Thank you very much, and thanks to the committee for inviting us to be part of the panel today. We welcome the opportunity to speak briefly about the important role of publicly administered income security benefit programs in poverty reduction.
We want to urge you in this study to look not only at CPP and OAS, as it says in your mandate, but at all the federal programs and funding mechanisms that have a role in reducing poverty. Poverty can't be reduced in Canada without shoring up in some significant ways the programs and policies that exist to provide income security to Canadians.
We'll comment briefly on the Canada child benefit, the CPP disability insurance program, and the Canada social transfer. My remarks today are preliminary, and we're going to be sending in a written submission that will address these issues in more detail as well as provide some comment on OAS, GIS, and employment insurance, which I know you know a lot about because you've already been through that study.
The Income Security Advocacy Centre is a community-based legal clinic funded by Legal Aid Ontario. We have a provincial mandate to improve the income security of people living in Ontario. We do that through test case litigation, through policy advocacy, and through community organizing.
As part of our work, we've been deeply involved in the Ontario government's poverty reduction efforts over the last nine years. We've gained a number of insights into poverty, one of which is that while poverty is certainly a multi-dimensional problem, clearly a lack of income security is foundational. Financial benefits from government can have a transformational impact on poverty, so access to these benefits and benefit levels are critically important.
Ontario, for example, has seen progress on child poverty from investments in the Ontario child benefit, and they report that the OCB has played a role in not only lifting children out of poverty but also in preventing children from falling into poverty in the course of this last recession.
With respect to the national view, the new Canada child benefit is a powerful tool in reducing poverty. We commend government for that, but we recommend a few necessary changes to allow the CCB to realize its potential.
First, the CCB urgently needs to be indexed to inflation before the current projected date of 2020.
Second, take-up among indigenous peoples living on reserve has to be addressed, particularly given that 60% of first nations children on reserve are living in poverty—that's 60%.
Third, the CCB must address significant gaps in eligibility, particularly for those without regularized immigration status.
Fourth, steps should be taken to make sure all children in Canada see the full benefit of the CCB without clawbacks from social assistance incomes.
Finally, the base amount of the CCB should be increased.
With regard to addressing poverty among people with disabilities, CPP disability is the largest public benefit program for people with long-term disabilities in Canada.
I'm going to go way over time. I'm sorry about this, but I have a lot to say.
It's a contributory program tied to labour market participation and it uses a relatively strict definition of “disability” to determine eligibility. However, people with disabilities in Canada have a low labour market participation rate relative to others, and only 15% to 32% of people with severe disabilities actually receive benefits from CPPD. They have a higher incidence of low income than the rest of the population, and there are some equity issues here as well in terms of discrepancies in access to the labour market. People who are more likely to be working in low-quality jobs are, of course, going to be impacted when the programs that they rely on are based on their labour market contributions to that program.
Many CPPD recipients, you'd be surprised to know, receive benefits low enough to allow them to quality for social assistance benefits in this country. CPPD could be made better at reducing poverty by increasing the monthly benefit, expanding the definition of disability, and increasing access by loosening the contribution requirement.
This committee reviewed the CPPD program in 2003 and made a number of recommendations that we believe should be reviewed at this time to have the CPPD program better deal with poverty.
Finally, I'd like to address the Canada social transfer. This is the primary source of federal funding that supports provincial and territorial social programs, including social assistance. About 5% of Canadians receive social assistance, but they make up about 40% of the people living in poverty in Canada.
Reducing poverty effectively cannot be achieved without addressing poverty on social assistance, so the CST becomes a very important policy lever for the federal government. Federal contributions currently cover only about 10% of the cost of provincial programs, which is down significantly from the historic 50% of cost sharing. Just as importantly, in the transition from the Canada assistance plan to the Canada health and social transfer and now the CST, four of the five conditions for federal funding were eliminated.
The overall objective of ensuring that social assistance programs provide adequate support to people in Canada has been lost, because the provinces and territories no longer have that as a condition of receiving CST funding. We really have no accountability mechanisms or standards to ensure that social assistance programs across the country meet the basic needs of Canadians.
In every jurisdiction and for every family type, the incomes provided to people receiving social assistance fall below, and often far below, accepted measures of poverty. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has recently reviewed Canada's obligations, and it has made comment on the inadequacy of social assistance. It has recommended that Canada work to ensure that rates be raised to allow for a decent living and that accountability provisions be put into the CST to allow monitoring of how the funds are allocated.
We believe that increased and accelerated investment in the CST, as well as requirements for provinces and territories to spend those investments on improving incomes, would represent a significant contribution to poverty reduction in this country.
Thanks for your attention. I'd be happy to answer questions.