Evidence of meeting #40 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was john.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Randy Hatfield  Executive Director, Saint John Human Development Council
Donna Gates  Executive Director, Living SJ
Penni Eisenhauer  Community Organizer, Living SJ
Shilo Boucher  President and Chief Executive Officer, YMCA of Greater Saint John
Erin Schryer  Executive Director, Elementary Literacy Inc., As an Individual
Wendy MacDermott  Executive Director, United Way Saint John, Kings and Charlotte
Kit Hickey  Executive Director, Housing Alternatives Inc.
Jody Kliffer  As an Individual
Anthony Dickinson  President, The ONE Change Inc.
Althea Arsenault  Manager of Resources Development, Economic and Social Inclusion Corporation
Daniel Shoag  Assistant Professor, Harvard Kennedy School, As an Individual

9:15 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

Thank you very much.

MP Long, for six minutes.

9:15 a.m.

Liberal

Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks again for the great presentations and answers.

Shilo and Erin, with great interest I heard about the proposed project for early learning and the initiatives that would potentially be in the three priority neighbourhoods of Saint John. I was particularly interested in how you talked about parallel programs. One side is the early learning, but the other side is programs that will be offered to parents in parallel.

Shilo, I thought that maybe you could talk about those.

9:15 a.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, YMCA of Greater Saint John

Shilo Boucher

Thank you for the question, Mr. Long.

Although child care and licensed child care are very important in the situations where families are living in poverty, we definitely feel that more supports are needed for parents. The proposed pilot and the one that's operating in the south end right now are to engage not only the children but the parents, because the parents are the ones who the kids go home to every day. We try to instill skills in them, whether it's employability skills or just basic parenting skills to help them when the children come home at night.

That's what we're proposing through this model: to continue to engage parents. I think it's an issue in this school districts as well as kids go to school. If the parents aren't accountable and engaged, then the kids lose out at the end of the day, which also affects their learning. This model works to involve both the children and the parents in different ways, whether individually or together.

9:15 a.m.

Liberal

Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB

Erin.

9:15 a.m.

Executive Director, Elementary Literacy Inc., As an Individual

Erin Schryer

I'll just mention there, too, on our theme of leveraging existing resources and infrastructure with parallel programming, that we can offer a program in the south end and also offer it in the north and the west, but responsive to those neighbourhoods. There will be emerging needs from the different neighbourhoods that may be different, or they may be the same. In some cases with our programming, one parent program may look exactly the same in the three centres, or it may look a little different depending on the needs that we're finding in that community.

With having the three centres, I think you're able to leverage the existing infrastructure, resources, and learning across the centres. That's really part of the impact that we see from this by coordinating everything. Again, as we've talked about a lot today, it's also being responsive at the same time, so it's not the same program, perhaps, depending on what the neighbourhoods are showing.

9:15 a.m.

Liberal

Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB

Thank you very much.

Donna, Living Saint John is an impressive organization. You obviously have your four pillars, if you will. If you don't mind, I'd like to get some comment from you as to how you measure success. Obviously the program is wonderful, but I'm a businessman, too, and you need results, and you need to measure and monitor. Can you talk about how you came up with the proper metrics and measurements?

9:15 a.m.

Executive Director, Living SJ

Donna Gates

I'll go back to the principles of collective impact. I could have gone into it in a lot of detail, but this is probably not the time and place. I do encourage you to maybe google “collective impact” and learn a little more about it, because there are principles in there that can be applied to many of the issues that we face not only as a city but also as a province and a country.

I'll highlight two areas.

Part of collective impact is the common agenda. As I stated earlier, it's not easy to get all these passionate people—and I should also mention that all these people at the table are partners within our Living SJ network—to reach consensus on an agenda. We were able to really focus on four pillars that are crucial to being able to create change.

Another piece of that is the measurement. The way we do that is to start first with a conversation about whether we are evaluating what we're doing. Wendy spoke about this as well in terms of how the United Way, as one of our partners, was able to change its thinking and even its funding model by asking the applicants to come up with outcomes. That process of really thinking about how we're actually going to measure and evaluate is very important.

We're also doing a project with Shilo at the Y, in which we're also measuring outcomes. When we get our collective impact teams, which fall under these four pillars together, evaluation measurement is always part of the conversation. We're also trying to do it in similar ways. I'm also fortunate to have a team member who has a background in statistics, evaluation, and measurement. Sometimes it's through surveys, but we are measuring in different ways. We can't manage and change what we can't measure, so that's really a fundamental principle of what we're doing.

9:20 a.m.

Liberal

Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB

Very quickly, Randy, every time you speak, I'm wowed by your knowledge and your passion. We're obviously here as a committee to help the minister come up with a national poverty reduction strategy. Let me learn from you. What would be the first things you would do if you were us?

9:20 a.m.

Executive Director, Saint John Human Development Council

Randy Hatfield

You have to be kidding.

9:20 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

You have 20 seconds.

9:20 a.m.

Executive Director, Saint John Human Development Council

Randy Hatfield

Twenty seconds?

We would engage the community in the lived experience. I think Living SJ speaks well for the community of Saint John and the priorities that it has established. I think we need to have more confidence. We have to approach funding mechanisms much like HPS. I'm a fan of putting money at the local level into the hands of a community that has determined its priorities, that's prepared to make the tough decisions about funding, and that is prepared to live with the consequences.

9:20 a.m.

Liberal

Wayne Long Liberal Saint John—Rothesay, NB

Thank you.

9:20 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

Thank you very much.

For six minutes, we will go to MP Zimmer.

9:20 a.m.

Conservative

Bob Zimmer Conservative Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC

Thanks for coming to the committee today. We finally got here last night at about 1:30 in the morning, but we're here.

The one thing I would like to bring up is that the study is called the “poverty reduction strategy”. It isn't talking about the poverty mitigation strategy. It isn't talking about the poverty continuation strategy. It's about the reduction strategy.

Wendy, I think you're on to something, because you said that a lot of cheques have been written, but still, here we are. I think Erin also said something about that, which is that we're still treading water with this poverty thing, if you want to call it that. I don't think that's giving it the weight it deserves, but there it is.

What I'm concerned about is how we reduce it. Reducing poverty looks at a bunch of different factors. For me, it's looking at family structure and whether there is a job in the family. How do we actually bring the poverty down and how do we change that?

Wendy, I'll ask you specifically, because you're on to this. I think you said that you've written the cheques and you don't want to just see that continue. You want to see change actually occur. What three things would you do, if you could actually do them, to reduce poverty?

9:20 a.m.

Executive Director, United Way Saint John, Kings and Charlotte

Wendy MacDermott

To me, it's really about breaking the cycles. We know what the cycles are. It's about paying attention to the evidence on what really works. Again, this stuff isn't popular, and it's not for the faint of heart. We've taken some significant hits over the last few years as we've made these big changes.

I'll use one illustration. Earlier, I mentioned family violence. The model that was created as a temporary measure back in the 1970s was the emergency shelter model. That is really great for keeping women safe for 30 days. What we started tracking just in the last couple of years was how many of the women who are there have been there before. We can actually measure the cycle, and it's 50%. Fifty per cent of the women who were in the shelter last year were there before. That doesn't count repeat visits or anything.

If we're looking at breaking the cycle.... We also know that the evidence says that if you grow up in violence, you are five times more likely to be a victim or an aggressor. That's the cycle. We need to intervene differently. On the other hand, locally we also had a ridiculously underfunded charity, a one-person shop, that was working with women for 18 months in a residential capacity. It found that 95% of the women left their abusive partner for 12 consecutive months. There are thresholds, according to the literature, that say if you leave for long enough, your likelihood of going back starts to go down.

There are different kinds of interventions, but we've built entire models around an emergency system. I'm not saying that we shouldn't fund shelters, and I'm not saying that emergencies aren't emergencies. They are. But as long as we keep perpetuating that same most costly, least effective approach...that's what we do in the criminal justice system and in the emergency departments. Every most expensive intervention we have could be prevented for a huge number of people, both in the financial costs and the social costs, because kids are growing up in these awful situations.

February 9th, 2017 / 9:25 a.m.

Conservative

Bob Zimmer Conservative Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC

The other analogy that I had written down is that we keep on trying to put out the fire instead of preventing the fire. My question is about structure. You strike me as a person who plans. If you could build a poverty reduction strategy for Canada, what would it look like? It's more than six minutes will ever allow.... What does this thing look like? Have you built a plan that would work across Canada? You've talked about different things.

I'll explain this a bit. I'm a former teacher, and I was part of a really good school district that really was thinking outside the box. The thing that frustrates me—and Erin mentioned this—is that we keep doing things in the same way that we've always done th,. The fact that we have a literacy problem and we have kids who go to school for 12 years is bizarre to me, because they're spending all this time in school.... That's where I learned to read, so why isn't that occurring there? I see some of the things that my kids come home with. They have amazing facts that they come home with, but they can't do the simple things in life. Part of that is adaptation. That's what I'm trying to say. You need to be flexible to do things that are effective.

I would ask that you really consider building that plan and presenting it to the committee, because you have your foot in the door right now. I challenge you to give us your whole plan. If you could pull it off, what would you do?

Erin, I want to come back to you about the literacy and what I was saying about that. Again, it has always struck me. Why isn't it occurring in school now? Our kids spend so much time in school. What's your answer to that?

9:25 a.m.

Executive Director, Elementary Literacy Inc., As an Individual

Erin Schryer

Unfortunately, in the education system and among educational researchers, there's quite a divide between the educational research and the practice, what happens in schools. Unfortunately, in schools, that has contributed to a lot of things happening that aren't necessarily working—I guess we're on a theme here—but it's what we know and what we do, so that's what the practice continues to be. There are examples of this all over the place, as there are with literacy. Through my own research, I've seen it. The practice and what we're seeing in the research literature aren't lining up.

I hate to simplify it, but that is one major area, and it's something that my organization has been working on with the provincial government to talk about. How we can we merge what's going on? We do have several faculties of education. We do have several people who are looking specifically at the area of literacy and early reading development.

How can we merge those two areas to make the research that's happening effective in the classroom and to look at doing some demonstrations, such as what we're proposing here with Learning Together? That means taking it back before school and looking at pre-K. What are the activities that our pre-K educators could be doing with children to prepare them for school? It's very well established in the research literature what the things are that children need to know and what classroom teachers can do. How can we bridge those two areas?

9:25 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

That's fantastic. Thank you very much.

We are running very short on time, but I do want to give the last word to MP Sweet for a few minutes. Go ahead.

9:25 a.m.

NDP

Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet NDP Hochelaga, QC

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

We have talked about the federal government's ability to fund projects. Ms. Gates, you talked about multi-year funding.

People from the FCM have said that projects should be funded in the long term, but they were talking about eight years. Do you believe that that number of years is appropriate? That is my first question, and it goes to Ms. Gates.

My second question goes to anyone who wants to answer. If you had one priority or one urgent situation to tell the federal government about, what would it be?

9:30 a.m.

Executive Director, Living SJ

Donna Gates

Thank you.

You're wondering if I feel that eight years is enough for multi-year funding. I would like to see 10 years. I think so. I think over 10 years is where we can actually see a difference. That would be my recommendation.

As far as one thing goes, I think what we're demonstrating here is that we all know not only how to work together, we know how to leverage funding. If we were able to use Saint John, as I mentioned, as a lab, to be able to take small groups of people concentrated on our four key pillars and study that, we could look at expanding that not only within our province, but as Randy mentioned, New Brunswick itself can be a fantastic lab considering its rural and urban structure. I would like to see that happen. That would be my wish.

9:30 a.m.

NDP

Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet NDP Hochelaga, QC

Does anyone else want to tell us about a priority? This is for all the witnesses.

9:30 a.m.

Community Organizer, Living SJ

Penni Eisenhauer

I don't have one, I have two—the two that I asked—and they're simple ones.

First, change the child tax credit. Move it from the 20th of the month to the 15th of the month. That's simple.

The other one is the criminal record. Change it back to the way it was, the pardon system. Really, the Harper government did a disservice to people. It is very expensive to go through the record suspension, and the record suspension just keeps you hostage because it holds your name. If you reoffend it pops back up. People cannot seek employment, education, or even volunteer with a criminal record. I've heard that it's a simple switch of the computer.

Thank you.

9:30 a.m.

Executive Director, Saint John Human Development Council

Randy Hatfield

I think we have to pay attention to the middle group of people who I spoke of. Seniors seem to be have income security that's adequate. Children now are covered off. With the changing nature of work, with artificial intelligence, with the use of robots, with the globalized economy, we're going to have a number of working poor. So it's that middle segment of people. It's people between 18 and 64 years of age who need an adequate level of income, because poverty is an income measure.

We talked about poverty eradication, or reduction, or prevention. We're using an income measure. You have to put more money in the hands of people if you want to have a lower poverty rate. So I would think it's that middle cohort now that has to be examined and looked at very carefully as the economy changes so rapidly.

9:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Bryan May

Thank you so much.

Sadly, I do need to keep us on track. That is pretty much my only job up here—or actually, it's her job—to make sure we stay on time.

I do want to sincerely thank all of you for coming out early this morning and answering our questions—very well, I might add.

Notice I did not say “St. John's” once.

9:30 a.m.

Voices

Hear, hear!