcome. You have seven minutes.

[Adrienne Montani, Provincial Co-ordinator, First Call: B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition]

Thank you.

Thanks again for the opportunity to share our thoughts with you and have a bit of a dialogue after we present.

I want to start with our thank you for the motion you took to the House of Commons on November 24, that the federal government develop an immediate plan to eliminate poverty in Canada. Having that motion passed in the House of Commons confirms that having a plan is an absolutely essential first step. Hopefully future action will lead to setting some targets and timelines so we can see what kind of progress we're making to achieve that resolution. Thanks for that effort.

Nationally, First Call is part of Campaign 2000. We produce the annual B.C. child poverty report card. Additionally, we're part of the B.C. Poverty Reduction Coalition, which Daryl is representing today.

As a child and youth advocacy coalition we are particularly interested in the immediate and long-term effects that growing up in poverty has on children's development and health. I'm sure you're all familiar—and Daryl has referenced some of it—with the mountains of research evidence attesting to the negative impacts of poverty on children and youth, and that the longer and deeper the poverty the greater the threat to their well-being. This obviously makes poverty reduction an urgent issue for all of us.

We do have some specific recommendations for actions that the federal government can take, many of which you've likely heard before. I'll run through them quickly. They are contributing to a substantial increase in the supply of affordable and subsidized housing, which is not new to you; investing significantly in the creation of a system of accessible, high-quality, affordable child care; ensuring that post-secondary education is accessible to those with lower incomes without having to incur a burdensome load of student debt; creating a unified child benefit that combines the Canada child tax benefit, national child benefit supplement, and universal child care benefit, and increasing it to $5,400 per child, per year; restoring and expanding eligibility for employment insurance and increasing benefit levels so that most workers are protected during a temporary loss of wages and receive a benefit they can live on while they look for new employment; and, last, ensuring direct and indirect, meaning contracted, employees of government are paid a living wage. A simple place to start might be reviewing the wage levels of people who clean federal buildings and offices, even if, and especially if, they are employed by a contractor or through a property management firm. We need to be part of the solution in all aspects of government, and we can show leadership there.

Whatever actions the committee eventually recommends, they should be grounded by having agreement about where we want to go and establishing the parameters that tell us we're getting there.

We agree with Campaign 2000's interim target of a 50% reduction in poverty for all Canadians by 2020. But if we are to be faithful to the resolution just passed by the House of Commons, there must be a target date for achieving the full elimination of poverty in Canada as well.

The Poverty Reduction Coalition in B.C. has proposed a more ambitious decrease for our provincial government, to reach 75% reduction in poverty within ten years. They have two additional measures that a federal plan might do well to adopt. One is eliminating deep poverty in two years' time, so ensuring that no one falls below 25%. That level could be negotiated, but let's look at eliminating deep poverty, making sure that people don't fall a certain percentage below the poverty line in a shorter timeframe. The second is making sure that reductions in poverty rates include and have the same benefits for those who are now over-represented in poverty statistics, such as aboriginal people, people with disabilities, single mothers raising children, and recent immigrants. Let's make sure those groups benefit equally as progress is made.

In addition to targets and timelines for reduction in poverty, the plan should also clearly spell out the income thresholds that would guide specific actions—for example, we use the LICO before-tax threshold and ask what minimum hourly wage would be required for a single person working 40 hours a week for a full year to meet that threshold. In Vancouver, that would be $10.80 an hour to bring a single person up to that threshold. Similarly, welfare rates could be set in the LICO after-tax or market-basket measure threshold, taking into account federal tax, child tax benefits, as both thresholds are measures of disposable income.

Speaking of child benefits, the $5,400 recommended by Campaign 2000 is based on the additional income that a lone parent with one child, working full-time, full-year, at $11 an hour would need to reach the poverty line.

So some thought has gone into some of these, and there are some thresholds we can recommend to at least bring people up to a poverty line, if we can agree on one, and we should do so.

We need to move from the almost whimsical way that we seem to set benefit levels and instead use a set of agreed-upon thresholds that will guide government in setting rates. Two of our First Call colleagues have also written about the problems that occur when there are differing thresholds, usually quite low, at which benefits begin to be reduced. They refer to this as the stacking effect. Perhaps you've heard of this. The report “Now You See It, Now You Don't” is available on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives website. It shows how a low-income two-parent family with two kids faced an effective marginal tax rate of over 100% because of the way in which various benefits were clawed back. Those ranged from the child tax benefit to provincial rental supplements or child care subsidies or even the medical services plan's premium assistance that we have here. Those all start to be clawed back, and that interacts with their earned income at a very low rate, and families, as they start to earn, are sometimes actually worse off than they would be if they had stayed on income assistance.

It may well be that the guaranteed income proposed by Senator Hugh Segal could help address some of these stacking effects, but again it will be critical to establish a threshold that would make such a guarantee adequate. I think Elsie Dean spoke to this earlier.

Those are our suggestions for the committee. I want to thank you again for your work on bringing a resolution to the House of Commons, and thank you for inviting us to appear. We look forward to a discussion with you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Montani.

We're now going to move over to Laura Track, from Pivot Legal Society.

Ms. Track, you're a lawyer with this society. We'd be happy to hear your presentation. You have seven minutes.

[Laura Track, Lawyer, Pivot Legal Society]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today. Pivot Legal Society is a non-profit legal advocacy organization doing work in Vancouver's downtown eastside, which is often referred to as the poorest postal code in Canada.

Homelessness and affordable housing are major concerns for the community we serve at Pivot, but in addition, of course, these issues are felt across the country. I'm here today to speak to what I hope you've heard many, many times already in your travels across the country, about the need for a national housing strategy for Canada. Ensuring passage of the bill that is currently before the House, an act to ensure secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing for Canadians, is a first step the federal government must take towards solving the crisis of homelessness and underhousing in Canada and addressing the issue of poverty across the country.

There are an estimated 150,000 to 300,000 homeless individuals currently in Canada. In the current global economic slowdown, these numbers are only climbing. With the onset of the recession, 500,000 jobs have been lost and more than 150,000 Canadian households have been evicted from their homes because they couldn't afford to pay their rent. Canada's supply deficit, the gap between the number of new households and the amount of new housing, is growing at a rate of 220,000 households annually. Millions of Canadians live in housing that is overcrowded or otherwise substandard, and disturbingly, single women and lone-parent families headed by women are particularly impacted. A national housing strategy is necessary to stem the devastating impact that homelessness has on those afflicted, to relieve the costly financial strain that Canada's homelessness crisis puts on our health and social services, and to allow Canada to live up to its international obligations.

Canada's previous national housing strategy, which was dismantled in the early 1980s, worked. Following amendments to the National Housing Act in 1973, more than 20,000 social housing units were created each year until the early 1980s. Unfortunately, cutbacks at the federal level and transfer of responsibility to the provinces since have led to the homelessness crisis that we see across the country today.

Annual spending on affordable housing at all levels of government has steadily declined since the early 1990s. A study by Steve Pomeroy, a senior research fellow at the University of Ottawa, found that although provinces have technically complied with federal requirements to reinvest savings from federal subsidy transfers related to social housing programs, most provincial governments have simply reduced their own direct costs and compensated with federal dollars.

Homelessness today is at the worst levels Canada has ever seen. Housing affordability is also hitting a low, with more than four in ten renter households and more than two in ten owner households spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Despite this crisis, federal housing investments are $618.5 million behind what they were back in 1989 after adjustments for population and inflation.

Canada is one of only a few countries in the world without a national housing strategy. This has subjected Canada to considerable negative international scrutiny. In 2006 the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights denounced Canada's homelessness crisis as a national emergency and specifically called on Canada to implement a national strategy for the reduction of our homelessness problem. In 2009 the report of the UN special rapporteur on housing found that Canada is failing its housing obligations and recommended that Canada adopt a comprehensive and coordinated national housing policy based on indivisibility of human rights and the protection of the most vulnerable.

Although allocations in the 2009 federal budget plan to stimulate housing construction were necessary and commendable, little money was spent on actually increasing the affordable housing stock. Construction of new housing is fundamentally necessary to house the over 150,000 people currently homeless in Canada. Furthermore, without a national strategy, Canadians don't know whether the money the federal government is investing in affordable housing is being spent in the most effective way.

Earlier this year the Auditor General of British Columbia released a comprehensive review of the province's homelessness programs. He concluded, “Clear goals and objectives for homelessness and adequate accountability for results remain outstanding.”

The government has not yet established appropriate indicators of success to improve public accountability for results. We found significant activity and resources being applied to homelessness issues, but there is no provincial homelessness plan with clear goals and objectives. When there are no clear goals or performance targets, accountability for results is missing. How will we know we are successful if we have not identified success?

Homelessness is clearly a social problem in Canada that needs to be resolved, and the current economic downturn is an optimal time to address this problem. New affordable housing constructed through a national housing strategy will directly inject money into Canada's construction sector. Moreover, investment into supportive housing for homeless individuals will actually save money on support services and over the long term help many of these individuals gain the stability they need to find permanent employment.

In my print submissions I've gone through a number of research studies that show that investing in affordable housing actually saves money over the long term. The study I'm most familiar with comes out of British Columbia, which showed that addressing homelessness the way we do now, through the courts, jails, police, hospitals, ambulances, costs about $55,000 per homeless person per year. Providing people with the supportive housing that they need would reduce those costs to approximately $37,000 per homeless person per year, for an annual savings for this province of about $33 million. So clearly we cannot afford not to invest in supportive affordable housing.

Finally, a national housing strategy is necessary to enable Canada to meet its international human rights obligations, particularly article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which explicitly obligates Canada to take appropriate steps to realize everyone's right to adequate housing. We've been repeatedly criticized internationally for not living up to our housing obligations. In the special rapporteur study I've mentioned already, the rapporteur has raised numerous concerns about the negative impact of ongoing federal funding cuts since the 1990s, and in particular the impacts of those cuts on aboriginal people.

The report comments that the practical effect is that very little new aboriginal housing off-reserve has been funded in recent years, even though local studies in cities as diverse as Toronto and Edmonton show that a significant number of people who are homeless are of aboriginal ancestry. Just this year the United Nations Human Rights Council conducted its first universal periodic review of Canada's compliance with its international obligations, including the right to housing. During the periodic review a number of countries raised specific concerns about housing insecurity and homelessness in Canada. The federal government's response to the UPR accepted the UN's recommendations on housing and stated:

Canada acknowledges that there are challenges and the Government of Canada commits to continuing to explore ways to enhance efforts to address poverty and housing issues, in collaboration with provinces and territories.

The federal government's offer here to collaborate with the provinces and territories on affordable housing can be realized through the establishment of a national housing strategy like the one proposed in Bill C-304. The provincial and territorial governments have been asking the federal government to partner with them in a national housing strategy for more than four years. At a meeting of provincial and territorial housing ministers in 2005, the group made the following statement:

We all share responsibility for good housing outcomes. Federal, provincial, and territorial governments have a shared commitment in ensuring that their citizens have a decent and secure place to live, and, thereby, can access and contribute to the social and economic life of communities.

The federal government has a responsibility to live up to its housing obligations. Canada must allocate sufficient resources in the 2010 budget and implement a national housing strategy for the reduction of homelessness as called for by the UN Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights with the special rapporteur and is desperately needed by Canada's homeless population.

Thank you for your consideration.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Track.

We're now going to move over to Ms. Keeping, who is the Executive Director and Founder of Vibrant Communities Surrey.

[Susan Keeping, Executive Director and Founder, Newton Advocacy Group Society, Vibrant Communities Surrey]

Actually, I'm a founder of that and also I work with the Newton Advocacy Group Society, and I'm a founding member of that.

I'm glad to see Dona here--I thought I wouldn't recognize anybody--so I'm feeling a little more relaxed.

This is something I haven't done before, so I'll read a little bit from my notes. Some of the information in my written notes has been repeated already here, so I would maybe like to be a little more descriptive of what Vibrant Surrey is and its connection to the national Vibrant Communities.

It's a model of multi-sectoral collaboration that's using and working with all three levels of government, the municipal, provincial, and federal, working with business, working with faith groups, and working with other community service agencies, non-profits, things like that, and individuals in the community. It's a unique model, in that we are looking at innovative ways of solving a problem. We realize that there's not an infinite number of dollars. We're trying to be creative. What we do is actually look at and identify some of the gaps and needs in the community. We discuss it at our table and then people bring to the table what they might be able to contribute. There's a list here of all the wonderful people who are involved with Vibrant Surrey, and I hope you will read it later.

One of the things I wanted to highlight and use as an example is that there is an issue around people who are working and homeless in Surrey. There was a count in 2005. We identified over 100 people--actually, I think it was 136 people--who were identified as day labourers and they were homeless. We started a community discussion. In that discussion, we found it didn't make sense that people could have a job and not have a house. So the Surrey firefighters, the RCMP, we all started talking about what we could bring to the table. Both VanCity and Coast Capital Savings--it's a wonderful model... There are other examples in my written submission of how they have come to the table with funding. There's been matching funding through the municipality, through United Way, and there are a number of projects we were able to put on the table.

With Project Comeback we actually went to the individuals who were experiencing homelessness and we asked them, “What do you want to do? What do you need? Do you want to be paid to go to a training program so you can get a better job?” They clearly said no, they didn't want to do that. They clearly said the only thing that makes them still feel human and normal is the fact that they can work. The fact that they're homeless, they lost their housing... There are multiple reasons about why they lost their housing, but they really wanted to continue working.

We created a program that had services beyond simply the nine-to-five Monday to Friday kind of thing. I know Dona has information. We've talked to Dona about what's happening with Project Comeback, and she's a good supporter of the Newton Advocacy Group Society. But I really want to make it clear that without the connection to Vibrant Surrey and the multi-sectoral model, we wouldn't have been able to be successful.

In the end, Services Canada did fund the program partially. It still brings in about $40,000 a year with private donations, in-kind donations, like workboots. The Surrey firefighters will often donate work gear, food, transportation. It's simply amazing how faith groups will come along and if we have somebody who needs a damage deposit or first month's rent, they will literally pass a hat on Sunday and come up with $300 for a damage deposit. We might have other fundraising we're doing. So we do it person by person.

To date, since 2005, when we started this project, we have helped over 200 people get into housing, stay in the housing, and get better employment. They're no longer day labourers. They're no longer in that vicious cycle of work today, get paid today. I won't go on and on about that, because I'm getting way off my notes here.

One of the things I did want to talk about as well is not only the model of the collaboration and seeing business partners and faith groups and community partners working together to solve the issue, but it is the fact that on a federal level... I wanted to give a little bit of a description here about some of the things that were happening or that I saw happening in the last 20 years. Originally, we had an act governing welfare; it was called the guaranteed available income for need. When it ended, the B.C. provincial government created an employment and assistance program, where we went from legislation that stated benefits were to relieve poverty, suffering, and neglect, to a short-term employment and assistance benefit.

There were some good intentions and ideas. We wanted to get people back to work, and we wanted to break the cycle of dependency. I heard that kind of language. But what ended up happening was that we took financial aid workers and we turned them into employment assistance workers. Where is the social safety net for these most marginalized persons? People were falling through the cracks.

I work on the front lines. I'm very much a grassroots advocate. I myself have been there and done that. I was on income assistance as a single mom leaving an abusive relationship. So I know it. It's what actually has given me the passion to work, over these 20 years, in this kind of environment.

But what happens is that people are falling through the cracks. There was some legislation that I think was called CAP. It was the federal legislation that got dismantled. The responsibilities were given over to the provinces. I caution the federal government when it is making changes. Who is watchdogging the provincial government so that it is not further eroding our system? Years ago, we were all talking about how we knew there would be a homelessness problem today. It's no surprise to me. And it's just getting worse. People are falling through the cracks over and over again.

I have some information here about Surrey, but I won't bore everybody by reading the stats. I want to identify some of the new initiatives that Vibrant Surrey is working on.

For example, the living wage has been mentioned here. We talk to the province, because that's whose jurisdiction it is to manage the living wage and to make changes. How can you, the federal government, influence the provinces to do the things they should be doing—having a poverty-reduction plan, having a better housing plan, or using the funds that have been allocated? What can the federal government do to guide the province or create legislation so that these funds can't be used for something else?

I had an example in here about the family bonus. Somebody mentioned it earlier. The family bonus, in my recollection, was the federal money that was given out to persons to help them deal with child poverty. When it was transferred to the province, the B.C. government deducted that from income assistance. How can an initiative that is supposed to make a difference on a federal level be given to the province? It felt like there was no follow-up.

A group of us got together—not Vibrant Surrey—and we wrote a letter asking what they were going to do with the savings now that they were deducting all the money from people who had children and who were on income assistance. They said they were going to use it for training programs. But it just disappeared. We don't know what happened to that money. It's an outstanding question to this day.

We have other payments. We're looking at the LMDA , the labour market development agreements, in which the employment and assistance funding is transferred to the province. I still remember the first meeting I went to. It was a combination of the provincial leadership and the federal leadership. These were bureaucrats, not the politicians, and they were saying they had all this money in B.C. to do all this work. The federal representative was quick to point out that people had contracts attached to all this money. So it's just an ongoing issue, an ongoing erosion of the little bit of money we have to support people who are homeless, who earn a low income.

There are a couple of things we're working on right now. One is the rent bank. This is just the municipality. We have Coast Capital Savings, Envision, and VanCity all sitting at the table with a couple of non-profit organizations, including the Newton Advocacy Group. This is fully supported by Vibrant Surrey. It is designed to create a fund so that people can get a micro-loan that they can pay back over two years, before they become homeless and have no access to crisis grants or hardship grants. This is brand new. We're going to start rolling out loans in January.

I'm not the researcher, but our researcher showed that in Toronto it was very successful. It's now province-wide. In Calgary they have a momentum rent bank model, and I believe the municipality has now taken over more and more of the actual activity of the rent bank and they have a grant bank there.

Our model is testing out the Calgary model. There is one in the valley in Abbottsford that's testing out the Toronto model and there is an aboriginal one in Prince George. So we're excited to have that go forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'll ask you to wrap up if you can, just to leave us with a final thought.

[Susan Keeping]

I hardly followed my notes. I apologize.

The main point that I wanted to bring home and repeat is that in building and growing those partnerships we all have something to contribute. Whether it's a pair of work boots, rain gear, experience, connections, networks, or used furniture, we all have something to contribute. So what can we do to work together with you?