Human Resources Committee on Feb. 15th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Good morning, everybody.

I would like to welcome all of the witnesses here today. We got in fairly late last night, but we had a wonderful breakfast this morning. We have our coffee. We're ready to listen and to hear what you have to say.

Given the number of witnesses we have on this panel, we're going to suggest seven minutes for opening remarks. If you have given us notes ahead of time, that's great. I can follow along and see how much time you have versus how much script is left. If you see this mike go on, it means we're either right up against the time or you're over time. I'll usually let you go on a little bit longer if it sounds like you're wrapping up. If I do have to interrupt, please forgive me. We have a full slate today, and the committee members have a number of questions that they want to get to as well.

Welcome.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee is resuming its study of poverty reduction strategies. Today, obviously, we are here in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the home province of MP Niki Ashton. She's playing host to us today.

To start, we have, from the Central Neighbourhoods Development Corporation, Mr. Allan Wise, executive director. From the City of Edmonton, we have Kate Gunn, director of community inclusion and investment with the department of citizen services. From EndPovertyEdmonton, we have Jeff Bisanz, co-chair. From the Right to Housing Coalition, we have Tyler Pearce, chair of the federal working group in Manitoba, and Clark Brownlee, member of the federal working group in Manitoba. Representing the University of Winnipeg is vice-president of research and innovation at the institute of urban studies, Mr. Jino Distasio.

Welcome to all of you. There are a number of you, so we're going to get started right away.

We're going to start with Mr. Allan Wise, from the Central Neighbourhoods Development Corporation. The next seven minutes are yours, sir.

[Allan Wise, Executive Director, Central Neighbourhoods Development Corporation]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You have a copy of my presentation before you, so I'm going to start by reading it, and please stop me if you have any specific questions.

I would like to thank the members of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities for the opportunity given to me today to speak about the Income Tax Act in considering applications for charitable status for organizations whose purpose is poverty alleviation.

In my respectful submission, this matter is very important because many organizations like mine are faced with the challenge of applying for charitable status.

Since 2009, CNDC has twice attempted to gain charitable status to seek alternative sources of funding through a charitable foundation and to move toward organizational sustainability. Our application for a charitable status has been declined both times, and we are currently undergoing a review process by CRA.

The basic reason for declining our application, we have been told, is failing to establish how our activities in the community lead to poverty relief. The challenge is that the Income Tax Act, the legislation based on which an organization is granted charitable status, does not contain a definition of charitable nor a definition of poverty. Therefore, what's deemed charitable is left to be determined through legal interpretation of common law conventions and practices derived from the 1601 Statute of Charitable Uses, or commonly referred to as Statute of Elizabeth.

While the preamble to the statute considers acts like helping humankind, maintenance of schools, houses, food banks, and highways, looking after the poor and the elderly, and many other publicly beneficial acts as having charitable purpose, it does not lend itself to the more contemporary progressive agenda of the charitable sector that has become a significant economic actor in Canada.

For example, minimizing the societal ills of low graduation rates in inner-city schools through ancillary programs offered to underserved schools, or promotion of commerce by allocating microloans to small local businesses to flourish in areas experiencing business lags are not seen as charitable activities, because empowering marginalized communities does not fit the traditional definition of charitable acts.

A positive step toward a comprehensive strategy for poverty reduction in Canada would be legislative inclusion of services offered through organizations like the NRCs, neighbourhood renewal corporations, aimed at empowering the disadvantaged population and entrenching a progressive definition of charitable and poverty relief that would include those of no means as well as those with moderate needs who certainly are at the same risk of experiencing poverty.

A constructive measure toward developing an inclusive and proactive strategy for poverty reduction could be initiated by amending the Income Tax Act or through enabling legislation.

The relief of human suffering from disaster and destitution in times of crisis is a purpose beneficial to the community and is considered charitable, so then should be the provision of proactive and preventive services to disadvantaged groups by means of examining the scope and outcome of those activities. Thus far, the act has been interpreted by CRA with an emphasis on charitable activities rather than charitable purposes that would benefit the community over the long term.

Allow me to further elaborate my point by using activities of my agency as an example.

We are a neighbourhood renewal corporation charged with delivering community economic development in three economically stressed areas here in core Winnipeg: Central Park, Centennial, and West Alexander. These areas are designated major improvement areas by the city and are selected as a designated community by the Manitoba Community Renewal Act.

We have found in the past that serving the complex needs of unique communities like these, characterized by higher than average unemployment, higher than average populations with core housing needs, higher than average instances of living below the poverty line, higher than average cases of high school dropout, and higher than average rates of incarceration, requires a more progressive approach by the act in defining poverty and charitable acts.

That is why I'd like to submit to the committee that an entrenched, progressive, expanded, and inclusive definition of “charitable” and “poverty relief” in the Income Tax Act would be beneficial to the community and would constitute a small but effective step towards a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy for Canada. As the French novelist Victor Hugo once said, nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, Mr. Wise.

We are going to move on to Kate Gunn from the City of Edmonton and Jeffrey Bisanz from EndPovertyEdmonton.

I understand that you did rock paper scissors and Mr. Bisanz will begin. Are you sharing your seven minutes?

[Dr. Jeffrey Bisanz, Co-Chair, EndPovertyEdmonton]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Okay. Do you want me to let you know when we're at the halfway point?

[Dr. Jeffrey Bisanz]

No, that will be fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Excellent.

[Dr. Jeffrey Bisanz]

We have some slides that were handed out, in both English and French, so if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Jeff Bisanz, and I am a community co-chair of EndPovertyEdmonton. I am here today with Kate Gunn of the City of Edmonton.

As a new community-driven collective for change in Edmonton, we welcome your work toward developing a national poverty reduction strategy. We know that ending poverty is a generational effort that demands investment from all orders of government and the enthusiastic commitment of citizens. We appreciate the participation in EndPovertyEdmonton by member of Parliament Randy Boissonnault and representatives of our provincial government.

In 2014, our mayor, Don Iveson, convened a task force that has sparked a community movement to end the poverty in our city within a generation. Following two years of research, consultation, and community planning, EndPovertyEdmonton was launched to steward this work.

Edmonton has a strategy to end, not merely manage, poverty. It also has a five-year road map containing 35 starting-point actions. In December 2016, the Edmonton city council unanimously approved a significant multi-year investment to kick-start implementation of our plan, one we believe is progressive, inclusive, and maybe even visionary.

I'll mention four key features. First, we believe that how we define poverty shapes our solutions. Our indigenous round table helped us see that poverty requires a holistic approach. We define poverty not just as a lack of financial resources, but also as a lack of social and cultural resources that enable connection to community. Second, we believe that we are all treaty people, and that ending poverty is a very profound act of reconciliation. Third, we believe that ending poverty is an issue of human rights and equality. While charity is good, justice is better. We are eager to lead a human rights approach to ending poverty. Finally, we believe that we need to reframe how we see, talk about, and respond to poverty. Edmonton is therefore focused on growing a grassroots movement for change.

Our written submission includes a cornerstone recommendation, six specific areas for action, and a final capacity-building recommendation. Today, we highlight the key cornerstone recommendation and three of the six areas of recommendations.

Our cornerstone recommendation is that Edmonton be considered as a viable, ready-to-go pilot community in the tackling poverty together project. Our anti-poverty landscape is deep and engaged. We have high-level political commitment from the city and the province, robust community infrastructure in EndPovertyEdmonton, and committed investments. Our road map for action is already funded and under way. Alberta's capital city is ready and keen to be a strong case study site that illustrates a reconciliation and rights-based approach to ending poverty.

We encourage you to invest in the next generation. We know that children who grow up in poverty are often exposed to experiences and environments that disrupt healthy development and contribute to negative outcomes, such as mental and physical illness, continued poverty, criminality, and addictions. After-the-fact remediation is expensive and often not as effective as intervening earlier. Providing a supportive environment to young children and their families is not just a smart move economically; it is essential to our commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In Edmonton, we are working to develop a practical plan for an integrated system of early learning and care. We are also working with municipal, provincial, and other partners to develop policies and practices that support such a system.

At the federal level, the new Canada benefit will have a significant and positive impact on low-income families with children. We welcome further engagement by the federal government in three areas: first, improving the quality and affordability of early learning and care, as well as the number of spaces; second, developing, with the provinces, a strategy to build the well-educated workforce needed for high-quality care; and third, ensuring that research is conducted nationally to support continued improvements in learning and care.

Kate, go ahead.

[Kate Gunn, Director, Community Inclusion and Investment, Citizen Services, City of Edmonton]

Thank you.

We urge the government to support cities to build stronger, more prosperous neighbourhoods. That's because we see that cities are drivers of change in this country and that neighbourhoods are the arenas where this change becomes tangible. Neighbourhoods really play a critical, transformative role in tackling poverty as labs where resources and creativity can come together and where ideas can move to action. Cities don't do it alone, however, and innovative partnerships with other orders of government will really spark change.

As part of our road map for change for the next five years, one of our first actions in Edmonton is the creation of a new community development corporation. It was just launched in January in Edmonton, and it integrates housing, community economic development, job training, and local business revitalization. We're pleased to say that the leadership for this comes from the Edmonton Community Foundation, which is going to incubate and lead this new organization in our community. In December, it received five years of operational funding from the City of Edmonton to kick-start its work, and a $10-million commitment to parcels of land for development from the city. We anticipate that in the next five years the new CDC will be be able to leverage diverse community investment to really stimulate economic growth in some of our poorer neighbourhoods.

On anti-racism and reconciliation, it's very clear that there's an inextricable link between racism and poverty. Although anti-racism didn't appear in your discussion paper as a key area of action, we do believe at EndPovertyEdmonton that it is fundamental to addressing poverty. In fact, we heard from thousands of Edmontonians who we engaged in our process that, if we do all the work to eliminate or end poverty that we have in our road map and we don't address changing attitudes, shifting values, and the culture in the way we talk about poverty and racism, we will not end poverty.

It's time for innovative solutions, and a couple that we have—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Excuse me. What is that?

Go ahead. Sorry for the interruption.

[Kate Gunn]

No, that's good.

In Edmonton, a very exciting project that is part of our road map is something called the Edmonton Shift Lab. It's a human-centred and -designed social innovation lab led by our skills society and the community foundation to explore this intersection of racism, poverty, and housing. It is launching this spring a new tool as a prototype to support rental companies and landlords to assess their practices in terms of bias and discrimination and to help renters understand their rights as well.

A second example in our road map is the creation of a new indigenous community culture and wellness centre. We're located in Edmonton on Treaty 6 territory and, as Jeff has explained, reconciliation lies at the heart of our EndPovertyEdmonton plan for action. We heard that it was long overdue, a new culture and wellness centre in our city, so we would encourage the federal government to continue to advance on the actions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and to support innovative community-based approaches into addressing racism as part of a national, rights-driven anti-poverty strategy.

Finally, building capacity—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

We have to evacuate. We're going to suspend then until we figure out what's going on here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

It was a false alarm. We're going to recommence.

I'll give you about 30 seconds, if that's okay.

[Kate Gunn]

Thank you.

We urge you to continue your investment in community-based anti-racism and anti-poverty initiatives, and we'd like to close today with the words of Nelson Mandela, “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Moving on, from the Right to Housing Coalition, we have Tyler Pearce and Clark Brownlee joining us.

Tyler, please, the next seven minutes are yours.

[Tyler Pearce, Chair, Federal Working Group, Manitoba, Right to Housing Coalition]

Thank you.

My name is Tyler Pearce. I'm the chair of the federal working group for the Right to Housing. With me is Clark Brownlee, a member of the working group and formerly the volunteer coordinator of Right to Housing.

[Clark Brownlee, Member, Federal Working Group, Manitoba, Right to Housing Coalition]

Right to Housing Manitoba is a volunteer-run advocacy group. Our members include policy analysts, housing providers, and service providers. We have well over 50 organizational supporters in the community and in the province.

We'd be happy to share with you our written submission at a later time on how the federal government could re-engage in social housing as well as in enhanced private-sector capacity to build affordable rental housing. We cannot imagine a poverty reduction strategy that does not include a strong housing component.

[Tyler Pearce]

We will make note of income before focusing directly on housing.

In Winnipeg a household would need to make $43,000 to afford a two-bedroom apartment, and nearly $50,000 to afford a three-bedroom. A household made up of minimum-wage earners would need 2.2 to 2.5 full-time, minimum-wage jobs to afford either of those apartments.

The rising costs of shelter have far outstripped any increases in income, including minimum wage levels, but also including rates for social assistance. In that way, housing affordability cannot be separated from income. Any poverty reduction strategy should consider how the federal government, through its social welfare policies or its training and employment programs, can encourage increases to wage levels in partnerships with its provincial counterparts or private companies.

Other worthy measures introduced at the provincial level in Manitoba include rent assist and introducing basic income. It should be noted that renters face the highest affordability burden, particularly single parents, and overwhelmingly indigenous people, on and off reserve, are over-represented in core housing need.

[Clark Brownlee]

In total,100,000 fewer Canadians are now living in social housing than in 1999, and that's not because there isn't a need. It's substantiated by the fact that 1.5 million Canadians are at risk of homelessness.

Between 1999 and 2014 Manitoba lost 5,000 units of rent-geared-to-income or social housing as their operating grants expired. Another 35,000 units are at risk, with the loss of these units expected to accelerate starting in 2022.

As people are pushed out of RGI housing they pay more of their income on shelter costs. This in turn pushes up rent, as more and more people vie for so-called affordable housing. In that way, the bottoming out of RGI units does have a serious consequence for the entire housing market. Keep in mind too that the rental universe is shrinking. New construction of rental housing has been very slow, and construction costs are rising.

Our 2015 brief outlines a list of measures that could be used to encourage new construction of rental units. This remains important for poverty reduction because there is currently a bias against new rental construction, which also plays a role in driving up costs.

Rent-geared-to-income units are going to require an ongoing commitment. Very low-income Canadians will continue to use it. The market is not going to solve all the problems in housing, especially for people on low and moderate incomes.

Our analysis of government funding for social housing compared with the tax revenue generated by CMHC's lucrative business in mortgage backing found that while the government provided social housing funding to CMHC of about $18 billion in the last decade, CMHC made over $20 billion. This means that for the past decade, Canada's social housing program has been funded entirely by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's profits, with the federal government netting about $1.3 billion in the process.

We advocate strongly that CMHC profits should be used to fund social housing.

[Tyler Pearce]

To close, we want to emphasize the short-term and long-term benefits of social housing by sharing with you the words of a manager of a deep-subsidy social housing provider in Winnipeg who serves indigenous families. He says:

We have some deep subsidies, we depend on those deep subsidies. Our tenants depend on those subsidies. When operating agreements end, the only way to exist is to raise rents. To raise rents, we become landlords, not social housing providers.

For this housing provider, the difference between being a landlord and a housing provider is a bit of understanding. He has a mandate to work with tenants to make rental payments. In the most extreme cases, some families take all month to cover their rent.

This understanding is key. He says:

Social housing providers make room to maneuver. I think families need that. And they need help here in the city because not everyone will give them that chance.... I see so many families come and go and grow. People come in as single young mothers who go to school, get a job, they work.

Successful tenants move out, he says, when their RGI rents get too high, but not everyone is that successful. He says:

We see families that do not experience that kind of growth, but they become part of the community. They are still on assistance, but their children have a different view. Their children are established in a house. They are not changing schools every six months.

We want to leave you with that as you develop a poverty reduction strategy, because we'd like the committee to remember that there are both tangible and intangible benefits to safe and stable housing. Poverty is often intergenerational. Access to good, stable, and affordable social housing is the best way to tackle intergenerational poverty.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Now we will hear from the University of Winnipeg.

Jino Distasio, the next seven minutes are yours, sir.

[Dr. Jino Distasio, Vice-President, Research and Innovation, Institute of Urban Studies, University of Winnipeg]

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I'd like to acknowledge that my presentation takes place in Winnipeg on Treaty 1 land and the homeland of the Métis nation.

My name is Jino Distasio. I'm the director of the institute of urban studies. I've been with the university since 1999. By way of background, the institute was founded by Lloyd Axworthy in 1969. I always tell him I was one year old at the time. He doesn't like that. Since that time, we have produced well over 500 reports, publications, and pieces of critical information about housing, poverty, homelessness, mental health, and the health of communities. I think we've added to the discourse.

At the institute, we are working in an applied nature to help understand some of the complexities facing our community and to dig deeper into community-based solutions. I think that the way to do that is to begin to understand how policy plays an important role in what we're trying to do, which is to shape policy and ensure that fewer Canadians struggle with poverty, mental illness, disabilities, and other challenges.

I think it's important to note that, as an academic, I've also had an opportunity to serve on a number of boards, including Habitat for Humanity, Westminster Housing Society, and our own board. As an academic, I like to tell people that I've actually built affordable housing for Winnipeggers and others across this country in a role that I'll talk about shortly. I've also had the opportunity to pen the community plan, the HPS plan for Winnipeg, and I was on the plan to end homelessness in Winnipeg. I'm trying to bring a whole bunch of different perspectives together here.

Let me start by saying one thing I noticed in some of the different points. We talk about the government's role, and I really think that education is such a key driver. There was a question related to how we support education through things like the Canada learning bond, and all these different things. Interestingly, we were given $750,000 and a three-year mandate by the feds to examine why there was low uptake among new Canadians and indigenous populations on the Canada savings bonds and all of these various programs.

At the end, we said simply that there are just too many barriers. How do we have a program that has so many families jumping through so many hoops? How can we not just make it automatic? How can we not just empower families through income tax or some other means, rather than making them take weeks and weeks to open a free account? This is painfully difficult and painfully problematic. It's such a simple solution. It just pains me that we had to spend three years telling people how to do it simply.

As I knew he would, Clark took some of my thunder. I have some statistics we all share on the number of Canadians struggling with homelessness—30,000 Canadians on any given night are estimated to be struggling. We know that last night, just outside our doors, many Winnipeggers, maybe upwards of 1,500, struggled. Many have lost hope. Many have fallen through the cracks.

We also know that on any given day there are probably—and I use this number all the time—upwards of 10,000 Winnipeggers that I call part of the hidden homeless population living in ramshackle rooming houses, in SRO hotels, in unfortunate circumstances beyond their control.

We know that the core-need model puts a spotlight on Winnipeg's challenges—single families, indigenous persons, new Canadians, not only struggling with affordability but also living in apartments three to five storeys high that have no elevators. On a day when it's 30 below, it is difficult for somebody to get into and out of their apartments. We know that accessibility remains a critical challenge in a city like Winnipeg, where almost 40% of our housing stock was built before 1960. Fundamentally, we need to find ways to improve what we have, not only to expand. We have a massive amount of old housing stock.

We know that the homeless population is overrepresented by indigenous community members, perhaps 70% or higher, so we know we need unique programs and supports to deal with that. I think you quoted Lawrence Poirier from Kinew Housing. Kinew Housing remains a showcase for Canada. It is the oldest owned, operated, and managed aboriginal-based housing organization in this country. From 1970 to now, it has transformed families. It is a model.

End-of-operating agreements, however, remain a fundamental challenge in Canada.

To me, a simple solution would be to replace that program with a subsidy, provide a gap of a couple of hundred dollars per unit per family to support the maintenance of some of this housing. A good chunk of what has been funded by that program, at least in Winnipeg, is a hundred years old. It needs help. It doesn't need just a walk-away mortgage. It needs help.

Very quickly, let me switch gears to say that over the last eight years, I have served as the principal investigator in the the At Home/Chez Soi project. The federal government provided academics and researchers with $150 million to establish the Mental Health Commission of Canada. As you know, we went from five cities in this country using the housing first approach, to now perhaps 70. Housing first and the commitment of government to fund an innovative approach was transformative.

I struggle in saying how amazing it was to see a thousand people sheltered. I think in Winnipeg the success was in localizing it, giving the indigenous community members an opportunity to grow a largely American model by understanding that the local community had the answers. Ottawa didn't, the federal government didn't, but in partnership, a whole bunch of us in this city tried for six years to do something different, and we did. I think there are a lot of things that we can gain from that.

We know too that while the housing first approach is critical, housing first and putting somebody in housing doesn't end poverty. One outcome that I always share with the folks around that table is, yes, we got somebody off the streets and into housing, but we didn't end poverty. To really be transformative, we needed to add that extra dimension.

My final comments, because I know you're going to hit the button, are on the HPS model. When I mentioned that I have had the opportunity to work on Winnipeg's community plans, I've done so for a very long time. I know the original SCPI program. I know that the $750 million helped to build shelters. But increasingly, HPS has been strangling community-based organizations with red tape, metrics, reporting, and paperwork that are killing the essence of what it used to be: a community plan. There is no community left in those plans. But let me say that HPS is critical.

I'll acknowledge too that I did work at CMHC, and they're at my heart. I think that between CMHC and HPS, CMHC brings the housing building experience. They should be building housing and HPS should be funding communities to come up with their own community-led solutions.

When we begin to think about those solutions, communities can begin to address their own needs. Whether it's mental illness and disability, and all the different challenges, what we've demonstrated in Winnipeg.... The other piece that I'm almost ashamed to say is that, for 40 years, Winnipeg has been a laboratory for every imaginable federal, provincial, and municipal intervention into poverty, urban renewal, neighbourhood change. We have spent billions of dollars experimenting, testing, and learning.

Community-based organizations that are run by the folks around this table have the answers. We just need to find a means by which to give them support funds and the ability to do the great work that they're doing, because it is being done and we've demonstrated that time and time again.

I think I'll end there. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, and well said.

We're going to get started right away with questions.

To begin today, we'll have Karen Vecchio for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

I'm going to start with you, Jino. I really appreciated everybody's presentations today, but specifically yours, because you seem to have done a great amount of studying on this.

Are there any approaches that we could do to streamline what the federal and provincial governments are doing to help reduce poverty in this community or across Canada? Is there anything that you would say we need to attack?

[Dr. Jino Distasio]

Again, I would suggest that over the last 30-plus years, going back to either neighbourhood improvement programs, NIP and RRAP, and all these kinds of initiatives, I still think that the HPS framework provides a mechanism that has enabled local communities to create entities to receive federal money. I think the mandate needs to be shifted just a little to give more empowerment to communities.

We have a tremendous wealth of expertise. We export housing technologies and information through CMHC. Get them supporting organizations that are building housing, because what I see in my roles at both Habitat for Humanity and Westminster, and the work we've been doing elsewhere, is that we're not skilled.

We have a tremendous number of community-based organizations in rural parts of Manitoba that are taking on massive capital projects without the expertise. They just have the tremendous willpower. If CMHC were empowered to provide hands-on support on the build and HPS was the organization through which to diffuse cash to communities, you could do tremendous change with very little.