Human Resources Committee on Nov. 1st, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Seeing the clock at 8:46, I call the meeting to order.

Good morning, everybody. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, June 13, 2016, the committee is resuming its study on poverty reduction strategies.

We are currently in the first theme of the study, government administered savings and entitlements programs. This is the fifth and last meeting for this particular theme.

Joining us today, we have Ian Lee, associate professor from Carleton University.

Welcome.

From Canada Without Poverty, we have Harriett McLachlan, president of the board of directors; and Leilani Farha, executive director.

Welcome to both of you.

I think we still are having technical difficulties, but hopefully we'll be joined shortly by Kendra Milne, director, law reform, from the West Coast LEAF Association, coming to us via videoconference from Vancouver, British Columbia.

In the interest of time, we're going to get started with witness statements.

Can you keep the statements to seven minutes? If you want, I can give you a one-minute warning.

We'll start with Mr. Ian Lee, associate professor from Carleton University.

Welcome, sir.

[Dr. Ian Lee, Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I thank the committee for inviting me to appear before you today, because I have a very personal interest in this subject. In 1971, exactly 45 years ago this year, I dropped out of grade 12, and by any measure, I was below the poverty line. I was frequently unemployed, and I was certainly always earning minimum wage when I was employed; and I remained in that status until I returned to school as a mature student a couple or three years later.

First, here are my disclosures. As you mentioned, I'm an associate professor, tenured, at Carleton, in the Sprott School where I teach business strategy and public policy. Second, I do not belong to or donate any monies to any political party. Third, I'm not a registered lobbyist under the Lobbying Act. I don't represent anyone anywhere, except myself. Fourth, I've taught approximately 100 times in developing countries around the world since 1991.

What I'm going to talk about today is based on a meta literature review, a peer-reviewed article by me and Sprott Chancellor Professor Vijay Jog, concerning the Canadian public retirement income system. It was published by the Journal of Public Finance and Management. I'm also drawing on another peer-reviewed article that I wrote, which was published this year in How Ottawa Spends and focused on the policy and vertical issues in the reform debates surrounding CPP. I'm going to expand on that and generalize from that.

Finally, I'll also draw on my op-ed published two years ago for Ottawa Business Journal, which was called “The Benefits of a Lower Minimum Wage”.

As someone who is relentlessly evidence-based, relying on evidence from StatsCan, OECD, and OECD government departments, I want to provide some background empirical data concerning wealth, incomes, and poverty in Canada. I do this due to what I believe is a substantial amount of misinformation and misunderstanding in the public today concerning poverty in Canada, due to what I characterize perhaps a little facetiously as Trumpisms, made-up statements lacking any empirical basis.

I do have the background data for this, which I will provide to the committee after. I have the actual source data from StatsCan and the OECD, and so forth.

Restated, contrary to what has been reported widely, poverty is not skyrocketing and it's not exploding in Canada. It's real, it's there, but it's not exploding and it's not skyrocketing. Income inequality is not exploding or skyrocketing in Canada. I have the OECD data on that. Incomes are not stagnant in Canada per StatsCan.

First, the overall Canadian income data is in a comparative context. I provide this to my students every year and they're just simply astonished. This is based on 2011, because there's a lag when you're using OECD. Canada's average GDP per capita, our income per capita, expressed in U.S. dollars, because the OECD converts everything into U.S. dollars so you can compare across countries, was $44,000 U.S. The EU average at that time was $36,000 U.S.; that's the EU-28. The eurozone average was $38,000. The OECD overall average was $38,900. So Canada was averaging and is averaging about 20% higher than the European Union, which of course we know is one of the wealthiest places in the world.

Turning to Canadian poverty rates, we discover they're at the lowest level ever in Canadian history, at approximately 8.8%. In my lifetime, from the 1960s until now, poverty has collapsed. That's not to say it's disappeared. Of course, it hasn't, and there's more work to do, but it's certainly not going up.

Then we examine inequality; Canada is below the OECD average. That's never reported. We get the impression that we're skyrocketing and we're above everybody else. That's simply not true. Then we examine outer poverty in Canada and discover what we all know, that it has been collapsed since the 1960s. Whether you use the LICO or the LIM, whether it's households or single people, it's collapsed.

Again, according to the OECD, Canada has one of the lowest rates of elder poverty in the entire world. There is only a handful of countries that have a lower poverty rate than we do.

Turning to my research on the retirement income system, my overarching message is that Canada and other OECD countries go forward into a new world of significantly reduced economic growth due to the aging of the population, which will inexorably lead to diminished taxation revenues, as Minister Morneau is going to tell us this afternoon. We can no longer squander scarce public resources on frivolous policies, of which universality is exhibit A.

Our meta literature review of the Canadian retirement income system showed that Canada has one of the lowest levels of elder poverty in the world per OECD pensions, at a glance. Moreover, a consensus of Canadian researchers such as Professor Milligan of UBC, Jack Mintz in Calgary, and even Bob Baldwin from the Canadian Labour Congress find that approximately 80% of Canadians not yet retired are in fact pension-ready, and that the problem is not in the bottom two quintiles but in the middle and upper-middle quintile. This cries out for a targeted solution, not a universal, one-size-fits-all policy.

My second message to this committee—and I'll be winding up right now—is probably going to be very different from that of most witnesses who will argue that we simply need to spend more money to solve our problem. I want to first note that I am not here before your committee asking for more money for my interest group, for the universities. Not at all.

Rather, I hope and urge that the committee can think about how we can grow the economic pie through restructuring policies such as the elimination of protectionist barriers, such as were advocated by the advisory committee to Minister Morneau, rather than simply redistributing the pie or rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic in this brave new world of much lower economic growth.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, sir.

Now, from Canada Without Poverty, we have Harriett McLachlan, president of the board of directors.

Welcome.

[Harriett McLachlan, President, Board of Directors, Canada Without Poverty]

Thank you for inviting Canada Without Poverty to appear at this important study of poverty reduction strategies.

CWP is a federally incorporated charitable organization dedicated to the elimination of poverty in Canada. Since our inception in 1971 as a national anti-poverty organization, we have been governed by people with direct lived experience of poverty, whether in childhood or as adults. This lived experience of poverty informs all aspects of our work.

I'm the president of CWP, and I have lived most of my life in poverty. I'm joined in my comments by CWP's executive director and United Nations special rapporteur on the right to housing, Leilani Farha.

I've reported many times before committees, and still poverty persists. Canada Without Poverty can provide all the statistics that you need to understand the persistence of poverty, homelessness, and hunger in Canada, the country with the tenth-highest GDP in the world, when we spend 5% to 6% of our GDP on maintaining poverty.

This morning, allow me to tell you about the actual lies behind these statistics. My poverty started when I left my middle-class yet abusive home at the age of 16, in 1978. My siblings and I were beaten from early childhood, and I was sexually violated by my father from the age of nine until I left home. These early experiences were crippling and devastating. I slowly fumbled along trying to make my way, and eventually married, yet to someone who was abusive and following the familiar pattern that some broken people live. I then became a single parent with three children.

Today I'm an educated professional with a master's degree, and have worked for over 20 years in my field. As a single parent, I faced obstacles and lived in deplorable conditions. I made hard choices between paying a hydroelectric bill and getting food, not to mention not having any money to save for the future. I did not have a bedroom of my own. We lived with sewer rats in our home, in our living space, in my kitchen, and even in my children's beds. I could not afford to live in a better place.

My poverty has been persistent. It has not collapsed. It has existed since 1978. Though mine is a personal story, the roots are systemic and bridge the lives of 4.9 million others living in poverty. At various times, members from every political party have said directly to me that they care about poverty, and I believe them.

So please understand that my poverty is a violation of my human rights.

United Nations treaty bodies have recently instructed Canada that we are in violation of our international human rights obligations to ensure an adequate standard of living, including the right to food and housing. The consequences of poverty, homelessness, and hunger are severe. Consider that in Hamilton, Ontario, a 21-year difference was found between the life expectancy of the poorest and that of the wealthiest residents of the city. In January 2015, two homeless persons died in Toronto, Ontario, due to cold weather, poverty, and a lack of adequate housing.

[Leilani Farha, Executive Director, Canada Without Poverty]

Good morning.

I am Leilani Farha, the executive director of Canada Without Poverty, and the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.

I am going to pick up where Harriett left off, on this idea that poverty is a violation of human rights, and I'm going to try to give it some life and some meaning.

My starting point, and I think our baseline here in this room, must be that poverty is a violation of human rights. In fact, this committee, in a previous incarnation, already made this connection—and I can provide that reference for you—and the Senate committee, in its study “In From the Margins”, also came to that conclusion and has made that recommendation for going forward.

As Harriett said, the United Nations has told Canada repeatedly that we need a national poverty-reduction strategy based in human rights.

I'm going to use that as our starting point and take it as a given. I think there are two reasons that human rights keep coming up with respect to poverty reduction in this country.

I think the first reason is that it's understood that it is a violation of human rights and it therefore requires a human rights response. That only makes sense.

I think there is another reason, which is that our ad hoc policy approach to date hasn't worked. We may agree that poverty is not escalating, but it is persisting. This has been a problem in Canada for a very long time now, for too long for such a rich country.

An approach that might actually work is being suggested, and that's the human rights approach. When I mention human rights and you think that I'm the UN special rapporteur, you start thinking about Geneva, croissants, coffee, and highfalutin ideas. But in fact, human rights is a way of governing. It's a way of doing business, and there are some hallmark characteristics to a human rights approach to addressing poverty that I can provide for you.

First of all, it suggests a holistic approach, an all-of-government approach, so you're not looking at just this social policy, or this housing program, or this child benefit, but you're looking at a whole-of-government approach. You're looking at the decisions that are happening in finance, the decisions that are happening in defence and in security, and at how those are having an impact on the poverty in the country.

The other characteristics are pretty straightforward. A poverty-reduction strategy would actually make explicit reference to international human rights obligations. It would include people like Harriett and others with lived experience of poverty in the development, monitoring, and implementation of the strategy. You would develop measurable goals and timelines. You would make the strategy a budget priority. You would include monitoring and reporting mechanisms for the implementation of the strategy. There would be accountability and review mechanisms for the strategy. And you would provide a claiming mechanism to ensure rights-holders have a place for their concerns to be heard.

In my opinion those are pretty practical, straightforward, actually easy-to-implement recommendations.

I'm going to close here. In my job as special rapporteur, I have the opportunity to travel the world and meet with governments and ministries in countries, developed and developing. One of the two biggest fears I hear around a human rights approach to poverty, homelessness, and inadequate housing, is: “This is going to cost us way too much money. We don't have the resources”. Under international human rights law, the standard is actually a reasonableness standard. It's a maximum of available resources standard. It's a progressive realization standard. It's not to end homelessness tomorrow. It's to put in place what you need to do to end homelessness over time. It's using the resources that you, as a wealthy nation, actually have going forward.

The other big fear is the claiming mechanism, but this is essential. If we believe that something is a human right, we have to be able to claim that right. That's a principle in international human rights law. Here in Canada we have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If my free expression is being curtailed or I feel it's being curtailed, I can use that charter. The fear is that if we say, “Oh, poverty is a violation of human rights”, we're going to have 4.9 million people knocking on our door.

That's not the experience of other countries. When you as a nation build a culture of human rights within the nation, then people know that their rights are being respected, and people don't have to make claims, because they're enjoying their human rights.

I'll leave it there. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, both of you.

Kendra Milne is the director of law reform with West Coast LEAF. She joins us from Vancouver, British Columbia

Welcome. If you could keep your remarks to seven minutes that would be fantastic. Thank you.

[Kendra Milne, Director, Law Reform, West Coast LEAF]

Thank you so much, and thank you for inviting me to appear today. As you said, I'm here in Vancouver on the unceded land of the Coast Salish peoples, and particularly the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

As the introduction noted, I work at West Coast LEAF, which is a non-profit organization that seeks to achieve equality by changing historic patterns of discrimination against women through litigation, law reform, and public legal education. We have a particular expertise in how poverty and economic insecurity impact the human rights of women.

Prior to my work at West Coast LEAF, I worked for another legal non-profit in Vancouver for eight years, where I provided legal services to thousands of people living in poverty, and I also worked on systemic law and policy changes concerning income security and housing security issues in British Columbia.

Today my comments are based on my experience of working directly with women living in poverty. I'd like to briefly address two topics related to women's poverty and the ways in which it undermines their human rights. I will then provide some suggestions for federal action to meaningfully address women's poverty in Canada and thereby support their equality.

The first issue I'd like to explore is the impact of caregiving performed by women on their economic security, and I suggest that this role as caregiver is intimately tied to women's experiences of poverty. We know that women continue to perform the vast majority of unpaid caregiving work for children. That work, in the absence of an adequate and affordable child care system, leads to significant implications for their economic security.

We know that in Canada women earn less than men do in full-time annual earnings, which is a gap that has been largely stagnant, if not growing slightly, and a gap that is worse for indigenous, disabled, and racialized women. When families with children of any income level struggle to afford or find child care, as they do, they may sacrifice the paid employment of the lower earner, often a woman, in order to fill gaps in child care or reduce the costs of care.

This is reflected in the fact that women work a disproportionate amount of minimum wage, part-time and precarious jobs, which means that their overall employment income, going beyond the comparison of just full-time, annual earnings, is significantly less than that of men. For women parenting as part of a couple, this means that they are increasingly financially dependent on their partner, even when both parties would prefer a more equal relationship, which puts women at risk of plunging into poverty if the relationship breaks down.

For women parenting alone, we know that the cost of child care is often an insurmountable barrier to employment because, given that the costs of child care are as high as they are, they cannot realistically earn enough to pay for care and other basic necessities. Many women are forced to rely on income assistance and live in deep poverty because of inadequate assistance rates or other forms of financial dependence.

Caregiving impacts women's financial security throughout their lives. With overall lower employment earnings, women accumulate lower pensionable earnings and retirement savings, and they continue to disproportionately live in poverty later in life. The scenario is increasingly problematic for older women who care for their grandchildren or other children, which is a situation we know is common, particularly in indigenous communities, because benefit schemes for older adults do not account for or support this caregiving.

Women's poverty is deeply intertwined with their role as caregivers, which reflects structural discrimination and undermines their equality. For any poverty reduction strategy to meaningfully support women out of poverty, it must reflect this fact.

The second issue I'd like to comment on is the connection between women's poverty and their vulnerability to violence, particularly in relationships. As I mentioned, women parenting as part of a couple often become financially dependent on their partner as a result of their role as unpaid caregiver. This financial dependence creates a power imbalance that we know puts women at an increased risk of relationship violence. It also makes it incredibly difficult for them to leave an abuser, because they face incredible obstacles to establishing security and independence.

Women experience poverty differently than men do. For example, despite being more likely to live in poverty and be housing-insecure, women are drastically under-represented in homelessness counts. Shelters and street sleeping are often unsafe for women, and because they will not put their children into those situations, deep poverty and homelessness look different for them. It often means couch surfing or relying on others for temporary housing. For many women, it means entering into relationships they would not otherwise choose to be in simply to get a roof over their head or the heads of their children. Again, these kinds of relationships, with deep imbalances of power and potential for exploitation, put women at an increased risk of experiencing violence, and compromises their security and their dignity.

Finally, I would like to make suggestions for action the federal government can take to meaningfully address women's poverty in Canada, and thereby support their equality and human rights.

First, the federal government can and should take a leadership role on a comprehensive national poverty reduction strategy that goes beyond piecemeal solutions and looks at the various causes and solutions of poverty in an inclusive and interconnected way that uses the human rights lens. The issues are often areas of mixed or solely provincial constitutional jurisdiction, but the federal government can and should utilize earmarked or conditional funding to ensure that poverty is meaningfully addressed across the country. Such leadership must take place in a transparent way with input from communities, experts, and other stakeholders.

Second, as part of the national poverty reduction strategy, the federal government can use a human rights lens and, in particular, a gender equality lens, to review existing and new federal laws and policies in terms of their implications for women's equality and economic security. For example, there are multiple developments occurring now on issues ranging from reforms to El parental leave benefits to the national early learning and child care framework to the national housing strategy, which appear to be proceeding absent a human rights lens and, in particular, without a lens focused on the impacts on women, despite the fact that we know that all of these issues are crucial to women's economic security and equality.

In addition, existing laws like the Divorce Act, federal seniors' benefits, and many other things have serious implications for women's economic security. Developing a rights-based review framework will provide a road map to move forward to financially support the security of all women, which is crucial for their dignity and equality.

Thank you. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all of our witnesses today.

We're going to move directly to questions from members.

First up is Monsieur Poilievre.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Thank you to the witnesses.

We know that the major determinant of poverty is whether someone is able to secure a job. The existence of government programming to help people who are unemployed ultimately exists to provide an income to people who would probably rather have their own income, so it should be the objective of any policy that combats poverty to enable people to work and establish their independence. But the income systems the government has in place, and the tax rates we impose on people on a combined federal-provincial basis, in many instances, make work a negative economic decision. In other words, individuals are worse off if they go into the workforce than they would be if they stayed unemployed.

My question is for Dr. Lee.

Do you have any comments on what the federal government can do to reduce what economists call the marginal effective tax rates, or the penalties that people face when they go to work?

[Dr. Ian Lee]

I agree with you simply because the peer-reviewed research is very clear on this. Professor Milligan of UBC has published extensively about the disincentives to returning to work. So has Professor Mintz at the University of Calgary. So has my colleague just down the road, at the University of Ottawa, Professor Ross Finnie. He has published on this extensively. We have been debating this and discussing this in public policy literally since I was in graduate school in the early 1980s. There is no question that there are barriers in the way we claw back income assistance when people return to work. But I just really want to go beyond your question, if you will, because this is my pet—

All of the discussions and the excellent suggestions by my colleagues here are great, but they are all symptoms. They are not the disease, and the disease to me is—and of course, I'm a convert, as I'm sure you know, as someone who dropped out of school and went back to school—that poverty is unbelievably correlated to low levels of education. I know I've said this to anti-poverty researchers, and they get very angry. I have the data showing the incredible correlation. I present it every September and every January to every one of my students in the first class.

By the way, the data sets are from two places. One is called the United States Census Bureau and the other is called Statistics Canada. They are showing that people with low incomes, in poverty, overwhelmingly have low levels of education. I didn't say it's perfect. It's not one for one. But the correlation is astonishing to anybody. Ross Finnie, who is certainly considered by many to be a progressive researcher, has come to a very similar conclusion. So we should be focusing on targeting hard-core unemployed people, or people with skill sets that are not needed anymore, for retraining.

The people supporting Trump are there because they can't make it in the economy, and so we have to retrain the people who can't make it. We should be talking about retraining, retraining, retraining, retraining for those people. Poverty is unbelievably correlated to low levels of education, and I'm exhibit A. I certainly wouldn't be a professor if I were still a grade 12 dropout, and I think that's very clear to everybody in this room.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

That's an inspiring story. We want to hear more stories about people who start from positions of extreme disadvantage but through their hard work and their own diligence are able to climb the ladder. We have to make sure though that we don't create a ladder that has missing steps in it. Right now in our tax and benefits system, there are missing steps.

For example, in the province of Alberta, if you are a disabled person trying to get into the workforce, and you increase your hours of work at minimum wage from 10 hours to 30 hours, you lose money. You make less money working 30 hours a week than you do working 10 hours a week. You have this person, who's desperately trying to get out of poverty and doing all of the right things, but being punished for it. That's a combination of federal-provincial tax and benefit penalties, and we need solutions. I'm hoping that we're going to have witnesses who can provide us with some solutions to that exact problem.

I wonder if you have any that you can offer.

[Dr. Ian Lee]

Let me follow up and again bring back in my theme.

If someone is on social assistance, they cannot go back to school. They will be cut off. Can you imagine? We should be telling every person on social assistance, please go back to school. We will pay your tuition fees, for goodness' sake.

We have these barriers built in.

It's not just on the income side, Mr. Poilievre. It's on the re-education side. We prevent people who are receiving social assistance or unemployment insurance from going back to school because we threaten to cut them off. We should be saying, “We encourage you and we will shout from the mountaintops to have you go back to school while you're on social assistance or on unemployment insurance”, but we don't. We put these huge barriers in to prevent them from becoming educated, and that is really bad. That's wrong.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

My question is for the other two witnesses.

There are a lot of things that government does that make housing more expensive—excessive red tape, fees, delays in municipal approvals for housing, particularly housing appropriate for people on a low income.

Do you have any suggestions about how we can remove that red tape and those government-imposed barriers, so the marketplace can build more affordable housing for people?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Your time is actually up, but I'm going to give you just a few seconds to respond.

[Leilani Farha]

Thanks for the question.

There is a lot that the government and governments—I use the plural because, of course, housing is a multi-jurisdictional issue. It's the federal government, as well as the provincial government, as well as municipal governments. There's a lot that can be done to improve the housing conditions for the lowest-income folks in Canada.

We know we need to build more social housing, for example. That's the throw-away. I find that to be a longer-term vision. It's not something that's going to happen overnight and it's not an immediate solution.

I think we need to start regulating markets and the real estate industry. I think it's an unsavoury and unpalatable suggestion. I think it's a difficult thing to make that suggestion when housing is viewed as a commodity.

Vancouver and British Columbia have started to move in that direction to address what is clearly a housing crisis for both the middle class and those in the lowest-income brackets. I think those are bold moves, but I'm not sure they are going to be enough. I think we need a national housing strategy that's based on human rights. I know the government is in the midst of working on such a thing. I think we need to address homelessness immediately, as an urgent matter, as a matter of priority.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

We have to move on. Sorry. Thank you. Maybe somebody else will ask you a question about that, because you sound as though you have a few more suggestions.

I want to move to Mr. Long.

Go ahead, Mr. Long

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our presenters today. I think they were all very good presentations.

I certainly want to acknowledge your presentations, Ms. McLachlan, Ms. Farha, and Ms. Milne. You are living with this situation every day and certainly have a first-hand account of what's going on.

My question is for you, Ms. McLachlan and Ms. Farha initially, regarding the alignment of government. Your organization has written about the lack of a federally mandated reduction strategy, and the result of that is that provinces and municipalities step up and try to reduce poverty in their own ways.

I would like you to comment on the importance of the alignment among the federal government, provinces, municipalities, community leaders, and corporate bodies in helping to reduce poverty, and to hear any ideas you might have.

[Leilani Farha]

Thanks for the question.

Yes, it's absolutely essential that there be some coordination, bearing in mind the sensitivities around federal jurisdiction versus provincial jurisdiction. But there's no doubt that we should at least be striving for some kind of national standards. I actually think the federal government could be showing some real leadership and not just taking its hat off to commend the provinces, all except B.C., and territories on what they have set out to do to reduce poverty, which is a great thing. That's wonderful, but there isn't any national organizing principle or framework, which I think is an essential ingredient to getting this right across the country, bearing in mind regional and provincial differences, of course.

I think the way in which the national-level government could show leadership is through human rights. That could provide that universal framework that all other provincial, and territorial, and even municipal strategies could fall under so that those would be the benchmarks that you're trying to hit, the human rights benchmarks. And you wouldn't be micromanaging provinces, territories, and municipalities. You're only saying, “We as a national-level government, having international human rights obligations, have to make sure we're all meeting those obligations, so, provinces, territories, and municipalities, here are the human rights benchmarks. Go.” Of course, you should be adequately resourcing the provinces, territories, and municipalities to ensure that they can meet those benchmarks.

I think that's an interesting way forward. There's no doubt that federalism is complicated. I think that any strategy has to grapple with the complications. I notice, as I scan the country, some really interesting developments at the municipal level and creativity at the local level, because they are so close to the people who are experiencing poverty, homelessness, and inadequate housing, terrible work conditions, etc. I think harnessing that creativity and ensuring that it flourishes in this country is important.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Ms. Milne, do you have any comments on the alignment of all three levels of government?

[Kendra Milne]

I would just echo those comments. In B.C., which is a province that of course is lagging with respect to adopting a poverty reduction strategy, we see that it's really more a matter of downloading the issues to municipalities. There are great, creative solutions coming out of, for example, Vancouver, but when we see really high and disproportionate rates of poverty in northern B.C., we're dealing with much smaller municipalities that simply don't have the resources to take on the same kinds of actions that a municipality like Vancouver has. So I would really echo the comments regarding the role of the federal government in really playing a leadership role both to set standards and to try to negotiate with—within, of course, the boundaries of federalism—some of the provinces that are less willing to take a proactive approach to these issues.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

There's one thing I have a comment on. I think at times it's not always about spending more money. It's about working with the province, the municipalities, to make sure that money is effectively spent. I'll give you an example. The homeless shelter in Saint John, New Brunswick, is run by a non-denominational group called Outflow. It receives money from the provincial government to run a homeless shelter. It has to privately fundraise two to three times as much as it receives from the province to make the shelter work. The shelter is overflowing. It's in crisis, and we find that the workers now are Big Brothers, police, health care workers, and social workers; they're everything, and the stress on these shelters is really unbearable. What in your opinion could we do as a federal government to help give some relief to those most vulnerable, those on the street and living in shelters? Can you also comment on the way out of shelters to transitional housing?

[Leilani Farha]

Sorry, are these questions for us or...?

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

They are for you and for you, Ms. Milne.

[Leilani Farha]

I just wanted to give her the opportunity. She's in a disadvantageous position.

Would you like to commence, given that there's a direct relationship with what you discussed with respect to women?

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Ms. Milne, you can go first.