Evidence of meeting #66 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was métis.
2:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you.
We'll come back for a second round.
Ms. Cadman, seven minutes.
2:25 p.m.
Conservative
Dona Cadman Conservative Surrey North, BC
Thank you.
Mr. Gurnett, on our inner stats we have about 32,000 newly arrived immigrants in Edmonton. Can you tell me what percentage of those would be living in poverty now? Would you have any idea?
2:25 p.m.
Former Executive Director, Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers
A lot of these things are very hard to get statistics on.
What I would say is that a significant majority of the number of immigrants who have arrived in the last five years, well over half of the immigrants who have arrived in the last five years in Edmonton or anywhere else in Canada, would be living at a significant depth of poverty. It depends how you break it down. If you looked at those with a refugee or refugee-like background, it would probably be 90% because they need a longer period of time.
2:25 p.m.
Conservative
2:25 p.m.
Former Executive Director, Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers
That's right. If you looked at skilled immigrants coming from western Europe and the United States it would be a relatively small number. But if you looked at—
2:30 p.m.
Conservative
Dona Cadman Conservative Surrey North, BC
I don't know about that. I'm from Vancouver. So we have a lot of immigrants coming to Vancouver. I have been in taxicabs with drivers who are doctors, lawyers, and they're barely squeaking by.
2:30 p.m.
Former Executive Director, Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers
That's right.
2:30 p.m.
Conservative
Dona Cadman Conservative Surrey North, BC
I noted that lower skills would put you at more of a disadvantage.
2:30 p.m.
Former Executive Director, Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers
No, not skilled. I say place of origin—if they're coming from the United States or western Europe.
2:30 p.m.
Former Executive Director, Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers
But for most of the world, that's what I was saying, skills are totally discounted and the chance of having them adequately recognized is terrible.
2:30 p.m.
Conservative
2:30 p.m.
Former Executive Director, Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers
When I left Mennonite Centre for Newcomers in the spring of this year we were probably serving about 10,000 people a year. And that varied. That might be somebody coming in for one afternoon's help with their résumé, right through to people living for several years in supported housing facilities that we have. We're one of about five immigrant-serving organizations in Edmonton and one of 450 immigrant-serving organizations in the country that are providing a whole range of services.
But again, the problem is often that the way we approach funding and providing services to immigrants now is almost trapping them for an extended time into needing to depend on services because it's providing a small ration that's stretched out over a long time instead of providing a rich opportunity to make a good start. Then most people, when they have that, take over and move themselves forward.
2:30 p.m.
Conservative
Dona Cadman Conservative Surrey North, BC
Yes. I agree.
Ms. Stanley Venne, you have the largest Métis population. I believe you said 85,000. Was that right?
2:30 p.m.
Conservative
Dona Cadman Conservative Surrey North, BC
How many are off reserve, would you say? What percentage is it?
2:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Métis Nation of Alberta
Alberta is the only place where we have settlements for Métis people. About 5,000 or perhaps 6,000 of the 85,000 are on settlements. They have land, and they have the ability to kind of run their own show. But they were placed on land that was the poorest, except in the Paddle Prairie area in northwestern Alberta, which is good land. But all the other land is very poor.
2:30 p.m.
Conservative
2:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Métis Nation of Alberta
Absolutely. That's what we want. That's what we've been striving for. As one of the three recognized aboriginal groups in the Canadian Constitution, that is our objective: self-government. I'm actually working on our governance model. We've been working on it for a long time. We believe that would give us the answer to a lot of the situations that exist for our people today. We consider them our citizens.
I just want to comment a bit on this. One of the biggest things that has happened in this province is the establishment of food banks. Alberta has been in a tremendous boom. I spoke to the person running for the premiership of Alberta, and I said to him something that I believe he took as quite shocking. I said that if it were up to me, I would close all the food banks tomorrow. I would close them and give the people enough money. He asked why, and I said that it is because of the humiliation. I told him to go to the food bank and beg and put himself in that position and then be turned down.
We're not only talking about the food in their mouths. We're talking about the spirit, the Canadian spirit. For you or you or you to go to a food bank would be very humiliating. I'm talking about the humiliation we have launched on the poor in this country so that they have to beg and go from office to office and have to do this, this, and this. Where are we as a country? Are we really doing this deliberately, or has it evolved over time? With this committee that has travelled together across the country can we not come up with something far better?
When I spoke to this particular cabinet minister, we had billions in excess money--billions, not millions--yet we had food banks in our province. How does that correlate? How does that function within a country that is one of the best in the world. We put our people through this humiliation and expect them to get up off their feet and do things, when they're shoved down at every point.
2:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you very much, Ms. Cadman.
We're now going to have a second round, and I'm going to turn it back to Mr. Lessard for five minutes.
2:35 p.m.
Bloc
Yves Lessard Bloc Chambly—Borduas, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Last year, I found out that it is in Alberta that there is the biggest number of people who work and who use food banks. It was a new thing for me. Yet, the province of Alberta has known the most constant, continuous and the strongest economic boom ever. This confirms what Mrs. Stanley Venne was saying.
I am deeply convinced that our report must give hope to poor people, about concrete things, about things which can be done in the short term. In each of your comments, I hear this expectation. I will use, as an example, the words of Mrs. Tellier, who is saying that the problem must receive immediate attention. It means we want to identify priorities. We must rank those measures by order of priority, because the government cannot do every thing at once — if he even wants to do something.
My question is for those who work on the front line and who brings us very tangible testimonies.
Today, if we were to tell the government that there is a priority that comes first in dealing with poverty, which would that be?
I would like to each of you to answer my question.
2:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Boyle Street Community Services
I will start with one that immediately comes to my mind, because there are so many. I would say tackling mental health. Certainly, with the population we serve, which is a largely homeless population, mental health I would say is the single most significant underlying cause of their situations. I see a real paucity of provision in our province, which has some of the largest mental health challenges, I think, of any province, and certainly some of the highest suicide rates. I think if we did tackle that, we would support people to begin the journey out of poverty and into housing and into all the other things, and to sustain that journey. If you have mental health challenges it's hard to sustain that journey, because you keep going back to where you came from without the proper support.
2:35 p.m.
Member, Edmonton Coalition on Housing and Homelessness
I would have to say affordable housing, because they cannot get out of poverty and tackle some of their barriers, their mental illnesses, their addiction issues. If they haven't got a place to lay their head down at night and if they haven't got a good source of income to be able to meet those needs, then they're left stuck in the rut of poverty and homelessness, and there are no solutions to that. You have to have a place to start, a place to call home, a place to move forward and onward from. So it's affordable housing.
2:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Métis Nation of Alberta
I would highly endorse both of those. I want to say for my Métis Nation, we need self-government, we need self-determination, we need our own policies, our own way of doing things. That is part of the pride in being a Canadian. We're proud of our country. We manifest it in the way we treat each other, the way we respect each other. Like I said, people are forced to go to the food bank. They are humiliated in every way possible because they have no alternative, they have to go at this point in time. I would think the whole building of the pride means enough money, housing, services, and the ability to make decisions and to even go on vacation maybe. These are things we take for granted in many cases. I want you to think about the pride and the essence of being a Canadian and how that must be dealt with; otherwise we're just going to be a collection of some poor people and some middle-class people and so on, and that coming together, for me, is the most important part.