Human Resources Committee on March 10th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Now we go to MP Sansoucy.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all the witnesses for contributing to our study.

More specifically, I want to thank Mr. Bach for insisting that we must first establish a clear definition of poverty. Surprisingly, the federal government and all its departments haven't reached an agreement on a definition of poverty in Canada. In our committee's report, this type of definition must be the basis of any strategy and objective concerning poverty.

My first questions are for the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario representative. You think the housing first program is “the” solution. We know that it helps very vulnerable people who already live in the street. However, local organizations that currently work on prevention were hit with budget cuts when it was decided that, in the major cities, 60% of the homelessness partnering strategy budget would be invested in the housing first approach.

You may know that, in Quebec, there has been a call for a long time to let the people who work in the field and who know the conditions and possible solutions choose the approach to use. The CMHC is looking at the possibility of letting the people involved choose either a broader approach or the housing first approach, according to needs in the field.

I want to know your opinion. Should we let the organizations or communities choose either a housing first approach or a broader approach?

[Mary Todorow]

I would say that here in Ontario, our 47 municipal service managers have put together 10-year housing and homelessness plans. They've done extensive studies, research, and community consultations in terms of what the needs are in our community and how we need to address them over 10 years.

Yes, I think that the local communities are best placed at this time. We're really looking forward to the results of these plans, which are being monitored by the Ministry of Housing. They look at what the needs are in the community, and they set goals and targets. They've done a lot of groundwork. I would say, yes, it's happening at the local level, but it can't happen at the local level—as Pam McConnell, Councillor of the City of Toronto said—without co-operation and funding from the other levels of government, both here in Ontario with the provincial government, and with the federal government.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you.

I'll move on to another subject.

We're currently talking about social housing because agreements are ending and the housing affected by these agreements will be rented to people who can afford to not rely on Quebec's rent supplement.

You pointed out that the waiting lists are long and that, as a result, it's important to build social housing. How should the federal government respond in relation to these agreements that are ending?

[Mary Todorow]

We consider that a huge homelessness prevention initiative, because what we could potentially have is hundreds of thousands of households not being able to afford their rent. I know that the federal government has done an interim funding arrangement. They intend to find a long-term solution to this, which we think is absolutely crucial. I actually used to live in a federally funded housing co-op under a federal program. A quarter of our units were subsidized. A lot of those people got their lives together, went on, and didn't need to live in a subsidized unit, and somebody else who did came in.

When I think that today the co-op wouldn't be able to provide a housing charge to those folks so that they could have money for all the other basic necessities in life and get on with getting out of poverty, I find that astounding. There has to be a fix, and it has to involve money.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you.

My next question is for Ms. McConnell.

You rightly pointed out that the different levels of government must work together. My colleague, Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, the member for Hochelaga, is our housing critic. She proposed that municipalities should be allowed to expand their taxation power by implementing a tax on construction materials or a tax of this nature. This would help reduce construction costs and building maintenance costs.

Ms. Boutin-Sweet proposed that a national housing strategy should have three criteria. First, it should be flexible, so that the communities can establish themselves the frameworks they want to put forward. Then, the communities should be given the financial means to do so. Lastly, the strategy must be based on a partnership between the groups in the field and the different levels of government.

Are these three criteria essential? I'm asking you this question because I find it relates to different parts of your presentation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I'm afraid we're past the time, but I'm going to give you about 30 seconds to answer that.

[Pamela McConnell]

Yes, that is essential. In addition to the taxation that would come to us, there is taxation that the federal government could do—most importantly, remortgaging to get the mortgage prices down.

I think that working with the community, particularly the non-profit and co-op sectors, has been hugely important here. When I was president of that organization, we were opening one co-op a month, and I don't think we've opened one in 10 years.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

MP Sangha, please.

[Ramesh Sangha, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much to all our witnesses for coming here and providing very valuable input.

My question is for you, Mr. Barata. You talked about five types of steps that you suggest the committee take. I'm not very clear regarding the steps. Could you please explain to the committee what you mean by “community infrastructure”?

[Pedro Barata]

Right now when we think about the government's investments in infrastructure, we tend to think about the deficits we have around bridges, sewers, and other kinds of hard infrastructure. What we're suggesting is that we also think about that infrastructure from a social point of view.

Community hubs are essentially community centres where agencies and various programs can come together and, in a one-stop shop format, provide opportunities for people to come in and get help with child care, employment services, and primary health care, with all of those under one roof. Building these requires an investment. We believe that investment is just as important as an investment in bridges, sewers, and other hard infrastructure, because what you're doing is essentially building a way to provide people with direct services and opportunities.

The other one is around community benefits. If the federal government is going to invest a dollar in terms of building these very same things, it could also think about how we can get this dollar to be spun to provide opportunities for those who are furthest from the labour market. We know that in the trades and in construction there is going to be a high demand—and a growing high demand—for building all the things that we need to build. There are really two approaches to this. We can continue to import foreign-trained professionals and to do temporary foreign worker programs to fill labour force needs, or we can look at the population that's sitting right in our back yard and is not being maximized, and at how it is that we engage in partnerships to give those people opportunities.

[Ramesh Sangha, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

In your school of thought, as you are telling us about here, is there a possibility that you can amalgamate this with Mr. Bach's ideas?

[Pedro Barata]

Absolutely, yes. In fact, one of the projects we're engaged in right now is the building of the Eglinton Crosstown in partnership with Metrolinx, the Government of Ontario, and the City of Toronto, not only to do construction trades, but to do professional administrative and technical jobs, as well as leverage social procurement. Metrolinx and its partners are going to be spending a lot of money on photocopying, couriers, and all kinds of different business needs, and we have a target of making sure that social enterprises, many of which employ people with intellectual disabilities, will have an opportunity to have them perform some of those jobs, get a foothold in the labour market, and belong to their community.

[Ramesh Sangha, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Mr. Bach, could what Mr. Barata was talking about in terms of social and family connection be amalgamated into this system?

[Michael Bach]

Absolutely. I mean, families need a place to go in their communities for resources, backup support, and assistance to help them navigate their communities. They're working across health, social services, and various benefit programs. They're falling through the cracks, and because they're falling through the cracks their kids are ending up in child welfare or in long-term care. The idea of community hubs as places that provide support for social enterprise and places for families to gather and to develop initiatives to provide them social support is the piece that's missing. It's not about delivering services directly but about giving a place in the community where people can gather to come up with creative solutions in their local communities.

We need locally responsive strategies, and we need the federal government to have a relationship with local communities. While transfers to provinces, whether for housing or health care or home care, are all important, we need a direct relationship between the federal government and local communities to help them come up with locally based, community-based solutions.

[Ramesh Sangha, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

To Ms. Barrera or Ms. Todorow, you talked about housing first and you talked about tenants with regard to rent-geared-to-income and affordable housing. Do you believe this has directly affected the housing situation, and what valuable ideas would your organization suggest to the committee regarding affordable housing? I know you talked about housing first. What would you suggest there?

[Mary Todorow]

We're not opposed to housing first. We're saying that it is serving just a portion of the need out there. A lot of people who are not on the street or not in shelters also need housing. There are people who are paying far too much of their income on their rent. There's a gap there between what they pay and what they can afford to pay. CMHC says it should not be more than 30% of our total household income. If we get up to 50%, we're at dire risk of losing our housing. For sure housing first is part of the tool box of addressing our housing affordability and homelessness crisis in Canada, but it's not the only one.

In terms of what we particularly focus on with regard to homelessness prevention, for example, our clinic runs a tenant duty counsel program in Ontario. We provide summary advice and sometimes representation to tenants who are mostly at the landlord and tenant board because they're facing eviction for arrears. In many cases, the only thing we can do is maybe negotiate for a repayment plan if the housing may be sustainable. Maybe there's a short-term financial gap, etc. In most cases, it's just not going to work. There's just not enough money to be able to pay for all their basic needs. This is why a housing benefit might be an appropriate approach, but we don't think that alone is the solution. We'd rather have that housing benefit tied to new construction of rental housing so that people can actually afford to go into the homes.

The affordable housing that's being built under the investment in affordable housing program is not affordable to the people on the waiting list who are homeless unless an additional rental subsidy is available. We're talking about the most vulnerable people in our communities here. People who are eligible for those investment in affordable housing rents have to make about $40,00 a year. As an example, half of the tenants in TCHC have incomes of less than $15,000 a year. The majority of the tenants in TCHC are recipients of social assistance.

Do you know what's really scary? The majority of people who are on Ontario Works are living in the private rental sector. Their shelter allowance component of social assistance is not enough to pay for average rents in virtually every community across Ontario.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Mr. Long, go ahead, please.

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

Mr. Bach, in Saint John we're proposing a social enterprise pilot whereby we work with the food banks, and the food banks bring in people with disabilities, who take training and warehouse training and learn inventory control. It's win-win, because obviously, the food banks can get some support, and we're helping those people. In the past, we've interviewed witnesses like Mark Wafer from Tim Hortons and Randy Lewis from Walgreens, who are wonderful examples of people who have broken down those barriers.

Again, we're here to come up with federal initiatives whereby we can help with a national poverty reduction strategy. I go back to you: from a federal government perspective, how can we help break down those barriers? How can we help employers? Mark Wafer and Randy Lewis both have children with disabilities, and I think Mark himself is hearing impaired. I'm looking for your ideas as to what programs, what things we can do to really help those people.

[Michael Bach]

One very successful example in the employment area, which relates to social infrastructure, is an initiative we're undertaking, with federal government support, in partnership with the Canadian Autism Spectrum Disorders Association, so for people with autism. We identified 20 communities across the country where the piece of infrastructure that's missing is the bridge between employers—the demand side—and the supply of labour. So much of the federal role, when it comes to employment, has focused on the supply side—another training program, a provincial government fund, employment support programs, all of which are fine. The problem is there's a mismatch between the employers, who are looking for people, and the diversity strategies to hire people with disabilities and people in the community where they are. This initiative, called Ready, Willing and Able, built the bridge. It's the social infrastructure between employers and employment support agencies. This initiative gets people with disabilities hired. We go to employers to generate, work on, and help them execute their demand, and then we link up supply in the community. In less than three years, we've had 2,000 hires. The cost per job for the federal government is half of any other federal disability employment program.

This is what I mean by “missing pieces”. We need the federal government to finance that infrastructure, because, as we get employers in local communities that are interested in hiring people because of this demand-side strategy, they say, “Well, you know, we have our national employer.” We now have almost 10 national employers. Costco is part of this, and because we're able to work on the employer's side, they're hiring in communities across the country. If that had been divided up among 13 provincial-territorial strategies, it wouldn't have worked. You need the link between local communities that feed into national infrastructure so you share lessons and you share information laterally. You'd need a massive federal and interprovincial conference to try to design this. Rely on communities to link up, share best practices, and build the infrastructure they need across the country. The example of local community hubs is ideal.

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

Yes, we have one in Saint John.

[Michael Bach]

How are we going to link up local community hubs across the country to share a best practices model?

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

I want to stay with you, if you don't mind. When Mr. Sangha was interviewing you, you said the federal government needs closer direct relationships with local communities. I think that's something that's a prevailing theme through our whole study. For me in Saint John, when I was a rookie MP I had all these great ideas, and then I found out that a lot of that federal money would go to the province, and from the province I didn't have a lot of control over where it went. How do you see that working? How do you see the federal government directly syncing and linking with local communities, municipalities, and towns?

[Michael Bach]

You'd have to redefine your relationship with the national non-profit sector, which has been underfunded and is facing incredibly difficult challenges. There is infrastructure that makes that work. We have an initiative, for instance, that touches down in Saint John, among immigrant refugee families, people with intellectual disabilities, and women with mental health issues, to address violence prevention. It's a huge issue. We've been able, through our linkages with other national non-profits supported through Status of Women Canada, to create these spaces where we have first nations and aboriginal women, immigrant and refugee women, and women with intellectual and mental health issues to come up with innovative strategies to address violence prevention in Saint John linked with other communities across the country.

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

Ms. McConnell, you talked about priorities and the focus being housing, transit, and child care. It's important that we get upstream of poverty. Can you briefly touch on how important a national early learning program would be to get upstream? As governments, at times we give bandaids. We don't get upstream. Can you quickly comment on early learning?