Mr. Speaker, we are debating a motion today on how to strengthen Canada. There is a 12 point plan.
In contemplating strengthening and saving Canada we must understand what would be indicative of that. Strengthening Canada and measuring the strength and security of Canada is really a measure of the health and well-being of its people. That is really what it comes down to.
One of the 12 points in the motion is to implement a comprehensive strategy to eliminate child poverty. It is extremely important that the issue be understood in a broader context than simply in an economic context. There has been too much said about the money one should spend to eliminate it. It is not that simple.
Poverty is one of the least understood issues in Canada. Advocacy groups call it child poverty. It tugs at the heartstrings of every Canadian. They have invoked images of children starving on the streets and report that the problem has increased by 50% over the last decade. Who could possibly be against eliminating child poverty? The bold reality is that poverty in Canada is more a matter of social poverty than it is of economic power.
There is a debate going on about how we should define poverty. The positions range from food, clothing and shelter deprivation to the other side of something about not being able to fully integrate into a community so that one would not be noticed. It is basically a question of being able to live in a community without being noticed.
Defining poverty first would be an important starting point. Consequently if we had a definition we would then have a foundation for social welfare in Canada. Defining a poverty level would identify the level of poverty that we are prepared to tolerate. There will always be the poorest in the land regardless of how everyone improves. There will always be a fourth quartile.
The absence of an official poverty line means that we must rely on other measures. Statistics Canada has a low income cutoff which suggests that some 17% of Canadians are significantly below the income of the average Canadian family. This is a relative measure of basically who is at the bottom.
Anti-poverty groups use this measure for who is poor, however, the measure does have a number of flaws. For example, 40% of the families who are so-called poor under that measurement own their own homes and 50% of those people who own their own homes do not even have a mortgage. Are people who own their own home outright really poor? There are assets. The measurements we use now really do not take into account the fact that there are underpinning assets.
Anti-poverty groups are growing in size and influence and they report annually on the growing level of poverty in Canada. They fiercely lobby governments to act and it is an important activity but the principles under which they lobby have to be broadened to take into account that there are real social underpinnings.
They have suggested solutions to the House, and to parliamentarians and governments, that include the need for more jobs, social assistance, social housing, tax benefits for families with children, money for health and early childhood development programs, employment insurance benefits and subsidized day care. These are just a few of the demands by the advocates for eliminating poverty in Canada.
LICO is accepted by these groups as the measure of poverty and it is accepted for one simple reason. It is an economic measure that demands or calls for economic solutions. If it had to address the root causes of poverty I believe it would open up a Pandora's box that few would be prepared to face.
Homelessness in Canada has become one of the target areas of discussing poverty in Canada. In January 1999 the federal government provided resource funding for a study on homelessness in the city of Toronto, our largest city that has a very large homelessness problem. The task force chaired by Anne Golden issued a report.
It declared it had workable solutions. It engaged all levels of government, all interest groups to have that input.
If we look very closely at the report, we would find that it paints a much different picture of poverty than simply economic poverty that many seem to talk about. The report identified that of the homeless in Toronto, 35% suffered from mental illness and 15% were aboriginals off reserve.
We all know of the serious problems that occur within the aboriginal communities in Canada. Probably 70% of aboriginals live off reserve. In fact, in Toronto of all its homeless, 15% were aboriginals who were living off reserve and 10% cent were abused women. We know that domestic violence is a serious problem in our society. These homeless people are the poor.
The one that tugs at my heart strings more than any of the others really is that 28% of the homeless in Toronto are youth who have been alienated from their families. Of that 28% of youth who are homeless, 70% have experienced physical or sexual abuse. What an indictment of our society.
Then we could look at the fact that the majority of the homeless across all those groups are also abusers of drugs and alcohol; another social problem within our society that we have to tackle.
Finally, 47% of the homeless in Toronto do not come from Toronto. They migrate to this large urban centre from Mississauga, a next door neighbour. We have nominal homeless situations in Mississauga and yet 15 minutes away in the city of Toronto there are thousands of homeless people on the streets. Why is that? It is because cities like Toronto build facilities, build shelters and provide services. It will give them the food, booze, smokes, anything that they want. It is called the urban magnet. We see the same thing in Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary. It is an urban magnet.
Part of the problem is that communities across our country have to invest in their residences as well rather than have no programs or support for people who have difficulties so that they do not have to migrate to these large urban centres. Large urban centres are not the place where our kids should be roaming around the streets. We have a social problem in Canada.
On the issue of children living in poverty, which is family poverty, lone parent families account for about 14% of all families in Canada. They also account for about 52% of all families living in poverty. Our rate of family breakdown in Canada is just under 50%. The incidence of domestic violence continues. Alcohol and drug abuse in our schools and in our communities has escalated with tragic consequences that we see time and time again. Unwanted teen pregnancies still remain at high levels. Over 20% of students in our high schools drop out and do not complete their high school education. Surely these are Canada's poor in waiting. Nearly 25% of all children enter adult life with significant mental, social or behavioural problems. These represent the social poverty in our society and they are the root causes of the vast majority of economic poverty in Canada.
If poverty in Canada is a horror and a national disgrace, then the breakdown of the Canadian family is the principal cause of that disgrace. Those who express outrage at poverty but who do not express the same outrage at the breakdown of the family are truly in denial.
However these days of political correctness, the family structure and the condition represent a minefield through which few are prepared to tread. Anti-poverty groups have meekly sidestepped the social poverty dimension. However, if we are not prepared to address social poverty in Canada, then we effectively choose to tolerate the very poverty that we so nobly seek to eliminate.
If we could raise one well-adjusted generation of Canadians, poverty as we know it would be a condition of the past. In that context, I mean the physical, mental and social health. It also contemplates that our social, moral and family values are sound and that our families, educators and legislators promote and protect those values. Our children are a function of the society in which they live. Those who become our future poor do so because we fail to put their interests ahead of our own.
Collectively, we are responsible for the poverty that exists in Canada today. Therefore, it is our collective responsibility to resolve both its social and its economic causes.