Thank you. I'll be happy to clarify that.
Shall I go forward? Thank you.
There are four areas that we've suggested to focus on with regard to poverty. The first is income support and living wages. The evidence would suggest that a living wage should be in the $10-an-hour range, but of course adjusted for inflation, which typically it is not.
Second, we recommend making sure that we have compliance with our employment standards.
Third, there should be sufficient capacity for affordable housing and, fourth, early childhood education and child care generally.
Just to dig a little bit into that, the issue of poverty and housing, our evidence and the research we've done suggest that there are two issues with respect to housing. The first is actually the dwelling and the second is the neighbourhood in which it is located. There are environmental health issues. There are psychological health effects that relate to socio-economic status, which really come about from endocrine immunological compromise from people who are under stress. It actually makes them susceptible to disease. So there are some pretty major issues with respect to the housing, and of course the location of the building, the reduced life chances, and the access to public services are very consistent with affordable housing, where it's located and the actual quality of the housing itself.
In a report that we will be releasing shortly, we talk about a couple of models for affordable housing. One is the U.S.-based Housing First model that originated in New York in 1992, and the other is the more recent Canadian version of that, which is the Toronto Streets to Homes model, also known as S to H. What we talk about in the report is the importance of the use of a Housing First model as a way to get people in there, and in fact the evaluation on the Housing First model is very good. The evaluations of them suggest fairly strongly that they reduce hospitalization and generally keep people located in homes for much longer.
So there are a couple of solutions to think about. First of all, an integrated policy framework through the use of joined-up policy-making.... I think if you look at the European countries, at why they are so much stronger at investing in social programs, it is because they take a much more holistic approach to such things as poverty. Second, we need to think about poverty in terms of income and assets. It's not just about incomes; it's also about assets, because we know that assets actually are the things that trap people into poverty. So we need to think again a bit more holistically rather than focusing on the income side. Thirdly, we need to think about alternatives to legislation. I would argue that in fact just coming together and agreeing upon standard definitions and goals and then measuring and delivering on those goals would be fundamental to the success of poverty reduction in Canada. I know there has been some interest in renewing the discussion around the SUFA agreement, although I struggle with that because I'm not convinced that it was that successful as a piece of legislation. Finally, we need to invest in social innovation.
Now I'm going to come back to the question around what the federal contribution is. What I've got is a picture of what poverty in Canada looks like using the LICO measure, before tax. When you look at it you can see it's a pretty flat line. It has a little bit of a downward trend, but ultimately it is a trend line over time from about 1980 to 2006, and as a policy thinker who has been involved with economics for as long as I have--one minute, I'll wrap it up--I think what you need to do is dissect that line in order to resolve it. What I mean by that is you need to take that line and figure out what part of that is provincial, what part of that line relates to federal, what part of that relates to housing, what part of that relates to education and child care. Only when you can answer those questions can you properly determine how you go forward.
I think about two debates. First of all, there's the debate that occurred around the Romanow commission regarding the percentage of the federal contribution to health care, and I don't think anybody knew what the answer was; and second, the impact of econometric modelling such things. It's a very simple thing to take this data and actually turn it into a model to actually ask questions about poverty and find out what the outcomes would be. So I would argue that in fact one of the major impacts you could have is creating some econometric modelling directly around poverty.
I leave you with three quotes. One, from the European Union, is “social expenditures are positively correlated with levels of productivity everywhere in the developed world.”
Second, “Children are kept in poverty not by a padlock to which there is a single key but by a combination lock that requires an alignment of factors if it is to be released.” This is from UNICEF. I think that emphasizes the complexity of this issue.
Last is something that was cited, actually, by a member of Parliament, and it was picked up in our research: “Why not a law against the rain?”
What I would suggest is that if you're really going to resolve the issue of poverty, we need strong leadership. As I stand in front of the Fathers of Confederation, I congratulate you on doing this.