Human Resources Committee on Nov. 30th, 2009

[Patrick Stewart]

Okay.

To me, that is one thing that needs to be done. There needs to be a national housing strategy. Having read the text of that, I know it refers to aboriginal communities, but my fear is that it's a limited description and gets to be understood as reserve communities only. The aboriginal population in the urban areas isn't included in the way it is written. That is one thing I had some concern about. The housing is definitely needed. In metro Vancouver we have three aboriginal urban non-profits. The three combined have a wait list of more than 5,000 people and there are no allocations. We have no federal dollars for housing. We have no provincial dollars for housing right now. Everybody is clawing back, and it's not acceptable. Housing has to be the foundation of this.

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

From what you said earlier, I was looking for a plan that would lift everybody out of poverty, if we could at all, the same as when we brought in the Canada Pension Plan. We lifted all seniors up to a level. Now many of them are back in trouble again. But we, as a government, lifted them out of some pretty desperate circumstances.

This morning I hear there may be a need for a specific aboriginal anti-poverty plan. Are you suggesting there needs to be a separate focus on aboriginal poverty?

[Sherry Small]

You used the word “aboriginal”. I would prefer to use “urban aboriginal”, because I represent urban aboriginals. The first nations are taken care of very well under the federal government because that is a fiduciary responsibility.

What is the name of your executive council group, the Vancouver Urban...?

[Patrick Stewart]

It is the Vancouver Aboriginal Council.

[Sherry Small]

Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council. They started the strategy there that would be really good to take a look at in this regard, because all the different things are represented there: housing, health services, and what have you. The group of people are all executive directors from various urban aboriginal societies who meet to look at how to work together in unison.

One of the things we did was say “Let's put unity back into community. Let's work together as one. Who delivers what better?” Lu'ma Native Housing Society has quality housing, very good urban aboriginal housing. We would look at someone like that to do that kind of stuff. Then the friendship centre does something very specific. Then there is education, a native education centre that does education. So they come together and talk about that. They would be the group, I would think, in Vancouver under aboriginal that you would look at to talk about poverty and solutions for that. In that way, you would have very focused goals and objectives to meet in modules—not a one-time thing—to gradually get you out of poverty.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thanks, Tony, that's all the time we have.

We're going to move now to Ms. Cadman for the last questions and the last seven minutes.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Good morning.

First off, I'd like to ask you, are you all considered elders?

[Sherry Small]

No.

[Patrick Stewart]

No.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Have any of you lived on the reservations?

[Sherry Small]

I have.

[Patrick Stewart]

Yes.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Can you tell us a bit what it's like there, compared to what you're living in now?

[Sherry Small]

For me, that's where I received my philosophy and values, which I find very useful to where I'm at today. Unfortunately, when we were under the Indian Act we were governed by the Indian Act, which allowed us to be in poverty. Now that we're under treaty, almost ten years come May, it's very difficult to get out of bad habits. How we were taught to be governed under the Department of Indian Affairs is very top down, whereas our traditional way is from the grassroots up. So it's very difficult to make that transition. In a nutshell, that's my personal experience.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

This is touchy. There have been stories of chiefs taking government money and then using it for themselves or their families and it not being trickled down to the people who need it. Is this the truth?

[Sherry Small]

I think that's a very personal question to ask the various agencies. That needs to be specific. Hearsay information I personally would not respond to.

[Dona Cadman, Conservative, Surrey North, BC]

Mike.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We have about five minutes left.

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

I would like to talk a little bit about poverty among seniors. One of the acclaimed successes of Canada in the last number of years has been that we have reduced poverty among the elderly from 29% about 30 years to 5.4% in 2006. It's an area in which Canada has had success. However, as you pointed out, we still have some real problems, and I'm referencing a report from the Caledon Institute, who do some great work on this stuff. In particular, 16.1% of single elderly women live below the poverty line, and many more live just barely above the poverty line.

Again, in terms of reducing poverty in Canada, I think someone referenced child poverty as being 9.5%. I think that was the number from Statistics Canada of the percentage of children living in poverty as of 2007, which had also come down, but I suspect both of those numbers have gone up in the last year because of the difficulty the economy has been in. One of the measures often cited for the success in reducing poverty among seniors has been strengthening pensions but also particularly the guaranteed income supplement, which goes to the lowest-income seniors.

I wonder, Ms. Dean, is that a mechanism that we should be making more robust as a priority, as a way to immediately inject money into the system for low-income seniors?

[Elsie Dean]

It becomes very difficult looking at these statistics, because it depends on how you're measuring poverty. If you think about it, the greatest amount of income a person can have if they depend on the GIS is under $15,000. That's for a single person. If they have no earnings, the most they receive is just under $1,200 a month. Now, in our books, we look at the LICO, the low-income cut-off, which says that to live in the community with dignity, a single person requires an after-tax income of some $1,700. It is around that figure. We consider that person who's receiving under $1,200 a month to be in poverty, because they're several thousand dollars below what we feel people should have to live comfortably.

What has happened in the last few years, with the price of housing, is that many of the seniors we work with are paying 50% to 70% of their income on rent. There are very few available low-cost rentals in Vancouver. So they have to compete for those low-cost rentals, which might be around $700 or $800 a month. I know several people who are paying that kind of money who are receiving under $1,200 a month.

I guess it's how you look at it. For instance, a disabled woman who I know gets $947 a month. Not quite half of it is supposed to be rent, so she gets just under $400 to pay her rent. How can she live on that? Is she not in poverty? Of course she is. So it depends, you see.

I get very confused reading all these studies. I've just read the latest study for 2009. It came from the National Seniors Council, a federal body. You can't understand it, because it doesn't tell you what type of measurement they're using. We look at what is really happening with people on the ground. We communicate with women around the province, and we talk about women's problems. That's where we're coming from.

We feel that LICO is a good measure. Now we know that there are other measures, but they all work out pretty well the same. Yes, we have observed and we realize that there's more poverty. For instance, for single women, when we put them against the measure of the LICO, we find that between 40% to 45% live at very low if not poverty levels. So that's a greatly different figure.

Now, if you put seniors against the whole population of Canada, you might say that they are doing fairly well. There's not as high a rate of unemployment. But we believe that each person counts, and that if you take a group of people, and at least 40% of those people live with inadequate income, that's poverty, and it needs to be dealt with.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You can have just a quick one, and then we're going to wrap up.

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

I agree with everything you said, and it's a very learned position. In terms of putting together a strategy, we have to have some specifics. It seems to me, and I'm sensing that you would agree, that we have to specifically target those who are most in need. Reducing the GST by a couple of points helps everybody save a penny on a coffee, but it doesn't do much for low-income seniors. That money could be used. I'm not advocating on tax policy at this committee, but the GIS is one area that specifically targets low-income seniors. If we ratcheted that up significantly, that would probably make life a lot better for those who need it most.

[Elsie Dean]

Absolutely; we advocate and we ask government to do that.

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

It's a federal responsibility.

[Elsie Dean]

It's the federal government. That is a federal program. That would make a big difference.

Next year we are facing a new tax. We've done some research on that new tax, and it's going to really affect seniors quite significantly. You have to look at the basket of goods seniors use.

There's another thing in looking at the statistics. We look at the LICO and ask if it is that much cheaper to live in a small town. We find that it isn't today. Groceries are higher. Rents are getting up there to pretty well the same. Yet in looking at it, the government says that you don't need as much to live in small towns. We don't agree with that. We think you need to look at that, too.