Human Resources Committee on Nov. 1st, 2016

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you.

Before I ask a question, I want to make one clarification and one comment. The first is that the reason we are here is not to come up with ways to throw money at this problem. The reason we are taking this study very seriously, and taking the time we are taking, is to come up with effective ways and innovative ways. That's why all of you witnesses are here today. I just want to make that point.

Second, I feel compelled morally to make a comment with respect to something you said, Dr. Lee. I worked with youth for 20 years in a high school. I just think it's important that we recognize that not all youth are bound to go to university or college. I worked with youth for whom that avenue was not available, either because their passion wasn't there or because they were not capable. We as a committee have to address those youth as well, so that when they go out to the world they can be very successful. I just felt compelled to make that comment.

My question is directed to you, Ms. Farha, Ms. McLachlan, and Ms. Milne, with respect to the evidence we have regarding underlying causes of poverty. We look at groups like women, indigenous groups, those who are disabled. Do you think we have enough evidence? Is the evidence there? Or do we need to do more research?

As well, you are all big proponents of this human rights approach. Very briefly, can you tell us what makes this approach the best approach? Why is this the way to go? Why are you such strong advocates of this approach?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Perhaps we could get a brief answer on those. We're almost out of time.

[Leilani Farha]

I'll be as succinct as I can.

I'll start with the resource issue, because it's so important. No one has named an amount of money that would be saved if we actually started addressing poverty. I'll give one figure: it costs about $55,000 to have a homeless person on the streets and it costs about $37,000 to have that homeless person housed. That's one small example, but that's a really important point here. We would actually be saving money.

Why do we advocate a human rights approach? We've been talking about causes, the causes of poverty, and 4.9 million people. That number suggests it's a systemic problem. We don't have 4.9 million lazy people or 4.9 million people who ditch school and just can't figure out their way back to school. It's a multipronged, systemic problem.

The human rights approach deals with systemic problems. When you look at what is happening across the country, these are all human rights problems. It's an issue of inequality. It's often an issue of discrimination. It's an issue of the lack of adequate housing. These are all human rights issues. They're codified in international human rights law.

I think it's appropriate to use human rights responses to human rights problems. As I said, we wouldn't abandon the charter in the face of a freedom of expression issue. We would say, well, the charter applies. Why? Because it's a rights issue. I'm saying let's bring those rights to whatever policy, programs, etc., and hopefully legislation, that we have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

I'm seeing the clock at 10:45. We do have to wrap up. We have another meeting in here at 11 o'clock, so we can't dawdle too much.

I want to take the opportunity to thank all of our witnesses, including the ones who came to us via Vancouver.

As always, thank you to the committee.

Mr. Warawa.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Just before we adjourn, we had a break. We do have vice-chairs. Can I suggest that if the chairman needs a break, the chair be filled by a vice-chair so that we don't have to break?

We missed out on an opportunity for a question on this important issue because of that break.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

All right. We can discuss it after. Actually, MP Tassi was cut quite short. I'm not sure, even without the four- or five-minute break, that we would have gotten to your question, but I do take the point. We can chat about that maybe on Thursday. We did in fact agree, when we talked about this new structure, that we would have that break. It was when we talked about going to two solid hours.

We can chat about that on Thursday if we want to maybe change that.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, everybody.

Thanks to the translators and my colleagues on either side. We'll see everybody Thursday.

The meeting is adjourned.