Human Resources Committee on Feb. 17th, 2017

[Teesha Sharma]

I think that funding is probably the biggest thing, and to also, as I said earlier, really give that opportunity to community-based people. For the most part, community-based programs don't really have access to funding for something like youth housing right now. It gets put in people's hands, which goes back to convenience, in some ways, as opposed to moving forward and creating something new that has a better potential to work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

MP Long, please.

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

Thanks, Chair.

Thanks to our presenters this afternoon.

We're here as a committee, obviously, to hear from you and to come up with ideas for recommendations that we need to make to our government, our minister, on poverty reduction.

I thought I'd start with you, Mr. Armstrong. Put yourself in our shoes. In a minute or less, tell me how you would proceed if you were us. What recommendations would you immediately make to our federal government to improve the lives of those living in poverty, short term and long term?

[Thom Armstrong]

I would do three things right away.

The first is a direction to make federal lands available for community land trusts to develop new housing.

The second would be to waive the GST or HST on new affordable housing developments so that it doesn't go straight onto the debt service of that housing.

The third would be to create an equity fund to partner with the community and with the private sector to invest in the development of affordable housing to reduce that cost between housing and income.

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

Marius, if you don't mind, why don't you give me your recommendations? What do you think we need to do, short term and long term, strategically as a federal government?

[Marius Alparaque]

In addition to what Mr. Armstrong has said, we are a country with a lot of resources. We have been selling our birthright since the beginning. When I say selling our birthright...our logs, our natural resources are sent somewhere else. They process them. They come back to us as value-added goods.

I think a cradle-to-grave approach should be taken. We know how many people we have—immigrants coming in, babies born. Why don't we invest in the basic need of housing, like the idea of pre-engineered homes, the accessibility of lands? We could provide not only housing but also employment, if we were to expand the value-added goods, products, and services we provide.

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

Thank you.

Councillor Williams, our mayor in Saint John—Rothesay is very supportive of poverty reduction and is very passionate about it, much like you are. Obviously, there's only so much a municipality can do. It has to do it in conjunction with the province and the federal government.

From your standpoint in New Westminster, what do you recommend we do? What would be one of the first things you feel we should do in a national poverty reduction strategy to help your city?

[Lorrie Williams]

Everybody talks about a national housing strategy. That's the first thing that we would want. Something that, for sure, would help us to do things like that—and yes, land. That would be wonderful, especially for New Westminster.

Encourage a living wage. You know that we're not talking about snowbirds here, who take their money and spend it down in the United States. People on a living wage stay local and spend local, stimulate the economy, keep things going.

A new look at unemployment insurance, I think, would be a big help to us, too.

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

How many people, Councillor, in your city are on a wait-list for affordable housing?

[Lorrie Williams]

I'm sorry. I do not know that.

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

Do you know how often that list turns over? Are people on it for years?

[Lorrie Williams]

I'm sorry. I don't know that answer. We have developers put in purpose-built rental and subsidized housing, and they go along with it, because in the Lower Mainland, as you know, housing is a big item. They put those in, and we have no shortage of people who snap them up.

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

Are you seeing benefits in your city of the Canada child benefit?

[Lorrie Williams]

Absolutely. I think any amount of money left in people's hands is spent on what they need, and anything we can do to increase that would be good.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Cowley and Ms. Sharma, again, your presentation and your story are very heartfelt and moving, I think, to all of us, so thank you for your story.

What can we do? We had a youth shelter in Saint John called Safe Harbour, which was closed due to some funding issues. I was new as an MP at that point, and I was very frustrated because, from a federal government perspective, there was really not a lot I could do. From a federal government perspective, Mr. Cowley and Ms. Sharma—whoever wants to answer that—what can we do to immediately help your situation?

[Teesha Sharma]

I think one of the biggest things that would be helpful would be.... We do have the MCFD, the ministry at the provincial level. There is a bit of a perception, I would say, that our kids can't fall through that because that's a safety net. I think that creating streams of funding outside of just giving.... What's happening is that those programs have so many barriers to access that their capacity.... They have a certain thing they work toward, and in a lot of cases they're very capable of doing their job, but there are youth who are experiencing barriers to those programs and they're being forgotten. To have a stream of funding that would allow community-based organizations to create something without barriers, that's what we need right now. I think that would be really helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Now we go to MP Vecchio, please.

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

Thank you very much.

I'm going to start with Marius. Just yesterday, when we were in Medicine Hat, we discussed a bit the Immigrant Access Fund. It's a fund that can be used by new immigrants coming into Canada to upgrade, a prior learning assessment tool. What is the uptake in your community of using that fund?

[Marius Alparaque]

It will be a great opportunity. If that fund is available, newcomers can immediately invest into career development and schools because they are already here.

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

Is it being used right now? It has been here since 2005. How many people would be aware that it's there and actually applying to get the funding?

[Marius Alparaque]

As I said, in the month of January alone we had about 2,000 new immigrants just from the Philippines, and that can be expanded to the other countries. About 50% of them are primary—they are older, the father and the mother. The rest are dependants.

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

Lorrie, I don't want to make this a political question by any means, but when we talk about living wage.... It comes up so many times, and it's something I have problems getting my head around because of my own philosophy. When we look at the living wage, I have a couple of questions. Right now it's $20.64. Prior to putting that in, in 2011, how many people were below that minimum amount?

[Lorrie Williams]

Actually, very few.... It's more of a social statement, as well.

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

That's what I'm asking, because we find that the municipal, federal, and provincial governments usually have it higher. A lot of times what happens is that people try to set it there as leadership, but what we find instead is that there is going to be an increase in taxes. That's my next thing. It's a small thing. How much did that increase?

That's why I said that I don't want to make this political. How much did that increase their human resource cost when you went from implementing the average cost to where you are now? It would be very little, because people were already making that living wage.

[Lorrie Williams]

We had a few people like shelvers in the library, part-time and things like that, students—