Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 25 - Evidence, May 10, 2007
OTTAWA, Thursday, May 10, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:05 a.m. to examine and report upon rural poverty in Canada.
Senator Joyce Fairbairn (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Good morning, honourable senators, and witnesses, and good morning to all of those who are watching our Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. Last May this committee was authorized to examine and report on rural poverty in Canada.
Last fall we heard from a number of expert witnesses, who gave us an overview of rural poverty in Canada, and on the basis of that testimony, we wrote an interim report, which was released in December, just before Christmas, and which, by all accounts, really struck a nerve. We are now in the midst of our second phase of the study, where we meet with rural Canadians in rural Canada. So far we have travelled to Athens, Ontario, and to the four eastern and western provinces. Along the way we met a truly wonderful and diverse group of rural Canadians who have welcomed us with open arms into their communities and sometimes their homes.
The committee still has much work to do. We still need to visit rural communities in northern Ontario, Quebec, and in our northern territories. We want to hear from as many people as possible. In short, we need to make sure we get this right and that we understand rural poverty in its core.
To that end, we continue to invite witnesses to Ottawa, and this morning we have Jake Kuiken, member of the board of directors for the Canadian Association of Social Workers, CASW. Founded in 1926, the CASW has evolved into a national voice on behalf of some 15,000 members. We have one hour this morning to cover a wide range of issues with this witness. I invite my colleagues to keep their questions as brief and crisp as possible to allow him to respond fully for everybody. Mr. Kuiken, you will start first. Give us a good background, and then my colleagues will be full of questions.
Jake Kuiken, Board of Directors, Alberta Representative, Canadian Association of Social Workers: Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I am delighted to be here as a social worker, in particular, as a board member for the Canadian Association of Social Workers.
We appreciate the opportunity to make this presentation and to be part of the discussion that you have referenced already, a national dialogue around the issue of rural poverty.
As you indicated, the Canadian Association of Social Workers was started in 1926. I might add, according to a colleague of mine who has been involved for much longer than I have, we are of the oldest social work organizations in the world. Canada was part of the social work community early on.
We represent about 15,000 social workers across Canada. We were a founding member of the International Federation of Social Workers in 1928, so we have a long history of commenting, encouraging the development of public policy around a number of issues, and one of those issues is poverty and social programs.
This morning, I thought I would pick out a couple of things that were in our submission, which, by the way, are my notes to myself rather than a polished presentation.
One thing I looked at were some of the transcripts of this committee. Early on I noticed there was some discussion around the subject: What does it mean to be poor? I think you had Christopher Sarlo and an organization called Citizens for Public Justice, both of whom I am somewhat familiar with. What has struck me as a social worker is that often the issue of poverty, in terms of its definition, revolves around the discussion: How many dollars does it take to be not poor?
I have come to the conclusion in recent years that, while I do not want to diminish the importance of the number, what is more important is what people are capable of doing or not doing, or being and not being. As Canadians, as human beings, I think we all aspire to be and to do the things that are uniquely human kinds of qualities.
What I found particularly helpful, in thinking about that, was going back to Adam Smith, probably not foreign to us, but certainly not someone we go back to often to find out what we think is important.
Mr. Smith, often thought to be the father of capitalism, and sometimes not thought about particularly favourably, has profound insights into what it takes to have a good quality of life.
I often refer to what he wrote as his story about shoes. In his book, The Wealth of Nations, he writes about what people need not to feel ashamed about who they are and what they look like. He writes that if it is necessary for someone not to feel ashamed about how they appear by having leather shoes, then people ought to have those leather shoes. In other words, he establishes what I would call a rule of decency.
We evaluate ourselves and each other, at least in part, by how we look, and his point is that leather shoes are an essential point of appearing to be decent. The quote I want to read is:
Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people.
I think that point is important. More contemporary people who have thought about this subject are the economist, Amartya Sen, who received a Nobel prize, I believe it was 1998, and Martha Nussbaum, who is a legal scholar at the University of Chicago. They have developed what is called the Capability Approach. I have summarized briefly, particularly what Nussbaum thinks about those capabilities. You have it there in front of you.
Next, I want to comment on some of the social issues that social workers typically encounter working in rural far northern and remote parts of Canada. Some information is statistical in nature. I extracted some of these things from recent reports by various government departments. One of them is, how healthy are rural Canadians? That report points out that a higher proportion of people live with low income in rural areas. The prevalence of smoking and obesity are greater in rural areas. Urban men live longer. Mortality risks in rural areas are higher, driven by higher rates of circulatory diseases, injuries and suicide.
On the other side of the equation, overall cancer rates are somewhat lower. Respiratory mortality risks are significantly higher amongst rural residents.
I mention these health-related aspects because many social workers across Canada work in health settings. I can tell you that about a year ago there were some issues in Calgary with the health system in terms of emergency services. The chief executive officer of the Calgary health district hired a number of social workers to be placed in the emergency rooms of the Foothills Hospital to help prospective patients deal with stress and emotion as they waited to be triaged into health care. Social workers are on the front line of health care, not only in urban areas but also in rural settings.
Particularly in the northern parts of Alberta, the province with which I am most familiar, social workers are on the front line of delivering mental health services, for instance.
I wanted to make a few comments about experiences that social workers encounter when working in rural, remote, and northern parts of the country.
Again, I owe a great deal to my colleagues who have helped me put this presentation together. One of the first things a number of social workers told me was that poverty is all about service deprivation.
Simply put, we have great difficulty accessing the kinds of services that are available regularly in urban Canada and in urban settings across the country.
One example is child care. It is difficult to find good quality child care. The labour force participation rate in Alberta of both men and women is amongst the highest in the country, both amongst those with and without young children. However, those families particularly with young children have a great deal of difficulty because of limited access to quality child care.
In the area of child welfare, in particular, living in a rural part of Canada is extremely problematic when social workers engaged in the child welfare system repeatedly must send children to the urban settings, away from their homes in those remote or rural settings. It is not helpful to the treatment that children often require that they are removed from the home or the community in which they normally live.
Poverty is frequently what I would call the substrata for many of these different social issues. To digress for a minute, K Division of the RCMP issued a report, I believe in late 2006, about the issues that contribute to crime, and in particular to the development of gangs. The report pointed specifically to poverty as the underlying factor. In effect, the argument was that young people are unable to do and to be what they want, and lack the capability of exercising their potential. As a result, they begin to look to others who are in similar situations, and hence develop into gangs around crime issues.
The other comment I wanted to make is with respect to the practice of social work in Aboriginal communities. I encountered this combination of things while I was President of the Alberta College of Social Workers in speaking to colleagues. Above all, the devastating impact of extreme poverty of Aboriginal people in the northern and remote parts of our country is appalling. The levels of substance abuse and family violence are disproportionate, by far. Again, those things are connected to the issue of poverty.
The difficulty for social workers in those particular settings is the matter of simply staying hopeful in what appears to be a hopeless situation. Perhaps not entirely new to this committee is the comment of many social workers that I have spoken to about the political games that go on between the federal, provincial and local governments and First Nations. These games cause problems in terms of finding resolutions to many of the social issues that are encountered by social workers working in Aboriginal communities.
I have spoken about as long as I want to at this point. I am available for your questions.
Senator Callbeck: Your association has had a long history. It was established in 1926. As you say, you have been involved a great deal with policy.
You have talked about the social issues of rural Canada. I want to ask about strategy. We know that Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec have anti-poverty strategies. What are your thoughts on a national strategy and what should be included in it? Where should we start, and what recommendations would you make regarding a national strategy?
Mr. Kuiken: That is an interesting question. I will give it my best. For a national strategy, we need more of the good work that is happening in Newfoundland and Labrador and in Quebec.
Canada needs some kind of guaranteed annual income. There are other ways of describing it. In some respects, we already have a whole series of guaranteed incomes but, programmatically, they are not well developed. For instance, at a provincial level, we have welfare. At a national level, we have pensions and Employment Insurance. We have a hodgepodge of what I would call categorical programs directed towards particular groups of people.
It is time to look at a more comprehensive and unified approach that combines and gets rid of these categorical programs. Canada did that once before. In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, we talked about what eventually became known as the Canada Assistance Plan. In many respects it was a superb program because it enabled federal dollars, provincial dollars and, in some provinces, municipal dollars to be directed toward a number of issues.
That legislation, if I remember the preamble correctly, was about eliminating poverty and preventing children from coming into care under child welfare legislation. That focus was primary.
We should move toward eliminating categorical programs and move to a comprehensive legislative framework that brings the best of what the federal government is able to do with what provincial governments are able to do.
By the way, the Canada Assistance Plan got rid of many individual or categorical programs that were developed primarily post-World War II. I suggest moving in the direction of, for lack of a better term, a guaranteed annual income.
Senator Callbeck: Certainly, the Canada Assistance Plan had another advantage as well, in that we knew exactly where the province would spend the money.
Mr. Kuiken: Yes.
Senator Callbeck: Of course, with block funding, it is entirely different.
Mr. Kuiken: Yes, I cannot remember exactly the year that this took place, but I believe it was during the early years of the Trudeau government. Minister Lalonde in an Orange Paper did some experiments, I believe in Manitoba, around a guaranteed annual income. I know it was researched. I have never seen a final report on it, but I recall that it was relatively successful as an experiment.
Whether we go back to that sort of thing or move forward from where we are now, we should eliminate the categorical programs. All they do is divide people. A great deal of provincial legislation is built on the values of those who are deserving versus those who are non-deserving. We see that in welfare legislation in many provinces.
Senator Callbeck: So you would have a comprehensive framework, and have it delivered by one government?
Mr. Kuiken: That is where the complexity of federal-provincial jurisdictions comes in. That is something that needs to be negotiated amongst the two orders of government.
Senator Callbeck: On another subject, the working conditions of social workers have changed a great deal, as has everything, over the past ten years. How is the Internet involved here? Do you use the Internet to provide any services?
Mr. Kuiken: Yes, a number of social workers provide counselling over the Internet. Some work has been done internationally, particularly in the U.S., between the Association of Social Work Boards and the National Association of Social Workers. As the Canadian Association of Social Workers, we have a special arrangement with the National Association of Social Workers, NASW, around a number of issues. We are aware that Internet counselling is happening. In a regulatory context, which is where the concerns have been raised, that area of jurisdiction is provincial, and a number of provincial regulatory bodies are looking at those particular issues to see what the implications are.
There are social workers who provide counselling services over the Internet.
Senator Callbeck: You say the provinces are looking at regulatory issues. Give me examples of those issues.
Mr. Kuiken: One issue is that once they begin counselling over the Internet, there are no limits as to who they can counsel. They can be on the other side of the world. How do regulatory bodies deal with that when their jurisdiction is within the province? How do they deal with a complaint from someplace in Europe, for example? Those issues arise. There is the question of confidentiality. They can engage in elaborate ways of trying to ensure security, but it is the Internet and hacking is not an unpopular sport.
Senator Oliver: Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Kuiken. When I heard a portion of your presentation, it made me worry about being poor and living in rural Canada, because there was not a lot that was positive about it. For instance, you spoke about the prevalence of smoking and obesity for those who are poor and living in a rural area. The mortality risk in rural areas is higher, as is respiratory disease. The level of education is lower for people who live in rural areas. They exhibit less healthy behaviours. The list goes on.
The picture was negative and I began to wonder why in the world a person would want to live in rural Canada if these are the findings of the Canadian Association of Social Workers. Why would you ever counsel someone to live in rural Canada if these are the conditions?
Mr. Kuiken: That is an interesting question. I must say it may well reflect at least a partial bias of the profession that we gravitate towards looking at those statistics. That would be one comment I would make.
My other comment is that the data comes from the Government of Canada. The question of how healthy are rural Albertans is a Canadian Population Health Initiative. I simply summarized what they produced.
There are many good things about rural Canada as well. Many people have firmly planted themselves in rural Canada and would not leave are doing well, whether they are in the farming business, the forestry business or oil if they are from Alberta. Having lived in Calgary for most of my life, these days I often think there might be advantages to living outside a large, dense, populated area.
Senator Oliver: Health-wise, given your statistics, why would one take the chance?
Mr. Kuiken: Maybe that is why this committee is having these hearings, because, in point of fact, there are significant issues. I mentioned service deprivation, from a social work perspective. I spoke only about those things that social workers typically are involved in.
The research I have looked at shows that people who live relatively close to a large urban area have access to a wide range of services. However, if they live in remote areas of Northern Alberta or Northern Saskatchewan, there are not a lot of services. Unless that is their home community and they, as do many Aboriginal people, identify with the land in the way they uniquely do, there are many things about the quality of life that are difficult.
Senator Oliver: I think a number of aspects of quality of life in rural Canada can be positive.
Mr. Kuiken: For those who are reasonably well off, that is absolutely true. For those who are poor, it is not such a good deal.
Senator Oliver: That leads to my final question. I was fascinated by what you called the Capability Approach. You referred to two authors on page 3. As I read and understand it, Ms. Nussbaum lists 10 so-called capabilities that promote human functioning: that is, the capabilities define the things that we are as humans and the things that make us human. Nussbaum talks about emotions, practical reasons and affiliation. Since this study is of rural poverty, I took, as an example, the concept of affiliation under capabilities. Your presentation says:
Being able to live for and in relation to others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction . . . .
If a person is in poverty, living in rural Canada, how can the person obtain this aspect of affiliation as defined in your paper?
Mr. Kuiken: That is an interesting question. I will share with you a case that I personally dealt with a couple of years ago when I worked on the east side of Calgary in communities that are relatively poor and diverse. My staff had started a program for women. It attracted a number of women from outside Calgary, one of whom was Aboriginal and dealing with mental health and child welfare issues. In the course of one of our discussions with that group of women, this woman told us about how she needed to fish in the Bow River to provide her children with, as she said, protein. She lived about 50 miles outside Calgary.
In terms of poor people living in rural areas, the opportunity for affiliation, to live in relationship with others, is profoundly limited. The kinds of characteristics that I cited from that health study would probably be reflected in her life.
Senator Oliver: All 10 capabilities listed in your paper would be difficult to achieve for people living in rural poverty.
Mr. Kuiken: Yes, absolutely.
Senator Oliver: What can we, as a committee studying rural poverty, take from that?
Mr. Kuiken: I want to go back to Senator Callbeck's question about how we address this issue of poverty. One thing I did not say in response to her question is that we have a tradition in Canada of talking about minimum wage. We need to move beyond that discussion and adopt what is a living wage. No one in Canada, in my view, should be expected to work and not earn enough money to live a decent, reasonable life, the kind of decency that Adam Smith spoke about in 1776.
There are movements here and there across Canada where local community groups talk increasingly about issues of a living wage rather than a minimum wage. In Alberta, for instance, the minimum wage at the moment is $7 an hour. I am sorry to say, people cannot live on $7 an hour if they live in the city of Calgary. They cannot afford a house or food. In rural Alberta, the situation is exactly the same. We need to have a wage that enables people to earn enough money so they can live a reasonable, decent lifestyle. The first way to address the issue is through the market. That is how we have decided to engage in issues of exchange.
For those who are not able to work for whatever reason, we need to look at some kind of guaranteed income or a comprehensive income support program.
Senator Oliver: Your thinking is one component of rural poverty this committee is looking at. Do you feel that some kind of cash, money or income is the way out of it? That being the case, is there any other element that you could tell the committee about?
Mr. Kuiken: I talked about service deprivation. That obviously is connected to the issue of money. We need to be more creative about how services are delivered in rural remote parts of our country. Some of my colleagues, particularly in the area of child welfare, place children in communities other than where they grew up. We need to rethink those kinds of issues when we separate children, for good reasons in many cases, not only from family, but from local community. What are we making better?
Senator Peterson: Thank you sir for your presentation this morning. We are dealing with rural poverty but there also is urban poverty. You spoke of smoking, obesity and respiratory illness in connection with rural poverty. Is that to say those problems are not in the urban sector or, would we have different results in the urban sector?
Mr. Kuiken: The report I referenced is How Healthy are Rural Canadians, looking specifically at distinguishing rural from urban populations. It is not to say that these problems do not exist in urban areas. The presence of those factors is higher in rural areas.
Senator Peterson: In the delivery of social services, what is the lowest denominator? How would a village of 200 people access social services even if the service were obviously not in the village?
Mr. Kuiken: In some instances, particularly in the northern parts of the country, it is not unusual for a social worker to find himself but most often herself, as one the few professionals in a community. The other ones might be the RCMP, a nurse or social worker. They may live in one of the villages, the kind you described and service a number of other similar villages elsewhere in the region.
Anecdotally, I was surprised a number of years ago, being an urban social worker, when one of my colleagues said she was taking a special course because she was going to work in northern Alberta. I said, what is the course? She said, "I need to learn how to look after a four-wheel drive. I will live in a community that is only accessible by four-wheel drive. I know nothing about them so I am taking a course in looking after a four-wheel drive.''
Senator Peterson: In remote areas, you talked about abject poverty. Is the definition different? Obviously, it would not be lack of money because I imagine no one would have much to use as a benchmark. Do we look at things such as nutrition and health care? What benchmarks should we focus on in our report?
Mr. Kuiken: Any report has must not only provide leadership but must have some kind of vision. I hope that any report this committee produces has some kind of vision that encourages and enables the well-being of rural Canadians as much as urban Canadians. We do things incrementally in Canada, so we need to do that as well. The report needs some kind of vision that we can aspire to and work towards. It should go beyond the basic essentials but move into some of the things that Senator Oliver spoke about, those notions of affiliation and things that we all aspire to.
Senator Peterson: We have read about cases where social services failed their clients. Would this failure be a case of overwork, lack of direction, overlap and duplication where no one follows up? Should social service be an integral part of what we talk about here in our vision, in a broader sense?
Mr. Kuiken: Absolutely: I want to comment about Aboriginal communities in particular, because of the extreme poverty and complexity of the issues those communities deal with. I do not know the solution. Much of what we have tried in the past has not been effective in supporting and enabling people in the First Nation Aboriginal community to be what they could be. I think this distinct group needs to be addressed in this kind of a report.
Senator Mahovlich: Is the gap between the rich and poor in rural areas wider than in urban centres?
Mr. Kuiken: My recollection is yes. I do not remember what the genie coefficient, a measure of income equality, is for rural Canada but my recollection is the depth of rural poverty is greater than that of urban Canada. That situation might well be connected to the availability of income support programs. That would be my guess.
Senator Mahovlich: I read in the paper yesterday that the gap is becoming wider. We are not closing it at all.
Mr. Kuiken: That is correct. From what I have seen, the spread in income between those who have and those who have not has become worse in recent years in Canada. I have been a social worker, albeit in an urban area, for 41 years. My own experience tells me that things in the last 10 to 15 years have become significantly worse than ever before for people living in straitened circumstances.
Senator Callbeck: In your experience, has family violence increased a great deal in rural Canada?
Mr. Kuiken: I had the good fortune of being part of a course recently where one of the other students specializes in incidents and issues associated with family violence. She identified two issues. One, we are becoming more aware of the problem. The count might be higher than it used to be. Two, the complexity of issues around family violence and our understanding of them are increasing. People are reporting family violence more often. It is seen increasingly as an underlying factor in child welfare. Children witnessing family violence end up in the child welfare system because they have had this experience.
Senator Callbeck: I take it the statistics show family violence increasing but one reason may be that we are more aware of it and report it more frequently.
From your experience, or your association, what recommendations would you give the committee as to how we can decrease or eliminate family violence within rural areas?
Mr. Kuiken: In the first instance, services need to be made available. In the context of rural populations is the notion of service deprivation. We need to be more creative about delivering services. Two major institutions, I think, could be helpful. One is the health care system. The other is the educational system. One of those institutions sooner or later opens itself to members of a family through children. We do not fully exploit those institutions in terms of their potential to provide interventions in situations.
I will qualify that point by saying it does not suddenly become the responsibility of teachers. Teachers ought to teach and have as much time to devote to teaching as possible. However, we need to build in other support services to the educational and health systems in rural Canada that are not necessarily available now.
Senator Callbeck: You talk about being more creative in delivering services. You mention health and education, and other support services. I want to hear more about both those areas.
Mr. Kuiken: The volunteer communities have something to offer. Rural communities have a high sense of volunteerism and what I call community support, mutual-aid kinds of things, working through those organizations, whether 4-H clubs or other agricultural societies, but introducing some of these issues into the things that they discuss and become aware of.
In my own practice many years ago I started off doing welfare and it was probably the best training ground for social work that one can get. I encountered every kind of problem in that one year. I have never dealt with anything new, as it were, including family violence, but our level of awareness of the dynamics of family violence was not then what it is now. I can tell you that I would have done things differently. My point is creating awareness. I mentioned health, education, the volunteer community and the various faith communities. All those resources can be vehicles for creating awareness. That is the first step. The next step now is to provide the services. There are some challenges in northern rural areas.
Senator Callbeck: The first step is awareness. What role does government play there?
Mr. Kuiken: I mentioned the Canada Assistance Plan earlier because I have always thought of that legislation as an interesting tool. Alberta was the only province, if I remember correctly, that directly involved municipal governments, and municipal governments in turn funded, and still do, local groups to identify and to deliver services. In Alberta, federal dollars, provincial dollars, municipal dollars and voluntary dollars, the whole gamut, provided services that were identified in local communities. I believe, at the moment in Alberta, 104 different communities provide family and community support services programs. In fact, your next speaker, who is from Alberta, was once the President of the Family and Community Support Services Association of Alberta. That program, enabled through federal legislation, was a hugely creative way of addressing those particular issues: creating awareness, creating services and then delivering them.
Senator Callbeck: What program was that?
Mr. Kuiken: Federally, it was called the Canada Assistance Plan. In Alberta it was initially called the Preventive Social Services Act of 1966 and it later became the Family and Community Support Services Act. As I say, three orders of government shared costs with local community groups to deliver services identified by local communities. It was a creative program. Many of its best features ceased to exist when the Canada Assistance Plan was replaced by the Canada Health and Social Transfer.
Senator Callbeck: The CAP program was 50-50. The feds put in 50 cent and the province put in 50.
Mr. Kuiken: Alberta had a special deal. The federal government put in 50 cents, the provincial government put in 30 cents, and the municipalities put in 20 cents.
The Chairman: When the federal government brought forward the infrastructure program several years ago, much to many people's surprise, the first province to buy into that was Alberta, and in so doing, it also opened its door to let the municipal level of government be part of the proposals. It worked.
Senator Oliver: You mentioned one thing at the beginning of your presentation and you referred to it later in answering a question from Senator Callbeck. You referred to Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations and his definition of the necessities of life to which everyone is entitled, rich or poor. The language used by Adam Smith in 1776 is "rules of decency.'' To put that in context, the quote reads:
Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people.
What do you, a long experienced social worker, now say are those elements of decency? What things today make the necessaries?
Mr. Kuiken: People need a living wage as the first thing. Obviously, there is food, clothing, shelter, transportation, health care, child care and recreation. Let us say we sleep eight hours, we work eight hours and we have eight hours, or some number of hours, as leisure. We need to begin thinking about what we do in our leisure time, whether it is volunteer work or engaging in recreation, but those things are profoundly essential to our sense of well-being, regardless of what we do in terms of contributing to our own well-being or contributing to the well-being of our community.
The necessaries of life today are much broader than we typically conceptualized them in income support programs, or in our minimum wage kind of thinking. I would include things such as leisure time. Our leisure time activity is important in creating quality of life for Canadians.
Senator Oliver: That quality also applies to people in poverty.
Mr. Kuiken: Absolutely: In fact, if you look at some of the research around the benefits of recreation or leisure, it is profoundly important, particularly in the lives of children. It gives them all kinds of a sense of self-worth of being able to relate to others. In terms of the diversity of this country, there is nothing like leisure activities where kids just play. That helps create a sense of community, irrespective of whether they live in rural Canada or urban Canada. Maybe they play street hockey in rural Canada and they go to the rink in urban Canada, but they need something that gives them a sense of belonging, of purpose.
Senator Oliver: Do you think this is something that the state or the national government should be involved in?
Mr. Kuiken: Yes, but maybe government has to think about how. I am not necessarily saying that governments need to fund everything, but they need to create and develop the infrastructure to enable that play to happen, so that it can happen. By infrastructure, maybe the need is capital dollars rather than operating dollars.
We need to have a conversation in this country about what we can do because, ultimately, we are talking about our children and our children's children. We have an opportunity, given the state of our current knowledge, to make a real difference for the next generation of children. The research is clear, particularly in terms of leisure.
Senator Mahovlich: When I was a young boy, there was a Rotary Club and a Lion's Club. Are these gone? Are they still active in rural Canada? I grew up in Northern Ontario.
Mr. Kuiken: I do not know how viable they are at this point in time in rural Canada, but I can tell you that many service clubs are struggling for members. I spoke recently at a Kiwanis Club in Calgary. They looked like some of us, grey. They are fine people, but they are tired. They have done this for 20 or 30 years, and no one is coming. We need to rethink those things.
Senator Mahovlich: The youth are not going in that direction. They are probably too busy, or do not have enough recreational time.
Mr. Kuiken: To the extent that recreational time is available, it is disproportionately unavailable to people living with low income.
On a personal note, I was the manager of a social work recreation group of people working for the City of Calgary until a few years ago, and I used to go to the local fitness centre in east Calgary and do lane swimming at noon. There would be three or four of us in the pool during the weekdays. The fee was $5 per swim. On Sundays, the city had a special deal called loonie Sunday. For a buck you could swim. Particularly during the summers, families would line up outside the door because they could then afford it, but the $5 user fee was not affordable. A struggle is going on between the haves and the have-nots and it works itself out most concretely in the lives of our children.
Senator Mahovlich: That should not be. The poor little boy should be able to go to that pool.
Mr. Kuiken: Absolutely.
The Chairman: Not too long ago, there was a nation-wide study by the sports part of the federal government on what communities believed was the most important assistance to be given to young people to bring them into sports and ultimately into the highly competitive sports that Canada has always been involved in.
Without doubt, in every region of Canada, at that local level, it came back that local communities need to go back to the days where there was an easy place to play hockey and swim, places that were available to people at any level, economically, of life in our smaller communities. To a large extent — and it certainly existed when I was young — for economic reasons or whatever, it has disappeared. It has taken away a great opportunity, not only in the sports community, but in the health community as well.
It has been wonderful to have you here, Mr. Kuiken. You will be pleased to know that our witness earlier in the week was Marie Logan from Lomond, and she spoke about the importance of 4-H. We are hearing these things, and it is useful for us.
Our second set of witnesses this morning is from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. With us to talk about rural municipalities in Canada are Don Johnson, Chair of the Rural Forum; and Susan Villeneuve, Senior Policy Analyst.
We have an hour to cover a wide array of issues with these witnesses, so I invite my colleagues, as always, to keep their questions crisp and as brief as possible so we can allow our witnesses to respond fully to add another story to our hearings.
Don Johnson, Chair, Rural Forum, Federation of Canadian Municipalities: It is an honour to be here this morning. Thank you for the invitation to visit with you. Hopefully, we can add to the discussions you have had, and that you will find our contributions useful.
May I express, on behalf of those of us in Southern Alberta, our appreciation for the leadership that you have provided in supporting rural Southern Alberta. I know that has been translated to the federal level. The Chairman is well known and well respected by all of us in that area.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
Mr. Johnson: We bring greetings from Alberta and on behalf of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, FCM.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today. The survival of vibrant rural communities is linked inextricably to Canada's success as a global economic competitor, which requires that we maintain a high quality of life for everyone.
As your interim report shows, defining the terms "rural'' and "poverty'' can be complicated, but the simple truth is that economic and social poverty touches much of rural Canada.
Although Canada's rural communities are critical to our economic, social and environmental fabric, a growing number of rural communities are struggling. They face increasing poverty, weakening economies, deteriorating infrastructure, and an aging population. Worst of all, they are losing their young people, who have left in search of other opportunities. As a result, rural communities are losing their capacity to foster economic activity and maintain a high quality of life.
Rural poverty and its many consequences is a complex issue. As your interim report pointed out, the problem goes far beyond farm poverty and is tied to the economic and demographic decline of rural Canada.
FCM's rural policies are based on a number of core principles. Rural communities are significant contributors to the national economic growth of this country. If we look at the report of the Prime Minister's External Advisory Committee on Cities and Communities, it specifically references rural Canada as a significant contributor to the GDP of this country, but it is not recognized as such. The report makes recommendations on what we could do.
All orders of government must work together to promote sustainable rural communities that build on economic, social, environmental and cultural foundations to improve residents' quality of life. Programs that are successful in urban areas will not be successful necessarily in rural communities, which have different capacities.
Rural municipal governments generally do not have the same resources and expertise as their urban counterparts. There is growing concern in rural Canada about the federal government's capacity to respond to rural challenges and concerns. FCM's rural forum has called for a clear rural champion in cabinet, as well as a fully resourced administrative body that can coordinate across federal departments and respond to rural needs. In fact, we have suggested that we need a rural ministry specifically to deal with some of the challenges we face.
Our submission today includes a number of recommendations. We ask that you include these recommendations in your report and that you urge the federal government to do the following:
First, ensure that a significant portion of the new Building Canada Fund is dedicated to municipal infrastructure projects.
Set aside a specifically designed funding program that recognizes rural conditions and takes into account the particular challenges faced by rural municipal governments.
Foster conditions for rural economic development and diversification so that these communities enjoy the advantages comparable to those in urban areas. One measure would be to ensure that farmers in rural communities can participate in, and benefit from, biofuel production, as an example.
Ensure that rural communities have high-speed access to the Internet by developing and funding a program based on the successful Broadband for Rural and Northern Development, BRAND, pilot project.
Ensure that federal policies and programs recognize the linkages between rural and urban communities. This component is critical. Urban and rural communities are tied together: they cannot be separated.
Ensure that rural communities have access to resources including tools, expertise and financial capacity.
Develop federal policies, programs, and regulations in partnership with municipal governments. FCM believes that strategies to encourage rural economic development must include new and innovative approaches to attract people to rural communities and encourage them to stay.
Rural communities must become attractive to young people, immigrants and Aboriginal people, and to do that, they must build or rebuild their infrastructure: economic, technological, social, and cultural areas. This infrastructure must include libraries, parks, post offices and community centres. Post offices play an important role. People do not understand that. When people lose their post office, they lose the ability to connect, and we have lost much of that in rural Canada. Although roads, bridges and airports will take people to rural communities, a high quality of life will keep them there.
In closing, I want to stress that a one-size-fits-all federal approach to dealing with rural communities and rural poverty will not work. The cure for rural poverty is healthy and prosperous rural communities. Rural communities need sustainable development strategies to enhance and diversify their economic base. For example, we believe that the government's role is to create a positive environment and to work with rural communities to support locally developed initiatives.
One of the keys, not only with individuals but also with communities, is to give people a sense of hope. Some have lost that sense of hope. How do we do that? How do we respond? Government's role is to provide tools and opportunities, provincially, federally and municipally, to give people that hope.
We need to develop initiatives, plans and projects so that all our citizens have access to essential services. We believe that any action taken to improve rural communities must be initiated and led at the local level. It needs to start from within those communities. The solutions must allow flexibility and innovation and must have cooperation among rural regions and communities.
We believe four key areas are essential for sustainable rural communities. They are: economic growth; community capacity and that speaks to quality of life and infrastructure; health care delivery and you had some discussion with your previous speaker in that regard; and learning and skill development.
Priority access involves giving rural citizens a real voice in the discussion, improving access to resources, building community capacity, particularly in leadership, and rural regional development.
To be effective in any Canadian province or territory, solutions must incorporate an integrated long-term approach by all orders of government, supported by a real understanding of rural-urban interdependencies and specific rural challenges.
Only then can we get on with the work of closing the growing divide between urban and rural, a divide that is creating two Canadas: one urban, populous and prosperous; the other rural, depopulated and poor.
Thank you for your time and consideration this morning. I am happy to respond to any questions. I have additional materials I will leave that may be useful.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Johnson.
Senator Callbeck: Thank you, madam chair, and thank you for coming this morning.
You represent the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and Mr. Johnson, you are chair of the Rural Forum.
Mr. Johnson: Yes.
Senator Callbeck: What does that mean? What makes up the Rural Forum? Is that the rural municipalities? How often does it meet and so on?
Mr. Johnson: They are rural communities. Then, we get into a discussion about what rural really means. We consider it to be communities of 10,000 and under across the country. Our board meets four times a year in various locations across Canada. We have an upcoming meeting in Calgary, our annual conference with all the rural and urban municipal communities. We will have a specific rural component. It is a broad cross-section from coast to coast to coast.
Senator Callbeck: You have representatives from every province.
Mr. Johnson: Yes, these are municipal associations. I am the President of the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties, and as such I sit on the board of FCM but I am also the chair of the Rural Forum.
Senator Callbeck: Would they be representative of places that are under 10,000?
Mr. Johnson: Yes, we have small fishing villages in Newfoundland, communities in Nunavut and Northwest Territories, and others across the prairies.
Senator Callbeck: You use the figure 1,400. Is that for the whole Federation of Canadian Municipalities?
Mr. Johnson: There are 1,400 member municipalities, including urban and rural.
Senator Callbeck: How many are rural?
Mr. Johnson: If we take the definition of 10,000 and under, it would probably be the majority of the members. Some consider themselves both urban and rural. For example, in Alberta, the definition is different than it is in other areas. In Ontario anything that is a village and up is considered urban. In other provinces it is not necessarily the same.
For example in southern Alberta, Joyce, Enchant, Taber, and High River are really rural communities. They are service centres for outlying rural farm communities.
Senator Callbeck: How are you financed?
Mr. Johnson: How is FCM financed?
Senator Callbeck: Where does the money come from?
Mr. Johnson: The money to operate FCM comes from the membership fees of the municipalities. It receives no government grants of any sort.
Senator Callbeck: What are your membership fees, roughly?
Mr. Johnson: For small communities, they are in the order of $400 or $500. For larger cities such as Calgary or Toronto, the fee is substantially larger. It is on a per capita basis.
Senator Callbeck: You mentioned broadband access. How many of these 400 municipalities have access to broadband?
Mr. Johnson: Not nearly enough. About a year and a half ago I pushed vigorously to have a rural task force within the Rural Forum. Minister Godfrey invited us to approach government more, to tell our story and outline some of the challenges we have in rural Canada. We identified three specific areas: transportation infrastructure, which is critical to the economic viability of the outlying areas; broadband high speed Internet services; and environmental sustainability, which speaks to waste water and treatment.
Thirty per cent of our rural communities currently do not have access to broadband.
Senator Callbeck: Is that thirty per cent of those 1,400 municipalities?
Mr. Johnson: No, that is 30 per cent of the rural municipalities.
Susan Villeneuve, Senior Policy Analyst, Federation of Canadian Municipalities: The BRAND program, a pilot project to bring broadband into the rural communities, ended March 31, 2007. Presently, there is no funding available for any future programs.
Mr. Johnson: It is not only a federal government responsibility to provide funding but also a provincial responsibility. Our role is not only dealing with the federal government, but also with the provincial governments, to encourage their support and participation in programs like this.
Your previous speaker talked about the family services support program, unique in Canada, where the municipalities have ownership with 20 per cent funding and provincial governments 80 per cent funding. Local communities have tremendous ownership of that program. They have the opportunity, under the legislation, to determine what the needs of their own community are, and they have a fund they can access to deliver those programs.
Senator Callbeck: Ms. Villeneuve, your resume shows that you have worked on several projects, focusing on delivery of services to children in rural communities in Newfoundland. I want to hear about successful programs there.
Ms. Villeneuve: The projects dealt with health services, speech language pathology services in particular. In the remote community of Twillingate with a population of about 3,000, where I lived, service delivery was difficult because of transportation issues. For many parents, taking their children to see the speech pathologist in the hospital was difficult. We wanted to improve that service at a local level. We initiated a research project, which then developed some pilot projects. It connected different groups of people that dealt with the same thing, but they had been split into their little silos. We connected the public health nurse with the speech pathologist and the doctor at the hospital. Through broadband, we worked in tele-health for speech language pathology services for those children or parents who could not go to the hospital. In the end, the project was successful in that it greatly improved the service. At the time the project started, there was a three-year waiting list to see a speech language pathologist, and that is too late. We were able to make significant improvements. As Mr. Johnson said, it is something that must start at the local level, with local initiative.
Senator Callbeck: Are those services continuing?
Ms. Villeneuve: Yes, they are.
Senator Peterson: Thank you for your presentation. How are you related to the Canadian Federation of Mayors and Municipalities?
Mr. Johnson: I am one of the 75 members of the board from across the country and I represent our provincial rural association. I sit on the board automatically, as the president of that Alberta rural association. I also participate in the Rural Forum, as its chair.
Senator Peterson: Thank you for that clarification.
Senator Gustafson, deputy chairman of this committee, has said on many occasions that the majority of the wealth of Canada comes from rural Canada and little goes back. As a federation of provinces and municipalities, do you think this is fair? What would you recommend to address this issue? How would you prioritize it as we move forward?
Mr. Johnson: That is a tough question. I have never thought of it in terms of fairness. I do not think of it that way. I think there is a challenge and we go to work on it. I agree that the majority of the wealth comes out of the rural areas. I have said for a long time that the cities can refer to themselves as the engines of growth economically in the country, but I remind them engines do not run without fuel and I am the fuel truck. Literally, if we choke off services to outlying areas through lack of infrastructure, we impact negatively the economic possibilities of both the urban and the rural areas. They are tied together inextricably through extraction of resources, lumbering, agriculture, mining, oil and gas, et cetera.
In terms of transfer of wealth back to rural areas, there is a lack of benefits. Some of that must go back into infrastructure, such as investments in the broadband Internet, so that companies want to locate there. The Prime Minister's external advisory committee report recommended moving value-added activities back into the rural areas where those resources come from so that concentration is not always in the large urban centres. To facilitate that movement, we need investment in infrastructure.
Typically, in rural communities, 70 per cent of the budgets revolve around roads. The property taxpayers have a difficult time keeping up with that cost.
For example, in northeastern Alberta, the heavy oil cannot be pipelined, so all the equipment moves in by road. All product is trucked out by tanker on roads that were built for three-tonne grain trucks. The infrastructure is not facilitating that activity, so we have a case where the oil industry is coming back to the government and municipalities and saying, "Unless we have investment in that infrastructure, we will not be able to go into that area and extract that resource.'' That lack of investment impacts the economy negatively, and not only in Alberta.
Many people do not understand that 27 per cent of the jobs that relate to the oil patch in Alberta are in Ontario. Manufacturing that takes place in Nova Scotia is directly related to such things as fabrication. There is a significant tie- in interprovincially. There is a significant tie-in from urban to rural where that interdependency cannot be separated.
I do not know if that answers your question. We suggest that government needs to reinvest in that infrastructure. It needs to reinvest in our communities. We will not attract rural physicians if there is no quality of life there. A rural doctor will not go there if the spouse does not want to be there, if the children cannot play hockey or soccer, go to ballet or take music lessons. There is a quality of life issue in attracting professionals into those areas.
Senator Peterson: As you said earlier, I do not think city folk understand this reality at all. The first order of business is educating Canadians as to the realities so that we can have this fairness. Then we can start delivering. We can do many things here. There is no end to them. You mentioned volunteers. Coming from Saskatchewan and the small villages there, I assure you that volunteers keep the villages going and they can do more with a dollar than any federal, provincial or municipal government. We should try to find a way to provide them directly with unconditional money, bypassing everyone, because they will do more with that little bit — and I am not talking many dollars — to make a community viability, to keep everyone involved and provide things for the children and young people. That is what we must focus on.
Mr. Johnson: I could not agree more. If I could build on that example, I will go back to Mr. Kuiken's example of the 80-20 split and the involvement of rural communities. The leveraging of dollars is significant and for that 80-20 split, with the volunteer component that is added to that, we have the federal dollars, provincial dollars, municipal dollars and the volunteer side that he referred to. The Province of Alberta puts in roughly $80 million. The municipalities contribute in excess of the 20 per cent, roughly $30 million on top of that. When we add the volunteer component and the federal dollars, and with the leveraging that goes along with that, it is about five to one. The impact is a half billion dollars, mostly in rural communities, as a result of $80 million being spent. That leverage is pretty good, but it is driven by the local community.
Senator Mahovlich: Was the gap between urban and rural Canada 40 or 50 years ago as great as it is today?
Mr. Johnson: It was not.
Senator Mahovlich: I know there has been inflation, but it is across the board, is it not?
Mr. Johnson: Yes.
Senator Mahovlich: The gap has widened from 50 years ago.
Mr. Johnson: Yes.
Senator Mahovlich: The mayor of Timmins and others got together and said, "We can save money by closing the high school in Schumacher.'' However, that was the beginning of Schumacher becoming poor. I think closing the school really hurt. They did not save any money at all. A person will not want to live in Schumacher if that person must take the bus to Timmins to go to school. When they look at the bottom line, they make a town poor by closing a school.
Mr. Johnson: Absolutely: You make a strong point. When our schools are closed in our small rural communities, the community dies. We have examples of community willingness to turn this around. The Chairman will be familiar with the girls' hockey school in Warner.
The Chairman: The committee went there when it travelled to Alberta. The biggest hit, of course, was Senator Mahovlich.
Senator Mahovlich: It was a positive thing. The town livened up because of the school.
Mr. Johnson: They were in danger of losing that school.
Senator Mahovlich: You talk about post offices. This is important for a community to have. Probably Schumacher has lost its post office.
Mr. Johnson: There is loss of the post office, the rationalization of schools, and rationalization of health facilities that the previous speaker talked about. Your preliminary report deals, to some extent, with the investment in capital as opposed to other areas. Even in a farming community, I used to be able to haul half a mile to the closest elevator. Now I am hauling 45 miles. The capacity is not there. I do not use my tandem. I call someone with a B-train to come. That change impacts the rural infrastructure.
The Warner hockey school was generated from within the community. It has been an absolute hit. To see them on CBC's show about Hockeyville was an exciting experience for us to be involved in supporting it.
Senator Mahovlich: Is the government neglecting this hockey school or supporting it?
Mr. Johnson: To my knowledge, there is not a lot of government investment in it.
Senator Mahovlich: This is where we fail. It is the same with schooling and hospitals. When a community has a problem, the government should step in and help. This is where we fail.
Mr. Johnson: Senator Fairbairn referred to Marie Logan. Ms. Logan and I sat on Alberta's Rural Development Strategy Task Force. We examined some things. She is part of the board now that administers a $100 million rural development fund in the province of Alberta. Programs such as the hockey school in Warner were already going, but it would have been nice to have some dollars to help stimulate them. Vauxhall, Alberta, north of Taber, has now developed a baseball academy. They have kids from Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario and all across this country coming in, and they are competing well against kids from the United States. They have a high academic standard. Those kinds of things are being done to help create some sense of identity and hope within the communities.
Senator Mahovlich: As Senator Peterson said, little goes back into communities from the government. This is where we fail the rural areas.
The Chairman: To add to the list, Cardston now has started a rodeo school.
Senator Biron: In your presentation, you say that there are difficulties in health care and education services, and many of these problems could be alleviated with high-speed Internet. You said that 30 per cent of rural municipalities do not have high-speed Internet. Was it because it was not financially viable for the incumbent telephone company to install these services even though it was subsidized, or was it because the program was finished before they had installed?
Ms. Villeneuve: For the communities that were left, it was because the program had ended and installing it was expensive. The pilot program funded the installation, in cooperation with the telephone companies, for the health and education services.
For instance, in my community in Newfoundland, a telehealth pilot project allowed physicians in St. John's or Montreal to examine a patient in Twillingate. In the high school, students were able to take a course, maybe a specialized course, that they would not otherwise have had. That is the importance of the service, and 30 per cent is left because funding for the pilot program is finished. We are now waiting to see whether more funds will be put towards a new program.
Senator Biron: It would be a recommendation that I would make to the government?
Ms. Villeneuve: Absolutely.
Senator Peterson: I think in your material somewhere you recommended a rural minister, who would deal with these issues. At the present time, do you go to a multitude of ministers dealing with these issues and each says it is the other person's responsibility?
Mr. Johnson: We visited yesterday with the rural secretariat and when we questioned her about some things, it became clear that, within the ministry that currently looks after cities and communities, transportation and infrastructure, there is little in terms of dedication of staff and resources to the rural area. If we talk to the ministry of agriculture, the same situation occurs and they currently have the responsibility for the rural secretariat.
Sometimes it is lost in the shuffle, so I struggle with the fact that there is no clear ministry that can direct and dedicate resources and be an advocate within cabinet on behalf of rural communities. It is easy for the cities of Toronto, Montreal, Calgary or Vancouver to receive press and coverage. The mayor of Calgary can take a plane to visit the Prime Minister, and they have done that in the past, but for a reeve of a small rural county or a village, where do they go? There is no champion in government who specifically deals with rural matters.
Various governments have had different treatments of rural issues. At one point, there was a rural ministry, sort of, and Wayne Easter had responsibility, as the secretary in that area. He looked after those rural areas and did a commendable job.
The Chairman: He was Minister of State, I think.
Mr. Johnson: We think there is compelling reason. We need a voice, someone who understands. We need someone who can sit at the cabinet table and say, these are the challenges of rural communities in Canada.
Senator Peterson: It can be part of our fairness argument.
Mr. Johnson: Absolutely.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure having you here and it was karma that had you coming in after the first witness. Keep up the good work and we will do our best from this end.
Mr. Johnson: I referred to Alberta's rural development strategy and I have copies of our brochure. If you would find them useful I would be happy to leave them with you.
I think when we sit before a committee like this one or go to government, we have a responsibility not only to have our hand out asking for money, we need to come armed with solutions, ideas and thoughts. In this document are clearly identified solutions that I think might be helpful and useful. If you would be willing, I would be happy to leave these with you. You may find this document useful in your discussion.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here.
The committee continued in camera.