Human Resources Committee on March 10th, 2017

[Sandra Datars Bere]

I was raised in a small town in southern Ontario. I think a lot about my reality of living for 30 years now in a larger urban community, although when you ask me where my home is, I will tell you that it's that small community, that town in southern Ontario.

I use the word “community” specifically. We have great communities doing great things, but what we've lost is the concept of community. There's been a lot of discussion about what we need in our communities, whether it's affordable housing or supports to people, but we need empathy in our communities. We need supports for people who are experiencing difficulties.

I recently hosted a very challenging community event, where we started to really see the divide between what people think. In our community, that's a challenge. Whether there are concerns about racism or those kinds of things, those are coming out more. The lack of community....

I appreciate that it isn't necessarily a federal responsibility or a provincial responsibility. It lays more on the municipal responsibility. It's for us to take the resources we receive from the federal government—as you've indicated, they grow—and to use those in ways that support the community approach to things, where people wrap around others in our communities and address issues of poverty in ways that we've always done, but that we've forgotten how to do. That's what we need to get back to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Mr. Willis, they've left you about 30 seconds. Go ahead, take a minute.

[Victor Willis]

This is a fabulous table.

Very quickly, I sit as a member of the mental health and addictions leadership council in Ontario. We've had the opportunity to look at some of the systems and how they relate, so thank you for what I wasn't able to say.

I think the opportunity for the federal government is in the way that people are engaged with the tax system and in being able to look at benefits. A housing benefit would be hugely helpful.

The other part is recognizing that as people earn income and how they can actually earn that income, there must be some minimum standard for where we decide that poverty exists. Most of our income support systems are well below any acknowledged low income cut-off. You have the ability to actually make those kinds of recommendations—it's within your purview—to raise the bar and raise the opportunity for individuals who are going to recover and who need to be able to use the tools they have. Part of that is within the tax system. I hope you'll look at that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

You guys were going to split time. You don't really have time. I'm sorry, but you're past—

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

I apologize, but I wanted to give the witnesses an opportunity, so I would ask your indulgence to perhaps allow Mr. Poilievre—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

You're about a minute over, but if you have a very brief question, I'll give you half a minute. Go.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Alana, I wanted to ask you about income support programs for disabled people. You mentioned that you're on the Ontario disability support program. When people on that program get a job and go to work, they start to lose their benefits, and not just income but also drug benefits and housing support. Is this something that has made it harder for you to get into the workforce?

[Alana Baltzar]

Absolutely, yes, when you transition from social assistance to paid work employment. At ODSP they're a bit better when it comes to reductions in welfare, but you only get $200. Once you hit that $200 point, they start deducting from you.

Once you start making set amounts of money, you are no longer eligible for your medical and dental programs. That is a problem and it is a barrier, but I would have to say that the biggest barrier to the workforce for me is the fact that while I have a diploma in social work, if you want to work in social work, there are conflict-of-interest policies in place that prohibit you from working for the agencies you have to access for support.

I would love to work for the Good Shepherd, but because I'm a former client of the Good Shepherd, I am ineligible to apply for a position with them for another nine months. At that point, it'll be two years.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

That's an interesting point. Thank you.

Finally, we have Wayne Long.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Again, thanks to everybody who gave their presentations today.

Mr. Whittle, can you talk very briefly on transitional housing and how important transitional housing is? I'm going to ask that same question with respect to London.

In Saint John, we have shelters, the HPS, and affordable housing, certainly, but there's no transitional housing. Can you talk to me about how important it is and what you think we can do federally to come up with a solid transitional housing program?

[Alan Whittle]

That's actually a significant question, because I think it was part of the new HPS round that transitional housing could not be supported.

I think the important thing about transitional housing is that it doesn't need to be there for everybody, but there are definitely certain groups in particular that require it. I'm going to use as an example street-involved women, who may come with addictions and mental health issues and have been involved in the sex trade. There may be a whole cluster of issues that come to bear that require time to relearn some skills, to relearn how to live with other people in a community setting. Similarly, addictions is another area where I think transitional housing can be critical.

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

Deirdre, could you also give me your comments on transitional housing and how important you think it would be?

[Deirdre Pike]

For sure.

Right now, in Hamilton, we have, I think, 69 units at one of our transitional housing facilities for women. It is not funded by housing first. It's not seen as a pillar of that, yet that is the place where women are able to get all the supports in lots of the ways we're talking about. The low barrier is what's really important. We've just started an overnight drop-in at that very same place that is providing an even lower barrier to access. The constant tension I think you will need to struggle with, and that we all struggle with, is how much you put into affordable housing so that we can really house people but have these low barriers. They are both needed. It's both-and, not either-or.

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

I'm surprised, going across the country and going to shelters and talking about investments in affordable housing, by the lack of transitional housing.

Ms. Datars Bere, can you talk to me about London and what you have for transitional housing and the need you see, federally, for us to be more involved in it?

[Sandra Datars Bere]

As my colleagues have spoken about, we have an HPS program. We have shelters. We're actually reducing the number of shelter beds, because we have ascribed to and want to move forward on a housing first approach. I think I'm going to use the good words of my colleague beside me, who said that it's about making sure there's a place for people to live and putting transitional supports around them that are respectful of what happens to people in different situations.

There's no doubt in my mind that there are people who need transitional housing at a period of time. There are also people who choose not necessarily to move into affordable housing, because they don't know how to manage the affordable housing reality. Paying rent and those kinds of things are harder for some people, so there is always going to be a need for people to be in transitional housing. We're trying to get to a model where people have housing first, and then we go from there to support them and put supports around them.

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

Perfect.

Mr. Whittle, with respect to housing first and Chez Soi, are we doing a good enough job? Are there enough wraparound services? Again, we move people through shelters and transitional housing into houses, but without that support, they can digress and move backwards. Are we doing the right things federally to make sure there are enough wraparound services?

[Alan Whittle]

In terms of the federal programs? No.

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

What can we do better?

[Alan Whittle]

I'll use as an example the fact that health services are not funded as part of the HPS. They're time limited to two years. I think my colleague spoke to the whole issue of time. There is a journey a person goes through in recovery, and it isn't necessarily two years.

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

Right.

Ms. Pike, do you want to comment on wraparound services?

[Deirdre Pike]

We talk about women moving into a first apartment after living in maybe a shelter and then transitional housing. They're so institutionalized that the skill of cooking, for example, is gone by then. They experience things like just staring at a blank wall not knowing where a natural community for them is. The wraparound is networking, it's social, it's nurturing, and it's broad. I really think we need to broaden the scope.

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

Ms. Datars Bere.

[Sandra Datars Bere]

The largest-growing population on our social assistance rolls right now in the city of London is men between the ages of 45 and 65. While I appreciate, Deirdre, your point about women, it's a huge problem for us in terms of how to support individuals who have been working in industries where there are no longer jobs for them. They are single individuals who have not necessarily engaged in supports in the community before and now are finding very difficult challenges.

I think another piece we need to be thinking about is the aging population. Then there are seniors who have mental health issues who don't necessarily fit well into long-term care facilities or who can't get in. They seriously need housing support, and they don't fit in our system anywhere, in my opinion.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

This has been a very long study, the longest study this committee has been involved in to date. Both panels this morning were absolutely amazing. It's great to end on such a good note.

I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we learned a great deal by going across this country, by meeting with people in Ottawa, and by listening more than we spoke. My background is in the non-profit sector, working with charitable organizations like the YMCA and the Boys and Girls Club. I did that for about a decade, but I can say that I learned more in this last year about the realities of this country because of folks like you. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you to the committee for being as one, really, in terms of understanding that this is not a partisan issue. This is very much a Canadian issue. It is an issue that we hope will be, at some point, something our kids will read about in the history books.

Thank you to everybody here who makes these meetings possible, and to the folks who are integral in making sure that all of this information is captured and articulated. I look forward to going through the report we will be producing in the very near future.

Thank you very much to all of you.

The meeting is adjourned.