Human Resources Committee on Feb. 9th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Welcome. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are continuing with our study on poverty reduction. We are moving forward in the area of housing and neighbourhoods, and we are very pleased to be hosted in the great city represented by MP Wayne Long.

I'm very pleased to see all of you here today. If we nod off, please forgive us. We got in fairly late last night, and we hope we can leave later today, as I understand we have a bit of a snowstorm coming.

We're going to get started with presentations from this group. We have quite a few of you here today, so we're going to try to keep the comments to about seven minutes if that's possible.

I'd love to welcome, from the Saint John Human Development Council, Randy Hatfield, executive director, and Greg Bishop, project manager, and from Living SJ, Donna Gates, executive director, and Penni Eisenhauer, community organizer. Oh, I'm sorry. Mr. Bishop is not here.

From the YMCA of Greater Saint John—go YMCA—we have Shilo Boucher, president and chief executive officer. We also have with us, as an individual, Erin Schryer, executive director, Elementary Literacy Incorporated. As well, from the United Way of Saint John, Kings and Charlotte, we have Wendy MacDermott, executive director.

Welcome, all of you.

We're going to get started right away with you, Mr. Hatfield. The next seven minutes are all yours.

[Randy Hatfield, Executive Director, Saint John Human Development Council]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is the traditional unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik and the Mi'kmaq people of New Brunswick.

My name is Randy Hatfield. I'm the executive director of the Saint John Human Development Council, the social planning council. I was to be joined this morning by Greg Bishop, but he is attending a medical appointment with his wife as their third child is imminent. On the heels of the rather dismal population figures that were released yesterday, we fully support his choice of venue this morning.

I've provided members with a power point deck that I'm not going to display but will be referring to. I would like to set the scene in the community of Saint John and describe the community that we work in through a poverty lens.

The first question we would want to ask ourselves is, “What is poverty?” In New Brunswick, we have an answer; we have a definition. In our Economic and Social Inclusion Act that establishes the New Brunswick Economic and Social Inclusion Corporation and oversees the provincial poverty reduction strategy, we find a definition of poverty that says it is “the condition of a person who lacks the resources, means, opportunities and power necessary to acquire and maintain economic self-sufficiency or to integrate into and participate in society”.

Well, how do you measure that? How do you measure a condition? It's a very lofty concept. It's a social inclusion notion that goes to participation and belonging, but when we talk about poverty, we're forced to use a surrogate measure. We're forced to use a proxy measure of income. When we look at poverty through a lens in Saint John, we look at something called the “low-income measure”.

I know that this committee and the government will be looking at measurement and what measure it's going to choose as it moves forward when discussing and implementing a poverty reduction strategy. I would commend the low-income measure as half of the median income, a widely accepted OECD measure that I think is capable of being trended over time and giving us powerful longitudinal tools to look at progress—or not—on the poverty reduction file.

Using the low-income measure and using taxfiler data for 2014, the most recent data available, we have in the province's eight cities levels of income poverty that range from a low of 8.5% in the city of Dieppe to a high of 24.5% in Campbellton, a city to the north. Similarly, when we look at the rates of child poverty, there is a low of 9.6% in the city of Dieppe, but a shamefully high rate in the city of Campbellton of 35.1%. The city of Campbellton has 10% of the population of the city of Saint John, and where we are today, in the city, we have a child poverty rate of 31.5%.

When we take account of poverty in this community and in this province, we also have to look at the working poor. StatsCan defines the working poor, a growing cohort of the population, as those between the ages of 18 and 64 who have earned income of more than $3,000 but still fall below the low-income measure. The city of Saint John has the highest percentage of working poor in the province at 8.1%.

As in any statistical analysis, you have to break things out. You have to go deep, or as deep as you can, when it comes to an analysis of numbers in poverty. When we look at the Saint John census metropolitan area, or the CMA, it's important to distinguish the central city of Saint John and the more affluent suburban neighbours that surround it. The CMA level of income poverty is 14.5%, which is a tie with the provincial rate. However, when we look at the central city of Saint John, we find an income poverty rate of 19.7% and a child poverty rate in the city of Saint John of 31%. The suburban municipalities that surround Saint John do better by almost any SES measure, whether it's income, degrees of home ownership, education attainment levels, or family composition. There are two worlds within the CMA, that in Saint John and that in the surrounding municipalities.

At the human development council, we encourage going even deeper in our analysis and understanding of poverty. We take a look at the city of Saint John and then disaggregate regions and numbers, and we are able to find that with our ward system of four wards, although they are of equal population, we have startlingly different metrics. Where we are located today as we sit in ward 3, we have a child poverty rate of almost 48% within this ward.

There are five priority neighbourhoods that have been identified in the city of Saint John. Three of the five are located in this ward 3, and two are in ward 2. As some of the measures that are in the slide deck would suggest to you, we have alarming rates of child poverty concentrated in our neighbourhoods, and in Saint John's case, concentrated in an electoral ward.

Another feature of this community you're visiting today is the presence of lone-parent families. There is a large cohort of that segment of the population. Lone-parent families account for one in three families in ward 3, one in four families in the city of Saint John, and one in 10 in a suburban town that surrounds Saint John.

We also have to consider the depth of poverty. It's one thing to say that there's a low-income measure. If you're $2 or $3 above or below, does your life not materially change? No. It's the depth of poverty that looks at the difference between the income that's received through work and entitlement and the low-income measure that's been established. We do have a depth of poverty here that requires a huge increase in income if we're going to put people above the low-income measure.

We also, in Saint John, suffer the consequences of income and wealth inequality, and we've seen the growing gap between the rich and poor. The senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives noted in 2014 that of the 86 wealthiest Canadians, Canada's wealthy 80% represent only 0.002% of the population, but they're so flush that they could buy absolutely everything owned by every person in New Brunswick. They could buy all of New Brunswick's cars, all of the houses, all of the undeveloped lands, all of the stocks, bonds, pension funds, and RRSPs, all of the jewellery, all of the furniture—everything—and still have billions to spare.

But we at this table are filled with hope. We see an opportunity and a window that is open which suggests that circumstances are aligning themselves so that we can make a difference in poverty reduction. I would like to extend our thanks and appreciation to our local MP, Mr. Long, who has used a lot of his time and, one would say, his political oxygen on poverty reduction, and I think those at this table would agree.

We certainly feel the momentum here in this community as the result of some of his efforts. He was the sponsor of electronic petition number 291, which the Saint John Human Development Council was pleased to initiate, which is certified by the clerk of petitions, and which calls for Saint John to be designated as a demonstration site under the national poverty reduction strategy.

This morning, you will hear about the innovative programs and determined people who will make a compelling case for demonstration site investments. You'll learn of innovation, collective impact, and community collaboration, but I would be remiss if I did not remind the committee that we need strong national programs and that federal leadership is required. I know that the mandate letter to the minister for families and children talks about a national housing strategy, which is important.

You'll also hear about the importance of early childhood education and care.

We applaud the work that has been done over the years with regard to the levels of poverty among seniors. With the OAS as a universal measure, the GIS as an income-tested stream of income, and the CPP as related to employment, we now have seniors reasonably well accommodated with some tools.

With the child tax benefits for children, we have a wonderful measure that is now putting more money in the hands of low-income Canadians, not only as poverty reduction but, I would suggest, as poverty prevention. We are going to see the impact of the child benefit for years to come. I applaud the work of the government in that regard.

We still have to plug the hole of those with disabilities, those who are on income assistance, and the working poor. Along with enriching the working income tax benefit, we would urge you to look at basic income, but not at the expense of basic services. New Brunswick has yet to implement, for instance, an affordable prescription drug plan. In 2012, more than 70,000 families were identified as being uninsured. We would welcome this committee's consideration of a national pharmacare program. That would bring to this province a well-needed piece of infrastructure.

That concludes my remarks. I'm sure that was seven minutes.

I want to welcome you again to the city of Saint John. We wish you well in your inquiry on this important subject.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, sir.

For the next seven minutes, we will hear from Living SJ and Donna Gates, the executive director.

[Donna Gates, Executive Director, Living SJ]

Good morning, and again, thank you for coming to Saint John.

My name is Donna Gates, and I am the executive director of Living SJ. I'm joined here today by Penni Eisenhauer, our community organizer and an incredible neighbourhood leader.

I'd also like to acknowledge and thank our MP, Wayne Long. He is personally championing the issue of poverty in Saint John, and we are very grateful, as Randy suggested.

Living SJ is Saint John's poverty reduction strategy and we have one goal: to end generational poverty. As I suspect you'll hear many times today, Saint John, sadly, is home to a deeper level of complexity: multi-generational poverty.

What is Living SJ? We are a network and a part of Vibrant Communities Canada. Our mission is owned by 36 local senior leaders, and I'd like to point out here that having senior decision-makers at the table has been key to our success. Our partners include all three levels of government, post-secondary institutions, low-income neighbourhoods, businesses, and non-profits. It was no small feat to get representatives from many organizations, who usually do not sit at the same table, to agree to four areas of focus. We used the principles of collective impact—and it is just that—to identify the following targets.

First is education and closing the education achievement gap: every child succeeds, from early learning to post-secondary. This includes improving literacy and high school completion outcomes.

On health, it's a neighbourhood-based model of care, with individuals at its centre.

For employment, it's about connecting residents to employment through education and training. The Learning Exchange, which you'll see in action later today, shows a path to transition from social assistance to employment. Your lunch is being prepared by one of their amazing social enterprises. This is a true Saint John success story and I look forward to you finding out more about it.

Neighbourhood revitalization with a goal of mixed-income attraction is our fourth pillar. Penni will speak to this a bit more, but a fundamental defining value that we have at our centre is the inclusion of the voice of lived experience. The Land Bank has been named as a priority of our Living SJ housing working group. Jody Kliffer will speak to this later this morning.

I want to share with you that we are currently helping colleagues in Halifax as they begin to prepare their process of collective impact to address poverty. This is all about sharing and learning from one another. Their community says this: “Nothing about us without us”. That speaks to the voice of lived experience always being at our table.

We've developed a common agenda, and it took some editing. We deliberately had to consider what was out, at this stage anyway, and what was in. Also critical to our success is shared measurement. Our partners are measuring their activities in the same way. For example, the health authority discovered that the cost for three individuals using the emergency department over a three-year period for non-emergency reasons was $100,000, so our team looked at how to reach people where they lived, and a wellness centre within one of our five priority neighbourhoods was established.

What do we need? We recognize that government cannot do this alone. We're asking you to use Saint John as a lab. We want to keep learning and experimenting to get it right. This involves sustainable and more bendable multi-year funding with community input and accountability built in. Let's put decision-making back in the hands of the community. We're doing it here, and it's working.

Thank you for coming to Saint John.

Now I'd like to turn it over to Penni.

[Penni Eisenhauer, Community Organizer, Living SJ]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to welcome you all to Saint John.

We are not going to make a difference in poverty if people who have lived experience are not included in the process and in decision-making at every step of the way and at every level. Our lens is that privilege, money, and power exclude, and what we are really talking about is that we cannot make change and see a difference if those with lived experience are not engaged from the beginning. If we are not at the table, then we cannot help.

What I know from the work I do as a community organizer within one of the priority neighbourhoods is that when people are engaged it influences change in their lives. I've witnessed things changing within neighbourhoods because people can see what they can have an impact on. This, I believe, is true engagement in a meaningful way.

What we know from people with lived experiences is that there are two barriers within our system.

Number one is the time of the month for the child tax credit. The recommendation is that it be changed to the 15th of the month. This comes to you on behalf of those voices living this experience.

Second, for those who have gone through the criminal justice system, the changes since the Harper government have had a significant impact on those of us who have a criminal record. These barriers include: access to employment; access to post-secondary education; and even volunteering at your child's school. The recommendation would be to go back to the pardon process, which the Liberals supported prior to the Harper government, .

If you want tangible results and you want neighbourhoods revitalized, you need to allocate financial resources to the work of poverty reduction in Saint John. Through investing in neighbourhoods, engaging in meaningful ways, and building on innovative projects, programs, services, and best practice models that currently exist in Saint John, I believe this will elevate the level of our ability to implement what we know works, do pilot projects, showcase collective impact, measure outcomes, and have a social return on investment. Also, we will learn from each other, and that includes success and the ability to say that we need to make change, ultimately making a difference and improving people's lives with the hope of ending generational poverty.

This is the value of having someone with lived experience presenting here today.

My name is Penni Eisenhauer, and thank you for listening to me.

Merci.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, both of you.

We're glad to have you here as well, Penni.

Now we'll go to the YMCA of Greater Saint John, with Shilo Boucher, president and chief executive officer.

Welcome.

[Shilo Boucher, President and Chief Executive Officer, YMCA of Greater Saint John]

On behalf of the YMCA of Greater Saint John, thank you to the members of the committee for this great opportunity. I'd like to welcome you to Saint John.

I have been working at the YMCA for 10 years now and have served as president and CEO since 2011. Before that, I worked in business, and I can say that it has been an eye-opener to see the level of poverty that exists here in our city. More importantly, I think, I need to express the level of support and willingness in our community to improve the situation that exists. It's fundamental. For more than a decade, community groups and business leaders have been working to reduce poverty.

As for what the YMCA does, we support 2,400 people a year in Saint John through the YMCA's Strong Kids program, which is our annual fundraising campaign focused on raising much-needed resources to give kids the opportunity to live healthier and happier lives today and in the future. Really, the goal today is to bring your attention to the importance of early learning and child care in breaking the cycle of multigenerational poverty.

As Randy mentioned, Saint John, New Brunswick has the highest rate of child poverty in the country. In the south end, where an evidence-based early learning centre already operates, 90% of the attendees are in second- and third-generational poverty. Further, New Brunswick has some of the highest adult illiteracy rates in the country.

To address these challenges, the YMCA of Greater Saint John currently operates an early learning centre, which began as a three-year community pilot project in 2009. What is different about our model of early learning centre is that it not only provides early child education to children, but also supports the family. We are already seeing positive impacts in our community.

By taking innovative neighbourhood-based approaches and centring services for children and parents within community hubs, we can have a greater, longer term impact that breaks the cycle of poverty. When services are spread out across multiple locations and parents face additional challenges such as literacy or disabilities and lack of transportation, navigating the system can be difficult.

Consider Krystal's story. She is a mother of three, one of whom has autism. Initially, Krystal visited the early learning centre at her social worker's insistence. Impressed by the staff, she has been at our centre ever since. According to Krystal, “...the best part is we no longer have to take a bunch of buses for all of the kids' appointments”. She said:

It felt like we were always running from place to place. A lot of times I just cancelled because I was too tired to go. Now our early interventionist, speech therapist, occupational therapist, physiotherapist and social workers all come and meet us at the centre.... I don't miss [my] appointments anymore.

Also, the children are doing wonderfully.

Our model of early learning is designed to help families like Krystal's in a way that reduces barriers for parents and gives children the support they need.

Almost 90% of our children receive some type of financial assistance in the early learning centre, and over 50% of the children are below the targets for developmental levels. To address this situation, we deliver a free kindergarten readiness program for those not in licensed care. We also offer nutrition classes tailored to children and parents working together to learn about healthy food. We also provide information to parents when they need help. We connect them with community organizations such as food banks, parenting classes, and case workers. We even help fill out forms in cases where literacy is a problem.

The Saint John Early Learning Centre has had many positive results over the last eight years of operation. Our capacity has expanded, with 7,000 family visits each year. Twenty partner organizations are engaged with the centre. The better school preparedness score went from 40% to 80%. We have increased kindergarten readiness programs in two other locations, and there are more programs provided. We have enhanced program offerings based on community needs and now offer 17 different programs.

We have achieved these results while working with limited resources. To meet the needs of the community, additional funding will be required. Currently our programs operate with support from the provincial government and the YMCA's Strong Kids program. Currently, we do not receive any federal funding for this program. In addition to leading national policy development, the federal government can provide much-needed funding so that many more families can access these poverty-reducing programs.

In the coming weeks, we will be submitting a proposal for federal funding for a pilot project called “Learning Together”, which will test the feasibility of a model for integrating child care, kindergarten, family support, and the delivery of social services in a school-based community hub. Our aims include: increasing the school readiness of children; increasing reading proficiency; and, increasing early learning access for all low-income families by providing full funding to all families that fall beneath the low-income measure. The project will expand on the work of the current centre, implementing a program and research model and creating two new centres in the priority neighbourhoods.

My colleague Dr. Erin Schryer will speak to the research component she will oversee as part of the Learning Together project.

The anticipated return on investment for this program is high. According to economist Robert Fairholm, high-quality child care in Canada will return $2 for every $1 invested, and societal long-term benefits exceed costs by more than two to one.

Also, a study led by Dr. Gina Browne at McMaster University showed that lone-parent families on social assistance who received comprehensive services, including quality child care, resulted in 25% of the families exiting social assistance, compared to 10% without those services. The study showed that offering comprehensive services to single mothers and their children pays for itself within one year. This is due to reduced health and social services, and a high level of exits from social assistance.

Innovative community-based approaches that support parents and children are needed to tackle multi-generational poverty. This will require support from the federal government. Public investment in initiatives such as the Learning Together project that we have proposed can have a transformative effect, building the economy, supporting families, and helping children get off to their best start.

Thank you for this opportunity. We greatly appreciate it. We look forward to continued stakeholder engagement throughout the development and implementation of the poverty reduction strategy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

I obviously have a soft spot for the YMCA, having worked there for more than 10 years. I'm very pleased to see you here today. I know very well the fantastic work that the Y is doing across the country. Thank you.

You gave us a hint for our next speaker. From Elementary Literacy Inc., we have executive director Erin Schryer.

[Erin Schryer, Executive Director, Elementary Literacy Inc., As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very pleased to be here today and to welcome you and the entire committee to our beautiful home of Saint John, New Brunswick.

I received my doctorate in education from the University of New Brunswick in 2014. I continue an active research program there as an honorary research associate. I'm also the executive director of Elementary Literacy, or Littératie au primaire. We are a provincial non-profit organization advancing the importance of early reading success among New Brunswick children. We are currently serving over 200 elementary schools across New Brunswick, in both English and French, and over 1,200 students annually.

To begin today, I would like to start by highlighting four key principles that I would urge the committee to follow in developing this important strategy.

Number one is the use of evidence to inform your work. I have to say that I fear the term “evidence-based” has become a little sexy and has lost some of its meaning. I would urge us to remember its meaning. Take literacy as an example. Federally, funds earmarked for literacy have traditionally been earmarked toward adult literacy programs and organizations, even though I would argue that funding levels have never been as high as they need to be. The research evidence, however, clearly demonstrates that the prevention of reading difficulties is best followed by remediating difficulties early, when children are in school, such as we are doing at Elementary Literacy. Preventative early intervention approaches have been proven to be the most effective ways to increase literacy in a population. The evidence is clear, yet policy—or perhaps tradition—has not kept up.

Number two is the use of experimentation. Our experience at Elementary Literacy when we were established in 2009 was that national and international research was emerging that showed volunteer reading mentors could significantly support children's reading development, but we needed to experiment with that evidence here in New Brunswick, as every jurisdiction has unique characteristics.

In New Brunswick, we are Canada's only bilingual province, and we needed to create French and English programs. Roughly half of the population in New Brunswick lives in rural settings. We also have areas with extreme concentrations of child poverty, such as here in Saint John.

Through experimentation, local evidence is collected, refinements are made, and things are made to work.

My third point is something that we have worked really hard on here in Saint John and that Donna talked about: coordinating and leveraging existing infrastructure, resources, and knowledge.

Finally, my fourth point is around the need to be innovative. We need to use evidence in innovative ways to explore directions—in this case, for reducing poverty. Nobel laureate and economist James Heckman has concluded widely and repeatedly that early childhood development heavily influences the health, economic, and social outcomes of individuals and society at large. He has shown time and time again that there are great economic gains to be had by investing in early childhood development, particularly among low-income children and families.

This brings me to the specific project that I would like to bring here to Saint John as part of a national poverty strategy. Learning Together is an innovative, evidence-based prototype of early learning service delivery. Learning Together aims to establish three early learning demonstration sites in three priority areas of Saint John, all of which have high concentrations of child poverty. The three centres will work together as one fully integrated branch of a single strategy for programming, implementation, and research. One of these centres already exists, and I am very pleased to know that you are visiting the Saint John Early Learning Centre this afternoon. Two new centres are also being proposed.

These centres are in response to the evidence, which is very clear, that children are oriented toward success or failure at kindergarten entry. This is based on the experiences they've had in the early years before school. For children living in poverty, the odds of reaching kindergarten ready to learn and to benefit from the curriculum and their teacher are very low. In fact, the 2014 Canadian Institute for Health Information report concluded that while 26% of Canadian children demonstrated developmental problems or risk profiles at kindergarten entry, more than 40% of children living in low-income areas exhibit risk at kindergarten entry and less than 10% of children from high-income neighbourhoods exhibit any level of risk.

The link between income and school readiness in Canada is very strong, but it does not have to be. Early learning research has shown that children who attend high-quality early learning facilities exhibit greater rates of school readiness, language, and literacy success once in school, and ultimately greater rates of social mobility, enabling them to break the cycle of poverty for them and their families.

Learning Together would fill a significant gap in service for low-income children and families. Child care in Canada is still treated as a market commodity. Parents pay very dearly for child care. Families in poverty simply cannot afford to do this and thus often lack the access.

A significant piece of Learning Together is the research program that I would manage should our model be adopted, with the primary aim of integrating early learning research, practice, and policy to enhance the skills and school readiness of low-income children. Importantly, through this work, we will also address the knowledge and competencies both of educators and of parents. Parents are our children's first and most influential teachers. We cannot forget that.

I want to leave with you this. There is an opioid crisis happening in our country. It is devastating communities and families and killing Canadians. Dr. Maté, a retired palliative care doctor, recently penned an op-ed for CBC News entitled “Fixing fentanyl means treating trauma that creates addicts”. In his piece, he speaks to the influence of early childhood in shaping the brain, noting that “childhood adversity is at the core of the emotional patterns and psychological dynamics that drive addiction”. That Learning Together, through prevention, has the potential of impacting future addicts is not an exaggeration.

I thank you for your time and for considering this work. Excuse my trembling voice. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

There's no excuse necessary. I come from the non-profit background. I completely appreciate what all of you see every single day. It's a challenge across the country. You've brought up an issue that has touched all our communities. We're all feeling the same thing.

Now, from the United Way of Saint John, Kings and Charlotte, we have executive director Wendy MacDermott.

[Wendy MacDermott, Executive Director, United Way Saint John, Kings and Charlotte]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming to Saint John, and welcome.

I serve two rural communities as well as Saint John. Our United Way has undergone pretty significant change over the last four years. We've gone from being a typical funder, basically a writer of cheques. That was good, and we did that really well, but when we looked back at our 60 years of history, we saw that social conditions really hadn't improved despite the fact we invested $50 million over that time. We decided that something really needed to change and said, “Let's start with ourselves.”

We decided instead to be a catalyst. We're still writing cheques—don't worry—but we're doing it very differently. We're doing it with a new sense of responsibility. We are much more focused on outcomes than on transactions, than the number of kids sitting at a desk. We're much more interested in whether those children graduate. We're much more interested in whether a woman does not return to an abusive situation for the rest of her children's lives, rather than whether we just saved her life one night. That's important, and we can't lose those things, but we will continue on this treadmill if we continue to invest in the same way.

We saw our role change and we believe the role of all funders needs to change. We need to leverage each other. We need to create new expectations in our community. We are driven by performance, as humans, as systems, and as organizations, and if we have greater expectations of our community organizations, they'll do it. They'll perform. We've seen it happen over and over again. If as funders we drive the measurement of transactions, that is what they have the capacity to do, and that is what they will do because we've asked them to.

As funders, we need to create a greater discipline and a responsibility. Without innovation and discipline by funders and service providers, children will continue to go hungry and the fragile will continue to suffer indignities. We have to look at breaking the cycle. We have to stop driving projects that are independent of each other. We do not have the luxury to continue as though we are all on our own as funding partners. We must be interdependent if we are going to make any of these substantive changes. We have to align our efforts and our resources. We can leverage each other. We can leverage our money. We can leverage our expertise.

What you have at this table are people who are very grounded in their respective organizations and the realities that we serve.

There are deeply imbedded cycles, particularly in Saint John but also in many other communities throughout the country. We can make a big difference if we stop making decisions in isolation of each other and being preoccupied with our own territory and our own mandate.

As funders, we also—and this is not popular—drive duplication. When our provincial government, our federal government, and our local United Way make decisions in isolation, and when we fund different organizations to do similar things and don't ask each other what we're doing, we are driving this insanity. The community cannot respond in any other way than we are demanding of them.

We also must have the courage to say no to the things that can't demonstrate that they work. That's so we can say yes to the stuff that does. You've heard multiple examples of projects that work but are vastly underfunded because we are trying to spread our resources too thin. We can make an impact, but not the way we've been going.

We also have to free up the human resources of the local organizations. They are chasing their tails in trying to meet our reporting requirements. We all ask for different timetables, different fiscal years, and different budget templates. This is insanity. They are spending so much of their precious resources on accounting, measuring, and reporting—and often measuring things that actually don't matter—to keep us satisfied. That is wrong.

We could easily free up 25% of that capacity. For those of you who have some business background, imagine that. Just like that: another 25%. Imagine a world where Erin's organization has to write only one report a year that goes to all funders. These things are completely within our control.

Both Randy and Donna spoke about what makes Saint John unique. We have deep generational poverty, we have single-parent families, and we also have a tremendous history of collaboration. There are certainly federal actions that can go a long way in redistributing wealth, but in a community that has created a subculture of poverty, much more than money is needed to resolve generations of no workforce attachment, untreated mental health issues, and, frankly, hopelessness. These issues can only be resolved locally.

Our community is one that has self-organized for over 15 years to tackle this complex issue. What we need from the federal government is a flexible and willing partner. We know that standardization and systematizing things is the way of big bureaucracy, but we desperately need to innovate. We need to experiment, just as Erin said.

We are the best game in town—in the country—when it comes to innovation and experimentation. We are committed to breaking the cycle of poverty. We want to go from being the city in Canada with the highest rate of poverty to being the one that figured out how to fix it. That's something to be proud of. That's something to tell our children about.

We'll do this by measuring whether our initiatives work and by directing our funds to what works, to rewarding innovation and risk-taking, balanced with bringing in the best practices from away. Again, we need the federal government as a partner in our local strategy. As has been mentioned, MP Long and his staff have been deeply engaged in the work of our community, but there are limits to what one MP can do.

Sorry, Wayne.

We don't fit neatly into any one provincial or federal department. Issues happen here in Saint John and, frankly, our failure or our success will be determined here in Saint John. We have demonstrated as a community the courage to make tough and sometimes unpopular decisions in order to achieve greater outcomes.

As a local funder, having a strategy in place provided my organization with the support we needed to say no so that we could say yes. We need to create a local innovation fund with flexibility and pooled resources, so that federal government resources, provincial government resources, community resources, and business community resources can be deployed in strategic ways with significant accountability. Again, we can do these things.

We know that big systems struggle to innovate. We know governments cannot risk public failure. A local fund is an arm's-length means of contributing to local innovation without assuming the risk of failure. As a community, we're willing to assume the risk, the collective impact. This would be ideal for ideas that do not fall within any one government department, jurisdiction, or mandate, so we invite you to become partners with us in some crazy new ways.

I'll leave you with one last thought. Living SJ was invited to go to Australia to talk to the Australians about how to engage business in philanthropy. As often happens, the conversation revolved around money, such as, how do we get those corporations to give the community money? Sure, that's important, and there is a cheque-writing function that is very important in this work, but there is so much more that the business community can bring to the work we do: the business discipline, the entrepreneurial spirit, the drive to metrics, and the focus on performance. Those are things that drive us in this community.

I again welcome you to consider a broader role for the business community in engaging and participating. Bell's Let's Talk program is a wonderful illustration of a company going further than just writing the cheque by creating a conversation that none of us locally can do.

Merci.

Thank you for coming.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, Ms. MacDermott.

Having done this job for about a year and a half now, I completely appreciate and understand your concerns regarding the gap between the funders—or the government—and the organizations on the ground in terms of understanding the logistics and the realities of your budget or timetable. I was in that position for a long time. We used to scramble to get in those applications and were thrilled when we got the funding, and we never complained for fear of not getting it again.

We need to make sure that we're bringing this stuff back to the decision-makers so that we can get on the same page for a lot of these things. Thank you very much.

We're going to get started with questions now.

For six minutes, MP Vecchio, you're up first.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate all of you coming out this morning and discussing this with us.

One thing I've heard across the panel is the call for an early childhood education system. There are just a couple of factors I want to discuss with you. I am one of the critics for the families, children, and social development department. People are looking at a national strategy, but I think that a lot of times the national strategy is taken from one community that is very different from another one.

Erin, you talked about poverty. Should we be creating a national program that's available to everybody or should we be targeting it? Should we be making sure that our low-income families have accessible child care and early childhood education and have that differential? Some provinces already have that. Should we be looking at a national strategy where it's free for all—similar to Quebec, where there is a small fee—or should we be looking at something much more targeted?

[Erin Schryer]

I'm somewhat prepared for this question, because I do honestly battle with it in my own head. As I tweeted the other night, I spend over $10,000 a year for one child. Part of the reason why we've waited so long—not so long, but long enough—to have another child is that I could not pay for two children in day care.

I think a national child care strategy addresses many access barriers. It would allow people to access child care. My fear with a national child care strategy, or the piece I would like us to add to it, is exactly what you're saying. Our experiments are addressing unique needs. People living in poverty are going to have different child care needs than other populations do. We are going to need to respond responsibly to their needs.

I have many conversations with families who quite honestly ask me—and I've thought about it with this project I'm pitching—why they would send their child to day care. They say they're home and they can take care of their child. Part of it this is about communicating the importance not only of child care—and we can even think about that in the title, “national child care”—but of early learning. It's about family development, both pre- and post-natal.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Specifically what ages are you targeting? I'm a mom of five. My children are all doing quite well. They've all had different experiences in child care, and I am very much an advocate of “if I can pay for it, I'll pay for it”. I looked at the Quebec scenario in which there is a two-year waiting list and the quality is very questionable, yet it's being touted across the country as the best thing since sliced bread.

I'm looking at those things and thinking that I want to see this for those children who need a hand up, because I believe in that approach. I'm just wondering how we do that as well and what age group you are going to start factoring this into. Some people are concerned that it's going to start at six months. Other people see it at the age of three. What are your thoughts?

[Erin Schryer]

The research is very clear. The longer children spend in child care early learning facilities is what impacts their development. I know that in Ontario there's the four-year-old pre-K. In particular, for children living in poverty, that is not enough time for them, due to all the disadvantages they may have gone through in the early years. As I mentioned, when children arrive at kindergarten, they are already oriented toward success or failure because of what happened in their early years, so the longer we can have children in child care....

I advocate for zero to five. Given our policies in Canada, a lot of us don't have to start until about nine months or a year, but it really is the whole gamut. It's not starting at three or four years of age.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I will turn to Randy.

I am from a small community of 300 people in southwestern Ontario. A lot of times when we talk about the poverty effects, we are really focused on urban centres. Poverty in urban areas is very different from poverty in rural areas. What are some of the things that we as a national committee should be looking at specifically to make sure that when we're looking at these strategies we're encompassing both the rural and the urban areas? What are some of those differences that we should be aware of?

[Randy Hatfield]

How much time do we have?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Randy Hatfield]

That's a great question, because New Brunswick would be considered a province in which 50% of the population is rural.

There is a tension between strong national support programs and the flexibility that could be engaged and enjoyed if you were to target resources. Coming from a smaller community, maybe you can appreciate that it's a question of scale, which is often very difficult. Saint John now has 68,000 people, and we experience all the social ills of any major metropolitan area. It's a question of how we can create and develop the capacity to deal with that. We have a needle exchange, a men's shelter, and a women's shelter. These are all fragile pieces of infrastructure that we're trying to sustain.

It seems to me that a principal barrier when you're talking about rural populations is transportation. I know there are many in this group who have worked to overcome that and to deal with it. It's a huge barrier and an impediment to participation, to belonging, to getting access to services.

Per capita funding allocations don't often serve us well. New Brunswick now, according to yesterday's census data, has 2.1% of the national population and 10 federal seats. It is a question of relevance, of access, of political power, and of what per capita funding allocations do. We need to have some flexibility at the local level. I think differential funding formulas are something that this community has advanced over the years, and I think there's a compelling case for doing that. A central city elementary school trying to fundraise and to develop the range of services that you would expect in a public school is far different in downtown Saint John than it would be if it were in one of the suburban municipalities or even one of the rural areas that surround it.

It's an excellent question. I don't have an easy answer. I think there's a combination of a strong national program.... I spoke about pharmacare, and I think there are 70,000 families in New Brunswick that are uninsured. I think it's going to have to be one of those combinations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

MP Long for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses today.

It's great to be home. I just love seeing the passion and conviction of your presentations. It's wonderful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

So the cheque's in the mail....

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

It's not an election year yet, is it?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!