Thank you.
We've been concerned for years about the fact that persons with disabilities in Canada face disproportionately higher rates of poverty than do other Canadians. One of the problems is that they can't get into the labour market and can't contribute to many of the social insurance benefits that we have, for example, the employment insurance sickness benefit or the Canada Pension Plan disability benefit, and, as a result, we have about 500,000 Canadians throughout the country who have to rely on welfare.
Welfare is a program of last resort. It never was intended to provide a guaranteed income for so many Canadians. One of our proposals has to do with the possibility of taking people who have a disability off welfare to create a new basic income program that would be supported by the federal government. It would be similar to the kinds of configurations that we have for seniors, particularly the guaranteed income supplement, which is an income-tested program. The combined old age security and guaranteed income supplement provide about $13,700 a year, so we're looking at that configuration as a model for how we might reform income security.
Now, if we did that, if in fact we removed people from welfare and had a new income security program, there would be considerable savings to the provinces and territories. One of our proposals is that under a negotiated agreement with the federal government there would be a reinvestment in disability supports. These include technical aids and equipment and personal supports like home care and homemakers' services. This is really a significant area that we've overlooked, not just for the 16% of Canadians considered to be disabled from a formal definition perspective, but also from the viewpoint that we have an aging population in Canada, and we have to pay attention to that issue.
Another core component of a poverty strategy has to do with a set of services. The federal government really has an important role to play in terms of financial support for these services. One of them, the core area that we have been looking at over the years, is child care. Child care is significant because of its social policy value and its economic policy value. In terms of social policy, we know from a burgeoning literature, a very vast literature, about the value of investing in early childhood development, from the perspective of readiness to learn and support for good mental health and development over the years. But we also know that high-quality, affordable child care is essential to economic policy because it enables families to pursue education and to participate in the labour market.
One of our concerns has to do with the fact that a good-quality, early childhood development system requires an investment of funding. The federal government had played a major role in this regard in the federal-provincial-territorial agreements it had signed, both in the year 2000 and in the year 2003, which really enabled the development of this system across the country. There have been some new measures and a real retrenchment from that commitment, and we're concerned that within a major poverty reduction policy we should be investing significantly in high-quality, affordable child care.
Another core component of a poverty reduction strategy is decent affordable housing. This is significant because it's both a safety net and a springboard. It's a safety net in terms of providing support for people who are not able to pay their rent--and we have a lot of Canadians who are in very precarious positions right now--but having them in stable environments is also a springboard, because it contributes to healthy development of children, and it also allows people to participate in education and training.
We were very pleased to see the investment in affordable housing in the last budget: the $1 billion for social housing, the $1.9 billion to the affordable housing agreements, the additional billions that were spent for housing on reserves and in the north and for seniors, and the $75 million for housing for disability. All those are very significant, and we have supported that and said this is an essential part of our social infrastructure. Our concern has to do with the fact that we don't really have in the country a strategy for affordable housing. It really has been more hit and miss. It's been from one agreement to the next, but there is a real role federally for leadership in meeting the affordable housing needs, as well as for continued investment, and the security of that investment. It's very difficult to have an affordable housing plan unless you're assured of the financing.
Just very, very briefly, there are two more areas we have written about, and those are social infrastructure and the enabling environment. In our view, to reduce poverty, it's not enough just to have affordable housing. Four walls and a roof are obviously critical, but equally important are healthy communities, which allow citizens to participate and allow children to have opportunities to participate in recreational and artistic programs. We have argued that the infrastructure financing should go equally to social infrastructure, such as repairing our schools, our community centres, our libraries, all the places that make for healthy communities.
We were pleased to see that the last budget made investments in recreational centres. We had argued that rather than put money into individual tax credits, which benefit higher-income families, you really have to invest in the actual places and neighbourhoods and communities where people are living and raising their children.
One last point we'd like to make in terms of a federal role—because we talked about a direct federal role with respect to income security, and a shared federal role in terms of financing some of the social programs, like child care and housing and social infrastructure—is that we would also like to see the federal government play a role in terms of the enabling environment for community groups, who are trying to find local solutions to reduce poverty.
There's a tremendous amount of activity under way in the country, in which local groups are working with business and labour unions and the voluntary sector, and people living in poverty are coming together and trying to find their own solutions. Oftentimes they find they're up against the rules and policies of governments and other funders, which make it difficult for them to do their work.
So there are a number of areas where we would like to see these barriers and policy difficulties removed to enable the work of local groups. The other aspect of that, of course, is providing some support for them to be able to help each other and to learn from each other.
I will stop here. Thank you, again, for the opportunity to share our views.