Human Resources Committee on March 10th, 2017

[Deirdre Pike]

I think the option is always a good one, and I think communities do need to have responses tailored particularly to their own experiences, yet we are seeing, particularly when you apply a gender lens to this issue.... In Hamilton, the work we've done with this exceptional innovative funding through HPS around having a coordinator to look at the system, we've been sharing with our partners in London, because they are finding the same problem there. In Waterloo and Niagara—these are all Ontario cities that are kind of close by.... We've approached Deb Matthews, who is one of our elected officials provincially, and asked if we could roll this out as a region. We've agreed there are some very significant ways and supports that women need, and we agree on those.

I don't think, in that sense, it needs to be community to community, but I do think we should ensure that each community has the opportunity to really home in on the particularities around the needs of women when it comes to homelessness. I think we can ramp that up. These pilots, like the one for the basic income, are not as useful if they aren't able to be scaled up in a way. I think this regional approach is a thing that will really move things forward and transform that. I hope that helps you understand that. It does matter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you so much.

We now go over to MP Long for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses.

I come from Saint John–Rothesay in southern New Brunswick. Unfortunately, we're a city of two stories of great success, but we do lead the country in child poverty, babies born addicted, violence towards females under 12, low-income single females, literacy, and obesity. We have our challenges. We're travelling the country, obviously, to come up with a national strategy to alleviate a lot of that.

Mr. Whittle, I listened with great interest to many of the things you talked about. Let's start with shelters. Our office does a breakfast program with Outflow in Saint John in which we serve breakfast to the men. I have great affinity with the shelter and the men there. From a federal government perspective, what frustrates me is that we can't get a lot of direct money to help those shelters, those people who have fallen right through the net. I'm looking for a recommendation from you as to what we can do better federally to make sure that those most vulnerable are looked after in our shelters.

[Alan Whittle]

Thank you for the question. I think it's a critical one, and it's obviously fraught with multi-level issues.

Ultimately, the federal government has the ability to say this is how we want to spend the money.

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

How do you see that looking? How do you see that rolling out?

[Alan Whittle]

As an example, through the current HPS program, just as you did with housing first, you could simply say that this amount of it needs to go to maintain some kind of shelter system. In my mind, that would be the simplest. You could also go the direct route, and I know other people have spoken of this in the past, and go directly to the organizations by doing a proposal call in some fashion.

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

One thing you mentioned hit home. You said that one size doesn't fit all. I think there are opportunities to work with individual communities directly, because communities know what they need and every community is different.

Another thing you talked about was a non-profit housing strategy. Can you elaborate on how you would see something like that working and being funded?

[Alan Whittle]

I'm not going to say I have the answer, but I know that elsewhere the advanced economy countries have come up with solutions. Unfortunately, what we have done in Canada so often is to try to address the problem with programs like limited dividend partnerships and the section 56.1 and section 95 programs. These were all great programs in their day, but now so much of that housing has just become part of the larger housing stock. It is not necessarily part of an ongoing strategy to deal with the needs of those most vulnerable in our communities. Do we take a look at that?

So many of those, especially the non-profits, have equity in their projects. Perhaps we could find a way to unleash that. Those of us who are creative would be happy to take that challenge and find a way to build more housing without asking upper levels of government for more money.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Datars Bere, you listed eight pillars in your poverty reduction plan, and the last one you talked about was system change. Can you elaborate on what you mean by system change?

[Sandra Datars Bere]

For us in the city of London, although there are other municipalities looking at changing this, if you're in need of assistance for housing, social assistance, perhaps child care support, and food security programs, you probably have to open seven doors. I only listed three things, but you probably have to open seven doors. The reality is that as communities, we need to start looking at how we integrate that, how we put the client first, the individual first, the family first, and talk about what that means for that individual and the process that person goes through.

We talk about systems integration, putting our housing with our social assistance. Housing first is a premise we think about, so if we deal with housing first, then we can deal with the social and other child care pieces after the fact. We have many community stakeholders that are involved in supporting people outside the system, whether it's faith-based organizations or local not-for-profits. It would be helpful to have that system work in a way that people aren't going from one food bank to another food bank to another community meal.

It's around that systems piece. The system is excellent. I'm not suggesting that it's not good. It is coordinated in many ways, but people within systems who live in poverty are probably the best coordinators we have. They know exactly where to go to access the services they need. We need to start doing that too.

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

Thank you.

I think it's apparent that we need all three levels of government aligned to effectively deliver poverty reduction strategies. Can you give me an example in London of how alignment of the levels of government has worked? Can you give me a success story?

[Sandra Datars Bere]

I can give you a great one. This is a recent one. We are the sixth-largest community in the province of Ontario, and we took the third-largest number of Syrian newcomers into our community. We put together a task force of 40 different agencies, stakeholders, community organizations, and three different levels of government—the province, the federal government, and the municipal government. We supported 1,600 newcomers coming into our community in less than three and a half months.

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

Wonderful.

How does London ensure that the money spent goes to the right agencies, if you will? I know one issue in Saint John, and we've done a collaborative approach with Living Saint John, is that there was a lot of duplication. Similar agencies were all looking for the same funding, if you will. If you could wave a magic wand, you would certainly fix that.

How does London prioritize?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Very briefly, please, Sandra.

[Sandra Datars Bere]

I can do it in a few words: by asking the community what they want and then deciding how to move it forward.

The challenge in that is asking agencies to give or to change, and that's troubling for some, frankly. It would be because they have employees, status, and those kinds of things, right?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

MP Sangha, please, you have six minutes.

[Ramesh Sangha, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you again, witnesses, for coming here today and for your very good input.

My first question will be for you, Mr. Willis. You talked about an invisible disease, that is, an invisible disability. You have your personal and professional experiences of that. Being a lawyer, I have dealt with personal motor vehicle accident claims and personal injury claims and all of that, and I used to get many people with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, but this—schizophrenia—is really a very hard type of.... I had a chance to represent one schizophrenic patient too.

Is it better to keep these types of persons who are suffering from schizophrenia in affordable housing, in social housing, or should they be with their families to bring them back to their lives...?

[Victor Willis]

Of course, the real piece here is, what's best for that individual? I think we've heard from a number of our members here at the table about the individual. What's their choice? Then there are those who care, the surrounding caregivers, and I would count myself as one. What do we think we can do to support that individual?

I think the idea, though, that.... I have more stories, other than the one I gave, of somebody with a major mental illness who was able to recover, move out of affordable or supportive housing, which costs money, and was able to get back on their feet and in fact become a productive member of society.

The other part of the opportunity that I think exists for reducing poverty is increasing the access to achieving somebody's potential. There are numerous barriers. To give you a quick example from a poverty-reduction point of view, in Ontario there are 840 or 850-plus rules for social assistance. On any given day, it's probably pretty hard for the workers, and certainly the individual, to understand how all those rules apply. Then we could have some municipal rules, and let's have some federal rules as well.

I think what we've been talking about here today are some of the ways to streamline or integrate what we do so that it has the greatest impact. How can people make the choices they need to make in order to best live up to their opportunity and potential, which all Canadians would want? That takes a couple of things: the right door being open at the right time, or the right program being available for the person, and the time it takes for somebody to actually make those steps. Many programs are very time limited, but people don't live on a six-month or nine-month trajectory. They often take years to increase their ability to understand what they do, especially for people with a complex mental health history, who may have perceptual difficulties and relationships that were lost.

I go back to the trauma, which is the most important thing about this. Having a mental health crisis, losing your understanding of how reality affects you, how it affects your family members, and what it means to your understanding of your rights as a person, because maybe those rights were removed for a period of time—you were put into hospital and you were treated—all of these things have a real trauma to them. You talk about PTSD, but let's add that onto perhaps some sort of psychosis disorder as well.

To unravel that, to begin to trust again, and to begin to have good, real relationships, that's not a nine-month program. That's going to take quite a bit of time. It takes the kinds of community resources that we have here, which wrap their hands around the person and, with them, walk them through finding their ability to get back on their feet. The expectation has to be that recovery is possible—it has to be—and that we are going to design programs to make that the measurable indicator for success. It's not custodial care. It's not taking care of people. It's giving people these tools so that they can in fact be recovered and productive members of society.

[Ramesh Sangha, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

When you feel they have attained this stage, you feel that they can go for employment. Do you think it is better for the employers to hire this type of person, who is now ready to go for employment, and who will be very helpful to the employer and very loyal because they know if they get employment it will be good for them to be busy with the employment? Is this the best way to get rid of our poverty and is this a strategy for poverty reduction? Is it the one that can be possible?

[Victor Willis]

If you'd like a recommendation, yes. Make sure that programs actually lead out of poverty into employment and into choice and the ability to participate as full members of society.

We know that having meaningful activity and employment works. We've also heard about guaranteed income and a few of the other tools that are here. Those tools are part of creating the platforms or the ramp as I mentioned earlier, but we need to actually describe what the ramp is like. Engineers have figured out the ramp for wheelchairs. We now need to figure out the ramp for mental health so that people do not fall back into poverty, especially if they have episodic challenges. That means having an appropriate insurance system. That means that the health care system has to, in fact, be able to catch people appropriately, get them back on their feet, and have them recover.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

We now go over to MP Brassard, please, for six minutes.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am a guest on this committee. I haven't had the opportunity to travel across the country as members of the committee have. I know we're getting to the end of our time. Oftentimes when people appear before committee—at least this has been my experience on the veterans affairs committee—they'll say to you afterwards that they wish they'd have said something.

You guys can fight amongst yourselves for the time, but I'm going to give you an opportunity to say what you thought you should have said by this point. I'll start with Mr. Whittle.

[Alan Whittle]

You know, I think I came here mostly wanting to talk about housing and my experience in housing, and I think I addressed most of that. I think the only thing that I would leave with you is that homelessness is not a defect. It is not a permanent condition. It is something that we can resolve for every one of our families, neighbours, or members of our community.

[Deirdre Pike]

I want to be clear that when I'm speaking about women's homelessness, I'm speaking about single women—not violence against women—86% of whom have children but not access to them. Housing would provide a chance for family reunification. So be clear about that. We need a living wage, and the Government of Canada needs to address the issue of precarious employment by making sure that it supports a living wage with appropriate increases for costs of living. Finally, we need housing with support so that women and men and trans people and LGBTQ people can sing for their lives.

[Alana Baltzar]

I want to add two quick points. I spoke at the social audit that we had in Hamilton in February. I am also one of the storytellers. That is one of the best experiences I've had, with people genuinely listening and wanting to know what it's like to live in poverty. One of the best recommendations I could give for anyone to get even a taste of what poverty is like is to go with someone to a food bank. Help them out with the trip. You'll be there half the day. There's a lot of waiting there.

The other thing I want to touch on is housing. I live in social housing, CityHousing Hamilton. It took me three months to get one repair done, and that was just to get a plumber to come out to find out why my sink was backing up. It took two trips to the head of maintenance to say, “Why isn't this resolved?” I had to make an agreement with them that if the head of maintenance agreed to send a plumber out, I would have to talk to one of the other maintenance people about getting repairs done, which to me means they're kind of sick of seeing my face and hearing me stand up for my rights as a tenant.

I'm going to be straight up. I know it's social housing, but legally, as a tenant, I have a right to safe housing, housing in which I don't have to wear a face mask to walk down my hallway because it reeks and I don't want to know what's in the air there. I have that right, and if it comes down to it, I have no issues taking CityHousing to the landlord and tenant board.

Housing is another key point when you're working with vulnerable people. I used to be in the HOMES program, which Alan Whittle mentioned today. The main reason I left that program was that my superintendent was harassing me. For over two and half years there was non-stop harassment. I couldn't get Good Shepherd to do anything—no offence—because the relationship, and he spoke about this, with the property managers has to be maintained. If you lose that relationship, you're losing affordable housing, not just for that one tenant but for the other tenants who depend on that.