Madam Speaker, the issue before the House today is probably one of the most important challenges facing our country.
Poverty is a complex problem and for every complex problem there is a simple solution, but this one is wrong. Today we have had a suggestion that we can deal with poverty by giving tax breaks to the poor. Not only do the poor not pay tax, the poor do not have income. In fact the poor are those in our society who are unable to help themselves. They are the ones who are on welfare and social assistance. They are the ones who need Canadians to re-establish their value system so we ensure that all Canadians can live in dignity.
A parliamentarian once said in this place that when dignity is lost, everything is lost. We should never forget that.
Child poverty is a convenient political synonym for family poverty. We should talk about family poverty in Canada. Nobody but nobody could ever argue against dealing with child poverty. It tugs at the heartstrings. However, by dealing with the issue of child poverty we ignore the reality that family poverty is the real issue and that the root causes of poverty rest with the conditions of the Canadian family.
Canada does not have an established poverty line. Statistics Canada has announced on many occasions that we do not have a defined poverty line. We do have, however, the low income cut-off, which is a measure of income levels which provide a certain amount for the basic necessities of life plus an additional amount for all other good things necessary for general Canadian life in terms of the lifestyle that Canadians would seek to enjoy.
Those kinds of calculations tend to generate high numbers. In 1989 when the Canadian Council on Social Development announced its numbers of so-called children living in poverty, it said the number was one million children, one out of six children in Canada. Ten years later the same agency reported that 1.5 million children are living in poverty, which is one out of five children.
The calculation used to determine poverty in 1989 had to do with the ability to provide food, clothing and shelter. Today the definition includes much more than that. What we have done is allowed the definition to float in a way which tends to increase the numbers to levels which nobody but nobody believes.
I believe that Canadians have actually become desensitized to what poverty really is in Canada. It has become so inflated that we have lost our focus on what real poverty is. StatsCanada and the LICO are talking about relative poverty, not real poverty.
It is about time that we understood what the level of real poverty in Canada is so that we can focus our attention and make sure that our limited resources are focused on those who are really living in poverty, and there are many people in Canada who are living in real poverty.
In 1989 the House unanimously passed a resolution to seek to achieve the objective of eliminating child poverty in Canada. “Seek to achieve” basically means to do something, to try. It does not mean to eliminate child poverty.
Members will be interested to know that that particular event was not as momentous as they would think. The motion of that day was made by Ed Broadbent on the very last day that he served as a member of parliament in the House of Commons. It was a Friday. There were four hours of debate only and most of that debate concentrated on tributes to Ed Broadbent. There was very little actually said about the real issue of poverty, except about references to the third world and children starving to death.
The discussion and the debate then, if members would check Hansard , was clearly not the discussion of poverty that we think it was. In fact, with 10 minutes to go in the debate before the House adjourned, the then secretary of state for youth, Jean Charest, entered the House huffing and puffing and said “Mr. Speaker, considering the exceptional circumstances today”, referring to Mr. Broadbent's resignation from the House, “and pursuant to discussions that we had before the debate, I move that the motion be passed unanimously”. Hansard then recorded some hon. members saying yes and the House adjourned. That was it.
The House did not actually have a serious debate about poverty, except for one speaker, to whom I want to give credit, and that was Perrin Beatty, the current chair of the CBC. Perrin Beatty spoke very eloquently in the House about the changing nature of the family and the reasons that was contributing to this whole problem of child poverty.
Poverty in our case today is somehow determined to be a measure of income. It is not just a measure of income, it is a measure of resources. That means income and assets, plus the value of social benefits and services that are available to Canadians so they are able to live in dignity, to have food, clothing, shelter and the basic necessities of life. Those are the things we should be measuring.
If we look at the root causes of people living in poverty in Canada we will see that a lot of seniors are on that list. A lot of seniors are on that list because they did not have the opportunity to provide adequately for their retirement income. Their income levels on their tax returns show them to be below some artificial low income cut-off.
There are immigration problems. Many immigrants, in particular the refugees who come to Canada, are unable to assimilate and to care for themselves as well as they should. They are also on this list.
Then there are the mentally and the physically disabled, those who are unable to care for themselves.
This is not something which we can simply pass a resolution on and then eliminate. It is a fact of life, which means that the social values of Canadians should be: How are we going to protect and care for the physically and the mentally disabled, those who are not able to care for themselves? That is a separate issue in the whole complex dynamic of poverty.
How about the youth? There are tens of thousand of youth floating around this country. If we look at the condition of today's Canadian youth we have to ask ourselves: Why is it that about 25% of Canadian youth drop out of high school? How is it possible for a high school dropout to even think of fully participating in the opportunities of Canada? To opt out of high school is to sit on the curb and watch the parade go by. This is an important aspect of poverty.
Again though, as members will notice, that falls under provincial jurisdiction. Federal issues are involved, municipal issues are involved, and there are also Canadian issues. If we are going to deal with poverty, we have to get Canadians on side as well. There has to be a minimal expectation that all Canadians will act in good faith and will work hard to get themselves out of the situation. Those are the things that we have to do.
Drug and alcohol abuse and addiction are very significant contributors to poverty in Canada. There are people who have illnesses and we are not providing services to help them.
That is part of the situation. It is mostly a provincial issue, but we as a federal government have to support serving Canadians with those health care needs. That is why we have a social union agreement. That is part of the agenda.
The single largest contributor to child poverty in Canada has to do with the breakdown of the Canadian family. Twelve per cent of all Canadian families are lone-parent families. They account for 46% of all children living in poverty. Almost half of the poverty situation we are talking about today has to do with the breakdown of the family.
Why does the family break down? It is a very complex area. It has to do with domestic violence. It has to do with substance abuse. It has to do with the lack of a job. It has to do with adultery. It has to do with a lot of things.
Let us not deal with poverty as a linear problem that has linear solutions. We have to deal with poverty as a complex problem, requiring a multiplicity of solutions that we can all support at all levels of government and embrace all Canadians to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.