Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Social Affairs, Science and Technology
Issue 23 - Evidence - May 10, 2007
OTTAWA, Thursday, May 10, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 10:47 a.m. to study the impact of the multiple factors and conditions that contribute to the health of Canada's population — known collectively as the social determinants of health; and to examine and report upon current social issues pertaining to Canada's largest cities.
Senator Art Eggleton (Chairman) in the chair.
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The Chairman: Honourable senators, we are ready to begin.
[Translation]
Welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. Today, we will be studying poverty, homelessness and housing.
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As we continue our study on these issues I want to point out that this is work completed by the entire committee but is related to our two subcommittees. The first subcommittee deals with population health and looks at the key social determinants of health, and the second deals with the major challenges facing our cities. Poverty, housing and homelessness are issues common to both of our subcommittees so we have decided that we would have the full committee meet with respect to these issues.
We have talked about that and have had an agreement on it before, but we have not formalized it in our minutes. We need to formalize that the subjects of poverty, housing and homelessness, within the respective orders of reference from the Senate, be considered by the full committee and that the evidence taken be then referred to each subcommittee for the purposes of their work in future reports. Is that agreeable?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chairman: As I have indicated before, we are also building on some previous work. It is important to note that the Senate has been quite active in the past in dealing with poverty issues. The 1971 report headed by Senator Croll is an important and significant milestone. There was also work by Senator Cohen, who wrote a book in 1997 called Sounding the Alarm: Poverty in Canada.
We are also building on the work that is being done by the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry headed by Senator Fairbairn, who is also part of our committee. They are dealing with the issue of rural poverty in particular, which is an initiative of Senator Segal. There has been a lot of work done that we are building upon and we are continuing on in that vein in our committee.
Today we have two panels. Our first panel includes Professor Sid Frankel who is a member of the steering committee for Campaign 2000. He is accompanied by Katherine Scott, Vice President of Research at the Canadian Council on Social Development, which is a partner organization. Campaign 2000 is a cross-Canada public education movement to build Canadian awareness and support for the 1989 all-party House of Commons resolution to end child poverty by the year 2000. We have talked about this before. The goal has not been accomplished and we are glad that the organization is still in operation.
Our third witness is Dr. Glenn Drover, a social policy consultant for the Canadian Association of Social Workers. This organization is the national voice for 10 provincial and territorial social work organizations. It has as its objective the promotion of social justice and the well-being of all Canadians.
Sid Frankel, Member, Steering Committee, Campaign 2000: On behalf of Campaign 2000, thank you for inviting us. We hope that you follow in the footsteps of Senator Croll's committee. That committee set the benchmark for dealing with poverty in this country in the 1960s and 1970s.
Our submission contains statistics, a brief discussion on defining poverty and a discussion of the impacts of poverty on children. We will not deal very much with that now. We would like to deal with what we think should be done and what we hope to see appear in your report.
Our hope is that you will recommend a poverty reduction strategy for Canadian cities that includes targets and time lines. With regard to child poverty, the strategy should contain three important objectives: reducing the rate of child poverty, decreasing the depth of child poverty, and enhancing the developmental outcomes of poor children.
In order to accomplish these objectives, there needs to be more effective general policy aimed at all families. That would have major impacts on child poverty in cities, but at the same time there also needs to be geographically based policy aimed at cities and at concentrations of poverty within cities.
With regard to the general policy recommendations, there are seven points that Campaign 2000 repeatedly makes.
One, we want to see child income benefits become more effective. They should move to $5,100 maximum per child in 2007 dollars.
Two, a universal, accessible, high quality early learning and child care program is absolutely crucial both for the developmental outcomes of poor children and to allow parents to seek work and training. We would like to see an investment of an additional $1.2 billion over the foreseeable future.
Three, good jobs with good wages are an important part of this policy architecture. Most child poverty is created in the labour market, not by exclusion from the labour market. The federal government can show leadership here by instituting a federal minimum wage of $10 an hour and strengthening the Canada Labour Code as the Arthurs commission recommended, especially to cover precarious workers.
Four, Canada remains an outlier when it comes to the absence of a comprehensive, long-term affordable housing strategy. There needs to be at least a $2-billion annual investment in new housing for the poor.
Five, post-secondary education is extremely important. It is becoming less and less accessible for the poor. There needs to be a much larger program of needs-based grants so that youth from poor families can attend post-secondary institutions.
Six, a restoration of the capacity of the Employment Insurance program is very important in protecting children of poor parents from temporary interruptions in employment. We would like to see a uniform 360-hour qualifying period and one year eligibility.
Seven, improvements to the Canada Social Transfer are needed. As you know, this is the transfer from the federal government to the provinces and territories that finances, among other things, social assistance and social services for children. It is very important for poor children. We would like to see a reinvestment to move that transfer to 1994-95 levels. That reinvestment should be accompanied by a clear statement of goals in the legislation, including the reduction and hopefully the eventual eradication of poverty. We would like to see the introduction of principles and standards so that it is clear what provinces and territories should be doing with these funds.
I will pass it to Ms. Scott to talk more about the community-focused policy needs.
The Chairman: For colleagues who want to read the detail, the recommendations you have gone through are on the last three or four pages of your submission, starting on page 10.
Katherine Scott, Vice-President Research at the Canadian Council on Social Development, Campaign 2000: I appreciate the opportunity to address your committee today. The focus on children in our cities is important, because children make up a disproportionate number of the poor, certainly in large urban areas, and it is critical that their needs be addressed as the unique population that they are.
Canada continues to have very high levels of child poverty and nowhere is that problem more acute than in our cities. The interesting thing about cities is that while there are tremendous sources of social stress attached to them, they also have the potential for social innovation, and some of the most exciting policy development today is done within the context of urban development. It is wholly appropriate to be looking at children in this context.
The challenge of tackling child poverty within an urban context has been taken up in other countries. The United Kingdom and United States have had policies on the books for up to a decade. In the United Kingdom, the New Deal for Communities program channels money into distressed communities and children are key elements of those strategies. The United States has adopted a somewhat different approach. The federal government has invested billions of dollars through initiatives like community empowerment funds, empowerment zones and community initiatives. Many of these initiatives are block grants but are channelled to particular communities with the intent to nurture business investment and job creation in order to stabilize the economic base of distressed communities.
What I find interesting about the international work is that there are no common paths. Just living in Canada, I think we would know that there is no common path forward. However, evidence shows that the number of distressed communities in the United States has decreased since the 1990s, which is attributable not only to economic growth but also to government initiative. It suggests that we can be doing something — much more than Canada has done — and that success is possible.
Canada has fallen into the trap of steering away from trying to intervene at the community level. Certainly the federal government has steered clear from areas perceived to be provincial jurisdiction. The research on urban poverty strategies reveals that what is necessary is a base of universal policies, which will necessarily have spatial impacts, as well as targeted interventions. We have fallen into an either/or dichotomy exacerbated by the federal-provincial dynamics in the country, but in fact we need the types of universal policies referred to by Mr. Frankel, which create an equitable base for children in communities across the country, as well as targeted or more spatially focused initiatives.
I think some of the local development initiatives have been successful in Canada. We started to see some work with the gas tax initiative, and there have been urban agreements, for example in Vancouver, and Winnipeg has a city agreement. These are tools at the federal government's deposal and the federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments have come together in these initiatives.
Such initiatives have had a degree of success, so I would recommend to the committee that you consider community development initiatives and vehicles for channelling funds. While it is not unknown for the federal government to channel funds in that way, I think we need a broader policy of putting development monies into communities. At this point in time, much of the money that goes into communities gets sucked up to infrastructure while social infrastructure is left aside.
It is our position at the council in our work on urban poverty that it is critical to re-examine issues of community development through tools such as the Canada Social Transfer and joint programs like the Community Action Program for Children, another federal and provincial initiative consciously bringing in municipal representation to develop specific community strategies. We have more information about that, but I am conscious of the time, so I will leave it at that and hopefully questions will come up. Thank you.
Glenn Drover, Social Worker, Canadian Association of Social Workers: The Canadian Association of Social Workers, CASW, focuses more on women's poverty as opposed to children's poverty. Obviously there is a complementarity and the kind of proposal just mentioned would benefit many women, particularly younger women with children. However, we want to put the profile on women. We will talk a bit about the issues and the challenges and end with a set of recommendations we have put forward.
The reports that we have provided basically cover the gap between women and men and their work, women's poverty, the income and poverty of Black women, the health of low-income women and a proposal to create a poverty line or social indicators that reflect the impact of poverty on women. We do not have time to outline the data, but you have it in the material we have submitted. I suspect you know generally what the issues are.
The 2005 data, which are more recent than the picture we painted in our reports based primarily on census data, confirm the same pattern. For example, the average earnings of women relative to men remain in the range of 62 per cent to 64 per cent; for women who are fully employed, it is higher at 72 per cent. It is remaining relatively constant. It is not moving; it is not improving. It did improve previously, but it is stuck now at a certain level.
The poverty level of female lone parents is 33 per cent. For unattached females aged 65 and over, it is 20 per cent, and for unattached females under age 65, it is 37 per cent. Those are very high levels of poverty.
There are two other issues we would like to highlight. First, the CASW report on women's health, in particular low- income women's health, is based on social determinants of health. We feel many of those problems would be addressed by the proposals we have put forward.
Second, CASW has not yet done a study on immigrant women, but I did a preliminary check of the 2001 census data that we used for the other reports and it shows clearly that the rate of poverty is higher, sometimes two to three times higher, for immigrant women from Asia, East Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe than it is for Canadians in general, but the poverty rate for immigrant women from Western Europe is lower than the Canadian average. There is a bit of variation there.
The policy challenges are in some ways similar to the issues facing children, but in some respects they are very different. For example, the gap between men's and women's income is stuck. That is a difficult issue to deal with and requires addressing labour market issues.
The welfare system in this country is dysfunctional and should be gotten rid of. The federal government can play a significant role in dealing with that.
The tightening of the Employment Insurance program not only had an adverse effect on who was eligible and the number of people eligible, but for women in particular it had a negative impact because of corresponding benefits for maternity and infant care.
As you probably know, the participation rate of women in the labour force in Canada corresponds very well to that in other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, but the participation rate of lone parents and married women with children who are lone parents is much lower. Other countries have been able to address that issue in a way this country has not.
By whatever measure used, the amount of quality and affordable child care is not adequate in this country and that is a major issue in terms of the employment of women with children. According to the federal government's own evaluations, the infrastructure is basically in place and corresponds to what is in place in other OECD countries, but there are problems around monitoring, efficiency, goal targeting, scheduling and dealing with the child care issues that are not being addressed here the same way they are in Europe.
There are two related housing issues that affect women. One has to do with mortgages and lack of accessibility for low-income women and the other has to do with housing subsidies or allowances that are focused on housing units rather than on individuals. Other countries have shifted housing allowances toward individuals because it gives individuals more freedom to move around and select housing options, whether social housing or market housing.
We offer four policy solutions. First, we are proposing a comprehensive poverty line. The poverty line we have now is based on income. We are suggesting a poverty line that moves beyond income to include measures of education, health, family support and so on.
Second, with respect to reforming the welfare and unemployment insurance systems, we support the idea put forward by the Caledon Institute of Social Policy, which you will probably here from. We think it will help women a bit.
Third, in relation to active labour market policy that favours women in a systematic way in relation to employment, we think standards, equal opportunities, pay equity, training and family supports will go a long way to improve the situation for women, because it is clear that, particularly in terms of the income gap and particularly for low-income women, if they are working, their life chances change significantly.
Fourth, in regard to housing subsidies, we are putting forward a proposal for a portable housing subsidy rather than the kinds of subsidies currently in practice today in Canada. Also, we are trying to make mortgages more accessible by having CMHC, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, take a broader view of the potential of low-income women to gain assets. You are probably familiar with the asset approach now in the United States to try to shift away from just income transfers to focus upon building up assets, education, housing and so forth. I think it is a good concept but poorly introduced and administered in the United States.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. I might add that we have a bundle of material that was sent to our offices from the Canadian Association of Social Workers. It includes the reports The Declining Health and Well-Being of Low- Income Women in Canada: A Preventable Tragedy, Income of Black Women in Canada, Gendering the Poverty Line, Women's Income and Poverty in Canada Revisited and finally Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW) Social Policy Principles. There is quite a wealth of information. Thank you for that.
I would like to ask Campaign 2000 about the goal that the House of Commons passed in 1989 to eliminate child poverty by 2000. It was a good goal, but to my knowledge it was not accompanied by any plan or any measurable goals to reach a plan. Therefore, it did not happen. We all know it did not happen.
I am not clear about how far away we are from where we were in 1989. It depends on which statistic you look at. You can say it is much the same. Other statistics may indicate it could be worse. Some show a bit of a spike and then come back down. Maybe you can clarify that. Are we about the same as we were in 1989 in terms of child poverty?
Mr. Frankel: We are at about the same place. We have seen a lot of variation year to year, and there is a lot of variation in income statistics if you look year to year. We have not seen a sustained slope going down. When we average it out year over year, we have a more or less flat line. The level of the line is different depending upon the particular poverty measure that is adopted, but the pattern is the same regardless of poverty measure.
Across all of the measures, we have not had substantial improvement since 1989. In fact, in 2005, using the post-tax, low-income cut-offs, we are exactly at the 1989 level. We have achieved getting back to that level in the year 2005.
Ms. Scott: As a quick follow up, I agree with Mr. Frankel. The pattern remains consistent. We just finished a research project on urban poverty in the 1990s, called "A Lost Decade.'' There was obviously a mid-decade spike in the 1990s, where the economic growth at the end of the decade reduced poverty rates. Since 2000 we have seen basically a flat line with marginal variations.
Despite the successive years of economic growth in Canada, we have not made headway on reducing poverty rates to where you might have expected. Research illustrates that income inequality in Canada is growing, and nowhere more seriously than in our large urban areas. Statistics Canada confirms that data; the headline last week was "the growing income gap.'' What we are looking at with poverty is what is happening at the bottom of the income ladder. Clearly, our poorest citizens are treading water.
The Chairman: Dr. Drover, you said that we should get rid of the welfare system and that the federal government could play a lead role in that. What would you replace it with?
Mr. Drover: We support the Caledon initiative. While it is not factored out in detail, the broad outline is there. The significant part is that it is a three-tier system.
There are two good parts to it. First, it is trying to make employment the focal point, much as Northern European countries have done, and so these income supports are in terms of helping people to obtain employment if they do not have it, and in those cases where it is not possible for them to obtain employment, to ensure a permanent subsidy and support by way of some sort of income transfer.
The first tier is geared to people for six months. It has taken a lot of the people who are poorly dealt with at the provincial level. Many of them — many of the women certainly — probably could be employed if they had adequate support for their kids and adequate finances to get through these programs and be able to deal with these kinds of issues. Research done by the OECD has shown over and over again that women are very responsive to these kinds of employment initiatives. The possibility is there. That was the idea of the first tier. Except in the short term, that is not likely to meet the needs of women who are already in the labour force or who move out and want to get back in.
The second tier is more important because it is where the employment programs kick in. Obviously, that is in cooperation with the provinces, as it is today. Unlike the Caledon initiative, our view is that the federal government still must play an active role in terms of funding, not just the provinces.
You have to ensure that the benefits are adequate and decent for people when they are taking their training program. They must be long term, which the welfare system is not. Basically, they want to get these people off welfare; therefore, it is short term and most of it is dead end in terms of employment.
We need a program that ensures continuity. In the European countries, training programs will sometimes go for up to four years. Single women in this country are disproportionately on welfare, while in Europe it is quite the opposite — they are disproportionately employed. Their employment levels are higher than many women on average.
Senator Munson: You are the voices for those who do not have a voice. I have three questions. First, how are your two groups surviving these days in terms of your own funding?
Mr. Frankel: Briefly, Campaign 2000 is always a struggle. I think it is a great example of efficient cooperation within the non-profit sector. It is a large number of partners throughout the country working with a relatively small foundation grant and also the generosity of the Family Service Association of Toronto. Occasionally we get research money from various government departments. We wish we could do more, but we are very persistent and I think we are surviving well as a coalition.
Mr. Drover: We are a professional association, so our funding depends on memberships.
Ms. Scott: The wheels are coming off the bus in the non-profit sector. I know a number of organizations that did not receive money at year end and are planning how to reduce or disband. It is a particularly difficult time to be a non- profit organization committed to these issues, to be any type of organization engaged in public education or, as in Campaign 2000's case, a coalition dedicated to advocacy.
I just got a call from the social planning council in Saint John, New Brunswick, saying that all sorts of community organizations, all front-line agencies do not have access to summer employment grants. Students will not be hired and they will not be delivering services. This will ripple across the country. The non-profit sector is struggling right now. I think we will start seeing closures from this point forward.
Senator Munson: That is a bleak picture. I will put the next two questions together for the three of you.
I was curious about the U.S. and U.K. policies that you described on the community empowerment fund. It sounds good, but you sometimes think of American cities — for example, parts of Philadelphia — as war zones. I want to know how it works. Keep it simple.
Then to Dr. Drover, dealing with Black women, there are five points you presented here. I will give you time to think about this. First, I guess we know how this has happened but how do we change it in terms of their salaries? You talk about their education being comparable to others, yet they are at the low end. I would like you to discuss that.
Ms. Scott: Research has been done in association with Action for Neighbourhood Change, an initiative funded by the federal government. They have just wound up their funding, but they were looking at neighbourhood renewal. They have some nice papers I can refer you to on neighbourhood revitalizing strategies. One looks at the American data and another one at the U.K. example. Duncan Maclennan did the research on the U.K.
The U.S. example is more of a private sector model whereby monies are made available. I think it is distinctive and instructive; what is happening in the U.S. is not happening in Canada. The pattern of urban poverty in the United States has very distinct, historical, ethno-racial roots and has grown up in that kind of political economy. The devastation we have seen in some of the American central cities has not been replicated in Canada to the same extent. We are seeing signs of it in Canada but I do not think we can directly compare. For instance, the benchmark in American cities is communities that have levels of poverty over 40 per cent. That is astronomical if you think about 40 per cent of the given community being poor.
With the federal enterprise zones, an initiative brought in under the Clinton administration, the federal government took action with the financial sector to facilitate access to credit in these areas. Through block grants, the government invested directly in the public infrastructure in those communities. Much of the research and some of the leaders in the United States demonstrated that in communities that everyone has appeared to abandon, even the residents, access to public service is critical for the quality of space, graffiti, even down to how people feel in their connection with their community. Some of these monies have been targeted to providing community facilities and infrastructure.
There are a number of different vehicles; but, again, the emphasis has been on private access to capital — facilitating business development and funds dedicated to training. Direct monies are transferred from the federal government to these municipalities or cities. That model is instructive for Canada because we seem to steer away from the idea that the federal government cannot touch municipalities. I think it is a red herring, frankly.
Senator Munson: I need the answer to my last question from Dr. Drover.
Mr. Drover: The paper we did on Black women was done through a group of Black women in Nova Scotia where, as you know, there is a long standing African- Canadian community. The women there felt strongly that current labour market policies tend to favour white, mainstream women; that is how they put it. They felt that the equal opportunities part, for example labour market policy, is not sufficiently rigorously enforced, not monitored well enough and not followed up with goals and targets. They do not have a sense of the measure of the development in that area that satisfies them.
There are also increasing numbers of Black women who are immigrants. That issue is a bit different than for women who were born here. In those cases, there is a need not only to have good labour market policies but also to ensure that the transition into Canadian society is supported in a positive way. Many of these women are on their own again and are faced with situations where their incomes are not only worse than those of the average women in Canada but also worse than those of men in Canada, including Black men in Canada. They are in double jeopardy. There are income, transition and employment issues.
Senator Keon: Dr. Drover, you are focusing on women, which is very appropriate, but there are two subgroups that need a focus, and those are mothers of young children and, even more serious, expectant mothers. One of the reasons we are not accomplishing things in the social domain in this country is that we are coming at everything from 30,000 feet. These great, wondrous programs simply do not work.
How would you target expectant mothers? It is a huge problem. A poor expectant mother who delivers a baby is delivering a child who does not have a fair shot at life ever and who will probably die prematurely of cancer, heart disease or some other disability. Even if he does not die, he will probably never achieve equality with a child born from a mother who had adequate nutrition while carrying the child.
Mr. Drover: There are a couple of issues we were thinking about. One of the reasons for making the argument about a multiple, indexed poverty line, which includes not only income but other features, is to get at these things. There are vulnerability conditions that women face that men do not. Incorporating these measures into a poverty line provides a broader index.
In the U.K., where they have done various measures of poverty, they have focused on every group except women. Importantly, where they have introduced these other measures, for example relative and perceived deprivation measures as judged by panels, plus a range of other indicators around health, researchers have found that who falls into poverty varies depending on the indicator used.
One study in the U.K. used three measures only and found that they incorporated a much larger percentage of the population than we tend to assume when we just look at income. That is because the risks of falling into poverty increase for certain types of people, certainly for women with small children and for expectant mothers. That is one reason why we think a multiple indicator is important and we try to argue that in the paper.
The other point is in relation to maternity and parental benefits, which have improved in this country considerably over the last few years but which are still low when compared to those in some European countries. We also know that many low-income women are disqualified from EI and cannot access those benefits. I know personally several women in that condition. It seems to me we have to take another look at those programs.
For the mothers with children, obviously child care is important. Without that, it is absolutely impossible for low- income women to get decent jobs.
Senator Keon: Do not get me wrong. I totally agree with you. It is a complex problem. There are many factors. Having accepted that, I encourage you to find a way of targeting subsections.
Mr. Frankel: Some of these more general policies are important for women in the prenatal stage. For example, adequate housing is of central importance. It has been called the unnamed social determinant of health. These women have nothing without stable housing. That is a major issue.
I want to point also to a forward-thinking initiative of the Government of Manitoba. They have put in place an income-tested prenatal benefit that initial evidence at least shows has had a positive effect on the status of new births. They have managed not to worry too much about issues around establishing with certainty that a pregnancy has occurred. They have found a way to deal administratively with those problems in an acceptable way.
I take your point that those kinds of targeted measures are also needed.
Lastly, many of the neighbourhood interventions that Ms. Scott has talked about are important for expectant and new mothers because they build community social capital. Where that kind of mutual social support can be put into place, it has been found to be one of the major buffers that limit the effects of income poverty on poor children.
Senator Cordy: You have all provided a lot of information this morning. It is sad information, but thank you for providing it.
I am interested in the issue of housing because everybody needs a place to call a home and to hang their hat for a wide variety of reasons.
In most cities and I am sure in small towns, we get clusters of low-rental housing in communities and there are stereotypes that go along with that. Unfortunately, we also sometimes get higher rates of crime in those areas.
An article about housing university students stated that we praise them for renting a house together because it reduces their costs. Dr. Drover, you talked about portable subsidies, which seem to make sense. If single women and mothers can get together and obtain better living accommodations, it would help with more than just the housing; it would facilitate child care and other things.
Do you know of any urban areas or towns where there is a portable subsidy rather than a unit?
Mr. Drover: Ontario has just announced a program initiative in that direction, which is also criticized by some people because it was moving subsidies away from social housing units to individuals. There is some initiative already to move that way, but not on a large scale in Canada. The difficulty is that there are so few social housing units and the subsidies for those are very important to keep them going and keep them up to a certain level of habitation.
As you know, federal housing support has diminished enormously. Even though in the last few years there has been increased support, it nowhere meets the need. Consequently, any effort to take money received by housing groups and allocated to social housing will be a real struggle within the sector. A portable housing subsidy has to come from groups such as yourselves, who see it as having value, and the federal government must take the initiative. Currently, it is left to the provinces to take that initiative.
Senator Cordy: You said that the program is dysfunctional, that part of the problem is that no one wants to lose their funding and that it needs to be a federal initiative. People cannot get out of the welfare cycle. They have enough to exist on and there are no incentives to get out of it. Would you agree?
Mr. Frankel: That truly is the case. People on social assistance are living far below whatever poverty line is adopted. Rules stop them from amassing assets, and assets, as opposed to income, are needed to move out of poverty. I would agree with Mr. Drover's comment that Canadian social assistance programs are too large. One reason they are too large is that we have no other targeted programs for people with disabilities who should not be on welfare and for young families who should not be on welfare. The other reason is that the labour market, which produces too many low-wage jobs, takes away one of the key incentives for moving off welfare. It is more than simply jumping over the wall; we want to ensure that people are able to jump over the wall and not end up in a pit on the other side. We have very low unemployment rates but we have to look in a more nuanced way at the labour market and evaluate the jobs and the attached benefits. We hope that you will give some attention to this, which is very important in cities.
We should not forget that there are people on welfare living in privation. All provinces and territories have instituted policy to help people move off welfare. Sometimes the policy is good and sometimes it is bad. We have found that those who remain on welfare after the populations have reduced tend to be on welfare for longer and longer spells. That means we have a relatively small but significant group of children growing up over the long term in privation, and it is showing in the developmental outcomes for those children.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I was interested in the benefit of $100 per child. Was there a role for deadbeat dads in any of this? I am also interested in the role of corporations. Even if there were a minimum wage of $10 per hour, it still would not do away with part-time labour, no benefits, and other problems. Could you comment on the role of corporations and the role of government and deadbeat dads?
Ms. Scott: Those are two distinct issues, deadbeat corporations and deadbeat dads. One of the premises of Campaign 2000 has always been that there is no magic bullet to addressing child poverty in Canadian cities across the country and that multiple strategies are necessary. When you look at studies of how families fall into poverty, marriage dissolution and loss of employment are the big factors in terms of the exit from and entry into poverty. The flip side is that the best way out of child poverty can be getting married, because dual-earner households are better equipped to secure the resources necessary to raise healthy, economically secure children. The provinces have jurisdiction and the federal government sets the guidelines for child support. I believe that the provinces are slowly instituting much more aggressive campaigns to secure or to follow up mainly on fathers who have not made their child support payments. Ontario's new photograph campaign is one example. Other countries take more aggressive measures, and we have looked at them. I do not have the research to say how large the problem is and how many children are in poverty as a result of default on child support orders. Perhaps some local agents have looked at the numbers but it remains an area to learn more about.
The role of corporations is a different issue altogether, and that is fair share. The Canadian Council on Social Development and Campaign 2000 take the view that an equitable taxation system is necessary to create the public resources to create a level playing field, and Canada has some of the lowest corporate taxation rates in the world, although that has been on a downward trend.
In terms of taxation, we need to look at the comparative role. In financing a Canadian welfare state, it is not sustainable over the long term to rely on individual taxation, particularly as we look at a labour market that is increasingly precarious and polarized. Instead, we need to look at Canadian corporations to pay their fair share for creating security in the welfare state in Canada.
Mr. Frankel: On the first of the two issues, child support payments from fathers, one of the difficulties with last resort social assistance systems is that they completely tax back any child support payment that the mother receives from the father. Thus, there is little incentive for these mothers to go through the pain and difficulty of obtaining child support. Somehow, that does not make sense. I can understand why that was put into place but it does not make sense in the way that it works on the ground.
On the second issue, corporations and employers, we do not think that a child benefit of the size that we have talked about is sustainable without wages being at a particular level. Therefore, we recommend and support a minimum wage rate of $10 per hour. In a sense, we do not see it as appropriate for employers who choose to pay very low wages to be able to socialize their employment costs by calling on the public purse. In terms of affordability, the generosity of the child benefit has to be considered in tandem with wage rates and with what government can do to move those wage rates above the poverty wage rate so that the full-time worker is able to lift herself or himself out of poverty strictly on the basis of the wage. That requires approximately $10 per hour of full-time work.
Mr. Drover: On deadbeat dads, I agree with what they have said but I am sure the average woman would like to be independent of the deadbeat dad. It would be better to focus on programs for women to help make them independent.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Does the state have an obligation to collect from deadbeat dads?
Mr. Drover: As was mentioned, in some countries they do collect and they make the transfer to the women. For example, the Nordic countries transfer the money directly to the women and then have the dads pay the state. There are various models on that theme but I have not looked at them closely enough to know how effective they are.
With regard to corporations, I have a few points. The active labour market programs that I have looked at in Europe actively involve corporations, and they do a pretty good job actually. The corporations are involved in the training programs and family support and in dealing with pay equity problems. Corporations are very important there, clearly, because if you are talking about the income gap between men and women, you are talking primarily about market income, and that is through the workplace. The only way to deal with that is to involve those companies and corporations in an active way. Particularly for employment standards it is an important issue, because a high percentage of women are in marginalized work and part-time work and they are not receiving the support to ensure that employment standards are met. Working with small companies is a challenge because they generally have fewer than 20 or 10 employees. Many people are employed in that sector, women in particular.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Should I assume that on the whole you would be in favour? In Toronto, WoodGreen Community Centre's Homeward Bound is an innovative program for welfare families, mothers and children. Is that the kind of program you would like to see mothers involved in, with three years of training to give them life skills and job skills? Is that a model you support?
Ms. Scott: Particularly considering urban poverty in a local context, employers, whether national companies, small companies or the vast range of independent businesses in Canada, need to step up to the plate and see themselves as integral parts of local communities. I think they do, but they should be actively engaged in labour market policies. It is becoming increasingly important. Consider the recent loss of manufacturing jobs in Ontario and the impact that that is having in a place like Windsor: that is where you start seeing the localized effects of the changing political economy in Canada, where you see the growth of service industries that have grown up in our large urban areas to service the financial sector and the retail sector and the like, which has become, in a sense, more structural. We have a whole layer in the labour market that is defined by low wages and the like. The role of corporations or businesses takes on added importance and there is a need for the federal government and other levels of government to cooperate around active labour market policy, particularly as the industrial base is changing. That will look different.
I am struck by the stories coming out of Alberta now. You would think the streets are paved with gold in Alberta, and that is not the case. Setting aside the issues of royalties and all that, if you are talking about social planning organizations in the city of Calgary, for instance, they have had a terrible problem with housing. No one can afford to live anywhere. In fact, they have new reports linking prosperity and poverty, and the income polarization that is happening in Calgary is extraordinary. They do not have the public infrastructure to begin to deal with it. The change in that particular labour market magnifies local conditions, in this case, the astronomical cost of housing, where families are literally being forced out and children are growing up itinerant and moving from house to house to house. The situation demands an integrated, multi-sectoral approach to addressing the concerns of economic security in those communities.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I want to focus on children and child care. Dr. Drover, the report Women's Income and Poverty in Canada Revisited talks about a number of things, including child care, that work to increase rather than decrease the economic vulnerability of poor children. In his book, Dr. Douglas Holmes states that the most vulnerable children are the children of single mothers, although there are vulnerable children in very rich families. One needs to add that. The next factor in this vulnerability is depression in these single mothers. That really encapsulates it.
I want to ask you two questions. I am beginning to call this the silent spring, because I am upset that there has not been more outrage about the fact that Ken Dryden's child care agreements were cancelled on March 31. They no longer exist. I do not know whether you want to comment on society's reaction or lack thereof. We have talked a lot about silencing people in different sessions. I am upset that there has been less reaction than I would have hoped for.
I want to ask you about Quebec, talking about labour productivity and the relationship of child care to labour productivity. Can you comment on the differences between Quebec and the rest of Canada? They are the only really shining example in Canada now attempting to address this problem.
Mr. Drover: As I understand the Quebec initiatives, there are a couple of things about Quebec that are important in relation to this area. One is that it has more affordable child care available to more women than in the rest of the country. That model of child care is closer to what we would like to see in other parts of the country. Quebec also has its own anti-poverty strategy, and Newfoundland has a provincial strategy. Whether you discount or criticize part of those strategies is another issue, but at least having a long-term strategy provides accountability and measures and so forth for what they are trying to do. You can see some sense of whether there is progress, and they have made significant income transfers because of that.
In relation to the labour market, I am less clear on what they are doing there or how well women are being integrated into the labour market through programs. I have no knowledge of how effective their programs are.
Ms. Scott: Recent research on urban poverty indicates that large urban areas in Quebec have some of the highest rates of poverty in the country. Quebec City and Montreal have very high rates. Interestingly, the child poverty rates in those cities tend to be lower than the overall poverty rate for the city. It is the reverse in other areas such as Southern Ontario and in other cities.
Quebec has an income security system with income-based measures, and that system is more effectively targeting young families with young children; their poverty rates are lower. It stands out that for 10 years now, Quebec has taken a pointed approach to direct the welfare reforms and programs it introduced. It was a pioneer. I know that the former federal government under Mr. Goodale and now this current government instituted a work income supplement program while Quebec was looking at this 10 years ago, directing its appearance at young children. In some respects, it has refined that, and that model has informed the current federal initiatives. Quebec has been a leader in that sense. Many books have been written about the evolution of the Quebec model and how it is distinctive and so forth. I set aside the reasons, but there has been a much more active state, and they have produced good outcomes and served as a model for the rest of Canada.
On your child care point, I agree. It saddens me tremendously. We were on the cusp of having vehicles to direct funds to develop much needed child care in Canada, a variety to serve families regardless of their need. There certainly has been an outcry in the child care community. It is minimized. The Save the Children report from the U.K. yesterday noted that Canada had fallen from fifth to twenty-fifth in their child index, largely attributable to the number of children engaged in preschool education. We have evidence that not only was Canada a laggard before — and certainly the OECD studies on childcare illustrated that — but we are now falling further behind our industrial counterparts.
Senator Callbeck: Mr. Frankel, one of the items you listed that should be done is enhanced clarity, accountability and capacity of the Canada Social Transfer. I want to ask you and the other two witnesses about your opinion as to what has happened in the last budget with the Canada Social Transfer. As you know, that is the money that comes to the provinces for education and for social services. When it was set up in 1977, the federal government gave up some tax points. As we all know, a tax point is worth different amounts in each province. There was a pot of money there to distribute, taking into consideration regional inequalities. That was how it was done in 1977. In the last budget, it was changed so that the cash will be distributed per capita.
Right off the bat, it means that they have set a figure of $289 per capita. Prince Edward Island gets a small increase of $7, which translates into $1 million. Alberta gets an increase of $102 per capita, which translates into $400 million. Next year we will get the same per capita in P.E.I. as in Alberta, but the tax point in Alberta is $310 while in P.E.I. it is $129. That will increase the gap between the rich provinces and the poor provinces. Could I have your comments on this change?
Ms. Scott: That was one of the measures in the budget that struck us as a critical step that had been taken. The Canadian Council on Social Development, CCSD, has been advocating around the Canada Social Transfer and its fate since the mid-1990s. It was rolled into the CHST and then broken out in 2004 I believe. Now they have nominally broken out the post-secondary money. We have been looking at what has been happening not only with the level but with the structure.
To say it is complicated is probably an understatement. I do not think we can fully appreciate the impact of the proposed changes to the Canada Social Transfer, some of which are positive, actually. In the absence of understanding the impact of the changes to the equalization formula, clearly the goal of the CST's moving to a capita formula is to recognize social need. The principle behind that, which has been advocated by us for a long time, is to identify and pull out social need so we can track it. We have not actually returned to 1994 levels except nominally; in real terms we are now continuing to underfund social services such as social assistance. That will be more evident now as they have taken steps to reveal that. How that works, now they have moved away from any pretence of trying to equalize investment in social services through the CST, will depend wholly on how the equalization formula will play out. It cannot be understood without further analysis.
CCSD has a national board from across our country. Our members from Atlantic Canada are beside themselves, in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia in particular, about what they perceive will be a systematic erosion of their capacities as "have-not provinces,'' not only forfeiting the chance in those provinces to address their debt and the historical inequity but confining them to substandard social systems that will play out in poverty in concrete ways.
I am not giving you a direct answer because I do not think we are at a point where we can make that analysis. There were positive steps with the CST announcement, but the plan remains underfunded. The whole issue of equity is critical; it is in our Constitution. I do not think we have any conversations in this country about the quality of the social safety net that every Canadian and every community deserves. It is not enough to leave it to the provincial or municipal governments, who may or may not invest. It is important to say that every child and every family in this country has an entitlement to a set of services and we need to use vehicles such as the CST to create that equity. I hesitate to say that further study is needed, but I do think that is the case in order to understand these issues.
The Chairman: It is a controversial issue and it has been discussed at another committee.
Senator Cook: If I understand what I am hearing from Ms. Scott and from Senator Callbeck, now the CST has a per capita model. Are you saying that it is in some way linked to the equalization formula of the province, which no one in Canada can understand? Is that where we are heading, do you believe?
Ms. Scott: I think there might be five people in Canada who fully understand the equalization program.
Senator Cook: I would be happy to meet one.
Ms. Scott: We need one person to understand what is being proposed. Ontario, for instance, has said for years that it had everything to do with their labour market agreements, immigration agreements, and so on, and that they were being underfunded. The tax points had been netted out. They were looking at the cash and how much money they had on their bottom line to address their growing social programs, many of which are concentrated in the urban areas.
You can take a perspective that a poor person in Ontario is a poor person in Prince Edward Island is a poor person on the lower east side in Vancouver. Taking an approach whereby there is an equitable playing field, which the federal government is recognizing, I think is a principle we can all support, but there is an absence of understanding that each province has radically different fiscal capacity to create a social service net. That is what equalization was supposed to address; it was supposed to provide that equity. If we had an equalization system that worked effectively to direct the differential capacities of the provinces to address their social and other needs, you could probably have a CST that might be a straight per capita transfer. That is what the theory would look like. I do not think we have that in practice; nor do we yet understand fully what we have in practice.
The provinces are feeling they are being rushed into signing on to an agreement that will profoundly shape the fiscal capacity going forward. We are at a point in time where it is indeterminate but the theory and practice have not come together here.
Mr. Frankel: There is no connection between federal transfers and provincial expenditures, which makes it very hard to discern the impact here. Under the Canada Assistance Plan, there was a connection. We are arguing that goals, principles and standards need to be stated in the CST legislation, including standards of adequacy and standards negotiated between the provincial and federal governments. At least in health care, we have the medically necessary services. When it comes to social services and social assistance, there is no bottom line. That is the big problem in thinking about this.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. We could hear a lot more from you but we have run out of time.
Senator Cook: Could I make one more statement? I am from Newfoundland. What I have heard is very disturbing, because I think from this a welfare wall will be built around Atlantic Canada, by the very nature of the population there. My premier is doing something. He has a 10-year plan, but he is doomed if this happens to him.
The Chairman: Again, thank you to our panellists. We very much appreciate your being here.
We will now bring in a new panel of witnesses. We welcome Loly Rico, President, and Roberto Jovel, Policy and Research Coordinator, from the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. OCASI was formed in 1978 to act as a collective voice for agencies serving immigrants and refugees and to coordinate responses to shared needs and concerns. Its membership is comprised of more than 170 community-based organizations in Ontario.
We welcome also Vera Pawis Tabobondung, President of the National Association of Friendship Centres. This association was established in 1972 to represent friendship centres at the national level. Currently, it represents some 115 centres as well as seven provincial and territorial associations across Canada.
Thank you all for coming here today.
Loly Rico, President, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI): Thank you for inviting us. That was our idea. I want to focus on the challenges facing immigrants and refugees around housing and homelessness, and I bring the stories of two women in Toronto who have come as refugee claimants.
The first woman I will call "Teegis,'' although that is not her real name. She arrived in Canada by herself as a refugee in 1997. She is a single and sole supporting mother. She started working, but her pay was low. She applied for subsidized housing and waited for five to seven years. In the meantime, she was able to bring her five children from Africa. At the time they came, she was living in a bachelor unit, and the five children lived with her. She applied for a larger house. It took 10 months to get a big apartment for her and her five children in the city of Toronto. The children were getting older. They moved to a townhome that was subsidized by Toronto Community Housing, but she had to pay utilities. That means the rent came as normal rent.
She is still working and the children started working, but they could not manage to pay the rent. In the meantime, they divided the family in a way to survive and pay rent. Now they are living in two apartments. Teegis, and her children, kept working, trying to build a business, and the other three children had to stop studying and start working so that they could survive and pay the rent.
The other person I bring as a challenge is Aisha. She arrived seven years ago from Africa. She came with a 28-day- old baby. She was a refugee claimant and she applied because that is something we do. Besides being the chair of OCASI, I work with refugee women and refugee claimants in an organization called FCJ Refugee Centre. She arrived with her baby, and we did the application for subsidized housing. She waited for six years to get her apartment. During those six years waiting for subsidized housing, she lived in a house rented by nuns for very low rent.
She was in Toronto. She got a job in the west of Toronto, and then her subsidized unit appeared in Scarborough. She got that unit because it was the only choice she had. She found daycare for her baby, who is now five years old. She leaves the baby in the morning and travels more than an hour to go to work. She has to ask a friend to pick up the baby every day because she cannot manage to leave her work at five o'clock and be on time to pick up the baby at the daycare.
This woman has been waiting for five years to reunite with her children coming from Africa. She is waiting for four more children who are coming within the next three months. She went to Toronto Community Housing and said, "My children are coming,'' and they said they cannot provide a bigger house until her children are there. That means she will face the same situation as the woman I described before.
These are the challenges that most immigrant and refugee women face when they come to Canada. I pass it over to Mr. Jovel to provide our recommendations and the main points.
[Translation]
Mr. Roberto Jovel, Policy and Research Coordinator, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI): Mr. Chairman, I want to give you a general picture of the social factors involved in situations like those that Ms. Rico told you about. I will tell you things that will be quite similar to the things you heard from previous panels, but I will focus on some specific issues that were raised before this committee regarding racial discrimination and gender discrimination, as well as migrant status, as immigrants, landed immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers or persons without migrant status.
In this brief, we want to present a list of academic and community research results, largely based on studies made by Statistics Canada. We have no doubt that the results show that inequity in Canada, and specifically in large urban centres, clearly follows racial lines. There are inequities among various ethnic and racial groups in the Canadian population.
We mentioned studies like the one by Grace-Edward Galabuzi. This is one of the best studies because it clearly shows how various factors combined with racial inequity in building the barriers that refugees and immigrants who come to settle in Canada encounter.
We are focusing on these issues, because they have to do with poverty and with housing problems. The studies show that there are problems with accessing the labour market in Canada. These problems are a cause of poverty and of difficulties in finding suitable housing.
The study that Michael Ornstein did for the City of Toronto using the results of the 1996 census and an update with the 2001 results was also quoted. Once again, this study showed that racially divided communities as well as immigrants and refugees are suffering from labour market discrimination, and are often prevented from making a decent living that equates with the standard of the mostly white, Canadian-born majority.
We must recognize that the racial factor in poverty affects everyone whose skin is not white. For instance, it affects African Canadians who settled here long ago and who are neither immigrants nor refugees.
We must emphasize this factor because for the past 15 years, the vast majority of the people who come to settle in Canada, as immigrants or refugees, arrive from southern countries and belong to racially distinct communities. The influence of race on poverty, together with the systemic barriers encountered by new immigrants, is a factor in creating poverty and inadequate housing.
Gender equality is also a very important factor for our members and for the people whom we serve.
There is one specific reference that we did not quote in our presentation. It is a study done by two researchers, one based in Toronto and the other in Halifax: Valerie Preston and Evangelia Tastsoglou. They used data from Statistics Canada to show that there is a gap between the employment rate and income level of the white Canadian-born majority, and the low standard of living of immigrants.
Immigrants who are not white enjoy a far lower standard of living than European immigrants who have far fewer problems with finding their place in Canada and integrating into society.
Moreover, non-White women immigrants and refugees suffer from even greater discrimination than do non-White immigrants and refugees as a whole. We did not provide the statistics, but you can consult them.
I also emphasized an issue that previous witnesses had raised regarding recent changes in the labour market, especially those that have to do with employers who want more market flexibility.
Regarding community and social services, we are concerned about unemployment, the precariousness of employment as well as cases of abuse of workers' rights because, in point of fact, they are not even protected by legislation.
Studies like the one done by John Shields describe the situation, as do other community-based studies that show various forms of abuse practised by temporary employment agencies. Examples were given of cases where Muslim women were forced to remove their veils or to wear mini-skirts by abusive agencies or employers. This rapidly growing sector of the labour market is bereft of legal protection.
I have said enough for now, but perhaps during the question period, we could discuss other aspects of our brief.
[English]
Vera Pawis Tabobondung, President, National Association of Friendship Centres (NAFC): Good morning. I bring greetings from all the people involved with the National Association of Friendship Centres. It is an honour to speak about our contributions to and thoughts on the great initiative before you.
We have comments about securing a better start in life, community safety and security, keeping our children safe from sexual exploitation, and putting a roof over the heads of families. The Assembly of First Nations and the National Association of Friendship Centres work jointly on poverty issues and hope to be part of the eradication of it in our communities.
As a result of our work with our partners, we can provide you with a number of statistics on poverty, our initiatives in response, and how they impact in our society. We understand that working together with partners advances the work of the National Association of Friendship Centres.
As Mr. Chairman said, we have 117 centres in small, medium and large urban environments. We originally came together because our people were moving into urban areas. Friendship centres were a vehicle through which we could learn to understand and share our language and culture and maintain our connectedness to each other and to the land.
We have grown to deliver a number of programs and services. We are the biggest and the best, we are community- based, and we try to ensure that ours are community-directed initiatives.
There is a great change in demographics evidenced by the great increase of Aboriginal people in the urban environment. We want to ensure that whatever initiatives we lay the groundwork for are not at the expense of our brothers and sisters in our home communities. They face the challenge of poverty in the First Nations communities as well. Poverty affects us as a people. "Poverty'' is not a word we have in our languages, but we are trying to understand it because it is important to the lifestyles of the future generations of our children.
Evidence suggests that larger gains are achieved through targeted interventions for disadvantaged children. Targeted programs providing free early learning and child care programs and supports for low-income children, especially Aboriginal children, would cost less and can be expected to generate higher returns for children.
With regard to community safety and security, many of the proposed changes to the existing legislation may disproportionately adversely impact Aboriginal peoples. The proportion of Aboriginal youth admitted to custody has been increasing over the years. Among the factors contributing to that increase are a proportionate number of repeat contacts within the correctional system and a higher level of criminal risk factors compared to non-Aboriginal people. Poverty and social isolation contribute to these negative trends.
We need programs to improve on that. We believe that measures such as a robust Aboriginal court workers program and legal aid can improve access to justice for urban Aboriginal peoples and their communities. We need measures that build upon Aboriginal youth justice initiatives and measures that address early determinants of criminality, employment, literacy, and early learning. As well, we need measures that strengthen accountability for results, evidence costs and strong parliamentary oversight.
Keeping our children safe from sexual exploitation is at the core of our responsibilities as Aboriginal people. We recommend that the federal committee against child sexual exploitation receive official parliamentary standing that will empower it to make meaningful progress in eliminating the child sexual exploitation that continues under our very noses.
With regard to putting a roof over the heads of our families, we know that these things intertwine and are part of a cycle. We need to work hard to eradicate the poverty that is so evident in our urban environments. We recommend that a federal national urban Aboriginal housing strategy be developed.
The urban Aboriginal population is the fastest growing sector of the population. Last year, our friendship centres delivered over 1,200 programs worth almost $90 million to over 1,115,000 clients. That includes multiple users to whom we have a commitment of transparency and accountability. Results have garnered the continued support of governments at all levels. Strong support has come from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Assembly of First Nations in championing the enrichment and expansion of friendship centres.
The story of friendship centres in Canada's largest cities is one of resilience, hope, dedication and hard work that has been unfolding for over 40 years. It is our hope that the honourable senators here today will support our ongoing efforts.
There are many stories I can share. Of course, I would like to say that Ms. Formsma is one of the many examples of the work that friendship centres do. She started as a young individual in her friendship centre in Timmins and has grown to be a strong advocate and roll model in our friendship centre movement. She continues to work for us as the urban Aboriginal youth counsellor intervener. She held many positions within her friendship centre, including board member and youth worker, and she has been a representative at the provincial level. Most of those positions were in a volunteer capacity. Volunteering adds much to the success of friendship centres.
The Chairman: Thank you for your presentation. We are delighted to have Ms. Formsma here as well.
I will start off the questioning and then I will turn it over to my colleagues. First, starting with OCASI, a number of witnesses have suggested that we need a $10 minimum wage, that we need to increase the minimum wage across the country. Of course, the federal government does have jurisdiction with respect to certain industries that are federally regulated. By and large, though, it is a provincial matter and we know what some of the provinces are doing or not doing.
I have repeatedly heard of employers attempting to circumvent that system and exploit people. They can exploit anyone, but by and large I believe the immigrant population is exploited most. Immigrant workers are told they are self-employed or in some kind of contractual relationship that avoids paying even minimum wage where it is now and avoids many of the benefits and labour laws of this country. Can you comment on how widespread that practice is in this country? Also, could you give us your thoughts about how we can prevent or reduce it?
Ms. Rico: This is a big issue, especially in Toronto but nationally as well. For example, in the cleaning services we have that experience where employers start trying to exploit immigrants, especially people who do not have legal status. Those are the most vulnerable immigrants.
There is also the practice of bringing in foreign temporary workers. Usually they come to do seasonal work for eight months and the employers do not have to implement all the federal laws. That trend is one of the main issues and one of our concerns. It is good to bring foreign workers to Canada, but they should come with a work permit and they should receive all the benefits they are eligible for here in Canada, rather than being exploited in their work.
Mr. Jovel: You are right that we have been paying close attention to these kinds of issues for some time now.
As you know, we are based in Ontario and under a provincial umbrella, but we know these issues are prevalent in other parts of the country. You mentioned a series of examples. In the services that our member agencies provide to newcomers, the approach is to inform them about their rights and about avenues for reparation that they may explore. However, the situation is acute and delicate for those who have not yet been recognized as refugees and who are struggling to get their case recognized and to obtain the protection and the certainty that they can stay here.
The figures vary a lot, but there are around 200,000 people without status in Canada who are contributing to the economy. Several industries and the whole of the population benefit from their work and their contribution to the economy but they do not have any rights. Therefore, they do not have access to housing or other entitlements.
As much as our agencies work hard every day with caseloads that are impossible to handle, the situation of learning that you can be an empowered new member of society in Canada takes a few years before being able to defend yourself from an employer who wants to abuse you. If you do not have a law that protects you in the case of temporary work or temporary agencies, you are completely lost to whatever the employer wants to do to you, even if you want to start some sort of litigation and try to get a lawyer. That demands effort and is time consuming. When you have a family and you are a single mother, it is way over the possibilities that you would even consider.
Therefore, people are left to themselves. Now we have an initiative in Ontario with Bill 161 to try to put controls on temporary agencies and temporary work. We have submitted a paper in support of the law but we also point out its limits as it has been drafted so far and we make recommendations, along with the Workers' Action Centre, to give it real teeth to ensure that employers and temporary agencies comply with what should be the basic rights of any worker.
We have actively joined the campaign in Ontario for the $10 minimum wage, which has pretty much been led by the Ontario Federation of Labour with several allies. There has been an announcement that the minimum wage will be increased to $10.25 over the next three years, but we have been saying that it should be $10 now if we want to catch up to the levels of a few years ago. In three or four more years, inflation will have grown and the wage will not be the same as what we consider to be fair and just now.
We also have supported another interesting initiative that you may know about — Modernizing Income Security for Working-Age Adults, or MISWA. They have produced an interesting policy analysis document where they see what the problems are in terms of how to ensure there is a minimum income for everyone that takes the working poor at least to the poverty line. It involves a series of measures addressed to provincial and federal levels of government. This is an issue we care a lot about.
The Chairman: My question to the National Association of Friendship Centres relates to Aboriginal poverty. All of the statistics I have seen show that Aboriginal poverty is much higher and has many more issues. You have touched on housing, which is a greater problem there than in the general population. In fact, you could say the same is true for the immigrant population as well.
How do the poverty rates differ between Aboriginals on-reserve versus Aboriginals in urban centres? Is one much higher than the other or are they similar?
Ms. Tabobondung: Poverty is poverty no matter how you look at it. Whether it is in a First Nations community or in the urban environment, poverty affects our children and our families. The Assembly of First Nations and the National Association of Friendship Centres share concerns about poverty and what we can do jointly to address it. We need to look at an Aboriginal answer. I believe we will work towards that. Whether one rate is higher or lower, our observations are the same, because it is poverty. We hope it is an area we can work on together and be part of the eradication of poverty.
Senator Fairbairn: Thank you. I wanted to ask as well about the Aboriginal youth centres that are springing up across the country. I am from Lethbridge, Alberta, close to Calgary. For many years the friendship centres there have been helpful to women and their small children and have raised funds to move this ahead.
In recent years we have started special programs in Southern Alberta hoping to bring young people into Lethbridge. The program is attached to our city council, and young people can be brought in and given a lot of assistance, encouragement and learning directed at getting jobs. It has been slow to start, but now it is up and running. Young people are doing quite well because of the doors that open through this program.
Are there many similar programs like this in other parts of Canada, or is it particular to areas in the West, where they have started to see some success?
Ms. Tabobondung: We have put youth as one of our priorities in the work we do. We also have an agreement that youth will at every opportunity be brought forward into the circles and discussion, so I will ask Ms. Formsma to answer that question. Young people very clearly have asked me to open the doors and provide the opportunity for them to speak and to answer for themselves. I will honour that request and Ms. Formsma will answer the question.
Jocelyn Formsma, Program Officer, National Association of Friendship Centres: Thank you. As the National Association of Friendship Centres, we operate the Urban Multipurpose Aboriginal Youth Centre, which is an initiative funded by Canadian Heritage. I have to say that it is a great program. The funding cannot go to local communities unless youth are part of the decision making regarding who gets the funding and how the funding is spent at the local level. It is definitely a best practice, not to say that there are no challenges.
There are 29 friendship centres within Ontario, and the funding we get is not just for friendship centres. It is for all off-reserve urban community centres. If we get 30 or 35 proposals, we can fund only 15. As much as the program is needed and is doing really good work, we are limited as to how many centres we are able to fund, and the funding is only year to year. In that year, you are trying to establish relationships with these young people and establish partnerships within the communities, but you do not have any guarantee as to whether or not at the end of the year the funding will continue. A centre receiving funding for the first time might not have the chance to get the resources they need.
You talked about opportunities in Lethbridge as an example, and you said it started out slowly and now is picking up speed. You see a lot of that in communities where you develop trust and start seeing the young people who want to come back, but you need time to establish those relationships.
From what I have seen, the best work with young people is done when there is youth-led decision making but there is also support for the decisions they are making and there are networks and resources, whether human or financial, in place as well as a little bit of mentorship and guidance that says, "I will not tell you what to do, but these are some of my experiences so I can help you in this way.'' I have seen a lot of success in many communities when the model followed says, "We will not do it for you but we will do it with you and help you as you go along.''
Senator Fairbairn: In Lethbridge it really is a partnership rather than a dictatorship that says, "Here, this is what you have to do,'' and it has moved a lot faster because of that. There is tremendous personal involvement through our mayor and people on council and the chieftainship of the tribes in that area. Once they get together, it really does work, and there have been good success stories. I hope that that will continue in my hometown and elsewhere as well, because it is a great opening for young people, and also an opportunity to start their own businesses.
Ms. Formsma: Sometimes the involvement of children and youth is seen as cutesy or subpar; the real work will be done by adults but we will involve the young people when it is convenient. I might be generalizing, but I see children and youth involvement in everything as a strategic investment in human capital, if you will. They are the experts because they are the ones at the end of the day who walk through the doors of the high school. We can have all the strategy sessions we like on trying to stop kids from doing drugs, but at the end of the day they have to face the people who are giving them drugs and say no. Youth involvement should not be there only for convenience; it is a must in the work we do.
Senator Keon: I want to come to the housing issue because we just keep hearing the problem over and over, but we do not hear solutions; there does not seem to be a solution. Ms. Tabobondung, you have come up with something interesting that I had not heard before, which is a federal national Aboriginal housing strategy. I think this is very interesting as it addresses the problem of reserve and off-reserve housing.
I do want all of the panellists to respond to this. Obviously there seem to be two major problems. One is that there is not enough housing available and the other is that the bureaucracy is hopeless, which we just heard about. Can you think of a way out of this for the various communities?
Ms. Tabobondung: I believe if we had the opportunity as the National Association of Friendship Centres to use some of the experiences we have acquired over our 40 years working with homelessness and some of the work we have done with the existing urban Aboriginal housing projects that we could most certainly come up with something that would start to alleviate some of the pressures our families are feeling. We could take some of the very basic things and start to work at that in partnership with other community agencies and have an Aboriginal design for an urban Aboriginal housing strategy.
When you have a whole dollar and that whole dollar goes to someone else, we are not going to be able to have healthy minds to be able to come up with some answers. However, I think that as we start to reshift and think about the investment and the assets we have, we would be able to have a better go at a housing strategy that would work. When we can do that, most certainly we will have made a positive step.
I am confident that within the National Association of Friendship Centres we could work with partners and different levels of government to be able to envision what that urban Aboriginal housing would look like.
Ms. Formsma: That is our position. We really want to have something that is built on our values and principles, but we cannot just look at the housing issue in terms of homelessness. There is a lot of mobility. We have high mobility rates within our communities, and people do not live in the same place from year to year.
As part of this overall examination, we cannot focus only on homelessness; we have to look also at home ownership and being able to have a place so that people do not have to be as mobile. We do have people who are doing all right and who are working well and earning a decent salary. However, there are still barriers for them to be able to own a home. That is a housing issue that I do not think has been on the table as often.
Senator Keon: Does the ownership aspect apply to both on-reserve and off-reserve housing?
Ms. Formsma: Ownership does not really exist on reserve. This is specific to off-reserve.
[Translation]
Senator Pépin: Mr. Jovel, immigrant single mothers who want decent housing in urban centres are treated unfairly because there is a systemic barrier. Has this anything to do with the woman's colour? Would a Black woman have more difficulty in finding decent housing as compared to other immigrant women? Would her colour make things more difficult for her? This would mean that unfortunately, a coloured immigrant woman would find it even harder than do other women to get decent housing.
Mr. Jovel: We are talking about systemic barriers. Let me give you an example. I will try to proceed step by step as I respond to the specific issue that you raised. For instance, landlords check a person's credit rating before renting an apartment to them. New arrivals often have no way of providing a landlord with their credit rating. This applies to all new arrivals and not only to coloured women. And then, landlords want references. A landlord may not accept the references given by an immigrant. Things can get even more difficult if the landlord learns that the person is a refugee or that they are underemployed or precariously employed at two or three small jobs in different places. If a landlord asks for proof of income and the applicant can only provide a few nondescript pieces of paper, there is a systemic barrier. Some barriers are faced by all new arrivals. Things are even harder for refugees and for those who do not yet have refugee status. At the same time, there are black single mothers who are not immigrants. I can tell you about cases that show how difficult it is for them to find a landlord who wants to rent an apartment to them. Refugee status or pending refugee status is also a problem. Unlike an immigrant, a Black single mother who was born in Canada and whose parents and grandparents have been here for generations, is aware of her rights and has some power to fight for her rights. She knows that she has resources. A newly arrived person is entirely on her own. I, myself, am an immigrant. I was a refugee, but I have lived here for 15 years and I know the system quite well. The majority of people who were born here know very well how things work. It is hard for them to imagine the situation of a new arrival trying to get through the first few months without any knowledge of the law, the resources and the way to prepare one's case. These are the systemic barriers that we are talking about. Racism is an additional factor. This is evident from the studies done by Statistics Canada as well as from two other very important studies published two weeks ago: Low Income and Chronic Low Income Situations Among Recent Immigrants and The Longitudinal Study.
Senator Pépin: I was struck by the situation of coloured immigrants and I wanted to emphasize it. I imagined that things would be even harder for them.
[English]
Ms. Rico: In my experience in my work with newly arrived women from Africa, when the ones who speak English call for a private rental, the person will tell them they have a space. When they go to view the apartment, that is when these women are told that the apartment is already taken. Why is this happening with landlords?
We need to strengthen the Tenant Protection Act, which in Ontario, for example, we lost 10 years ago. One of our biggest recommendations is that we need to provide training on the Tenant Protection Act so that we can provide the right information. We provide information to the newly arrived refugees but, at the same time, there is even a limitation on us to do the advocacy. We recommend that there should be a bill under which they can file complaints. In that case, all systemic barriers can be eliminated.
[Translation]
Mr. Jovel: We are working closely with organizations that help newly arrived francophones from Africa and Haiti, especially in Ontario. Indeed, outside of Canada's francophone regions, language poses a serious problem for immigrants in search of housing. In 2004, our organization did some research into the fact that in Canada, when someone first applies for independent immigrant status, the application form has a system that awards a number of important points for one's ability to speak either of Canada's official languages. Francophone immigrants from Africa and Haiti who settled in Ontario reported that they had not received clear and accurate information and that it would not be easy for them to settle anywhere in Canada even if they were proficient in either official language. Poverty, employment and housing represent additional barriers.
[English]
Senator Trenholme Counsell: This is a wonderfully inspiring presentation. Ms. Formsma, I hope we can encourage you to speak across Canada to inspire youth. The message you have given us is absolutely correct. Do not be shy to give it at every opportunity, and indeed seek opportunities to give the message you gave us this morning. You must be out there going after them. Be aggressive on this and help other youth to have the confidence and power to give a message such as you have given us.
I know you have touched on this, but I want to get a better picture of a new person coming to Toronto, for instance. Are there many centres throughout different communities and sections of the city where one can get information? I go to information centres in malls because I want to find things — not that I go to malls often. Is that a fundamental problem?
I know that in Toronto there are people with many languages. What do newcomers do if they are not readily embraced into a community that speaks their language?
In New Brunswick we have the multicultural association, which does so much of that. There is no comparison between New Brunswick and Toronto or other large cities. Is that a fundamental problem or is it improving?
Ms. Rico: OCASI has 110 member agencies in Toronto that serve immigrants and refugees. In our new agreement with the federal government and provinces, we have funding that will help new arrivals get settled.
The issue is not whether there are too many or too few centres to serve newly arrived immigrants. One of the main problems is how they are being seen, as Mr. Jovel mentioned, and the barriers they are facing. For example, a refugee who is a doctor or an engineer cannot practise here in Canada because his credentials are not accepted. Or there could be someone living and working in Toronto who does not have status and is therefore not eligible to apply for housing, for example. That is the problem in Toronto.
We have good services because we have many agencies that can provide the services. We now have new funding that we just received; it started last year. That is how we started working towards better services.
Senator Callbeck: We have been talking about the council providing services to immigrants in urban areas. I assume you do this in rural areas too. We are doing a study on rural poverty right now in another committee and we hear a lot about how we get immigrants to come and settle in rural Canada.
Do you have any figures on the number of immigrants in rural Ontario? Is that percentage increasing, are we going backwards, or where do we stand?
Mr. Jovel: The information is out there. There are 110 agencies in Toronto and 180 across the province; that is a lot of resources — I am not saying enough — for newcomers. The information is out there for them. However, a bigger problem is the enforcement part, which is why I referred to Bill 161 in relation to temporary agencies in Ontario. You can give the information to newcomers, but the potential for abuse by landlords or employers is still there because the newcomer is vulnerable and can be intimated.
This is a particular problem for women, in part because in the early stages when families arrive here, the service providers, even those at the government level, usually give counselling or information to the man. If anything happens later where a woman needs to take responsibility because her husband is ill or they are divorced, she has not gone through the same process to become informed and empowered to proceed.
I do not have the figures with me, but we know that immigrants tend to settle in large urban centres. In Ontario, more than half of the immigrants settle in Toronto and larger urban centres and fewer in rural areas. We do have members based in small communities and rural areas. That is pretty much the interface between the immigrant and refugee serving sector and the farms and rural work.
I am not sure I can give you the figures. There has been a small centre strategy initiative across Canada to attract and retain immigrants. There is a lot of thinking in the sector about what needs to be put in place so that when people settle in a community they feel welcome instead of facing an uphill struggle that lasts for a few years. It is a reasonably short and effective process. To have immigrants settle in different areas and not just in large urban centres is a challenge.
As was said earlier today, having a family or larger community to rely on when you are a newcomer is beneficial; you need that support. That is one reason people settle in large urban centres.
The Chairman: We must bring this to a close. I would like to thank our witnesses. You are doing valuable work. We applaud you for that, and you must keep going. We thank you very much for the input that you have provided today. It will be quite valuable in dealing with the issues of poverty, housing and homelessness.
The committee adjourned.