Human Resources Committee on Feb. 9th, 2017

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

I do have a lot to ask, and I apologize that I can't get to everybody.

Ms. Eisenhauer, I thought your speech and presentation were very well done. I commend you on that.

Penni, I know you, and I certainly know that you're very involved in Saint John. You talked about “lived experience”. Sometimes from government's perspective we tend to have our committees and our meetings and we do things in a bit of a silo. We don't want to do that. I think that in developing a national poverty reduction strategy, as our government is tasked with, it is paramount to involve people with lived experience. Could you share how important you feel it is to include people with lived experience in our strategy?

[Penni Eisenhauer]

Well, if you want the answers, they're the people to talk to. They're the ones who've lived it.

I've lived the experience. I grew up in a middle-class home, but I suffered with mental illness and addiction. I have two degrees; however, I've lived a diverse lifestyle, which led me into pockets of poverty for certain periods of time. I do know what it's like to live in substandard housing. I do know what it's like to not have enough money to get the food you need. I know what it's like to navigate a system that really wants to keep people in poverty.

I understand the fact that people are uncomfortable when people talk about lived experience. It makes people uncomfortable. For instance, I can come here this morning. However, maybe for a mum or someone who has children to get to school, 8 a.m. may not work for them. I think you need to look at engagement in meaningful ways.

I work with a collective, a group of neighbourhood leaders. We're called the “Neighbourhood Action Group”. We've developed a meaningful way to engage individuals around honorariums. There should be a value placed on people's time, and I feel that people are more likely to be engaged when there are child care, transportation, and food, and their time is valued.

My recommendation is that we need to look at the tables that require lived experience, and we need to look at how to engage people meaningfully. For some people this is very intimidating, so you may need to go into places that already have people naturally congregating there and have a natural conversation instead of having them always around the table per se.

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

Thanks. That's great. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

On Wendy's and Randy's comments on the alignment of three levels of government, from a federal perspective I strongly feel—and I think you do too— that a lot of transformational change will come from federal initiatives. Sometimes you see that the federal government wants to do one thing right across the country, and then the money goes to the provinces, whether it be for education, housing, or what have you, and while I wouldn't say we lose control of it, it may go to different areas that may not be a federal priority.

Randy, how important do you feel it is to have alignment among all three levels of government? What challenges and opportunities do you see there?

[Randy Hatfield]

I think the principal challenge would be constitutional, where you have a federal government with fiscal capacity, provincial governments with jurisdiction, and municipalities that live with the consequences. It's really difficult to get all three aligned.

Municipal governance in New Brunswick is different from municipalities in other provinces. It's quite an evolution for them to step up and accept some responsibility for social files and social conditions in their community, but we're starting to see that, particularly on the immigration file now, and people look upon that as an answer to some of our demographic challenges.

I think that's the difference, Mr. Long. When you have the fiscal capacity, the jurisdiction, and the lived experience and the consequences at the local level, it's critical that they align and work together, but that's a tough thing to do.

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

Wendy, do you have any comments?

[Wendy MacDermott]

I would add, as I said earlier, that I think the opportunity is to create some pooled resources that respond to a local plan.

I think one of the challenges we have as a local community in responding to even the great big RFPs from the federal government is that they're on the federal government's timeline when something is a particular priority. I think the best ideas come when they've been developed locally and they've been well thought out. Then, when they're shovel ready at the local community, how do we engage the federal government? It really happens in the opposite direction. I'll use a small illustration.

In November of 2016 there was a call for proposals in regard to looking at homelessness. Family violence was one of the areas. Luckily, as a community we had been working with four organizations to create a new model of how we would address family violence, rather than relying almost solely on an emergency system. Because we were ready, we could meet the six-week turnaround in order to pull that proposal together. If the community hadn't already been working on this.... Communities see the opportunity of a big pile of federal money and hear little angels singing, but the realistic ability to optimize those dollars locally is not there when you're not able to build on something you're already trying to achieve.

It's about changing the direction. Here's the local strategy, here's what we're working on, and here are the priorities, so how do the federal government and the provincial government engage and support this? It's really in the other direction from when government is ready to release money and then we try to scramble to get it. Again, local funders are part of that problem as well.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

MP Sweet, for six minutes.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, everyone.

Since I am going to ask my questions in French, you can put in your earphones so that you can hear the simultaneous interpretation.

I am the NDP's housing critic. So I am going to focus on the issue of housing because we have not talked about it a lot today. Housing really is a major piece of the puzzle that we have to consider if we want to fight poverty.

Do any of you know how long the waiting list is for social housing in Saint John? Do you have any figures on that for us, either the number of years or the number of people?

[Randy Hatfield]

There's currently a waiting list of over a thousand at the regional level. It tends to be an annual application that's required in order to keep your name on the list. It's very difficult, because within that cohort of folks who have housing needs, there's some triage that's undertaken, certainly for those fleeing domestic violence and for those with young children. We have a real problem in this community with non-elderly singles—NES—that population that doesn't fit into one of those priority areas. It's not uncommon for them to be on a waiting list for such a long period of time that they eventually drop off or really don't have an expectation of getting affordable housing.

Affordable housing is a very difficult file. I know that Mr. Dickinson will be commenting in the next panel on some housing issues, but again, it's a question of scale.

At the Human Development Council, we are the community entity under the homelessness partnering strategy for Moncton, Fredericton, and Saint John, the three principal urban areas in the province. It's a model that I think works very well. It embraces community. It requires a community plan on the community issues in an RFP. A community-based committee determines the allocation of funds, but in Saint John, for instance, there's less than a quarter of a million dollars a year, about $220,000 per year, to deal with homelessness. While that is a lot of money, it's not a lot of money, and it makes it very difficult, for the reasons of scale that I spoke of earlier.

There is a long waiting list for social housing and for affordable housing in this region.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you.

With the homelessness partnering strategy, Quebec's approach was to talk to the people who know the problems and know the solutions. A number of people have mentioned that, actually. We must not just focus on one approach. The “housing first” approach works well, but there are a number of other prevention initiatives. Unfortunately, their funding has been reduced.

Is it the same here? Would you like to see a more generalist approach in terms of funding homelessness prevention initiatives?

[Randy Hatfield]

I'm not sure that a different approach is required, as opposed to more resources. I know that's an often-used phrase, and everybody could use more money, but the housing file is one of those wicked files that crosses over a host of government agencies and departments. It makes it very difficult to go deep.

It's interesting to look at the three principal cities in New Brunswick, for instance, where each community uses its modest allocation in different ways. In Moncton, for instance, they tend to be capital projects. In Saint John, there tends to be a desire to maintain the operations of a number of fragile community-based organizations. I am a fan and a believer in the HPS model of embracing communities and allowing communities to determine their priorities and call for and fund proposals on the basis of those community priorities.

It would be nice if our provincial government, for instance, could match federal allocations, but that's unlikely. That's not going to happen.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Hatfield, you are the only witness to mention that we are on Mi'kmaq territory.

Are there specific problems with indigenous populations? Should we be thinking about different solutions for indigenous populations in the province and in the city?

[Randy Hatfield]

I believe there are 13 first nations in the province. They are spread out unequally across the province. There is no reserve, for instance, near Saint John, and there's no friendship centre in Saint John. It's very much spread out.

The needs of the aboriginal community are well known and documented. Serious investments have to be made by all levels of government for our first nations population. I don't think there's any doubt about that. That's beyond discussion or debate. Mr. Long spoke about the alignment. In that field in particular, there needs to be a serious alignment of provincial governments and federal programs.

Again, this federal system that we have is imperfect. We have to figure out ways that the fiscal capacity of the feds can align with the jurisdiction that exists in the province. We have to see the emergence in New Brunswick of municipalities and local governments that are prepared to step forward in social areas.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

In an anti-poverty strategy, you also see the need to include a housing strategy. How would you see the possibility of working on those two aspects together?

A number of people have said that all levels of government must work together. People talk about a Canada-wide strategy. However, we know that living conditions are very different from one end of the country to the other. I imagine that flexibility and partnership between the various levels of government, community groups and groups like yours would be just as important as the funding involved.

Is there anything else you would like to see in a housing strategy?

[Wendy MacDermott]

One of the things worth considering is the variety in terms of home ownership and rental, etc. One of the things that's somewhat unique about Saint John is that nearly half of our housing is rental. That's low-income and very terrible housing, which we'll hear some more about again in the second panel, but it's also a bit of a norm in Saint John, even with properties that are not low-income properties, that rental is there. It has become an issue in this community because the norm is that if you have the ability you own a house, and that's not necessarily the norm there. It's a small illustration of how we need a nuanced strategy that doesn't become a one-size-fits all strategy.

The housing stock in Saint John is ancient, so that comes with many issues. I was talking to Mayor Darling the other day, and he mentioned even the physical infrastructure. There was a pipe they had just dug up that predated the Civil War. That's our reality. It speaks to the struggle that Randy mentioned in terms of lining up the municipal, federal, and provincial priorities and jurisdictions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Very quickly, Mr. Hatfield, you mentioned a thousand on the wait list. How long is the average for them to get off the wait list?

[Randy Hatfield]

I think after a year they can revisit it again. They should apply and reapply. I think many people have simply given up on the list, frankly, unless they're one of those extreme or triaged populations. It's a very imperfect system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

We're seeing the same thing in Cambridge, with 3,000 on the wait list for five to six years.

We'll go very quickly to Mr. Robillard for six minutes.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I'll continue this in French, so keep your earphones.

Ms. Schryer, your organization interests me greatly, as a former teacher.

Your organization has two programs, Elementary Literacy Friends and, for francophones, Communauté-Littératie-Enfants.

In your view, how do those initiatives contribute to poverty reduction? How can we consider incorporating the example set by your efforts into a Canada-wide poverty reduction strategy?

[Erin Schryer]

Thank you for your question.

At Elementary Literacy, we're doing two things.

There's the whole literacy file. We know that people with low literacy are more likely to be unemployed and to be engaged in the social system and the criminal justice system. There is a range of impacts that are costly to government and also to the person in terms of the opportunity cost loss. Even just generally, I would illustrate that as the literacy issue. In New Brunswick, over 50% of adult anglophones have low literacy. Over 60% of our francophones have low literacy.

Our low literacy levels are really holding our province back. There has been much conversation lately. We're often looking at literacy and the economy, and how the economy is being held back in New Brunswick because of our low literacy levels.

What we did with Elementary Literacy, as I mentioned, was to really go to the evidence to see how we could help. At the time in 2009, there was a private sector movement afoot to say that we really needed to get this under control. The private sector was saying that it was affecting their bottom line. They couldn't find workers, and the innovation and entrepreneurship that they wanted to see in the province just wasn't there, and a lot of that was coming back to our low literacy levels.

We went to the evidence. It showed that reading problems emerge early in children. That's really the time to remediate. What we're advancing at Elementary Literacy is that if we can get to our children and if we can get to more children, we will not let them leave school before they are reading well, and then we will advance the adult literacy rate in that way and have the cascading effects on the economy.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Do you deal with digital literacy with the kids you help? Does your organization have initiatives based on new technologies, so that those kids do not fall behind in the subject?

[Erin Schryer]

I think I followed you. You're asking me about numeracy in the children. Can I confirm if that's correct? It is?

Right now, the literacy that we're working on with the children is very narrow to their reading literacy. We're looking at children's reading comprehension. There is—and we have our eye on it—research around children's numeracy, scientific literacy, and the links between foundational reading and those concepts. It's still up in the air as to how well established the link is, but there definitely is.... I've had many meetings with various financial literacy organizations in the province and with math teachers on how we can support their efforts through what we're doing on a community basis.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Coordinating efforts in Saint John through Living SJ has resulted in common priorities being established with private and public funders.

How did you manage to establish common priorities with those funders? Even more importantly, what impact has that been able to have on attaining the goals set by Living SJ?

[Wendy MacDermott]

Thank you for your question.

One of the things that was incredibly helpful is that many of the funders were there from the very beginning. Many of us—the community foundation, the United Way, the provincial government, the municipal government—were the ones sitting around the table saying, “Something has to give, and it must be us.” We didn't have the uphill battle of trying to convince the funders to do things differently. We were trying to figure out for ourselves how we lined up. In terms of changes, Living SJ provided the United Way with a template for what we should be investing in and how we should be investing.

We have a team of reviewers that looks at funding applications. When they do that, they use a Living SJ lens. We look at whether this investment we make will drive that bottom line, the bottom line being achieving literacy by the end of grade 2. It's looking at those things that as a community we are trying to achieve and how we make that happen with our own money.

It also shifted the conversation from just the cheques we write, which are significant in our community—we grant about a million dollars a year—to how we can leverage funding. We've been able to put the first $10,000 or $20,000 on the table to assume some initial risk, because as a community-based funder we can do that to attract some funding from the provincial government to test a new idea or to attract a private consulting firm to give us some really great analyses of the work we're doing. Those changes have been able to happen because of our collective approach.

When funders aren't part of the conversation and you have to sell this to them, it's much more difficult. At my board of directors, Living SJ is part of our DNA now. It's part of our board agenda. We talk about it. That is also important in sustaining that role into the future.