Proceedings of the Subcommittee on Cities
Issue 6 - Evidence, August 13, 2008 - Afternoon meeting
HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA, Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Subcommittee on Cities of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 1:20 p.m. to examine and report on current social issues pertaining to Canada's largest cities.
Senator Art Eggleton (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Welcome to the Senate Subcommittee on Cities, which is here as part of a cross-country tour. We are dealing with the issues involving our cities in Canada and, in particular, we are focusing in this first segment on poverty, housing and homelessness.
In undertaking this study, we are building upon previous work that the Senate has conducted concerning the matter of poverty. The 1971 report headed by Senator Croll is of particular note, as well as the 1997 report of Senator Cohen, entitled Sounding the Alarm: Poverty in Canada. I know that there are some people here from Saint John, where Senator Cohen is from. I recall that Tom Gribbons from Vibrant Communities Saint John appeared before us at our hearings in Ottawa. He told us that Senator Cohen continues her work in Saint John, volunteering an enormous amount of time supporting various groups in an effort to reduce poverty in the very streets that she grew up in. In fact, we extended an invitation for her to attend this meeting, but unfortunately, she was not able to attend, but she tells us that she is watching what this committee does.
I should point out that our study is also complimentary to a rural poverty study conducted by the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, so we are trying to pull all of these things together.
We have completed hearings in Ottawa, as I mentioned a moment ago and we published Poverty, Housing and Homelessness: Issues and Options. The 103 options set forth the challenges that we face concerning poverty, housing and homelessness.
This is the next phase of the committee's work. We are going to various Canadian cities and inviting people in from other cities, as we are doing here today, to further examine the issues and hear comments about these 103 options or any portion of them.
This morning we heard from the Province of Nova Scotia, and from municipal leaders in both Halifax and Charlottetown. Tomorrow we are going to hear from representatives of the provinces of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island as well as more municipal leaders.
This afternoon we have invited representatives of various groups that deal with people that face the challenges of poverty, housing and homelessness. During this session, we want to have an open and constructive dialogue and focus on what steps might be taken next. We would like to hear your comments on what kind of things you think the federal government needs to do. People are telling us that we need to have a collaborative approach among the different orders of government with regard to poverty reduction strategies.
I am going to go around the table. I will start with Deputy Mayor Wrye, if he is ready. Just introduce yourself, if you would, and give a little bit of your perspective on these issues or what your organization does relevant to poverty, housing and homelessness.
After we do that, then we will segment it a bit. We will get into discussion about poverty, in particular, the income support programs, such as EI and social assistance or welfare, things like that, and how they are working or not working and what government might do. Then we will go from there to housing and homelessness and that should complete our program for today.
I also want to mention to people who might be sitting back there that we are inviting anyone who has anything to say to us, to take five minutes and say it. We just ask that the people register at the table outside. With that, we will get into introductions. First, let me introduce the members of the subcommittee.
Jim Munson is a senator from Ontario, officially, but he spends a lot of his life in New Brunswick. Yes, he has definitely got his New Brunswick connections on today. Many of the members of our committee have different areas that they feel quite passionate about, and you will find out that Senator Munson has to do with people with disabilities and, particularly, autism. The committee just did a report on autism not too long ago and, of course, our committee under the previous chairmanship of Michael Kirby completed a major report on mental health called Out of the Shadows at Last. We have a fair history that this committee is made up of people with passion in doing things that they feel strongly about.
Senator Jane Cordy is from the HRM. I did not know what that meant until today, but it is the Halifax Regional Municipality and, of course, she is a Nova Scotia senator and an educator, so she asks many questions about education. Senator Hugh Segal is from Kingston, Ontario, and he asks a lot of questions about everything and he is passionate about everything. I am Art Eggleton. I was supposed to be the dispassionate chair. I am the chair of both this subcommittee and the main committee that this committee reports to, which is the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
Robert Wrye, Deputy Mayor of Wolfville, President, Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities: I am Deputy Mayor of the Town of Wolfville and President of the Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities.
It struck me when I started to read the report that the first comments were about the 1993 cutbacks of social housing and the impact on municipalities. When the cutbacks occurred, it became incumbent upon the municipal government to provide the kinds of services that the federal and provincial governments had been providing.
The municipalities are the one order of government with the least resources to handle the kinds of problems they have been handling. It seems to me that the tax relief provided at the federal and provincial levels over the past few years could have been used to address many of the problems in your report. Instead, they have been left to municipal governments.
As an alternative, municipal governments could have been provided with resources to provide some of the services. I am struck by the comment of David Miller made at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, that the City of Toronto is the largest landlord in the province.
The other comment I would like came out of the report of the National Council of Welfare. John Murphy, who is the chair, is a friend of mine. He gave me a number of copies of the report if anyone would like one. The report contains four cornerstones that I think could be used very appropriately here. One is that we need a national strategy to address problems. Second, we need a coordinated approach from the federal, provincial and municipal governments, and in order to do that, in my view, we need to do more at the municipal level than simply have the other governments tell municipalities what they will do. We need to actually have municipalities have a seat at the table. We need an accountable structure for ensuring results, we need an agreed set of indicators that would be used to plan, and monitor change and assess progress.
I was quite struck by the number of recommendations you have, but those four seem to me to encompass a lot of what you are getting at in various areas.
The Chair: They are options at this point; we have not decided on any recommendations. We listed in the report the 103 options that came to us because of the representations we have had to this point in time, but we do hope to come out with recommendations early in the new year.
Vince Calderhead, Senior Staff Counsel, Nova Scotia Legal Aid: My name is Vincent Calderhead. I work as a staff lawyer at Nova Scotia Legal Aid where I have been for over 22 years. I work exclusively in the area of poverty law, which may or may not be meaningful for people, but essentially it means income support and housing and pension issues.
I am one of 65 lawyers in the Legal Aid system. I am pretty well the only lawyer in the system that focuses exclusively on poverty law. Because of that, my mandate is to gauge the work I do, primarily at a provincial level, that is to say, test case litigation almost exclusively, challenging recurrent issues that arise in the context of our clients.
I also teach a course called Poverty Law and Human Rights at Dalhousie Law School. In what my children used to refer to as my other job, I work with national anti-poverty groups, NGOs that do litigation at the Supreme Court of Canada. That work includes interventions, but also a lot of work at the international human rights level, both in New York and in Geneva with the human rights treaty bodies, monitoring Canada's compliance with its international human rights obligations. I do a lot of that. For a variety of reasons, I have become very familiar with the dynamic and the phenomenon and the history of federal-provincial cost-sharing. That is now an esoteric area, but I would imagine it is crucial to this committee's, or will be, to their deliberations. That is my background.
Where I come at the problem from is I say I do mostly test case litigation, but I also am required for numerous reasons to see people on a weekly basis. Wednesday being my intake day, I have just finished seeing eight or nine people who come in with every problem you can imagine arising and related to their poverty. Every week, I see people with inadequate housing situations, people essentially looking for supportive housing and people with not enough money to live on. I have seen it now for 20 to 25 years and the problems are recurrent and there is nothing meaningful that is being done.
Lastly, what I would say just by way of introductory overview is not surprising given my legal background: I am a human rights lawyer and I see a need for a human rights approach to the alleviation of poverty.
Most succinctly, I think the federal government ought to adopt a human rights approach to the alleviation of poverty. It can and ought to consider a new era of federal-provincial collaboration — cost sharing — informed by Canada's human rights obligations in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Historically, one of the main problems with national standards has been the so-called ``Quebec issue.'' Being involved in the review of Canada in 2006 in Geneva, there were many there, almost 30 groups from Canada, NGOs and many from Quebec. What is significant is that coming out of the process was an agreement, a consensus, from the Quebec groups that they would be very pleased to be involved with and would support a new approach from the federal government, the provinces and municipalities. They could buy into a new approach that was informed not by national standards but rather international standards. They could buy into that. They could commit to that. It would not be seen as Ottawa dictating to the provinces yet again. It would be seen as the federal government, the provincial and municipal governments embracing those obligations and those rights, which we have already done.
The last thing I will say is the constitutional, not just authority, but I would submit obligation — for that resides in section 36.1 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which as people know, is a joint federal-provincial commitment — obligation — to the provision of essential public services of reasonable quality. That is the constitutional, not just authority, but I would say the source of obligation for federal involvement. Thank you.
Joe Metlege, President, Investment Property Owners Association of Nova Scotia: I do not know if I will be able to follow that, but my name is Joe Metlege. I am the President of the Investment Property Owners Association of Nova Scotia. We are an association that was established in 1979. It basically comprises of landlords in Nova Scotia. We represent approximately 25,000 units here in Nova Scotia, or 40 per cent of the rental stock.
Everyone around this table, I am sure, has the same intention of finding a solution to this problem with poverty, affordable housing, but we have to keep a close eye on how it is actually going to be filtered down into reality. I am here to give a reality check. This is a very touchy and difficult task to look at because we are looking to social legislation to affect the private market. It is no secret that government does not run as efficiently as the private market.
I am here to represent the rental-housing standpoint. What we face is municipal and provincial legislation, which is discussed in closed meetings or back rooms, and then pushed out through legislation. The legislation is put in place without any understanding of how it is going to affect the residents who actually administer these services and how is it going to affect the landlords who have to administer these solutions. At the end of the day, we have to create a balance and create the opportunity for anyone who needs assistance to be able to get that assistance, but it cannot be expected to be at the expense of the owner of the rental housing.
I do not know how unpopular I am going to be at the end of saying this, but it is something that we really need to take a hard look at because at the end of the day, the private market has to buy into whatever is suggested and implemented.
I can tell you that we are interested and we do want to find a solution to this problem. We all have family or friends who are in the same situation. We are not against this thing proceeding or against a solution; quite the opposite. We want to find a solution, but we want to find a realistic solution. Essentially, the more legislation that is put on private owners of rental housing, essentially how I like to look at it is the government is taking a percentage of ownership. What is the government going to be giving back in lieu of taking it? As an example, someone owns a two-unit home. They rent out one of their apartments. They need this apartment's income to be able to justify their mortgage. If legislation says you have to take someone who has an unstable income, has no work background, you know, somewhat of a risky tenant, God forbid that person defaults on payment. That lady or senior or whoever owns that duplex who is counting on this second income to be able to afford the mortgage, now jeopardizes his or her own well-being and livelihood.
I am not representing multinational corporations of thousands of units. We represent landlords from duplexes to several thousand units. When we speak about landlords, I just want to make sure that the image of the corporate landlord who owns thousands of units across the country and makes millions and millions of dollars does not exist here. The majority of our members are 10-unit and lower and smaller, so we have to keep this in a realistic perspective. These landlords are people who rely on every penny that comes in as their income.
The Chair: When we get to the housing section, we will get back to some of that because we need to talk about both private and public sector cooperation to help deal with the housing needs of people.
Claredon Robicheau, Past Chair, Nova Scotia League for Equal Opportunities: I wear many different hats, a lot of them touching poverty.
My background experience is 15 years with the Toronto-Dominion Bank. During those years, I repossessed homes because the owners bought the BMW, the cottage and the three-wheelers. I repossessed homes from couples who either the husband or wife had cancer, that sort of stuff. Even at the banking stage, I saw poverty in different levels and some of it, lack of education, living beyond their means.
I have been with the Nova Scotia League for Equal Opportunities for 15 years. That is a provincial umbrella for people with disabilities in Nova Scotia. I have just recently spent two years on the national board of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, which I am sure you are familiar with. You have met Marie White from Newfoundland.
If you are a person with disabilities, you are 50 times more likely to be living in poverty and some of it is just not all income; it is the technical aids, it is the housing, it is all that gamut of technology. I would be much better off living in Manitoba, Quebec or Saskatchewan. Why am I a Canadian citizen with all these services there, but not here in Nova Scotia or Atlantic Canada, even Alberta, to be truthful, in some cases?
Also, a recent hat was six months' work on the Nova Scotia Poverty Reduction Strategy. There has been some great work done before us by some great Halifax Regional Municipality, HRM groups, such as the homeless society and the Community Action on Homelessness.
Other than that, I am really interested in the length and depth of poverty. There is quite a bit of difference in someone who has been on social services for only one or two years versus someone who has been on it for 10 or 20 years because of health reasons. It is a totally different measurement tool and background.
I want to discuss the low-income cut-off, LICO. We were quite amazed this winter that someone making $12,000 to $13,000 a year actually paid income tax. It just blows us away that these big corporations have deductions and tax breaks. At the end of the day, if you make less than $25,000, there should be a line that says you do not have to pay federal or provincial tax.
Muscular Dystrophy Canada, MS, MD, Canadian Paraplegic Association, Canadian National Institution of the Blind, MS and autism are faced with the financial hardship of programs that do not exist or are artificially funded. We are not working together, but I think poverty would be the common ground for us to work together to make this a better place to live in at an acceptable cost.
One of the biggest impacts that I face, and as a reality check, is who owns it? Federal, provincial, municipal? You know, everyone owns it yet, no one wants to take ownership not even the interdepartmental agencies. You know, who owns housing, who owns transportation? It is intertwined and I am sure Ms. Streatch this morning, in your department's presentation, you talked about the web and the threads and how to put them together. At the end of the day, no one wants to take ownership and we need to come up with a strategy that there is buy-in and where the federal, provincial and municipal governments can do their part.
At the end of the day, cautionary is the mean word called clawbacks and mean testing is very mean because you can take it from one and give it to the other and it is clawed back, even the increase of minimum wages. Your rent is going to go up because you are at a 30 per cent ratio.
So even at the Council of Canadians with Disabilities we are looking at something like a $13,000 minimum and everybody gets a salary. I think Saskatchewan has a program that works pretty good, that it is actually at that level and it is tweaked every month for a minimum income level.
In closing, I am an insulation guy and the thing about housing is instead of spending more money on gas and oil in the tank, maybe we should insulate some of those houses and maybe the ecology people would be on board. Thank you.
Claudia Jahn, Program Director, Community Action on Homelessness: I am the Program Director with Community Action on Homelessness here in Halifax. We are the community entity that delivers a delivery model with Service Canada, the Homelessness Partnership Strategy. We work very closely with all community agencies, shelters and service providers in HRM together to find one solution that addresses homelessness.
Every two years, we develop a community plan that outlines the priority for this city and how we spend the allocated funding. On average, we receive $3.2 million for two years and distribute this to shelters or, lately, to design new programs for skill building and employability opportunities for marginalized groups.
Our biggest concern is the short-term of all these funding programs. As I said before, it is only two years, which makes it difficult for us to develop a strategic plan. From all the data collection and our work over the last years since 1999, we are well positioned to put together a 10-year strategic plan to end homelessness in Halifax. We could have a successful plan because we are a smaller city and we know the issues. It is still a huge problem, but compared to other cities and other countries that solved this problem, it is manageable. We are not able to solve this problem because the programs run over two years only. Some programs that could work together from the federal or provincial levels do not have the same timelines, so it makes strategic planning very difficult. That is the main concern of our organization.
Another issue is the growing rate of the homeless population in our city, which relates closely to the high-energy costs that we see. The diminishing availability of affordable housing units is certainly due to the change in the management in housing. I think you have heard that there is more and more condominium development around the city. Existing affordable housing units are being lost at a far-greater rate than new ones can be built since we do not have a social housing program.
Our recommendation in this regard, not only from Community Action on Homelessness, but also from the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia, which is based on a report from Steve Pomeroy from Ottawa, is looking at the housing market in HRM. It is crucial to support and to strengthen the non-profit sector so that it will be able to purchase units and housing and ensure that they stay affordable for a long, long time. No federal housing program can assure this affordability.
As we know, the latest affordable rental program in Nova Scotia requires the private landlord to keep the units affordable, meaning within the market rent, which is not affordable for the clients. This would this affordable level for 15 years maximum, whereby we know that it is the mandate of all non-profit organizations in this province and all over the country, to maintain this for a long, long time. So we feel this is the most reasonable way to really support non- profits and, thereby, really be the most efficient way to ensure the sustainability of affordable housing units. Thank you.
Barbara Clow, Executive Director, Atlantic Centre of Excellence for Women's Health: I am the Executive Director of the Atlantic Centre of Excellence for Women's Health, which is an organization funded through a contribution program with Health Canada and the Bureau of Women's Health and Gender Analysis. We are part of a program of centres and working groups and initiatives across Canada. Our centre is mandated to undertake social science research and policy advice for the women of Atlantic Canada. I have been in the position of Executive Director for six years.
Let me say up front that just because the title ``Women'' is in our organization's name and that we focus on doing gender-based analysis, we do not hate men, we do not dislike men, because sometimes people do assume that that is all we have in mind. We are very committed to looking at the issues challenging women because whichever subpopulation you look at, whichever population you look at in the country, if you look at the women in that population or subpopulation, they are always, always worse off than the men in that subpopulation.
When you talk about Aboriginal peoples, people of color, newcomers, white people, any group, the women in that group are always more likely to live in poverty, more likely to be raising their children on their own with limited resources, more likely to be homeless or under-housed, more likely to be victims of domestic violence, undernourished, et cetera.
We have initiatives that are looking at children in poverty, and Canada has made international commitments to eliminate child poverty. I have to say that phrase actually drives me crazy because children do not live in poverty; families live in poverty. Many of the families living in poverty or the families that are living in the deepest poverty are those who are headed by single female heads of households.
In Atlantic Canada, we have some of the greatest numbers of women living in poverty raising their children alone in the entire country. We also have among the deepest gender-equity wage gaps in the country, so women across this region as well as in other parts of the country are not just living in poverty because they cannot get good jobs, they are living in poverty because in the jobs they get, they do not get paid the same as men who have the same jobs.
Even though we have wage-equity legislation, we also know that there are many loopholes, as people remember from a recent Supreme Court decision not to provide a wage-equity for Newfoundland workers. I think these things also apply to women with disabilities who are often not just in need of care themselves, but also provide care for others. Sometimes we sometimes forget that.
Reading the report, I was really pleased that there was a clear acknowledgement that this is so; that women are managing families. They are in lots of ways — it does not say this in the report — but from my perspective, they are in many respects the heart and stability of the community. From my perspective, if we can target initiatives to help them, we will be effectively helping the next generation and our communities as a whole.
My concern is that amongst these 103 options, none of them directly addresses the fact that women are at greater disadvantage. Perhaps we need to put a little rider under many of these options that says that these initiatives need to be targeted to women. We need to recognize that these initiatives, like simply restructuring the EI program without looking at what it means for men and women in different places and different social locations, is not going to get us anywhere.
I mean the Compassionate Care Benefit is a case in point. It was a great idea on the surface to be able to provide people with income support while they were caring for a dying relative. However, we know it is not being accessed because the people who mainly provide that care are women and many of them are in seasonal employees, casual employees or self-employed and are not eligible for the benefits. My hope is that we can get to a place that whatever strategy we may decide on will include an analysis of the potential impacts on men, women and communities and not just treat them as if one solution will fit all.
William Buckland, Vice-President, Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia: My name is Bill Buckland. I am the Vice-President of the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia. I am also a National Canadian Housing and Renewal Association Board member for Nova Scotia. I am employed as the administrator with Seton Foundation, a non-profit provider on Cape Breton Island for the last 32 years. We have built and renovated approximately 350 single-family homes under the previous section 56.1 of the federal government non-profit program.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Senate subcommittee for the invitation to represent and enhance Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, CHRA, and the many families that have been provided a home by the Seton Foundation from the federal housing programs.
Clearly, a home has fostered improved physical and psychological health education and income. Most children in Seton homes are safe and feel good about themselves. They live in a stable and nourishing environment. They perform well in school, they are healthy and most importantly, they will not end up in institutions nor will they require social services.
The process of working with Seton in the federal government assisted programs over the last 30 years has broken the cycle of poverty for many families. Social housing expenditures reduced other social costs and the big winners are children and the society they will ultimately lead. The adult children from Seton homes who are productive, active members in their communities confirm the cost-effectiveness of social housing.
Having read the interim report, I must agree with your recommendations that we need a national housing strategy and that the federal government dedicate a portion of federal funding on housing programs, including extending and stabilizing the RRAP program.
To quote Tom Carter, ``Housing is good social policy.'' We at the Seton Foundation believe society will pay the cost of housing the poor. The question is will we house them in jails, hospitals and institutions or shall we pay for good housing that develops people and creates good citizens.
Belinda Allen, Research Project Coordinator, Human Development Council: I am the Research Project Coordinator with the Human Development Council based out of Saint John, New Brunswick. We have two roles. We are the social planning council for the Greater Saint John Region. We have an information role where we link individual citizens to services that are available to them. We also have a proactive role of developing solutions to our community's challenges. We all have the same challenges of poverty, housing and homelessness which affect us all just the same.
I have spent the last 11 months working on the homelessness file. I was hired under the Homelessness Partnering Strategy and I completed a study evaluating what the homelessness situation was in Saint John, what the gaps were and what we needed to do moving forward. I am in the process of implementing some of those recommendations. We have set up a steering committee to look at the issues and see what we can do as a community.
I read the report and I found it very interesting. A lot of the things that were in were a lot of the things that we are discussing, so it is nice to see something that is actually tangible. The Homelessness Partnering Strategy is set to expire in March 2009. After that, many organizations do not know where they are going to go next because they depend on that funding. It is the same as the affordable housing agreements between Canada and the provinces that are set to expire in 2009. There are things like that that we want to see continued and pushed forward so that they continue to work.
Lisa Wetmore, Project Coordinator, Urban Core Support Network Saint John Inc.: I come here today representing the Urban Core Support Network Saint John Inc., an organization of diverse membership that works toward poverty reduction on almost every level possible. We do some frontline work in education, awareness, research and advocacy toward poverty reduction. Our group has a mission and a vision that people living in poverty are highly important and informative of the work that we undertake. Often times in poverty, you will find women, so we primarily have projects that have been focusing upon women, some of which include a recent project involved with empowerment and movement towards the workforce.
In the past, we have also worked on income levels and social assistance levels, did some research around that, and came up with some solutions that could work within the New Brunswick region. As we have gone though our work we have found that there are several inherent disincentives within the current social assistance system. So we did research and then solution recommendations and have taken that to municipal and provincial levels to advocate for adoption of some of these changes, including the work supplement for low-income individuals.
Another arm of the organization which I have been more closely linked to in recent times is looking at the link between poverty and health which, of course, is quite a strong link, unfortunately. Our recent funding has been for a project involving chronic illness in people living in low income. It has been quite innovative, creative and recognized nationally for these attributes. It is called Dodging Diabetes and it brings an important lens to looking at the link between poverty and health. It filters through the socioeconomic determinants of health knowing that poverty, education, income, all of these social determinants and economic determinants are some of the strongest to influence health outcomes in individuals. It is a question of how we can, hopefully, counter some of these socioeconomic determinants and allow our low-income people to live healthier and with dignity.
The Chair: Is there any particular recommendation that you think the federal government should be considering?
What would help the people you are serving more than anything else? What are one or two things you would want the federal government to do?
Ms. Wetmore: I would like the federal government to do something about the barrier, really, the welfare wall, of people trying to move from income assistance towards work. I would also throw in the socioeconomic determinants of health. It is not primarily a social thing, but also a health issue.
The Chair: Dr. Keon is chairing a subcommittee on social determinants of population health. It is another good study that might be of some help.
Clair Smith, Executive Director, United Way of Prince Edward Island: I was glad to hear that he was here.
I am the Executive Director for the United Way of Prince Edward Island. We are unique in the fact that we are responsible for the entire province. We have a population, of course, of 140,000 people and, because of this we are obliged to try to provide a service throughout the Island.
I have been with this United Way now for 10 years and when I arrived, they were embroiled in a lot of problems in how they could best serve the community and the fact that they had 24 member agencies that received an annual funding support, depending on where they came in, at what time and so forth.
With a lot of dissatisfaction as a result of that type of approach, this United Way adopted a program called Priority Programming and that allows the United Way to address those priorities within the community. To take on that type of role, one of course needs to know the priority needs of the communities.
Annually, we produce a community-needs assessment throughout Prince Edward Island in the 29 telephone exchanges by contacting these individuals, children, youth, families, seniors or persons with disabilities and determine from them their priority needs. Based on that information, we then bring about a community consultation of all the counties on the Island and invite the public, non-profits, and government to these consultations to address what we have been able to determine to be the priority needs. They tell us what they feel could be brought about to improve the program and what are some of the assets in the community that might be further bolstered to bring about a result. Then we invite the community and non-profits to submit letters of intent as to how they would proceed in addressing one particular priority need in that population group. By way of an anonymous evaluation, we then determine what programs we would support.
When this began, I was somewhat skeptical as to exactly what would be coming out of the first study. On Prince Edward Island, if you were to talk to any number of the non-profit agencies, depending on their interest, there would be various things that they would point to as being a priority need in the community.
When we completed the first survey on families, the number one need on Prince Edward Island was financial counselling. When you look at financial counselling, you think sort of what would that have to do with the need? Of course, based on all the social problems is the financing of that family. That would be one of the programs that we become involved in. Providing that type of support in counselling families on how to address day to day living with the income that is coming in and what credit that they have been accumulating over the years.
That would be an example of one of the programs that have been addressed which would not probably have been. I feel that, in many cases that we are very busy in trying to find answers to the question, while we do not know the question itself. Quite often, we dart around in all kinds of directions coming up with grand schemes, but until we know what the actual problem is, I do not think that we will ever really resolve a whole lot of issues.
The contracts are only good for a maximum of three years and then the evaluation is done on that population group again to determine their priority needs. We feel that although we are not directly involved with the client, that being the recipient of a program or service, we certainly are providing the service to the agencies for them to better address what the priority needs in the community.
Miia Suokonautio, Director, Programming, Phoenix Youth Programs: Thank you for having me and thank you for the last-minute invitation. I am the Director of Programming at Phoenix Youth Programs here in Halifax.
I am just going go a little bit over about what Phoenix Youth Programs is and about my background and then I would like to answer some of your questions about the report and any sort of options or recommendations for governments in general and the federal government, in particular.
Phoenix Youth Programs is a non-profit agency here in Halifax. We have eight locations and about 75 staff. Our mandate is to work with youth who are experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of homelessness. We work with 16 to 24 year-olds. The real beauty of what our program does is we provide a continuum of services. We have everything from prevention, which includes working junior highs, a clinical team of social workers, to walk-in centers, a learning and employment center and an emergency shelter. Our shelter is the only youth emergency shelter in Halifax. We have 20 beds for youth, medium-term housing and then longer-term supportive housing. Many of the housing options discussed in the report are really things that we are involved in, as well as prevention.
We have about 75 staff, so that gives you a bit of a sense of the scope. Our program is also keen on being involved in many social policy issues, largely at the provincial level. We have been active with the Department of Community Services, the Department of Justice, with the municipality and then in some areas where we overlap with the federal government, particularly for employment-related services with Service Canada.
I wore another hat before I cam to Phoenix Youth Programs. I lived in Toronto for some time and I worked with modernizing income security for working-age adults, which was an initiative of the Toronto City Summit Alliance. I was on the St. Chris side, so I had the great benefit of listening to the arguments between the Caledon Institute and John Stapleton and Richard Shillington.
I had my biases when I read the report on who I like based on what cologne they were wearing at what meeting, but I also worked with David Hulchanski at the Centre for Urban and Community Studies. Again, through St. Chris, we were looking for gentrification in the downtown west neighbourhood, which has a lot to do with the deterioration of the housing stock there, particularly in Parkdale. And I know that is an issue also here in Halifax and I appreciate Mr. Metlege's comments, as well, around the affordability of housing and the cost to owners based on keeping things up to par and none of us would agree with poor quality housing.
It seems like I do a million jobs. I was also at the United Way of Greater Toronto and in their Action for Neighbourhood Change, which was also an integral piece. It is new. It is kind of controversial but looking at what is the best way to approach high-needs neighbourhoods with a dearth of services.
That is kind of who I am. I want to echo what I have heard here today. I am sure a lot of the stuff you said, you will hear from me and you have heard before. I also recognize the report is filled with a lot of options and not recommendations. Knowing that recommendations will be coming forward, I will just lend some weight to a few of those particular options.
The first thing in the report that, to me, is not necessarily a glaring omission, but an omission nonetheless, is the youth. What are the particular needs of 16 to 24 year-olds, 16 to 30-year-olds? It depends on who defines that category. They are lumped into the adult, children low-income families' categories. At Phoenix Youth Programs we tend to see a lot of youth who are living on their own and do not have family support or never had family support, so they are either aging out of care or exiting the criminal justice system or whatever their case may be.
There would be a number of specific subheadings under ``youth,'' EI eligibility obviously being one. It is very hard to be eligible for EI. When we talk about minimum wage, there is a sort of back-handed sort of comment, ``Well, in Nova Scotia, 80 per cent of minimum wage earners are under 25, so it is not a really big deal, 64 per cent of them live at home.'' But the problem is that does disproportionately affect a small group of those youth who cannot rely on their parents, so they will not be eligible for EI and then the jobs that they do get tend not to be sufficient.
We can talk about social assistance in Nova Scotia forever. In Nova Scotia among 16 to 18 year-olds, there is a particular way that social assistance is doled out which, again, is very difficult stigma in the housing market.
Recently here in HRM, the school board had a consultant who released a number of recommendations and who was looking at the school board issues. There was one really amazing thing, which was to have daycare facilities in schools so that students who are parenting, which we have many, many of in Phoenix Youth Programs, could actually continue in school. That is a very simple solution, actually. It is not very complicated. It makes perfect sense to me.
The second thing I wanted to talk about with respect to the report was that more emphasis on prevention would be great. If we take the example of youth, we can look at more focus supports, better housing and supportive housing. They may have issues with housing retention. We see eviction patterns going around.
The third thing with respect to the report is better collaboration. I think Mr. Calderhead also referred to that. We really, really need better collaboration between different departments and different levels of government. I think Ms. Jahn was also key in that. When we talk about marginal effective tax rates, it is obvious that is a product of the fact that there is not collaboration. That is a constant across the board issue, hard to resolve and very important.
I think there is a bit of an overemphasis on employment. There is a lot of discussion about getting people back into the workforce without recognizing that many people will never be ready for the workforce, or are already working but will never earn enough.
The report rightfully deals with certain types of disability, but the contentious subject of mental health and addictions is not really discussed. Addiction is not dealt with anywhere in the report and I know that is a big problem.
My last comment really has to do with just looking at the national housing issue. At Phoenix Youth Programs, we have three tiers of housing. When youth graduate out into market housing they are of out of our hands.
The Chair: We will get to you again, but I want to hear later on when we get into the income support discussion about your biases about the Caledon Institute and John Stapleton.
Our researchers have given me some information that says that Saint John has the highest rate of lone-parent poverty in Canada. This is a metropolitan area. According to the latest data, close to 6 in 10 of our lone-parent families live below the low-income cut-off. These families are generally comprised of a young single mother and her children and Saint John has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the country, a horrible ranking shared with Winnipeg and Montreal. Why is this? What is being done to get you out of this distinctive category?
Ms. Wetmore: This is a persistent statistic and the explanation is multi-faceted in terms of what has created this situation. One of the issues concerning this statistic is that some of these people are involved in generational welfare and inter-generational welfare.
In terms of the high number of lone parents, I am not sure there are enough efforts out there towards education and protection. Some of our young people have become young lone-parents. We have supports available but, clearly, we need more. I do not really have causation.
Ms. Allen: We do have one of the highest teen pregnancy rates and that leads into the lone-parent piece of it. That is not the only cause, by any means, but that is one of the issues. We have high concentrations of poverty in specific neighbourhoods and Ms. Westmore talked about it being a generational thing. They are essentially ``ghettoized'' in public housing in one spot in the middle of the city, so that is what they have lived with and that is what they know and, unfortunately, the cycle is not being broken.
There are steps that are being made, I hope, in a positive direction. Those numbers, while they are still high, have gone down a bit. We have a home for pregnant and parenting teens where they can get their education, they can get back on their feet, and they can go to second-stage housing. I think that is part of the process, but there is a lot more work that needs to be done.
Ms. Wetmore: We also have to factor in that we have some of the oldest housing stock in the country to throw into the mix, so that is quite difficult when talking lone-parent poverty and unaffordable housing.
The Chair: We were supposed to have someone here from the Business Community Anti-Poverty Initiative that unfortunately, at the last minute could not make it. How is that working? I understand that business and community leaders are helping in this area. You do not see that happen too often that they get that involved in terms of an anti- poverty initiative, specifically. Tell a little bit about that and how it works. Is it working well for Saint John?
Ms. Allen: It works really well. It is great to have business leaders step up because they have a voice that sometimes people listen to a little bit more often than to some of us. They have done a lot of work on the project that I talked about with the pregnant and parenting teens. They led the fundraising and helped in getting the building. We have a teen resource center where young people can drop in and have a place away from home and there is a homeless youth room. They helped fundraise for that as well. They lend their voice to the cause in such a way that they promote advocacy and getting other people involved that might not necessarily step up to the plate.
The Chair: Did the business community start it themselves?
Ms. Wetmore: I am not sure.
Ms. Allen: I think they did.
The Chair: Anyway, it is working.
Ms. Allen: Yes, it is working very well.
The Chair: Getting business leaders involved in these kinds of things, you think is a good idea.
Senator Munson: I am overwhelmed with all the information that we have received here and that we received in St. John's the last two days, and I would like to address two matters.
I would like to engage Joe Metlege in a debate about private sector involvement. I would like to know how you folks feel about what Joe said of that kind of involvement. I would like to listen to this debate because this committee is trying to come up with new and innovative ideas concerning this issue. That is one area that I would like to see explored a bit more. Barbara Clow talked about women and pay equity, and it is not in any of our options that we see. Well, it is going to be now, I can tell you.
I sit on the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights and I have lived in China for five years. I have done stuff dealing with human rights all over the place and, somehow, human rights in Canada are not on the agenda, the rights of the child, the rights of the charter and the rights of people with disabilities. We love signing things and we like feeling good about things, then we say we are a great nation.
I just thought I would like to throw those out because in this day and age, it strikes me in terms of pay equity that there are all these loopholes you have talked about. How do you get through that and how is that allowed to exist in this day and age without 50,000 women marching on legislatures and saying that this nonsense has to stop.
Those are a few of the things I would like to throw out on the human rights aspect of how you can actually take it from that route; people have the right to what has been talked about from Phoenix Youth Programs and youth and all the way through it all. I am just throwing it wide open.
The Chair: Could I ask Barbara Clow and Vince Calderhead to respond to what I think are your two main points?
Mr. Calderhead: On human rights, particularly the international human rights commitments that we make, central to them would be the ones to an adequate standard of living, the right to housing and the right to health. These are international commitments that when we go to Geneva and we tell the UN expert committees that are the treaty bodies, we say, ``Yes, we are implementing those rights. We are respecting them.''
Then these committees hear from NGOs not so different from the ones you have before you who will say, ``Well, here are the statistics showing housing is in a terrible situation and it is getting worse and it is getting worse for people with disabilities, getting worse for women,'' and so on.
The committees then release their concluding observations, as they are called, and if your question is, ``So what happens?'', the concluding observations of the treaty bodies are released and those present do their best to ensure that Canadians are aware of them. Government, more or less, does nothing.
Having been involved in the process for 15 years, the most recent review of Canada was in 2006. The core complaint of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was that their concluding observations from 1998 had not been touched, had not been addressed whatsoever. In fact, things have gotten worse. There was what they referred to as ``retrogression,'' which is a huge issue from a legal, international human rights point of view. The deafening silence from Ottawa is overwhelming, where the mandate seems to be to ignore it and hope after the media cycle goes through, that no more will be heard from it. That is a huge problem.
People often find the other aspect a bit galling, if not overwhelming. Many of the same lawyers who represent Canada and the provinces who go to the treaty bodies and say that they are complying with the right to an adequate standard of living, and make compelling submissions, will either be working with or instructing those lawyers who go to court on very important constitutional cases, Charter cases, urge the courts to avoid interpretations of the Charter that would include protections for basic human rights like the right to an adequate standard of living.
What we often hear is that our legal representatives go to Geneva and say, ``Yes, these rights are protected,'' for example, ``in the Charter of Rights.'' Then, many of those same lawyers go to courts in Canada and say to the judges, ``You should never consider ever interpreting the Charter of Rights so that it would ensure an adequate standard of living.'' That galling type of double standard really jumps out.
That is one of the problems but, more generally, it is a complete and utter lack of follow-up from the treaty bodies in saying, ``Well, okay, what is the to-do list we have been provided and what is our game plan by way of following up on it?'' I mean, that is completely obsolete at this point.
Ms. Clow: I think it is true that there is a deafening silence on many of these issues and a great deal of the legislation that goes forward or the discussions that take place in Parliament around particular issues do not take place within the framework of human rights issues. We know that should and could be the case.
Vince was talking about what happens between what we say, what we sign and then what we do. Then there is also what the legislation says and then what the courts decide. Interestingly, the issue of the Newfoundland-Labrador case of pay equity was that the decision was made based on financial hardship, right. It would be too difficult for the Newfoundland-Labrador government to pay off the women to give them the gender equity settlement, and so that was the main loophole. But, right now, tell me that the Newfoundland-Labrador government could not afford to settle that claim. However, there is no recourse because the decision is final; it is over. The system of defence is so onerous and expensive for the average person how would the women go about reopening the case.
I have been thinking lately that it is quite interesting that we have laws on the books that determine that certain things are considered hate crimes, and if you use certain words in a public forum about racial groups or Aboriginal peoples, you can be charged. However, that does not seem to extend to women, and our parliamentarians do not necessarily give us a good example to follow in the ways in which they think and speak about women. I mean, if we only think about the Peter MacKay-Belinda Stronach debacle, it is just shocking to me that those things went unchallenged. For me, it is really a systemic issue in terms of our institutions and the lack of connectedness, but there needs to be some real solid leadership that does something about it.
You asked about reactions to Joe's comments and I applaud him for bravely coming to this meeting because I am sure he has been nervous as all get out. I think it is an important perspective to bring to the table. The overwhelming majority of employers in this part of the country are small business owners. It would be very hard on them to have the minimum wage raised by 25 per cent. If the government does that then there are the clawbacks. In that situation, who are you helping? These initiatives need to be coordinated so that the burden of addressing poverty and homelessness does not fall on any single group. The government is responsible not because we want to shove it off on the government, but because the government is us. They are using my money to pay me, as it happens, but they are using my money.
The Chair: I guess we could say the same thing then.
Ms. Clow: I want that money to be used in ways that respects all interests.
Senator Munson: Joe has made a statement and I would like to hear from others, where the accommodation, and in terms of our recommendation, to be made between the private sector and the NGOs who want to live on the same street, in the same building, that Joe's group builds. I would like to try to find out anyway; maybe we cannot get it today, but of where that balance is in accommodation.
The Chair: If we get any comments of a general nature, because in terms of specific housing, we will have that come later in the session. Joe will get his day.
Senator Segal: With your permission, Mr. Chair, I want to be provocative and say that all of us in some unwitting way are part of a larger poverty problem.
We are very good in Canada in talking about this problem. We are probably amongst the very best in the world at producing detailed and long reports on this problem. We are superb at calling for coordination between governments.
I worked in provincial and federal governments. They cannot coordinate office to office, let alone government to government. Who are we fooling? We are well provisioned intellectually on the nature of the problem. I think we have had a problem and this relates to all the political parties, I am not talking about anyone in particular, with all governments in avoiding the core question. We do it because you know what they say about Canadians abroad. ``It is always fair-weather when the Canadians get together.'' Right? We never discuss anything unpleasant. We never want to be confrontational. It is just not who we are. One of our great strengths as a country is we do not confront each other with compelling, awful, horrific truths. But the compelling, awful, horrific truth is the amount of people who are poor as a percentage of our general population has not changed in 25 years. It certainly has not gotten better if less poor people, as a percentage of the total, is our view of better. It is not happening.
Everything that has been said by different colleagues around the table about the pieces of the problem is profoundly correct. Female, single, the bread winner of households, carry a disproportionate amount of the burden and are wildly over-represented.
Mr. Buckland commented that we will house the poor whether we like it or not, either in proper housing or in prisons, mental hospitals, or other institutions or on the street, but we are going to carry that cost. I would restate that and say, that the poor are wildly overrepresented in our prisons. Twelve to 15 per cent of the population is living underneath the low-income cut-off, but the percentage of people in our prisons actually starts with a nine not a one as a percentage.
Our First Nations, urban, rural, a little bit of a difference between the two, are wildly overrepresented in our prisons. They are overrepresented because, intrinsically, they are poor. I am not putting this out because I have an easy solution but because I would like to engage and get the benefit of the advice around the table from people who are working on the frontlines in so many compelling and important ways. One of our challenges is to decide if we are going to confront the different pieces of the causes why people are poor. Are we going to focus our energies on dealing with the hard reality that they are poor because they do not have enough money?
We know that if you invest more on education, the people who would benefit from that investment have a lesser chance of ending up poor. We know if you invest in education, those very same people have a lesser chance, the beneficiaries of that investment, of ending up prematurely sick or dependent upon the health care system. They will live longer and healthier because they are better educated.
Should we continue to look at all these piecemeal causal factors? Should we step back from the fundamental question that asks why do poor people not have enough money to pay their rent? Joe's colleagues do not want any new rules that are going to make it even tougher for small landlords to collect a fair rent.
I would argue, and Joe may disagree with me, that if people had what they needed to live with dignity and self- respect and pay a market rent, his association would be better off, quite frankly, than if we imposed a whole bunch of regulations on what they have to build and for who.
Anyone who wants to engage should feel free to do so. I was one of the committee members of the Toronto Summit Group to which Miia Suokonautio referred. The committee netted out by saying it is about adults who do not have sufficient income and therefore, the level of income support is nowhere near where it has to be and we have to move down that road very quickly.
There is another model. I forget which one of our colleagues around the table mentioned health outcomes: It was Lisa, perhaps. In Europe the level of income support is much higher and the amount of holidays people have is much greater. Guess what? They live longer; they live healthier lives. They are not caught up in the American notion that welfare is essentially a minimalist response to people who are, for some moral reason, unable to earn what they should. Somehow there is an attribution of fault upon the poor by the way our systems operate. It may not be what we had in mind. It may not be what community leaders believe in, but it is the way the system operates. All you have to do is talk to an unwed mother. I had a chance to meet with a whole bunch of them last night about what they have to face in front of an income support office — do not call them welfare officers — income support officers right here in this great province, which I think is trying to make substantial strides on this issue.
The Chair: Okay, senator.
Senator Segal: In a term that was used this morning — I am coming to the question.
The Chair: There is a question?
Senator Segal: A term they used this morning was an eligibility review officer, right? I do not blame the public servant, he was just doing his job, but we know what an eligibility review officer is and we know how demeaning this is to our fellow human beings.
My question is do we have the courage to step out of our narrow roles? Our roles are important and relate to our obligations to the organizations that we serve professionally. This is a question for senators and invited guests around the table who are, in fact, our real employers, for whom we all work. Do we have to step back and say that we need a much more fundamental solution?
If you go back to how we got universal health care, not one provincial premier except for Tommy Douglas thought it was such a hot idea, but once he started the political pressure on everybody else, it was such that nobody could resist it. Conservatives, like Bob Stanfield here in Nova Scotia, were in favour of universal healthcare. It would not have been his idea, but the politics moved so dramatically and I ask the question is anyone here of the view that we can continue to manoeuvre the way we are manoeuvring in our present silos and achieve any meaningful progress and, if not, what would you do about it?
The Chair: That was the longest sentence I have ever heard. I am going to ask if people want to respond to your question directly, but most of what you said has to do with income supports. That is a good lead-in for the next component of discussion. By the way, when we get into that discussion, it will be freewheeling, back and forth. I will not be going around the table, so you can choose to participate or you can choose not to participate. The other thing you can do is you can talk for yourself. You do not have to talk for your organization. We are not going to quote you as giving representative remarks of your organization on that discussion. It will be more free-wheeling discussion. As soon as we finish with the income support section, then we will go into a housing and homelessness section. For now, I want to get this session wrapped up.
Mr. Metlege: I think those are very intelligent comments and I would tend to agree. They go back to something I wrote down here on the paper but I did not want to say because now we are starting to really do some work around here if we are going to look at this question. I do not agree with giving welfare. I do not agree with welfare whatsoever. I agree with creating an opportunity. Far too often we think that throwing money at any problem is going to solve it, you know, up minimum wage to $10. Like there is a cyclical event. If you up minimum wage then the next level gets bumped up. The next level gets bumped up. The next level gets bumped up. Costs are bumped up and at the end of the day the purchasing power of that $10 is no more than the minimum wage ``x'' number of years ago.
What we need to do is teach, encourage and empower people to find opportunities and find trades or jobs that will pay better. There has been a big push here on the East Coast to promote university education. Probably for the past 15 or 20 years I guess, there has been a huge push going to the high schools and setting up seminars for students to get into university.
I am also representing developers and property managers and whatnot so we cannot find tradespeople. With what is happening out West, a plumber or a carpenter is making $50, $60 or $70 an hour so there is no such thing as there are no jobs out there and there is no such thing as there are no high-paying jobs and you have to be from a high university education degree to get a well-paying job. We just have to teach and open up the doors for our young people and get them focused.
There is a stigma that if you have a university education you are a better-educated person and that if you are a tradesperson, you are looked down upon. I know many tradespeople who are making a heck of a lot more money than university-educated people are and are actually able to stay in the province that they love. In Halifax, or in Nova Scotia, particularly we are getting an MTV effect. We teach the young minds, they go to Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, and they pay their taxes in those cities. Here we have a shortage of tradespeople. We have a shortage of professions and unfortunately, specifically in Halifax the age group of 18 to 25 is the majority of our demographic because we are a university town.
It goes back to my original statement of throwing the money at a particular problem or creating more welfare safety nets; I do not think that is the solution. I think it is refocusing and shifting the education system to promoting and implementing the actual demands of the workforce today. I mean, we have enough white collar jobs and we have enough white collar educated people coming up through the ranks. We do not have enough blue-collar workers. We do not have enough tradespeople who can take over these positions. That is why immigration is called on in vast numbers to try to bring in more bodies to fill in these needed positions. I would push that envelope and focus not just on higher- level education but on the trades at all levels. That is my two cents.
Mr. Robicheau: I will meet you halfway. I have a brother who is a lobster fisherman with Grade 9 education, he is doing pretty darned well, and we are in Atlantic Canada.
One-half of the people with disabilities are low-income people. To that number we add the women with disabilities, illiteracy, the whole gamut; I am not just talking wheelchairs. It is the whole thing. Half of them have the ability to get an education and to get a job of value and we are not a charity case. I am glad that in the last 10 or 20 years, that Canada has evolved into respecting abilities and people with disabilities and that it is not all just Paralympics and wheelchair basketball. There is some stuff and even our parliamentarian, Stephen MacNeil. Some of the fundamentals were those that are stuck in poverty meaning disabilities, including chronic, long-term and prolonged. What they are living on is not enough for them. And you are talking about the market value. To find an apartment here in HRM at $440 is just not feasible. Even outside of HRM $450 a month with the price of oil today, a tank of oil I think is $1,200 for one tank of oil. In the winter months, someone on a fixed low income, a senior or on social services, will probably pay $1,200 a month in heating costs. And we are looking at 30 per cent of their income being on housing? No, it is more like 48 per cent in those months and let us hope they do not have a car payment or any other things like that.
Senator Segal, on your question about is it going to get better, unfortunately with Nova Scotia's aging population, it is not. Many people are dreaming of age 65. The gap between age 55 and 65 years where some of those very low- income people there are many people on community services, they cannot wait to turn 65 years where they will have that old-age security income where it is going to increase their income. Also, we have to think about caregivers who are taking care of mentally challenged children who are not children anymore. Some of these children are 50 years old living at home.
A lot of this has to do with just upfront money to pay their rent and heat but disability support, which includes respite care and many healthcare costs. Everybody wants an MRI and a CAT scan in their backyard, but if you have to drive to Halifax, which is three hours away, travel becomes a big barrier in not only accessibility but also the cost of traveling. With all the health costs that have happened in the last year, the burden of that cost has been on persons with disabilities and the poor.
In closing, we have to think about housing as not just affordable but accessible.
Senator Cordy: I would like to thank each of you for being here this afternoon because you are the ears and feet on the ground. You understand what is going on far better than levels of government who have the best of intentions but are not necessarily in the trenches as you are.
What we have certainly heard today is the complexity of the whole issue of poverty. We have talked about housing, education, literacy, and income for necessities. We have talked about mental health, mental illness, addictions and disabilities. You cannot just talk about poverty and just talk about housing or just talk about addictions. You have to talk about all of it together.
I think as all levels of government, we have done a great job of writing great documents in great generalities but when the rubber hits the road and when we are looking at the outcomes and how far we have come, I am not sure that we have progressed that far. I remember the motion in the House of Commons to eliminate child poverty. I take your point that it is not child poverty, it is family poverty and I agree with you. The goal was to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000 and I am sure that every parliamentarian who voted in favour of that had the greatest of intentions and thought, ``Yes, we really have to do that.'' It was the UN Year of the Child. But the reality is it is 2008 and we are still discussing the same issues. We really have to start developing some outcomes, some measurements in saying what specifically are we going to do and how are we going to go about doing it.
I would like to talk just of one aspect of it and that is the housing issue. We heard yesterday in St. John's and I heard when I was on a committee studying mental health and mental illness about the challenges of people finding supportive housing. I know Phoenix Youth Programs does an incredible job with the young people and I was on the board many years ago before you were around Miia. They are doing incredible things. We heard a story yesterday of a young girl who was in the hospital with a drug overdose, due to an addiction. She attempted suicide, she was being let out of the hospital the next day, and she said, ``Where am I going to live?'' The nurse brought her a newspaper and opened it to the section on apartments for rent. It is so disheartening when you hear those kinds of stories.
Are those kinds of things happening in other parts of the Maritimes? They are happening in Newfoundland where we talk about affordable safe housing but without the safety net, without the support systems in place. Someone mentioned earlier about the welfare wall or the welfare barrier, how are you going to help yourself if you are taken out of the hospital or taken out of the penal system? You are released from prison and you go to what you can afford, which is often a boarding house and you are there by yourself and you are going to be around the friends that you had before you were in the hospital to deal with your addictions, before you were in the prison system. You have no support. You are going to go back, I believe, the vast majority are going to go back to their original lifestyle, continue in the same lifestyle, and be back no further ahead.
Are those kinds of things happening in Atlantic Canada? I know there are Elizabeth Fry Societies and the Phoenix Youth Programs. What about most people who are not in the metro area as an example?
Ms. Jahn: There definitely is a high need in this regard. We just heard yesterday at a shelter meeting from Community Services, that a shelter provider reported exactly on this issue that there is no support from the healthcare system. This one area needs to be discussed and should be included in any discussion.
I know that the Public Health Association started the same initiative to really focus this year on poverty and homelessness and how the healthcare system treats homeless people and people living in poverty. We heard a similar case yesterday. A woman tried to commit suicide. She sat there for eight hours in the ER. Nobody paid attention. She was released into a shelter. There is no medical case planning, nothing. We hear this all the time.
The main issue is funding. Many organizations would like to provide supportive housing and usually they are able to get the funding after 10 years of planning from our organization, but then there is no funding for the support services. Of course, non-profits are very creative so they use the operating budget and make do and use the leftovers to get the support services in place. I am always really thinking how we can make a real change.
What you touched on is really interesting because we always sit together. We come together and talk about it. We produce the data and new people come in so you always feel fresh energy coming and you think, this time it will work. But then I speak with a social worker who has worked for 30 years in the community who says, ``Oh, I am not going. I went 30 years ago.'' We really have to think outside the box so I try to do that by seeing an example in Toronto. I asked a lady from a supportive housing organization and she got funding for the support services. I said, ``So how did you do it?'' She said that there was one politician who just stood up, went against his senior advisors, and said the Department of Health would step up to the plate and give them $1 million for the support services because it is part of health. It is a health issue too. If you house people with mental issue or disabilities or addiction, it is our mandate. I think this is what we are looking for. We need basically, sometimes it is one person, this tipping point that someone stands up and says, ``This is all nice and I have the best intentions but I am courageous and I will make an executive decision to initiate a major change.''
Ms. Suokonautio: I am just going to try and link the two senators' comments. Senator, you referred to people leaving the criminal justice system and senator, you commented that the people in the criminal justice system are actually overrepresented among the poor and Aboriginal population. I will come back to what I said earlier. The best strategy is to prevent people being there to begin with and then having to find a place when they come out and all the other resultant issues. I think it is obvious that the need is there. I almost feel like it does not bear restating. All of us here are trying to address that. It is an ongoing issue. I can give you a list as long as my arm of youth who are having issues finding housing, leaving mental health services, leaving the criminal justice system, leaving regular health services, leaving foster care, whatever the case may be.
I want to talk a little bit about prevention in the way of better social policy. Senator Segal, I take your comments very seriously in that we are very good at producing reports. We are very good at doing research, but eventually we have to do what Claudia says, which is someone has to be the tipping point and be courageous and make a change.
Richard Shillington always talks about you always have to vet that through the people who would be most affected. That would be a general principle for any changes. EI eligibility Toronto it is 22 per cent. Here in Halifax it is less than 40 per cent. EI as a genuine insurance does not apply. That has to do a lot with the restrictions on eligibility. That really needs to be looked at.
The other part might be controversial and for different reasons I rather agree again with Mr. Metlege, that welfare is broken, so putting more money into welfare does not work. It is stigmatized. There are asset limits. There are clawbacks. It is very problematic. There are other and better ways to get money into the pockets of low-income adults and families and seniors in Canada and this is where my biases will now come out.
I think that refundable tax credits would work well. If I were to file my taxes today and I came out with, ``Oh, I get $700 back'' or something, nowhere do I say to myself, ``It is because I am poor or do I really deserve this or is there something problematic around this.''
It is something that we are able to put through and I think that is one of the options that is put forward in your report. You can do it with the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors. You can do it with Child Tax Benefits. There is no reason why we cannot do it with low-income adults. The reason why we cannot do it comes back to a philosophical problem. This is not a party alliance, but when Mike Harris was the Premier of Ontario, social assistance rates were cut and not only was there not a public outcry, he was re-elected; it is political. We have to ask if the public has an appetite for this and I think there is a long road to go on that and that is why sometimes this work that we are doing, as nice as it is to speak to senators, is pretty isolating.
The Chair: Presenters and senators, this session will be freer flowing. I hope it will focus on income supports but not exclusively because when you are talking about poverty you cannot forget that there are other components, other support services that are part of it. Please feel free to spread out your comments on that but the prime focus is on income supports.
I mentioned earlier the Croll report of 38 years ago. What did it say? It said that the welfare system is a hopeless failure. Is it a hopeless failure today? Do we need to throw it out and start over? Do we make improvements to it? Do we try to carry out some radical or perhaps incremental change? That is the kind of thing you want to hear about. A radical change might be, for example, a guaranteed annual income. We have had some presentations on that idea. In fact, in the appendix of the report there are some variations on that theme coming from the Caledon Institute, John Stapleton from Campaign 2000 and from the National Council of Welfare. They have variations on the theme. Not too many people use the phrase, ``guaranteed annual income'' these days but it is tantamount to that.
Then there is the question of EI. Many people have many complaints about the way EI does or does not flow. Many people are not eligible for it anymore and the eligibility varies depending on where in the country you live. For example, in St. John's, 51.5 per cent of people that apply get it, whereas in the City of Ottawa it is 20 per cent. In Saint John, New Brunswick, is at 43 per cent, Halifax is 39 per cent, so even within Atlantic Canada there are variations. Why are there regional variations and should they be eliminated. Some people said that, by the way.
There is also the question should EI go back to being an insurance scheme? Should EI go back to the original concept that goes back to the 1940s and should we be loading it up with other programs such as training? It seems logical to have training to get people back to work but should it be part of EI or should it be a separate program?
Another thing that we have heard a fair bit about in terms of income supports is the attempts to get through or around the welfare wall, the attempts to get into the workforce without it becoming a worse income circumstance. People have talked about the need for bridging, the need for transition, the fact that you get a job maybe at minimum wage and you lose your health benefits and other items that you would have had when you were on social assistance. What do we need to do about bridging the gap in terms of those folks in the transition period? Those are some of the issues involving income support. That is not all of them all but that is some of them.
What do you think we need to do? Do we call it a hopeless failure and start over or do we get in there and make some changes?
Ms. Suokonautio: You asked whether the welfare system is a hopeless failure. You asked about EI and problems with the welfare wall.
With respect to the hopeless failure of welfare, Barbara came to me just now and wanted to make sure that I was not misquoting myself in saying that putting more money into welfare is not a good idea. I just want to clarify that part of what I am saying is I do not think there is anyone who receives welfare leaves a welfare office without feeling pretty wretched, stigmatized and scrutinized. It is not that I do not think that we should be supporting people through income assistance, it is just that welfare, in and of itself with all of the clawbacks and asset limits and all of those things and the seeming arbitrariness of when you are eligible and when you are not is very problematic.
I think the welfare system and particularly from what I understand from the work that I have had the privilege to do with many people, needs a complete overhaul or reform. I had a chance to speak with some of your colleagues during the break. If we look at who is actually on welfare, it begins to look like a very blunt policy instrument, regardless of other supports that come onboard. A woman parenting a child between zero and five years of age and an unattached adult who has been on for seven years, may have very different needs but they both fall under the rubric of welfare. That is a bit of an issue and it is presumptuous to think that they have comparable needs at that point. We have backfilled that with child tax benefits and we have backfilled with other community-based supports but, at the same time, the very fundamental income assistance is coming through the same department and that is a bit of a difficult situation.
I think that the Employment Insurance system should go back to insurance principles. I think the Caledon Institute made recommendations around training being removed from that and similarly things such as maternity benefits should all be removed and that EI is an employee-employer insurance package.
Whenever I say this I am very cautious because I am afraid that then if you pull them out then it actually gets worse than it is. We are fortunate to have if you are eligible, to have up to a year of EI under maternity leave. Definitely, with no erosion of already made gains then that would make sense to me. I understand that there are plans for the EI surplus, but I do not quite understand what they are. I do not know if you guys know better than I do.
The welfare wall can actually be solved, I think, with better coordination. I think there could also be stop gapping of drug and dental benefits. There needs to be some sort of bridging process for people who are leaving the system because a person leaving hits a number of barriers simultaneously. They would need to be staggered. That would make better sense and would create less of an impact on the individual household. I would love to see costing on a lot of this stuff, too including a general dental care program for all low-income households whether or not they are on social assistance and ditto for Pharmacare. In that way people would not have to meet the eligibility for such services through welfare or disability programs. I do not know if that addresses your questions. It is just weighing in. It is much more complex than that.
The Chair: So you were kind of telling us a biased statement.
Ms. Suokonautio: Well the bias is that there has to be a new architecture; that is the language that the Caledon Institute of Social Policy uses. Part of their impetus, particularly with Ken Battle's work is that, given the differing natures of different populations and their needs, having one sweeping policy does not work so we need to set minimum standards. We are saying absolutely not and then if you are in this group, this is what would make sense or if you are in this group, this is what would make sense. If you are a single mom and there are child benefit issues or there are house supports for families with children, that would make sense. The challenge with that again, and then I come back to this is the political will to set those standards high enough, that they actually make sense. The other challenge is that always when you draw a line there are people who are on one side of the line and people who fall on the other side of the line and that may feel very arbitrary. It is like drawing a map and we start to draw line. There needs to be clear consultation with the people who would be affected if it makes sense to them.
Mr. Calderhead: On the point of income support, absolutely it is a huge issue and by income support, I am talking about not just basic needs allowances but special needs, those needs are not recurrent on a monthly basis but occasional. I am cautious in saying that because so often in my client caseload, the special needs that people with disabilities are for them basic needs so that has always been a problem.
Income support is a main issue. The question really for this level of government for the senators is this: Are the feds going to come back to the table or are they not?
There is something called the Canada Health and Social Transfer, which is not a blank cheque, as it used to be under CAP, the Canada Assistance Plan, but it is a block fund lump sum, no strings attached. You are not allowed to discriminate against people moving from one province to another on welfare but that is not a significant standard. Essentially it is a block fund, no strings attached. It is kind of an add-on to equalization. The federal government needs to decide if it is going to come back to the income support table through coordination with the provinces, or is it going to do it directly? I mean it talked about refundable tax credits. That is a way. One of the downsides of that is that you lose local flexibility or you tend to lose local flexibility and the nuances that are particular to each of the provinces. If you have a national child benefit program, there are standard rates that are issued but that may or may not be adequate given provincial and territorial differences. It can be a directly provided benefit as you have with children and by analogy through the seniors' programs, or it can be through the provinces conditional cost sharing.
Senator Segal said that it was almost inherently impossible but then I think went on and perhaps not intentionally, to answer his own question by pointing to the overall success story of the Canada Health Act and medicare. Like it or not that is, with all its shortcomings, a huge success story around federal-provincial conditional cost sharing. The federal government used to be involved in that. It was called the Canada Assistance Plan and then in February 1995 there was the announced repeal and that was the quid pro quo for those huge cutbacks to the provinces.
The federal government now needs to decide, and the Senate in coming to its conclusions in this report, whether the same level of legitimacy and entitlement that is accorded to healthcare users under the Canada Health Act will be re- accorded to low-income people through a national program. Really, that is what it comes down to. Up to this point, it has not been seen as a priority. Why? Because poor people are not seen as deserving. It is no more complicated than that.
Senator Segal: They do not vote, or they tend not to vote.
Mr. Calderhead: Yes, although if I were a low-income person I would not vote either because it does not work.
I was sharing earlier that the stuff around social determinants of health is bringing a newer and a refreshed spotlight to low income people. Why? Oh, low income people get sick and they have health problems. Hey, I have health problems. I can relate to that. Let us put therefore, poor people back on the agenda. It is a kind of way of according legitimacy in a context where, to this point, we have really struggled to ensure that happens. Frankly, I do not really care what the intentions are so long as the federal government comes back to the table.
With respect to EI, for me frankly it is not really an issue. I have not had a client with an EI problem in years. Why? Because none of my clients are eligible. People ask me about it. Well, the program is inherently complicated, but I never look at it anymore because I never need to. No one is on it.
The subcommittee needs to decide whether the federal government ought to come back to the income support table. If they do, assuming they do, are they going to do it directly through a kind of refundable tax credit with the limitations that implies, or are they going to do it through conditional cost sharing that is not an Ottawa talk-down telling Quebec what to do, but rather embraces norms that are shared internationally.
Mr. Metlege: I am going to take my association representation hat off and I have a question actually for everybody. Sitting back, it is starting to sound a lot more, and I do not know how to word this and I do not mean any offence by it but it is like we are taking pity. The system seems like it is pitiful. What I mean by that is I am a son of an immigrant. My father came here 35 years ago, did not know the language and did not have any relatives. He had about $150 in his pocket and he made it. This country gives opportunities. I have difficulty understanding why it is so difficult to encourage self-help.
Everyone, and I believe it is with the best intentions, is fighting for their association to support, to support, to support, but at the end of the day we need a system that promotes self-help. The system can tell Joe that it is there to help him, but ultimately he will have to have to carry the burden. Joe is going to have to stand up and say, ``I want to do better. I have to do better and I am going to do whatever it takes to do better.''
The support system should be out there to assist but not to alleviate the burden and I think that is where the welfare system has moved to. It has become very complicated. It has become somewhat restrictive and the people have gone on it have become somewhat reliant on the system. I can only speak from the experiences of the people who I have spoken to, but I have literally spoken to women who have said, ``If I get pregnant again I get more money for the next child.'' It becomes almost — well, it is welfare. It is not a stepping-stone for them.
There is nothing that I have heard of or seen that takes the people who are in disadvantaged situations, whether disability, health, sex, gender, race, religion, and said, ``Okay, these are your problems. We understand them. This is where you can go for your help, but at the end of the day this association or this charity is going to help you but it is not going to do it for you.''
I understand that we want to have social programs and we want to have social assistance but I think it should be social assistance, not just doing it for people. I do not mean to sound offensive if this is coming across offensively. It is just I am somewhat ignorant to the full details and depth of how far this thing goes but from my experiences in speaking with mainly residents and my personal experience is in Canada we are not a dictatorship. We are not a communist state. I truly believe if you apply yourself you can do whatever you want in this country regardless of your sex, gender, disabilities or anything. I find the more we do this stuff I do not want to say belittles that philosophy but I do not think we are encouraging it as much as we should be. I do not know if that is a bad comment or not.
The Chair: I think that might generate a couple of comments.
Mr. Wrye: Having been one to advocate or coordinate a government approach, I appreciated Senator Segal's comments about the fact that governments do not work well together and I could share that municipal governments cannot work together within a 25 mile radius. However, if you are going to move your list of options into recommendations that have some meaning and some chance of success, if the three orders of government do not work together, you are going to be back here in five-years at another committee meeting and there will have been no progress.
The challenges that we face or do we wish to have are what kind of employment subsidies do we wish to have. We can look at it two ways. The Canadian people have a challenge in front of them. In Nova Scotia, we currently ship our fish to China. We ship our chicken to New Brunswick. We ship our beef to Prince Edward Island. We are soon going to ship our pork to Manitoba. We allow Sobeys and Loblaws to import corn and produce from other provinces and undercut Nova Scotia producers. We buy our clothing from China. We phone call centers in Bangladesh to get insurance. Then we wonder why there is no meaningful employment.
At some point, Canadians have got to be prepared to understand that they can pay the federal, provincial and municipal governments to subsidize employment subsidies as is suggested here, or we can pay more at the store so that we can employ people in Canada and we can actually not eliminate poverty by subsidizing it out of existence, but eliminate poverty by giving people an opportunity to earn a fair wage.
From the federal government's point of view, the same choices have to be made. Do we wish as a government to subsidize people's employment and provide the kinds of programs you have suggested here in your options or do we want to invest our money in the kind of infrastructure to keep Canadians working?
The Conference Board of Canada explained to the Atlantic Mayors' Congress that the super plant was a better concept than the rural small plant, that it was more efficient for the government to invest $100 million in a super plant than to keep 10 small plants going by investing $10 million. What they did not take into account was what that costs the government in terms of infrastructure to move all the goods to the super plant and move them back to where they came from.
The government has to look at the fact are we investing in people by providing an opportunity for people to be employed or are we going to invest simply in programs that give people the wages that they could have had, had they been employed. There is no question in my mind from talking to people who are poor and who are struggling that they would much prefer to earn a wage and be able to keep themselves in a good style than they would to be on Unemployment Insurance.
Throughout Atlantic Canada particularly we see the number of people who are being thrown out. We had a Rural Matters conference in Edmonton put on by the Manitoba Municipal Association. Rex Murphy pointed out that in Canada this year, 40,000 jobs have been lost in the rural sector and the forestry industry through plant closures, small mill closures, the loss in jobs in the forestry itself. We continue to ship our product though to the United States but we have lost 40,000 jobs. When 2,000 jobs were lost in Oshawa in a truck plant because people did not buy the trucks anymore because they were too big and expensive and guzzled too much gas, both the federal and provincial governments were galvanized into action. So, we did nothing for the 40,000 jobs across Canada, but the 2,000 in a vote-rich area, boy we leapt quickly at those.
Anyway, those are my comments and as I see your options, your options do not solve poverty. Your options solve poverty by bringing people up, and I applaud the level. I am not suggesting we should keep them there but if we want to solve poverty, we have got to get at the root of the problem.
My last comment is in all three questions you asked together. I am amazed at the myriad of programs there are to try to help people, which are generally all failing because we are not helping people. If we could have one program like a guaranteed income supplement that brought people up to a certain level and I know it is called different things, tax credits, whatever. If we set a standard that said everybody who is single in this country should earn no less than $25,000 and we will simply do it through a tax credit or a GIS, boy we would eliminate a lot of jobs but we would also eliminate a lot of bureaucracy. We would free up a lot of money to allow people to be brought up to that level.
Ms. Clow: I want to respond to Joe's question, and I have to start by saying again that you are a brave man to ask the question. I think you know that anyone of us could bring to the table a number of personal experiences and personal perspectives, right? We all know stories on one side of the fence and the other side of the fence but if we are going to make policy, I think we cannot rely on individual opinion or single personal experiences; we need to rely on the evidence. As a social sciences researcher and an educator, I can tell you that the evidence absolutely does not support your point of view that anyone can make it no matter what. Hundreds of thousands of people live in this country that have been living with the stigma of racism for not just their lives but for four generations before them. Some people who come to this country, are amply qualified for jobs, and have to go through 75 interviews or applications before they can get a job that they are massively overqualified for. It is just not that simple. The evidence that we have collected for 30 years since the Government of Canada initiated the discussion of the social determinants absolutely shows that it is not possible to say that the cattle prod is not turned up high enough for all the people who are on welfare. It is just not the case, and so I agree that the welfare system is pitiful but not because it takes pity on people but because it is wholly inadequate and that was the point that I was raising with Miia earlier. I believe that we do need to start again. I am with Miia about this: let us go about this a little cautiously.
I do think that what we are doing is not working, but I do believe that we have a social responsibility to support everyone who lives in this country regardless of what they have been able to accomplish or what challenges and barriers they face. In fact, the people who face few challenges have an even greater responsibility to lend their support to the people who face more challenges. From my point of view that is what welfare is supposed to be about, and I think that is where it started for us in Canada, that originally it was meant to be a social safety network from the cradle to the grave and that is what it needs to be.
There are countries around the world that have real and viable social safety networks. The Scandinavian countries come to mind immediately. They pay much higher taxes than we do, but they have way better health than we do. They have great vacations, you know? I mean that sounds silly, but I have talked to a lot of lone mothers, and some of them will say, ``You know the thing I want more than anything else is to have a vacation and to believe that I deserve a vacation, that I am a human being, that I should be able to have a vacation sometime, too.''
My response to you is I hear you. I mean, members of my family would totally share your point of view, but all of the research including an enormous study done by the Ontario government which was meant to expose welfare fraud, they spent well over $1 million finding about $200,000 of welfare fraud. Actually, I think they spent more like $5 million to realize that of course, no matter where you look there is going to be someone who is edging the system, whether you are talking about business or rent.
Mr. Metlege: Sorry, but my comment is not just specific to fraud and those who are intending to fraud the system. My comment is also based on the mindset.
Ms. Clow: But you are assuming that many people have a mindset that ``somebody is going to look after me and if I just have another baby it will be okay.''
Mr. Metlege: No, I do not.
The Chair: We cannot get into a discussion here.
Ms. Clow: My answer is that I agree with Senator Segal's point of view that it is time to stop just fiddling and get it right, but also, as Vince said, that the crucial factor here is not whether we have the resources but whether or not we have the political will to make it happen because we certainly have the expertise, excellence and resources to make it happen. There is no doubt about that.
Ms. Jahn: I would like to appreciate your comment because this is something typical, what we hear of course all the time, and it is really fostered by this welfare system that is like a model, one fits all. If we look for instance at the shelter population, 80 per cent of this population have mental health issues. In another country, not all these men and women would be there. We would not see them on the streets so to me it is not their personal fault; it is the fault of our government and not the welfare system either, but our healthcare system. They belong in a nice home, in a group home where someone will take care of them. That is not their fault at all.
The single mothers, if they stay on welfare it is not a testament that they take advantage. To me it is a testament that it is not good enough. The welfare system is not good enough. It is not moving them up the ladder. I interviewed many single mothers in rural Nova Scotia on a study of how mothers live in rural Nova Scotia and if you would see this show it is unbelievable and none of them who like to stay on that system. They would like to get an education. There is no car. There is not even a car to get to the food bank or to get the groceries.
Your opinion is really well taken because it is something that our society is about. That is how we perceive people living in poverty like all that same. They are individuals. There are many, many faces to it and I think our programs have to address those people and they have to be geared to all these individual needs.
Mr. Robicheau: With respect to the broken system, about 10 years ago all governments decided it was time to balance budgets at all costs and some of it included social costs in infrastructure and hospitals. Some of the social workers in this province deal with 300 cases or more. They cut the meat and potatoes and they are out.
Regarding the income threshold, that requires filling out the forms. There are many programs but because of the lack of education of the overwhelming amount of programs, people are not applying for them. For example in the case of oil and heat, there is a brand new insulation program where they could insulate their house and probably save 30 per cent to 40 per cent of heat on their oil. But that is a prevention thing so you do not have to come back. At the end of the day, what these people need is support so they are supported while at the same time there is a prevention mechanism.
I think hopelessness is probably the biggest thing in this province right now because the cutbacks have been so massive. We have a list of documents for special needs, for example, food for diabetics and so on. There are 100 reasons why they can take them off those 50 but they are not inventing 100 reasons to put them on. A case in point, a lady in Sydney has been on community services and she cannot work. She has been a wheelchair user for years, she has been on the system for 18 years and just found out about the food supplement after 18 long years, and she had some cold winters.
I think the system is broken because it has been cut back so badly. It does not mean a whole bunch of money but those caseworkers know their defence. They are burnt out and there is no way they can afford to do time-wise prevention. So prevention is something we are hopefully going to do at the same time as income threshold.
The Chair: I would like to move into housing because housing has been identified as a major issue: the need for decent, affordable housing. The options that are listed in here are varied, everything from social housing, mixed housing projects, non-profit, cooperatives et cetera. In the private sector, there is mention of the private sector possibilities of tax incentives to provide for housing for low-income people in terms of people at the low end of the market. There are also some possibilities discussed in there about home ownership for lower income people and there are some examples of where that is being done.
I think we find as we hear different things in housing that there is probably some combination of a number of things including shelter allowances that would help resolve the problems with respect to decent, affordable housing. I would like to get your input on housing, how you see it in terms of the needs and what you think some of the solutions are and what advice you might have for the government, particularly the federal government in this regard.
Mr. Calderhead: On the issue of housing, my caseload has swayed hugely in the last five years and it is now importantly informed by the need for supportive housing for people with disabilities. I think that was what I heard Senator Kirby to Rex Murphy is the number one thing he would think is necessary. I can only say that all I deal with now is supportive housing issues.
Lastly, neither housing nor income support nor any of the issues will be able to be dealt with by the federal government if there is a continued erosion of the federal capacity and particularly the spending power. The federal government is tying its hands behind its back because of tax reductions. As a result, none of these things will there be tax room to do anything on unless the Senate, in its deliberations, takes up the issue that there needs to be a break on the tax cut frenzy and create an environment where increased tax is not seen as a capital offence.
The Chair: I want to also mention homelessness because that is part of this discussion as well. I would like to also hear how homelessness is characterized in your areas. In my city of Toronto there are many people on the street but there are also many hidden homeless. We went to St. John's and they said most of their homeless are hidden homeless so comment on homelessness as well.
Senator Munson: Chair, I brought this up earlier on homelessness, but Joe laid out some parameters about where the private sector is and I would like to hear how where the kind of accommodation amongst ourselves here where you can meet on the same street and in the same building, that kind of accommodation that he is talking about. You mentioned a person who had a duplex, and if that person is not working, they stand a chance to lose everything. I would just like to know where the accommodation can take place within people who are homeless and people who perhaps through transition get a job. Where does the private sector work with you folks in doing something for the common good?
Ms. Jahn: In direct response to your question, we have some very positive examples from the past. For instance, the YMCA started a WISH program, Women in Supported Housing, here in Halifax. They work in close relationship with the private sector. The YWCA does not build accommodation and supportive housing units anymore; they rent them, place their clients, women in there, and provide the supports. This is working very well and is really now an inspirational example for other organizations since it is very difficult to find the capital cost to build. So there is really a great example.
My office receives numerous calls from private landlords actually offering units to people who are homeless so we hear from this more frequently which is really encouraging. Nevertheless of course it is a huge problem to find affordable housing units.
In general, to give you an overview about the situation, the homeless situation in Halifax, all our shelters are always full to capacity. The need is on the rise and shelter providers report there are more and more seniors accessing the shelter system and individuals with a higher education level. Where you might have in the past someone without a high school degree, you find now people even with a college degree. As I mentioned earlier, 80 per cent of the shelter population would need mental health services so they will never be able to live independently. A couple of non-profit organizations provide supportive housing units, very few only. That is why the length of stay in shelters is longer and longer.
In regards to your comment on hidden homelessness, this is very difficult to measure. We tried this with the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia. We traveled across the province last year and conducted seven round tables in smaller rural communities and it was quite shocking, even to me working in this field, to hear the numbers. In Truro and Yarmouth, on the South Shore counsellors reported that at least 100 men are living in the woods so I think this is different from Toronto as well. Because it is a rural area it is quite acceptable that people live there for years. There might be all kinds of issues why they do so.
We heard from the Preston area where overcrowding is a huge issue so people are not accessing the shelter system. They would rather stay three generations in one house. People are going voluntarily to reoffend to spend the winter in prison. That is what we heard in the rural area quite frequently, because the housing stock is in very, very old and in desperate need of repairs so that is why it is impossible to heat them. It is easier, better, and more affordable to spend the winter in prison, which makes sense. It is not an offence. It is really survival. In order to survive you have to be creative. I think it is not much different than other provinces and one thing is for certain for every analyst that this is not getting better. Without a national housing program, I do not see any country in the western world that can manage this without a federal housing program. Canada was really proud that a home ownership program — that is why so many people in the previous generations were fortunate enough to start with this home ownership which means so much more because it gives you equity. You can pass something onto your children. You have the equity. You are someone and so I think we are denying this right to our children. Because if you look at even the middle class, lower class, if your children had to go to college or university, they will not be able to do so.
Senator Segal: Ms. Jahn, if you had, just based on your own expertise and experience with the problem, and this might extend to William Buckland as well. If you had to make a binary choice which I accept is artificial but a binary choice between a federal program that funded the construction of more affordable housing to increase the stock available versus a federal program that ensured that every Canadian had what they needed financially to operate within the housing market and rent what they needed, which one would you choose if you had to make a binary choice. I understand that most people will say, ``I want a bit of this and a bit of that'' but if you had to make a binary choice between the two.
I raise the question because of what our friend Vince Calderhead raised, which is that there is a way the federal government can get in constitutionally cleanly by providing funds to residents to meet their obligations. However, the minute they go down that other road they have provinces, municipalities who want to participate understandably and I am just interested if, based on what you know, if you had to make the binary choice and you can tell me the binary choice is completely artificial and unfair, which one would you choose?
The Chair: You can tell him the question is unfair, whatever you like.
Ms. Jahn: No, intuitively I would say the housing program because to me housing is the basis. If you look at the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs, if someone has a home and it is a secure, safe home, then you can explore all other areas in your life. Because we have too many people who have to struggle to obtain housing, to maintain housing, they have to worry, and if you have to do so, you cannot think about your health, your education, your personal development, your community involvement. That is why I say that government is responsible. It is a right. It is a human right that everybody is appropriately housed.
Mr. Buckland: I am on the same page as Claudia. I think back to what the federal government did in Cape Breton under the National Housing Act section 56.1 and what providing a house meant to these families. I brought some albums for the committee to see where those children are today and where they would be without that housing. You know, they are members of society; they are doctors, lawyers and they came from a first generation say, coal miner or steelworker who lived in poor housing. I brought the album so the committee could see what the effect the federal government had in our area with the guidance of Sister Peggy Butts, former Senator Peggy Butts, Senator Al Graham and their foresight.
I think it was Paul Hellyer's program in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. It has been phenomenal to see the development of families when you provide them with a home, as I indicated in my opening remarks, what happens to that family and those children and how they become real, active citizens in our community because you have housed them, kept them warm and dry. They feel good about themselves. The police calls are down in certain areas where we have built these houses. The non-profit sector looked at it a little differently than the early years of public housing saying, ``Well that is where all the poor people live. We will make it look like poor housing.'' In Cape Breton we built single, detached housing and filtered the families in through communities. Most of those communities do not even know that it is a Seton Foundation house and a family that has brought up a great citizen because of those programs the federal government provided.
Mr. Metlege: I guess from our standpoint there was a federal affordable housing program in place and it did not work. I know it did not work because I personally tried to apply for it. There is a subsidy for those of you who do not know about it, basically a subsidy per unit on the construction of new developments to designate these particular blocks of units as affordable. It did not work for a few reasons. One, administratively it was virtually impossible to get it. I mean you had to either know people or I do not know what was required to actually get the funding. Secondly, I know from a social science standpoint you want to integrate people to bring them in and make them feel part of the community and I think I tend to agree with that. Unfortunately, there is also a reality which also, and I find myself always playing devil's advocate and I do not like this but I think it is for the greater good so I will keep doing it. Similar to what you said about we cannot look at the shining stars of the people who believe they can make it, we also cannot believe in the shining stars on the people who are going to be on the system. The vast majority of the public outside of this world has a preconceived conception of homelessness and affordable housing and I hear it all the time because we conduct market studies on this. ``With all due respect, Mr. Metlege, I am not going to pay you $1,200 or $1,000 a month rent and have a homeless person living in the unit next door.'' It is harsh. It may be cruel but it is the reality, and so you can explain to them well it might be a disability, it might be homelessness, it might be health, it might be whatever their particular situation may be but people do not listen to it. It puts the private sector in a bind because we are now forced with juggling how we accommodate both segments of the market. That situation led me to brainstorm about the problem.
I was in New Brunswick a few years ago and there is a federally funded senior housing program where there are privately constructed and run facilities for extended care facilities. They work well. From the private sector's point of view, they are economical because the private sector is asked to put together a business plan and put together costing on what it will actually cost to construct and run this facility. Subsequently, they build the facility and they operate it with the proper nurses, doctors, support staff, counsellors for the old age sector to accommodate them. I think a similar system with the homeless might work. In that system, the private sector can go to the government and say, ``We can accommodate respectful accommodating facilities with the proper support staff. That staff may be drug, alcohol or disability support staff or whatever particular segment you want to support in that full facility and this is what it is going to cost.'' Once those costs are given then the finances are dealt directly from government to private sector and then obviously there has to be proper auditing. The private sector then delivers those services to the people in need.
I tend to believe the private sector can run a lot more efficiently than the public sector so the government will be saving a substantial amount of money. Plus if we are really concerned with providing housing and support that the people need and not just giving financial welfare, then that is what these facilities will create. They will give them the housing, the shelter. It will give them the proper counselling services or assistance services. The people who are utilizing these services will then have better opportunities to focus on doing what they have to do to make up the difference. That is from the private sector's point of view and I am open to comments on it.
Ms. Suokonautio: I have two questions. One was the characterization in Halifax and the second one was sort of advice and I am going to actually respond to a bit of what was said just now. I agree completely with what Claudia said. In Halifax I can just speak with Phoenix Youth Programs where we work with 16 to 24 year-olds. We have five residential facilities. One is an emergency shelter so it provides 20 beds; actually, we have individual bedrooms, which is nice. It is not dormitory style. Phoenix house, which is our longest-running program provides 10, five female, five male again individual rooms and then we have three houses where three youth live with one live-in support person. In that last program the housing component of social assistance is given to Phoenix house on a per diem basis but the personal needs portion is given to the youth. The idea is that the youth becomes responsible for his or her own food preparation, budgeting and things like that. The idea is transitional housing. You go through the different steps so that eventually you graduate out and you have some experience in independent living. That is a bit of what our services offer.
I think if we looked at our shelter we have done some of our own data collection. About 69 per cent come from the Halifax Regional Municipality. The overwhelming bulk come from the Maritimes and Nova Scotia and about 10 per cent are what we consider very transient youth who are going through Canada or are internationals so who come up from the United States, for example from Maine. That is a bit of who we see.
The migration from rural Nova Scotia to the city is very common. We all know about this. Between 2001 and 2006 the population of Halifax rose by 3.6 per cent. Halifax has the highest per capital concentration of 16 to 24 year olds in a census metropolitan area in Canada. Of course we are skewed because we have so many universities but it is also because the youth migration, particularly from rural areas is to Halifax.
Phoenix Youth Programs is very lucky in that we have very good community support from business, very good community partners. A large partner that we have is St. Paul Home Society that actually gives us rent-free homes.
I think Claudia's point is well taken. We would not have the resources to have a capital campaign and build something. We rely on those relationships to be able to provide the housing. Two of our homes were made possible through the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation. In about 14 years in one of our programs, which is our walk-in center, we have seen about 3,000 youth. Those are youth who are not necessarily staying in the residential programs. They are youth who are seeking assistance. We have case managers there. You might look at that as a de facto measurement of invisible homelessness but again they are only youth accessing services and does not measure at all youth who never come through our doors. But 3,000 youth over 14 years is a fairly sizeable number.
I want to give you an example of some of the problems that we see. A wonderful thing that Nova Scotia has is restorative justice. We do not trumpet our own horn enough on that. It is quite remarkable. There was a youth who had participated in this and ended up with a conditional sentence which meant that he had to have a curfew and he was staying in our shelter system. For a number of reasons he could not stay at the shelter anymore but the only option left to him was to turn himself in. He pre-empted his breaking of his conditional sentence by going to the police and saying, ``I cannot stay at the shelter anymore so therefore I cannot respect my curfew which means I cannot respect my conditional sentence.'' There we see a direct line between leaving a shelter and going, as Claudia says, other youth who say, ``If I go to prison at least I am warm and I get my meals.'' I mean, that is a common issue.
Youth with mental health issues also have commented that prisons provide a kind of stability which, having operated in the regular outside world, they would need and they are not getting those supports elsewhere. This is by no means everyone. This is by no means even necessarily the majority but that it happens in and of itself is an issue.
I disagree very heartily and I am lucky that zoning is not by people so you cannot zone people out of regions. I think that that is really an important municipal government piece that we have. Whether or not you like your neighbours does not really matter because you cannot discriminate on that basis. I mean, it will affect who is there and you can do all sorts of other things, but I do feel strongly that mixed income neighbourhoods are absolutely necessary. You only need to look at the work of Jane Jacobs and a number of other city planners to know ghettoization is absolutely no solution. More supportive housing and mixed income neighbourhoods and obviously we have municipal bylaws that prevent zoning people so that is taken care of.
The Chair: Joe, a 30 second response.
Mr. Metlege: A 30 second clarification. I am not talking about ghettoizing. These facilities that I am suggesting would still be required in any zoning so it could mean south end Halifax. It could be north end Halifax, Fairview, it does not matter. What I am talking about is in the same building, and that is not a zoning issue. That is the reality of humanity that some people do not want to live with other people. It is not a discriminatory factor. It is a marketing factor. If you designate 10 per cent or 20 per cent of your building as affordable housing, that 20 per cent will cost the owner the 80 per cent that is not affordable. If you want the private companies to work with this, you have to make it attractive and supportive for both sides. So within the same south end $500,000 home neighbourhood, you can have these facilities. It is just the facility itself would house similarly serviced people.
Mr. Robicheau: Joe, you are wrong and I am sorry you are. If you need to hear it in plain language, we are talking about the de-institutionalization of the mentally challenged. I have got to wear a people first flag here. You are talking about over 1 million people in Canada. Here in Nova Scotia 900 people have been put in institutions because they do not have supportive living, meaning little stuff supervision like just taking pills in the morning and going to the sheltered workshop. They are different, cerebral palsy. We are talking about an aging population in Nova Scotia where mom and dad are 80 years old, the mentally challenged kid is now 50 years old, and they are homeless by being moved into institutions like the ones in Sackville where they are going to spend $19 million. The wrong is they are being put into an institution. Please advise your committee that we people with disabilities are going to move into those $1,200 a month apartments, and they will be put into court the day the landlord refuses them because of mental challenges.
Mr. Metlege: No, you are making a statement that is false.
Mr. Robicheau: You are assuming society will not tolerate the market. The market changes like society.
Mr. Metlege: Hear me out.
The Chair: It is not our purpose to get into a debate here.
Mr. Robicheau: My point is that people with disabilities are going to include themselves in society and we should have the support for them to live in society in general, whatever apartment it is and it should not have to be in an institution like it has been in the past.
Mr. Metlege: That exists, though.
Mr. Robicheau: It exists, I agree.
Ms. Clow: I have a quick comment about the state of homelessness in HRM in particular. Right now we have emergency shelters for men and we have emergency shelters for youth, but no emergency shelters for women. If a woman comes as a refugee claimant to Halifax, the best that we have been able to do so far is to get the transition houses so the shelters for women who suffer from intimate partner abuse have been able to open their doors to accommodate those people on a short-term basis. A woman who needs emergency shelter, unless she is a victim of domestic violence does not have access. The existing shelters in that you think well you can put women in with men. Well that is not such a great idea but also the women are often homeless with their children so we do not have anything, let alone sort of interim steps.
Mr. Wrye: I have been chair of Wolfville's planning committee for the last 14 years. If I want to bring a crowd out, all I have to do is try to put a group home in a residential area or create an area for affordable housing and they will be out in droves. I agree with Joe. It might be right. It might be wrong but that is reality. And certainly we do not people zone but the people come out and they do not understand that. Affordable housing is nice. The problem with the old Assisted Home Ownership Program, AHOP was you could see an AHOP house a mile away so you did create ghettos whether you liked it or not. In order to make it affordable you had to put it on a smaller lot, you had to have a smaller house, they were all standard, you could see them all, and you could say, ``That is affordable, that is affordable.''
Given Senator Segal's question which I will answer because I liked the question, would I prefer to have more affordable housing or would I prefer to have people have the income to be able to house themselves, I will take the income to house themselves and that way we do not have the stigma of someone who is in an affordable house and someone else is not because everybody is in the house that they can afford.
The Chair: We have run out of time because we have to listen to some folks from the community who have been waiting to have an opportunity to talk to us. I know we could go for another hour.
I want to thank each of you for coming today and thank you also for the good work you do through your various organizations, your contributions to the community in different ways and your input has been quite helpful to us and I hope that at the end of the day, the kind of contribution you have made here will have impact on what this report, our final report ends up saying.
We are now at the part of our program where we hear from the people who have come in, some of whom have been here all day. This lady has been here all day listening to us and now we give her a chance to say something. We are asking that everyone take five minutes. We will start with Anne Marie Elderkin, who lists herself as a self-advocate.
Anne Marie Elderkin, self-advocate, as an individual: Salam Aleichem; peace be with you.
My name is Anne Marie Elderkin, and over the last 46 years I have dealt with a history of emotional, physical and sexual abuse along with poverty and housing issues which contributed to my experiencing serious mental illness for many of those years. It is my hope that Canada, and indeed all countries will strive to bring affordable, excellent education, counselling, consultation and medical attention support services and groups to all people here and around the world. We need groups where we can learn people, family, community, nation and world-building skills such as parenting and relationship skills, anger and stress management skills along with skills and excellent communication and conflict resolution. Some people think these are the last days but in truth I believe it is just the beginning of something wonderful. For the reference, see Surah 99, Yusuf Ali translation.
Our communities and nations must do more work in the area of health promotion and enhanced therapeutic approaches along with more advertising of available services. Making these needed services available and affordable or free will encourage people like myself to make use of the services and participate more fully and community and our recovery from the war at home and within ourselves. ``And whoso saveth the life of one it shall be as if they have saved the life of all mankind,'' from the Quran, Surah 5, Yusuf Ali translation.
I want to thank Canada for setting in place excellent community support networks that have encouraged me and inspired me and others to rise up and overcome our history of abuse, apathy, despair and participate in positive programs that helped us find the treasure within ourselves, others and the world. Programs such as Canadian Mental Health, Connections Clubhouse, Teamwork Cooperative, Options Work Activity, Mental Health Outpatients, the YMCA, the YWCA, Parker Street Food and Furniture Bank, Mobile Crisis Team were instrumental in my finding my way again after a 46-year battle with mental health issues. These programs and services showed us and me that we are valued in our communities and our nation and that these support services providers need more funding to reach those in need.
It would be great if there were also funding for self-directed therapy for things like access to good, affordable housing, art supplies and funding for a healthier diet would be a blessing.
I cope with poverty on an annual income of less than $8,000 a year for the past 15 years on social assistance and CPP, and it was very hard on my family and me. I have not seen my son since he was 10 years old because we lived in Yellowknife and when I got really ill I came back to Halifax to recover and I had to leave my children there and then they moved to British Columbia and I have not been able to afford the plane ticket to go and see them. Social services has no allowance for displaced parents or children.
I recommend that the social assistance payments or the income payments for a single person with disability be at least $15,000 a year so we can live with dignity. We also need free prescription drugs for a person with disability or serious health problems so we can work and we can afford to work knowing our prescriptions and medical expenses and counselling are covered while we are living under or close to the poverty line. All counselling and therapy approaches should be free, too, for disabled persons and those living near the poverty line.
My question to this committee and the Canadian government and governments around the world is when are corporations, big business and the wealthy going to share a larger portion of the profits of the riches of our sacred earth with our communities and nations and world and indeed all mankind? When will we benefit from these shareholders funding the setting in place of more community support networks and maintaining the ones I have mentioned? When will everyone know where to turn in good times and bad, places we will go willingly and know we will receive excellent care and our voice be heard and appreciated thus letting us take a leadership role in our lives, our families, nation and world. As one voice for the earth personified, this is a great call for everyone to care just a little bit more than we have the day before. We need to boost our spiritual economies and environments here and around the world urgently and a team approach will work best. The following is a quote that sums up my presentation. ``We are the Messiah, the Prophets, the Buddha, the Brahma, the manifestations of God, a living Messiah in the multitudes, not one of us but all of us. We are all messengers of God and we are all equally responsible for the care and well-being of each other and the world.''
Does anybody have a question?
The Chair: No, there does not appear to be, so thank you very much. We will move on to the next speaker.
Ms. Elderkin: Can I just say one more thing?
The Chair: Quickly.
Ms. Elderkin: I just want to say that on a lot of things the government is doing a really good job and it is really encouraging, but the area of income is yes, I can hardly wait for that $15,000 or $20,000.
Bill Grace, Exit Realty Professionals: I came to talk to you today about affordable housing. I have a big background in affordable housing. I started with the prefabrication industry and we delivered homes all over the four Maritime provinces. We sold houses with $50 down and supplied the people with the package, they were able to prefabricate the package, and they were able to put it up themselves. We supplemented that with some funding. Now I am putting together a program whereby it can be delivered throughout the Maritimes but mostly in Nova Scotia. There are 1,680 real estate agents in this system and we can harness them all to work with us.
The big thing is in Halifax, as you probably already know, the cost of housing has gone beyond so I am suggesting that some consideration should be given for the rural areas because there are probably 1,500 lots out there that are still available and they start at $10,000 so it gives families the opportunity. Not everybody works in Halifax. They work throughout the whole province.
This program allows people to do a lot of their own work. The program is set up that we have a credit for every part that the people want to do themselves, and they can also take on part of the contracts if they want to except they cannot exceed the allowance that we have for them.
That is my objective today. I am not getting any support from the provincial government in relation to this project. The biggest part of this is in the payment schedule. All the houses are pre-sold. The mortgages are all in place but the problem is with the do-it-yourselfers, which is part of the business. The first and second draws are not a big problem, but the third draw when you supply the people with the balance of materials to finish the job, you wait a long time for your money and there are things in relation to the GST rebates. For example, if you do not package the lot and the house all in one deal you cannot credit that to the house. The customer has to do that himself and only 75 per cent ever apply. This could easily be overcome by allowing them to do so. That is the biggest thing.
In this province, there is 5 per cent and 8 per cent. In the 5 per cent of the tax you get a 36 per cent rebate on the federal portion. The provincial portion right now is only $1,500 and that is only to first-time buyers so that 8 per cent, as far as I am concerned, you are gouging the people somewhat. Originally they had these to give back 18.75 per cent of the 8 per cent but that is where we are right now. For example, if you package the thing, you have to pay legal fees twice for the lot. You also have to pay deed transfer tax on the house as well whereas if you buy the lot first and you build a house on that lot there is no deed transfer tax. These are all considerations when you are going to build a house and we are talking about people that can get a house for probably $75,000 cheaper in the rural areas than they can right in the city proper. I am talking about out around the suburbs in the urban area.
That is pretty well all I have got to say.
Senator Segal: Have you ever gone to CMHC to see if they would support this on the same basis that they support other houses?
Mr. Grace: I have been to CMHC, yes. One of the problems that you have when you are dealing with these people is who are you going to deal with. For example the banks now pretty well have abandoned their responsibilities. At one time you used to be able to go to the bank and the bank could lend you the extra money but now it is all handled through mortgage brokers and you people should probably realize that only a couple of the banks will do what I am going to call a builder's mortgage. They do not want to get involved with a deal whereby they have to look after the draws and they have to look after the inspections.
Now the Government of Canada should have some say in how this is carried out because right now housing is too expensive and someone has to think about doing something about it. I am an old man. I do not have much time left.
I have left a copy of our program and we have an internet site, it is not complete but it is started so that we can have wide distribution of this particular product. I left some notes earlier today talking about OSB, Orient Strand Board on the walls and the floor and the roof. We are using tongue and groove lumber. We have a close association with a lumber mill that is going to look after supplying us with the lumber and materials and they will deliver the units for us.
Senator Segal: So the prefab kits are built in Canada?
Mr. Grace: They are built in Nova Scotia.
We are going to build them in our own shop. I have done this before. Years ago when they brought out the co-op system, they wiped out many of the small builders because you could not compete with an $8,000 deal where they cost in the lot. Now we are able to do it. We know how to put it together. It will take us a little bit of time but we need some financial support. The mortgages are all in place. What we need is the money to carry the thing through until the mortgage money is released. That is one of the big problems that we have.
The Chair: Mr. Grace has given us a book of his proposal. You also represent an organization called Exit Realty Professionals, is that correct?
Mr. Grace: I am a real estate agent in my brother's brokerage out there in Sackville, but we are planning to use all the real estate agents throughout the whole system and we are offering them all the same deal. We probably would not be able to do that except I am working with my brother.
Ann Duffy, First Voice Community: I am a First Voice Community person. My family is made up of a single adult disabled person which is myself and my daughter who is now, I call her my child but she is 20 years old so she is an adult, who is severely disabled as far as her mental ability goes. That is what my family looks like.
Today, I am mainly speaking as a single community advocate in my neighbourhood, and my first problem with this committee is I am wondering where the single First Voice people are because there are maybe only five or six of them here in this room or have been in this room. You have spoken to a lot of non-profit organizations and there is nothing wrong with that, but I do not see them bringing their First Voice people that they deal with every day whose stories you should hear. I am wondering how the committee made people aware of this meeting or any meeting they have had right around the country as far as that goes because they are not here. First Voice people are not being represented here and I know you have asked other non-profits to bring their stories, but I do not see them happening here.
My second point here is on advocacy here which is Claudia Jahn's thing. In the 1980s and 1990s, the provincial government here and sometimes the municipal government would back what Claudia Jahn calls supports, especially advocacy, because people do need the help. In my community where I live in north end Halifax, we are 30 per cent illiterate and there is 20 per cent what I call language illiterate which is people that have actually graduated from high school that can read but they do not understand what they are reading.
The progressive system within the education system has eroded much of what teachers are responsible to do. You get people graduating that can get out of Grade 12 with fair marks but really do not understand what they are reading so my neighbourhood is about 50 per cent illiterate.
There are very few community advocates in my neighbourhood except for volunteers. Since 1990s, the government has not wanted to fund advocacy as such. You have to call it something else or use another part, as Claudia Jahn said, of your funding to maximize that and that is a reality of what happens in the community.
The other thing is with housing, and Mr. Joe. As an advocate group we have tried to get the municipality to look at a percentage of new development being affordable housing. Our community here in Halifax just does not seem to want to look at it. It is not in the Halifax by design. It has been brought to them. It is not in the report so you will not find it there if you read it.
I found a couple of good things in your report. I have read the 85-page report. I cannot remember which option it is but somewhere between Option 84 and Option 90, you discuss a liaison person in a tri-base committee, something that would have federal, provincial, municipal representatives, or maybe just people on it that would have some say and the person would be able to bring recommendations back to Ottawa. I thought that was something good in your report.
The national poverty strategy, Option 102, I think can be put in place. However, the committee needs to look at all the other poverty strategies; Newfoundland's seems to be working well. Another one has just been given to our Nova Scotia government. Now whether they will look at it, whether they will shelf it, we are not quite sure yet. It has just gone in in June. It is called the Poverty Reduction Strategy for Nova Scotia, but will our government really look at it? I am not sure. That is kind of an ``if'' but that would be a good thing if there could be a national strategy based on what works in the other provinces.
That is all I have to say for today. I will have something else to say maybe tomorrow.
Senator Cordy: Thank you very much. We are going to be at North End Community Health Center tomorrow.
When we were in Newfoundland, we met with non-profit organizations, but we also went to the Stella Burry Center and heard from many other people.
Ms. Duffy: Real stories.
Senator Cordy: Real stories.
The Chair: Real stories, yes.
Senator Cordy: And you know what? That is what helps. That is what helps us is when we hear the real stories and you are absolutely right but we do have to hear from everyone.
Ms. Duffy: In my case the system works because I have had workers that have been empathetic and sympathetic to what goes on in my life. If you have positive workers, the system works.
Senator Cordy: Absolutely, yes.
Ms. Duffy: That is why I do not go on about the system too greatly. There are flaws but in my case, having good workers and empathetic workers that are working with you, it makes it easier.
Senator Cordy: There are good things happening. Sometimes we do not talk about the good things, but you are absolutely right.
Ms. Duffy: Yes, that is right.
Senator Cordy: I am just wondering about the provincial plan. I am from Nova Scotia so I also hope that it is going to work and that it is not just a report that looks good to read but is not accomplishing anything. At least it is bringing the focus to poverty and recognizing that there is poverty in Nova Scotia. I am just wondering how much input there is going to be from community groups such as the one that you have got non-profit.
Ms. Duffy: On the committee, it was community groups, business, and government and it was like a mixed batch.
Senator Cordy: That is good to hear.
Ms. Duffy: They met for many months to put it together.
Senator Cordy: That is good to hear.
Ms. Duffy: But will the province really look at what they asked for? I do not know. I mean it only went in in June so you could ask for the report and maybe they will give it to you and then we at least get it further on.
The Chair: I take well your point about not enough people knowing about this meeting to be able to come. I am thankful you know and others who have spoken know about it. We tried to get local community organizations to let people know that.
Ms. Duffy: That is good.
The Chair: We try to visit community organizations like the one we are visiting tomorrow and we have little discussions with people. I think that in future we will try a little harder to get more participation. We talked earlier about whether we advertise in the newspaper. No, we do not have a budget for that but you know what? Even if we did, it would be such a small ad I am not sure the right people that we want to get it would see it. We will just be a little more aggressive in our efforts in terms of the community organizations and getting people in to tell their stories because that is a valuable part of all this. Thanks very much. I appreciate it.
David Mooney, Nova Scotia Community Based Transportation Association: Mr. Chair and senators, thank you for allowing me to speak. I am not off the street but from one of the organizations that informed me that this was happening today. I am here from Yarmouth. I am the Chair of the Nova Scotia Community Based Transportation Association, NSCBTA. I will speak very briefly and you will probably be thankful for that.
In the mid-1990s when the provincial government made some changes with municipal governments and took on some of the services that were provided at the municipal level, one of the things that was put into the agreement was transportation. I belong to eight organizations in Nova Scotia; five are provincial and three are from Yarmouth. Almost every one of our organizations has transportation in the top one, two, or three advocate positions. Transportation is not just a need but may be possibly be a right. In order for our people to go to the universities and community colleges that Joe wants us to go to to be able to be viable citizens in our community, we need to be able to get there. There are some provincial regulations and municipal regulations that allow large companies to come into our areas and build on land that is not anywhere near our communities such as these call centers. People that are going to work in these facilities that do not have jobs and possibly are on the poverty line cannot even get there because we have no transportation.
In the mid-1990s, as I started to say, in some of these transfer agreements, transportation was noted, as the municipalities ``may'' provide, not ``shall.'' All the other agreements used the word ``shall'' and ``may'' is used and therefore our municipal governments do not see it necessarily their job to provide transportation in their areas. In Nova Scotia we have very little public transportation. The HRM and Cape Breton Municipality are very fortunate to have very large transit systems which can also provide transportation for people with disabilities, not only people that maybe are in wheelchairs or have trouble walking but also our senior population is growing very rapidly and these people need to be provided with transportation. The cost of having your own car with insurance and now the price of gas is so high that many, many Nova Scotians do not have transportation to get to these jobs. There are a few smaller communities such as Yarmouth that has a very limited transportation system. The Kentville-Annapolis area has a larger one and these are supported very little by provincial and federal funds. There are nine Dial-A-Ride systems in Nova Scotia that provide transportation for people that are transportation-disadvantaged or impoverished or have a disability which does not allow them to drive.
As Claredon mentioned earlier today, we need to find homes for some of these issues and no one really wants to take a grasp and to say, you know, ``We will look after these things.''
Federal gas transfers, gas payments, transfers are going to be very helpful I am sure but it seems that when we use the word ``infrastructure'' in our small rural areas and Halifax, our larger urban area, ``infrastructure'' means sewage and water. And yes, we do need these things and we need to bring them up to snuff and that will help our healthcare system also by providing better water and sewage treatment but we really need to be able to move our people around so they can go to work and to have jobs that will pay.
Speaking of pay, we talked a little bit, and very little, about employment insurance and I was really trying to figure out how that was involved in housing and in poverty. If a person who makes a minimum wage and is lucky enough to work a 40 hour week and gets to be employed all year, could possibly make around $15,000 a year which is a number that has gone around the room here a couple of times today. You know EI? They can only receive 58 per cent of this money and that puts them down below $10,000. This certainly is poverty level for sure.
If we could possibly do something with our taxes so that people that make a minimum amount of money would not have to pay any taxes or have them deducted from their pay, I think that would certainly help with that situation.
Very briefly, to talk about housing I am also a member of an association called the Yarmouth Association of Residential Community Options and we have homes in Yarmouth and in Halifax and we house over 70 clients. All of these clients are serviced by Community Services money which is provincial money and that is one of the money transfers that happened in the mid-1990s when transportation certainly got left out. These homes are small option homes. We are legislated to have between only three or four clients in each home. We have 170 employees looking after these clients. These clients actually have jobs. They are entrepreneurs. Most of these clients have mental and intellectual disabilities and therefore need one-on-one assistance. They have opportunities in these homes to go out and actually work in the community not necessarily in workshops but they do coffee delivery. They work in a little bakery that is set up by YARCO and these people, although we are using provincial funds, are being housed and are living equitably in our community and really you can see the appreciation and the smiles on their faces and the work that they can do in the community so it is very well received.
If we could possibly find some homes, whether provincial or federal, I think that would be the real way to go. We should try to make sure that everyone in Canada has the ability to live in his or her own home and to be able to get to work.
The senator earlier asked the question and I think that maybe housing does come first before the issue of poverty. If we all could live in our own home with our family I think it would be a better way to continue our lives and maybe get out into the world and work.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your input.
Mr. Mooney: Are there any questions?
The Chair: Thank you for your input on transportation particularly because we have not heard that much about it but you have certainly indicated that it is an issue for low-income people.
Senator Segal: Senator Eggleton referred to the Standing Senate Committee on Agricultural and Forestry Committee and its study on rural poverty. I sat on that committee and we found transportation to be one of the most serious isolating factors for people who live in rural Canada. In some cases, and I can talk about my own province, you can take a cab from Barrie to the rural counties but you actually cannot take a cab from the rural counties to Barrie if you have a medical appointment because of permits and licensing snafus that often exist.
Based on your own experience and the work you have done, what do you think would be the best solution? Would it be subsidized transportation? Would it be providing people with a transport allowance? What do you think would make the biggest difference?
Let us talk about a cluster of people who get a job in one of those call places where it is a little bit better, perhaps, than minimum wage and maybe some benefits and it is worth it to them to go for that job. What would occur to you as the simplest solution to make sure they can actually get there?
Mr. Mooney: That is the topic of many of our conversations. I think the best way to get people to work and to encompass what we have today is with the help of subsidies; that is really what helps these transportation services work. I do not believe there is a public transportation system in the world that is for profit. I believe that it is all at a loss and a subsidy.
In Nova Scotia, we are very fortunate that we have a Dial-A-Ride system. Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations provides the funds at a $1.60 per capita for smaller rural areas. Very few of our rural areas in Nova Scotia have public transportation and most have what we may call a taxi service. If we could partner and allow people to be bridged and moved from one system through to the other, then we could almost get everywhere but our motto with the NSCBTA is to move all Nova Scotians to get to where they want to be.
We do not have the systems in Yarmouth where I can take my wheelchair, arrive in Halifax, come to a meeting like this, and then get back home. We have to rely on bits and pieces to get here and actually we cannot do that. Some public bus systems can take wheelchairs but not all of them can. Halifax probably has the best system in Atlantic Canada where our public transportation now can take even more and more people in wheelchairs.
We have an Access-A-Bus system where you have to be a member to use the system. We have very, very few taxi services. If I could go from my home which is 15 miles from Yarmouth in my Dial-A-Ride, which I can call and pay for the subsidized service and go to town, if my bus could actually move me around the town and then I could get back home with the Dial-A-Ride service then that would work. Our small community Dial-A-Rides have come to rely a lot on charity and there is no reason why a service providing transportation service should have to have a hot dog sale or do something to raise money.
The subsidy is certainly a very good way to help to provide transportation but the issue with the subsidy is that there are communities in Nova Scotia and across the country that are very large communities. They take up the majority of the subsidy that is allowed for this very small accessible public transportation number.
In Nova Scotia, the number does not exceed $500,000 for 1 million people. The federal government, thank you very much, has provided some green mobility funds, which has just been coming into place in the last maybe 18 months, and some of the money comes from federal gas taxes. These initiatives allow the small organizations to get capital and capital is probably the word you are looking for. That is what we really need. These small organizations can run with the subsidy, but they can only exist for so long because there is no money to save money. That is what we really need.
If the organizations in Nova Scotia even knew we were going to get $10,000 or $15,000 each a year, then after four years we could buy a new vehicle. A small accessible van in Nova Scotia is around $30,000 to $35,000 that anybody can buy. It costs another $20,000 to $25,000 to equip it to take a wheelchair.
Our senior population is increasing very rapidly, in particular in Nova Scotia and because of the issues with taxis and public transit, a lot of the Dial-A-Ride systems are not even allowed to solicit seniors who do not have a disability to help with their service. Today we do not solicit or advertise to our seniors to come use our vehicles. We could make more money for sure but we cannot do it because we are not allowed.
Senator Munson: I want to add something to what you are saying because transportation, from my perspective, is a human right, as we talked about earlier today. It is partly the right to go to work. It could be that with allowances another industry could be created. I talked about those with intellectual disabilities and Special Olympians, for example, the work that I am involved in across the country. But in Nova Scotia for example, there are 1,200 Special Olympians. In New Brunswick, there are 900, but there are really probably about 9,000 Special Olympians in Nova Scotia and a heck of a lot more in New Brunswick but they cannot leave their homes either. That is a big key within that community. It comes back to transportation. Families want to have their young people go to events, to go to be trained and so on and so forth so I think you have heard about transportation earlier today and I think we are hearing it from you in a very personal way that there is something for our committee to recommend here which would be of importance to all, not simply just to get to work at a call center. But physical, intellectual abilities to get out because that in itself adds dignity to a home and allows a family to operate like any other family.
Mr. Mooney: Mr. Chair, what can we do, even at the federal level? I will give you another personal example. In Yarmouth, we have five accessible vehicles that are parked in parking lots. One of them belongs to three facilities at our Southwest Regional Hospital and within that facility there are three distinct, smaller institutions as we may call them. And one of them is the Veterans' wing and there are 15 veterans, I believe. There are 15 beds and they have a brand new van outside that nobody uses. When one or two of the veterans want to go somewhere in our town or outside of our town they call our Dial-A-Ride system and if they are using the van to take some of our clients somewhere else, that means that I cannot make use of the van to go to town. Veterans Affairs gave almost half the money to buy that van. One of the stipulations was that if the Dial-A-Ride system's van was broken, that they could use the veterans' van. That stopped any organization in town from saying do not give them the money, because we really want the money to come to the town and to buy these vehicles. But these vehicles are sitting idle. It is not just Yarmouth. They are sitting idle all over the province. If the Dial-A-Ride systems or the public transportation systems had access to these vehicles or the capital to buy these vehicles, there would be more transportation for sure.
Carole Hanrahan, as an individual: Thank you for giving me a chance to speak. I guess I am one of those people that your meeting is all about. I live well below the poverty level although the numbers are played around with as to what the poverty level is. I have been on assistance for quite some time and the most that I make is just over $8,000 a year. I have two teenage sons who I have with me every weekend in a very small one-bedroom apartment. I moved in there because it was just at the mark for the maximum allowance for housing through my assistance. That number is $530 per month. It was the best place I could find where I felt was safe for my children and myself. Of course, shortly after being there they raised the rent. I could not find anywhere else. For the last while I have been paying $570, which cuts into what I am allowed to clothe and feed myself. I do not get any extra to feed my children when they are with me every weekend. Because I have a one-bedroom apartment and two teenage sons who are over six feet tall, try feeding them on that budget, I have to sleep on my living room floor on a futon because there is nowhere else to go.
I actually have had many problems with the system. At one point, I was on the system, I was in a car accident with one of my workers, and I had very bad whiplash. I got a settlement after many years of arguing back and forth of just over $20,000. As soon as I received the settlement I was immediately cut off assistance. I was supposed the use that money on my recovery, my treatments, but I was forced to use it as my income. I had to live on that money, which was for my treatments. The money did not last long. After years of being on assistance, I needed to buy furniture for myself because I did not have any. I needed to buy clothing for myself because I finally had money to buy clothing for myself.
When that money ran out or I was close to running out, I went back to Community Services to reapply and they said, ``Oh, no, that should have lasted you at least three years based on our schedule.'' So I was fighting this. I went to see my local NDP M.L.A., Grahame Steele. I have been telling everybody that I have met since then because of what he actually said to me. I was shocked when he told me that he agreed 100 per cent that what was going on was wrong. He agreed that it was wrong but pointed out that poor people do not vote and that in order to get elected into a position of power where he could actually have the ability to help poor people, he could not be seen helping them at that stage. He said that would make him unpopular with the rich people who do vote. I was floored. I told him, ``Well, I am poor and I vote and I will never vote for you. That is for damned sure.''
One of the people on the board here said that what we really need is the income for people to house themselves. I do not require a lot. I require somewhere that is safe, where my children can come visit me and feel comfortable. They live in a fairly well off home with their father and stepmother. I am on the waiting list for housing and I have been on that waiting list for two years. They keep telling me they have housing available on Gottingen Street, but I would not feel safe there. My children would not feel safe there. I do not think I would fit in very well so the one place that I found, which had mixed housing was at the top of Clayton Park in the Harlington Crescent area which has duplexes, apartment buildings, whatever. Housing has an allotment of so many apartments and when one comes empty the next person on the list moves in. People on social assistance live on the same floor of an apartment building with other tenants. They do not need to know that you are on housing. Why should they need to know? I am the same as they are. I am just getting my money from another source because of a disability.
I do not think that I am a scary individual. I do not think that someone walking down the hallway of his or her building would feel shocked and ashamed that I was sharing the same building. I have lived in an apartment building for the last five years and most of the other tenants have no idea that I am on assistance. They have asked me to keep their keys when they have gone away. An elderly lady across the hallway has asked me to look out for her and keep her key. Poor people are not these separate beings. They are people and they need to be treated like people.
One other thing that I noticed when I was reading some of the minutes that were on the computer was at one point there was a comment that they found that some of the people working at social services were acting more like gatekeepers. I have definitely found that they seem more to discourage you than encourage you and help you with what you need. God help you if you ask for anything over and above what they offer.
I had to have jaw surgery and I had always worn a bite plate, just as an example. After the jaw surgery, I had had to have my jaws wired shut, my teeth had moved. I required a new bite plate. I had to go in and apply for special circumstances to get this because it is not covered under the dental plan. They came back and they said, ``It is not covered under the dental plan so we cannot give it to you under special circumstances.'' It was sort of like the Catch-22. They said, ``Well, if you get letters from your doctor and a letter from your dentist and a letter from your specialist and you come in and you through. . .'' I was even thanked. ``Oh thank you so much for going through the appeal process because not many people bother.'' And then they said no. I ended up having to rely on a therapist friend of mine who knew a professor at Dalhousie Dentistry and out of the goodness of their heart they made me one. I should not have to.
My disability is depression and try to get out of depression when you are living in these circumstances. I just got in last week and found out that my rent was being raised as of December 1st to $615. I will have to move. Where to? I have looked everywhere. I cannot even afford a one bedroom in Truro according to Kijiji. What do I do?
The Chair: Thank you for that. Did I get this correct? You said you are making about $8,000. Your income is about $8,000 a year?
Ms. Hanrahan: Yes.
The Chair: You said you are spending $570 a month in rent.
Ms. Hanrahan: Yes, I spend $570 per month in rent.
The Chair: You are spending three quarters of your income in rent.
Ms. Hanrahan: Exactly, and that is supposed to include power. That $535 maximum is supposed to include your power.
The Chair: How do you survive?
Ms. Hanrahan: Thank God I have parents who will slip me $50 every now and then in the middle of the month when I run out of toilet paper.
The Chair: Do you do food banks at all?
Ms. Hanrahan: Yes, I have to. Like I said when my kids come over, if I want to feed them it is hamburger and Kraft Dinner usually because that spreads a long way. They do not give me any extra money for that. I have not bought new clothing in over a year and God help me, I do not know what I am going to do because I need new boots for winter. I am not going to be able to get them. I have no money.
Senator Segal: What, in your judgment, would be the annual amount the system would have to produce so that you did have enough to live and meet obligations for shelter, clothing, food, heat, power, telephone, the fundamentals that we all need. What would be the core number, in your judgment, that would work?
Ms. Hanrahan: Well, of course that changes because that was the note that I got from my landlord.
Senator Segal: Right.
Ms. Hanrahan: The rent is going up that much from $570 to $615 because of the price of oil. Every building in my area that used to be somewhat affordable to me that I might think of to move to are all doing the same thing.
Senator Segal: Right.
Ms. Hanrahan: The cost of oil goes up and I guess their taxes are being raised for some of the buildings in that area. It gets passed along to their tenants. To come up with an amount, I guess if every Canadian should at least be at what is considered the poverty level in their province if they are on assistance. People who are on long-term disability with no hope of ever getting back into the workforce should not have to look forward to a life of drudgery. I am in that position; I will probably never be able to go back into the workforce. I was in the workforce for many years. So to picture my life continuing in this way and to try to then go in for therapy to say, you know, ``You are a valuable individual. Boy, this depression, you have got to fight that.''
I guess looking at the poverty level and saying that assistance should be lined up in some way that if everybody starts at the poverty level and then gets cost of living afterwards. The last time I got a raise on my cheque, it came out to $3. I could not even buy two cups of Tim Hortons for that. If poverty level was even $13,000 or $14,000 that is almost double what I am getting. To me I would be rich, you know? To most people that would be horrendous. To me that would be huge.
Senator Segal: If that were advanced by the consumer price index every year that would, in your view, be at least a fair start.
Ms. Hanrahan: Yes, because if you look at what reasonable housing is, that you are not forced to live in a crack house or a slum. When I moved in, it was $530. It is now going up to $615 for this tiny one bedroom. They have to look at what housing costs are in their area for what is reasonable to expect of that person.
Senator Segal: Sure.
Ms. Hanrahan: They also need to look at mothers of children and the fact that I may not have my children that magical number that they pick which is 51 per cent of the time that would allow me to get any kind of extra funding for them but I still have two children.
Senator Segal: Thank you.
Senator Cordy: I know you said you were in the workplace. Are you eligible for CPP disability?
Ms. Hanrahan: If I go on CPP, I lose my drug coverage.
Senator Segal: The old Catch-22.
Senator Cordy: Oh my God. This should not be happening.
Ms. Hanrahan: Yes.
Senator Cordy: We heard from witnesses from Community Services this morning and I asked them about the availability of apartments. They said the vacancy rate was 3 per cent, which was good. I am going to ask you the same question. Are there safe accommodations for people with low incomes?
Ms. Hanrahan: If you have at least $600 to spend on rent, there are. Because I have sat night after night after night going down the computer on every website in the newspaper, calling, knocking on doors, and you have to have at least $600 to have what most people would consider safe, reasonable housing. I do not have that.
The Chair: We really appreciate you coming in. We want to hear more stories of people who are actually experiencing this kind of difficulty.
Ms. Hanrahan: I wanted to let you know I read your article that was printed in the newspaper; I believe it was Saturday, which is how I found out that these meetings were taking place. At the bottom of the article, it said to contact an email address. I did. I tried to find a way to say I was interested in speaking today. I sent an email and never got a response, so I just happened to come down here hoping that there would be some kind of open mike time or that I could grab one of you after you had a break so that is how I found out about it anyway.
The Chair: Well, it worked. You are here. Thank you very much. We will have to get that email address straightened out.
Bernard Smith, Spring Garden Area Business Association: I manage the Spring Garden Area Business Association and I am a chartered accountant and I was, in theory, retired but I did not feel like retiring. About five years ago, I took a contract with the association to try to reposition an inner city retail area, which frankly, was under some stress and was suffering because of the usual ring of Wal-Marts and shopping centers surrounding inner cities. It was also under a good deal of social stress because there was a large street population, which was frankly negative to retail business in an inner city area. I took this position on and have worked.
Initially when I got there, there was definite hostility between the retail merchants, business people and the street population and I thought this was counter-productive to both groups so I tried to take a more proactive approach. One of the things I started doing was just trying to look at the needs of these people on the street to see what would be required in fact, to get them off. I thought I would share some of my findings after five years.
I am still learning, obviously and frankly my background; once again I am a chartered accountant. I am not a social worker so I have been sort of groping around where angels fear to tread and learning all the way. Fairly consistently over the last four or so years we have been able to put something in the order of three or four people a month back into the workforce. I regard this as putting people back into society because I see it, frankly, as a terrible loss to society that people are out there not being productive. One of the problems in this area is that young people between the ages of 16 and either 18 or 19 years do not qualify for social assistance. They are on their own. If mom or dad had a big fight or more frequently if a child is with one or other of the parents and then the parent finds a new mate that the new mate does not like child and child leaves, that is a sort of Monday morning scenario in our area. We get two or three of those a month. Immediately it is a danger. If the child is female we are worried about, obviously even more than male, we feel there is a real threat to that young person progressing productively into life if they are not dealt with fairly quickly.
We now have alliances with a training program called Options Work Activity Program. Frankly, I instituted a program in my initial innocence, of sweeping the streets. I hired people for two hours of sweeping a day. I have always paid more than minimum wage. I always pay 50 cents or 75 cents an hour more so it was giving $16. Now it is more. I think it is $17 now. We pay a little bit more than minimum wage and we assess the young person.
It is astonishing that some work very well and some are completely incapable of work without training. Frankly, a number of young people have sort of adopted us because we have adopted them. It is really quite touching in some ways. We will put ourselves to huge lengths to get those people back into school. The key to this, almost invariably, is housing.
I hate to generalize, but we are left with two or three populations that we are constantly working with. They are the older addicted people which I want to touch on. There are the younger sort of newly arrived innocents, who we have to try to deal with very quickly and try to avoid being locked into the street culture because the street culture propagates drug use and petty theft. It will get the young person some sort of police criminal record which then presents a heck of a problem getting them into employment.
I am not following my notes. I had a wonderful set of notes that was going to tell you that at one point I tried to cost the impact of this vagrancy problem, this street population, on our relatively small business district. It is in the millions per year in terms of lost business. That is a terrible burden for an inner city business area, which is faced with a whole range of problems. The cost of this, averaged out by the number of people who are impacting or causing that cost, which is probably something like 25 or 30 people at any one time, we could pay them to go away. But I cannot sell that to my board. What I have been able to sell to my board over time is tolerance. I literally, if I can get someone, because we get them sweeping and working and we will get to understand them a bit and we get to feel that they are employable, we will put them into sort of entry-level jobs in restaurants, as kitchen help, we will put them in office cleaning jobs.
We have one young man at the moment working as a trainee bricklayer. On Friday I went and got that young man food from the food bank so that he would have adequate food so that he could work over the weekend as a bricklayer. I do not think they understand why. Now this is so important to me. They are right up there.
One of the things we have done is I have so embarrassed the other business district management around and the city, that they now all club together, all the business districts of which there are effectively four in this situation, and the city. With some small grant from the province, we have hired a navigator for a year on a contract which, frankly, is a skilled street youth worker. He would have been here today but he has the flu. I did not want the word not to get out there but he is much more skilled than I at this than I am.
We have had a track record of success in this thing to the point of embarrassing people into helping us. What we have done over this time is consistently put 25, 35, 40 people back into the workforce in some form and some of them stick.
I want to summarize what I think are the lacking things in the mix of supports where frankly social workers are at times prepared to step over people literally lying on the sidewalk. I think this is shameful. I do not know how I could continue to go to work as a social worker if I had to step over clients on the sidewalk. I claim these are the fallouts from the system. Why are these things not being dealt with? Inevitably, housing gets to be key in this thing. By ``housing'', I am not talking about a split entry with a lawn, a dog, and a set of swings. I am just talking about a minimum level room perhaps with a bathroom that someone can lock that is clean. Right away the problem is supervision. I was out there in the early days of my efforts and I had approval for funding from the various provincial, federal housing initiatives to fund 26 units of supervised housing. Although the amount of the money was about $100,000 short of what it was actually going to take to purchase the land and to build this building, I was pushing like blazes to raise the $100,000. The killer in this is the supervision.
I went to the Salvation Army, the Knights of Columbus, and my own board. I actually optioned the land personally to put this on. It is so frustrating that there is no movement on this stuff. How can we leave our young people on the streets without a way off?
One of the things I introduced fairly early on and that my board went along with is that I pay $12 a day all the time you are working. If we get someone a job, one of the problems was they could not live until the first paycheque came. It is constructed to stop people getting from the streets into work. We provided $12 a day so they could go and have breakfast and supper or something just to keep them going until they got that first paycheque. Then they cannot cash the first paycheque so I cashed the paycheque. I know by that time where the paycheque is going to be coming from. There is not much risk to me so I go and endorse it and cash it at my bank, give the fellow the money or the young woman the money and this works. No one else is doing this. But these are the things we have to do to deal with this situation.
Let me tell you a little bit more about housing. One of my problems with the older, almost permanent street population is they are almost invariably addicted. Addiction treatment I know very little about but certainly the four day dry-out that is generally available to these people is completely useless. I can produce one man that has been 10 times for the four day dry-outs. Now I ask social services every day, ``How much does it cost you to provide this residential four-day addiction treatment?'' And they say they do not know and I think that is probably true. I say well let us assume it is $250 a day. I cannot imagine it is much less. For four days, that is $1,000. I can produce a man that has been there 10 times. That is $10,000. He is still on the street. He has got exactly the problem he had when you started. You have spent $10,000 and achieved nothing. Now surely we should be doing it properly.
I suggest it means much longer-term residential addiction treatment and there should be some mechanism for sentencing people to treatment. Frequently these people will descend to theft to support an addiction habit if they are not able to get enough money in terms of contribution from the citizens on the street. They do pass through the court system from time to time. But some of them do not descend that low. Do they have the right really? I mean, I am a great believer in freedom of everything almost but do they have the right to misrepresent themselves continually on the street as being poor, in need of help, got some sort of problem or other and really they will just go from one fix of crack to the next fix of crack.
Let me tell you something about housing.
The Chair: If you could briefly wrap up, Mr. Smith, we would appreciate it. We are way past the five minutes, thank you.
Mr. Smith: Well, I thought I was an entertaining guest.
The Chair: You are. That is why I have let you go 10 minutes.
Mr. Smith: I thought I would get away with it.
The Chair: You are.
Mr. Smith: One of the problems is that these people live in crack houses. They have got nowhere else to live and with a criminal record, an addiction and they are on the streets, who is going to take them in and give them reasonable housing? Without that housing they cannot get the longer-term addiction treatment. It is a no-win situation. There is a desperate need for supervised workshops, too, for people with mental problems, and that should be out there too.
The Chair: You deserve a lot of credit for the good work you are doing and so does your business association.
Mr. Smith: They have reasonable confidence in me because most of the time I manage to win things. In fact, we have turned the place around significantly.
The Chair: Well, you have overcome a lot of barriers in some of these projects you have worked on.
Mr. Smith: Yes, that is right and it has been hugely interesting trying doing it, to tell you the truth, much better than being retired.
The Chair: Do you have a written copy of it, by the way? We would not mind it for the record.
Mr. Smith: Hopefully you have it. I could give you a couple of papers that I have done.
The Chair: Or you can send us something, whatever you like.
Mr. Smith: I was about to tell you the story of my friend Phil, who was an addict who came back from jail and for the first time was off drugs. Phil told me, ``I am never going to go back onto that stuff again.'' I said, ``Phil, wonderful.'' He was a bank robber but now just a minor thief and an addict who dried himself out and looked so much better. He looked 10 years younger and never going to go back. ``I am so pleased, Phil. Where are you living?'' He gave me the address and it was a crack house. Two weeks later he was dead from an overdose.
Senator Segal: I would like to say that for all those who wonder about the ability of retired people to provide leadership, we can all benefit from; your testimony today puts the lie to that in a very compelling way. My question is, just so I understand, you have what we would call in Kingston, the business improvement association or the local business association to spring for the cash to hire homeless kids to do some street sweeping and whatever.
Mr. Smith: Yes, they water plants for me now, too. They are quite reliable.
Senator Segal: The business improvement association is quite comfortable with the use of their money for that purpose.
Mr. Smith: Yes.
Senator Segal: Just so I am clear, they see an improvement in the area in which they do business in a measureable way that justifies the investment?
Mr. Smith: Just. There is a lot of persuasion from me.
Senator Segal: Fair enough.
Senator Cordy: I would like to say that living in Dartmouth, I remember when you took over your job and the confrontational attitude that there was on Spring Garden Road and you have done an amazing job. I am just wondering whether all this was in your job description.
Mr. Smith: No.
Senator Cordy: You have done a wonderful job, thank you.
Mr. Smith: Thank you very much.
Senator Cordy: I do not think you will ever be able to retire.
Mr. Smith: Well, I keep threatening it.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Smith. I appreciate it and carry on and tell your association to keep supporting you.
Mr. Smith: Well, we have the navigator now. I will be wondering what to do with my time.
The Chair: That completes this part of the program and our day. We will be back tomorrow at nine o'clock in this room.
The committee adjourned.