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.