Human Resources Committee on Nov. 1st, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you. Unfortunately, that's time.

We do have to move to MP Sansoucy. Thank you.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Farha, I can tell you that I too agree with Mr. Poilievre at times. As to the committee's work, you can continue to hope and have confidence.

You mentioned international treaties. I will not make a list since you mentioned them and there are a great many of them, but I would like you to talk about them from a different perspective. I would like to know what commitments we, the Government of Canada, have made under these international treaties.

How should these commitments inform our committee's work as to the recommendations we have to make?

[Leilani Farha]

Thanks.

There are several committees within the UN human rights system and they are responsible for reviewing Canada's compliance with its international human rights obligations. That's their job. They're made up of independent experts. They don't represent any states, etc., so they're independent experts in the areas of human rights.

There have been many reviews of Canada recently by many committees and there is a consensus in certain areas, and poverty is one of them. Whether it's the committee dealing with women, or the committee dealing with economic, social and cultural rights, or the committee dealing with children, or the committee dealing with racial discrimination, it's been consistent within the UN human rights system that Canada is failing to meet its international human rights obligations.

The committees are very practical, so they come up at the end of their review—and it's on paper as well as oral—and they issue a series of recommendations. Those recommendations could be read by this committee and interpreted for its own purposes and incorporated into the committee's work.

The recommendations are very concrete. They say things like “Social assistance rates across the country are too low. People can't live on those rates and they have to be raised.”

As I said, human rights is a way of doing work, so they're very practical, and I think this committee would benefit from looking at all of those recommendations. CWP can certainly provide them to the committee.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Last June, I had the opportunity to accompany the Minister of Labour to the annual conference of the International Labour Organization, in Geneva. I learned that, in the work of our committees, we ask questions to our witnesses and internationally. I discovered that, as a country, we pay to have access to UN resources, that there is a treasure trove of information there, and that we should use those resources more extensively.

Thank you for pointing out that, in the course of its work, our committee should examine the very specific recommendations made by the various committees so that our future recommendations correspond to Canada's commitments under these international treaties.

Thank you for bringing that to our attention. I guess you can also tell us how we could access that information more quickly.

[Leilani Farha]

I don't know if there was a question in there.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I learned that we can get a great deal of information through the United Nations.

Can your organization help us access information that is more decisive for our committee's work?

[Leilani Farha]

Yes, we have consolidated all of the recommendations that have been made that might be relevant to the study of the committee around poverty reduction in Canada. We would be happy to forward that information to you forthwith.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you.

Do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

You have about a minute and a half.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Okay.

Mr. Lee, you said earlier that we need targeted measures.

When Statistics Canada officials appeared before us, they spoke more specifically about poverty among seniors. In your workshops, you meet people living in poverty.

In your opinion, if we automatically paid the guaranteed income supplement to those who are entitled to it, would that constitute a targeted measure?

[Dr. Ian Lee]

I will, because I've written and spoken about this in papers. In fact, we talked about it in the paper I referenced. I'm, again, basing my comments on a paper done by Professor Jack Mintz that was published in January 2015 at the University of Calgary. He drilled down into the 7.5% of elders. There are two issues. The first issue is those below the poverty line who are already elders; they're over 65. The other issue is those who are not yet 65, but who are approaching 65 and who are not, or allegedly not, pension-ready. I'm now referring only to those who are over 65 and below the poverty line: the 7.5%.

Professor Mintz drilled down into the data and asked a very good research question: who are they? They are overwhelmingly—this is my own phrase—elder elder females. These are not 65-year-old females. These are 85-year-old females, 90-year-old females, like my late mother who raised children and did not work outside the home in the 1950s and 1960s. They don't have CPP.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

My question is very specific. I would like to know if the guaranteed income supplement should be paid automatically to those individuals.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

That's actually time.

[Dr. Ian Lee]

Could I have just one second?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

You have about 10 seconds.

[Dr. Ian Lee]

The solution is very clear. What Jack Mintz said is the combination of, one, giving survivor benefits of 100% to any spouse who doesn't have a CPP in their own right, instead of having it reduced when the spouse dies and, two, increasing the GIS. He said that for about $5 billion a year in a $2-trillion economy, we can eliminate elder poverty in this country. There's the answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to MP Long, please.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I have questions for Ms. Farha and Ms. McLachlan on food security.

I just want to get your thoughts and feedback with respect to food security. So often we see food that's taken away to landfills or composting. I just want to get your thoughts on what you feel, from a government perspective, we can do to make sure that food that gets wasted gets put into our nutrition system.

[Harriett McLachlan]

From what I've read recently, there are some trends starting, retailers giving to Food Banks Canada. It might be interesting to look at how to encourage that and an education process about what we do with our food, and how much we buy or don't buy and how much we waste. There are good, hands-on education pieces that people get, and they say, “What? I'm just throwing away $1,000 each time on food, because I'm not being conscious enough?” It might be interesting to support.

[Leilani Farha]

I think there are some concerns around that, which I can't articulate, but I've heard buzz in the background, shall we say.

In the Dignity for All national anti-poverty plan for Canada, we have a whole section on what we think should happen with respect to food security, which also looks up north because food security is a huge issue there. It doesn't include the issue of dealing with food waste, but there are a lot of other concrete recommendations, so I would point you to that if you're interested.

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

Ms. Milne, do you have any comments on that?

[Kendra Milne]

The food bank solution is one example, and there was the Belleville man who was trying to do the social housing. Certainly there are steps that can be taken to improve or support charitable responses to poverty, but I think the bigger question is to really think through the importance of the government needing to take a more active role and it not just being left to those private charitable responses. We certainly see in B.C. that things such as food banks provide a crucial service particularly for folks trying to survive on income assistance in urban centres, but as soon as you get to rural areas, people are not as able to access those supports.

With regard to leaving things to the whims of donors, while those are welcome and certainly there may be ways to facilitate things happening, they can't be the only response. We have to look past them to the government's role in ensuring that everyone has access to a response.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Farha, I want to drill down a little further on your comment to my last question about alignment of government. You basically commented, in response to some questions here, that maybe the federal government should attach, I don't want to say strings as much as conditions, to social transfers. Certainly I believe that is one of the things we can do federally. You can look at what's going on with the health care discussions and what have you, but again, it's not just necessarily about throwing more money at it; it's about spending that money correctly and aligning ourselves.

Can you give us more on how you see us being able to align ourselves more with provincial governments?

[Leilani Farha]

I do think there's a lot to be mined there and I don't think we've fully explored the ways in which federal and provincial relations could work around conditionality.

I have seen something emerge from the United States, to which people may say, “Whoa, no way; this wouldn't work in Canada”, but I'll put it out there. I think it's always good to hash through ideas and try to figure out the best way forward.

In the United States, states get money for housing, and the federal government has a point system regarding how much money each state will get for how much housing. It's housing for a variety of income brackets. A state gets more points if it has eliminated the criminalization of homelessness. It actually gets more points and therefore more dollars if it takes this bold step of saying it's not going to criminalize homeless people anymore and throw them into jail.

I'm not saying that's an issue here in how we would deal with it, but there might be an interesting way of saying, okay, for provinces and territories that actually decide to raise their minimum wage to a living wage and their social assistance rates to realistic levels, there might be some incentive to do so, a monetary incentive. We might find that unpalatable—I don't know—but I think it's worth exploring those sorts of issues.

You see, we have a problem with federalism, at least from my perspective, the human rights perspective, in that provinces, territories, and municipalities have human rights obligations too, but they can't meet those obligations if they don't have adequate resources. There should be some sort of symbiotic relationship between the feds and the provinces, territories, and municipalities whereby they're all saying that in order to meet their human rights obligations, they need x amount of resources; they need the capacity. There has to be a shared conversation around that, and I think the leadership has to come from the federal government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

We will go over to MP Tassi for a couple of brief questions.