Proceedings of the Subcommittee on Cities
Issue 2 - Evidence - May 8, 2008
OTTAWA, Thursday, May 8, 2008
The Subcommittee on Cities of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 10:45 a.m. to study current social issues affecting Canada's large cities today.
Senator Art Eggleton (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Welcome to the Subcommittee on Cities of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. Today we are examining the rights-based approaches to poverty, housing and homelessness.
[English]
Our subcommittee is building upon previous work that has been done in the Senate on the matter of poverty. The 1971 report headed by Senator Croll comes to mind, as well as the 1997 report by Senator Cohen entitled Sounding the Alarm: Poverty in Canada.
At the same time, our study is complementary to the work being done by the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, chaired by Senator Fairbairn. At the request of the Senator Segal, they are dealing with the issue of rural poverty.
Today we have by video conference one witness from New Delhi, and we have three witnesses here in Ottawa.
First, by video conference from New Delhi, India, I am pleased to welcome Miloon Kothari, Former Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing for the United Nations Human Rights Council. Mr. Kothari, who is now an independent expert, was appointed in September 2000 as the special rapporteur on adequate housing. His mandate involved reporting annually on the status worldwide of the realization of the rights related to adequate housing and identifying practical solutions and good practices toward this end.
In this role, he visited Canada and issued a preliminary report in 2007. In fact, he was here for about two weeks in October. I must say, having read his report, he got a very quick grasp of the situation with respect to housing across this country. He is an architect by training and has extensive experience in the area of housing and land rights. I extend a very warm welcome to you, Mr. Kothari.
Before turning the floor over to you, I will introduce the people at the table here in Ottawa: Michael Creek, Director, National Anti-Poverty Organization, NAPO, a non-profit, non-partisan organization working for the eradication of poverty in Canada. They are no strangers to this committee; we have had NAPO here before. NAPO believes that poverty is a violation of human rights, to security of the person, and with reference to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the legal right to security of the person. Mr. Creek is accompanied by Rob Rainer, Executive Director of NAPO.
Also with us is Mary Marrone, Director of Advocacy and Legal Services, Income Security Advocacy Centre in Toronto. The centre has as its mission to work with the community and advocate for and seek legal remedies to address systemic issues and improve income security for people in the province of Ontario. The centre was established in 2001 by Legal Aid Ontario to serve low-income Ontarians, by conducting test case and Charter litigation relating to provincial and federal income security programs, including Ontario Works, the Ontario Disability Support Program, Employment Insurance and the Canada Pension Plan.
Finally, we have Bruce Porter, Director, Social Rights Advocacy Centre and Coordinator, Charter Committee on Poverty Issues, a national committee dedicated to promoting and defending the rights of poor people in Canada. He has represented claimants before human rights tribunals in a number of precedent-setting cases on the right to housing in Canada and coordinated 12 interventions at the Supreme Court of Canada, advocating for recognition of social and economic rights under Canada's Charter.
We have many knowledgeable people to help us out as we go into this area dealing with poverty, housing and homelessness in terms of human rights.
I now turn the floor over to Mr. Miloon Kothari for his presentation. It is the evening in India, and it is the morning here in Canada. We thank you for taking the time to be with us today.
Miloon Kothari, Former Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, United Nations Human Rights Council: Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. I am happy to be able to participate in this discussion. As you are all aware, I was on an official mission in October last year in Canada; I was able to travel across the country and visit numerous places, both rural and urban, and also take national testimony on the ground from dozens of people. I visited centres and shelters fully or partially funded by state programs accommodating homeless people and talked to women fleeing from violence; I spoke to Aboriginal women, people living with HIV/AIDS, children with disabilities and those suffering from deprivations.
Across the country, I saw examples of the excellent work being done to support these vulnerable groups, but everywhere I went I was told that the funding support is irregular, groups are often required to rely on voluntary contributions and voluntary labour, and the process of sustaining non-government organizations occupies a great amount of time and resources.
My overall observation confirms the comments that were made by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the last review in Canada, and referred particularly to homelessness and inadequate housing as a national emergency. Nothing that I saw proved otherwise. I was very disturbed that in such a wealthy country there is such a great level of homelessness and increasing poverty. I understand that recent data released by Statistics Canada just last Thursday confirms growing disparity and growing poverty across the country.
I looked at a number of issues. Homelessness is one issue that I looked at very carefully. I was disappointed that the government could not provide reliable statistics. The National Homeless Secretariat says that there are 150,000 homeless, but the experts to whom I spoke suggested that the actual number is twice as large.
Also a great number of Canadians, over 1.5 million, are classified as poor housing need, which qualifies them as inadequately housed and puts them at risk of homelessness.
The second issue I looked at was the issue of affordability. I was disturbed to find that one of the statistics I came across showed that almost one quarter of Canadian households — that is more than 2.7 million — are paying too much of their income to keep a roof over their heads. Cuts in social spending have heavily impacted on the lowest-income households.
During the mission, I also had a particular focus on women's rights to adequate housing. I spoke to many women across the country who talked about insufficient social assistance entitlements that do not match the cost of housing and other living expenses, or about children being taken away from mothers because they were living in inadequate housing. We also looked at how particular groups of women are affected, Aboriginal women, in particular who endure a disproportionately high rate of violence.
I visited a number of reserves and looked at the very adverse conditions under which Aboriginal people are living. I also visited the Lubicon Nation, in Alberta, and saw how energy-extracting industries are having a devastating impact on the livelihoods of Aboriginal Peoples and their traditional practices.
I visited Vancouver to study the impact of the forthcoming Olympic Games there and whether Vancouver was coming through with its commitment on using the Olympics to actually improve the housing conditions.
These are some of the areas that I looked at. In my preliminary remarks, I have made a number of recommendations. The most urgent recommendation that needs to be looked at is to ensure that three remaining national housing and homelessness programs continue beyond the expiry date of March 2009. This is the Homelessness Partnering Strategy, the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program and the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Unless there is an announcement for the continuation of these programs many communities across Canada will have to start winding down programs, which means more and more people will suffer.
I have also made recommendations in my preliminary report on the need for a comprehensive national housing strategy and a need to learn from the many examples across the country of the housing continuum concept, where people are able to move from shelters to adequate housing. Following a human rights approach, it is also important to have specific funding directed at groups that are particularly vulnerable, such as the Aboriginal people, the elderly, youth and migrants.
In closing, I would like to state that I found it surprising, travelling across the country, that a rights-based approach is not comprehensively adopted domestically since Canada has shown strong commitment at the international level and has ratified almost all the major human rights instruments.
A rights-based approach would mean that the rights of the most vulnerable are looked at first. It would mean committing programs, policies and funding to the principle of non-retrogression, which means you cannot go back on past achievements that were there. It would mean adopting an indivisibility of a human rights approach. If people are compromising on their right to food because they have to pay too much for rent or a mortgage, that is not acceptable.
Many instruments and interpretive materials are available from the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and from the work done by the UN Human Rights Council to assist Canada in implementing a human rights approach so that we do not see the type of realities we see today of many people being left out and not being able to have a secure place to live.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Kothari. We are still waiting to hear from the government about those programs that expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
Thank you for your observations. They were presented as preliminary observations. Is there a final form coming on them? Will there be any difference that you would see in the final form?
Mr. Kothari: These are presented as a preliminary note to the United Nations Human Rights Council in March. There was an opportunity, and the Canadian government gave an official response. A full mission report will be presented in either September or December of this year. The mission report will elaborate on the preliminary note and will take into consideration the detailed response that we received from the Canadian government and more up-to-date information, such as the recent statistics that have been released. The final report will be more up-to-date and a much bigger report.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Michael Creek, Director, National Anti-Poverty Organization: Mr. Chair and honourable members of the subcommittee, I am a director of the National Anti-Poverty Organization, NAPO. I am also a coordinator for Voices from the Street, a Toronto organization providing opportunity for people in poverty and on the street to express themselves on the issues affecting them. With me today is Rob Rainer, Executive Director of NAPO. We thank the subcommittee for this opportunity to engage in a dialogue on rights-based approaches to income security and housing in Canada.
In this opening statement, I will speak from my personal experience. This December will mark the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Canadian Human Rights Act is 31 years old, yet many of our citizens are under attack. Their human rights as to the security of the person and income security are being violated on a daily basis in this country.
Let me take a few minutes to explain this. I will begin by telling you a bit about myself. In 2007, I turned 50, an event that surprised and pleased me. Having been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cancer at the age of 37, I never expected to reach the age of 50. After receiving chemotherapy and surgery, I was in remission but was left with debilitating side effects, namely, thrombosis of the leg and chronic pain from re-occurring leg ulcers.
I was told that I would never work again, and my life in poverty began. I managed to get the Ontario Disability Support Program, ODSP, through a humiliating experience, and subsidized housing through the Ontario municipal housing authority. I isolated myself from friends and family. I became more depressed and retreated from society for 13 years.
For 13 years, I survived living in poverty. None of our social programs gave me the resources I needed to live at a standard at which everyone should be entitled to live. Poverty was my constant companion. I went to bed with it; I woke up with it. Poverty steals from your soul, leaving you with little or no hope. It robs you of all that can be good in life. It leaves you isolated, lonely and hungry, and that is just the start of it. Every day is a struggle.
I see people in my community of Regent Park suffering from life-threatening illnesses, cast aside by society and their governments. Thousands use the food banks every day. There is no dignity in having to line up for a couple of bags of food. Children go to school hungry every day. Think of the damage this causes to children. Think of how parents feel when there is no food to give to their children. This is a reality for many in my community. Children from poor communities are more likely to fail in the education system. Youth are more likely to fall victim to gangs and to crime. The birth of a poor child is the start of a life often filled with deprivation. There can be no security of the person if you live in poverty. The health and social effects of poverty will slowly kill you. The social isolation of poor people into low-income neighbourhoods only magnifies the social crisis in which people in poverty find themselves.
In my city, thousands of citizens are given social housing, many having to wait for subsidized apartments only to be given an apartment that you would never be able to rent on the open market. These run-down, drug- and crime-infested apartment buildings serve often as storefronts for illegal activities allowing crack apartments to go unchallenged, sometimes for years. Where are the rights for these people who have been condemned to a life of pure misery? Why do we have to fear for our personal safety? Are our rights not given any value just because we live in social housing?
The housing for poor people can be frightening. To get into my apartment, I must pass drug dealers and their victims, often high on drugs. The elevator often has syringes, human waste and garbage covering the floor. Bedbugs and cockroaches have invaded my apartment, travelling through holes left for plumbing and heating. Maintenance is a constant problem. Security is restricted to a few hours each day. There is a constant supply of trespassers in the building. Many social housing areas have high rates of crime. This can be attributed to the social cost of keeping people in segregated areas.
Where is the security of the person with such housing disasters? How can one feel safe in communities that have been infested with crime? Where is the security of the person if a mother or father cannot let their children go out to play? Where is the security of a person if a poor person has greater health problems than those of higher income? Where is the security of a person when poor people die sooner than those of higher income?
Poor people or people of low income must deal with this systemic discrimination of living at the bottom end of society. It is a persistent problem. This violation of a group of people is why human rights are entrenched in our societies.
Poor people who suffer the greatest inequalities will not file a complaint because they have become disillusioned by society. Poor people have been bashed into silence. Poor people are unable to participate in society in an equitable way. When you have been beaten and kept down, you sometimes stop struggling and give in to the feeling that nothing can change.
Where is the security of a person when all around you others are safe simply because they have a higher economic position in our society? This egregious violation of poor peoples' rights must stop. No longer will the poor be bullied into thinking that they do not have equal rights to others in society and their country. To deny the security of the person on the grounds of economic standing is a violation of my human rights and the rights that each of us are afforded as a citizen of Canada and the world.
The Chair: Thank you for sharing your story with us today.
Mary Marrone, Director of Advocacy and Legal Services, Income Security Advocacy Centre: Thank you for inviting us to speak here today. We welcome the opportunity to talk about a rights-based approach to income security.
My presentation focuses on the loss of rights that we have witnessed in this area over the last 15 years in Canada, as a result of the changing role of the federal government and the erosion of income adequacy that has resulted from this.
Today, low-income people have the right to appeal the denial of entitlement to existing programs, such as Employment Insurance, Canada Pension Plan, disability and social assistance programs in different provinces. However, there is no clear legal protection to guarantee the adequacy of those programs.
The Supreme Court of Canada has considered whether section 7 of the Charter could be used to obligate the government to guarantee adequate living standards. While the majority did not make this finding in the case that was before it, they did leave open the possibility that they might consider it in the future, depending on the circumstances. This has not been revisited.
I want to look at the role of the federal government and how it has changed over the last 15 years. In the past, federal governments have used their spending power to ensure that all Canadians had access to social programs and benefits in areas that constitutionally are in the provinces' jurisdiction. That spending power made it possible to establish medicare, unemployment insurance and the Canada Pension Plan. The spending power established minimum national standards and made them a condition of federal funding. That power was also used to establish the Canada Assistance Plan, CAP, which ensured that provinces provided social assistance in an amount that took into account the basic requirements of the person and prohibited workfare. Those rights were set out in statute and multilateral agreements and could be enforced by recipients of social assistance through the courts, if necessary.
The Canada Assistance Plan has been replaced by the Canada Social Transfer, which removed conditions of funding with respect to social assistance and to civil legal aid. In Ontario, the end of CAP allowed a 22 per cent cut to social assistance benefits and the introduction of mandatory participation in workfare programs, which often meant that people were forced into unrealistic program expectations and ended up suffering from loss of income and homelessness. In fact, since these changes, legal aid resources in Ontario through legal clinics have been devoted almost entirely to ensuring that the entitlement to the benefits that are in place are actually provided. The right to disability must be appealed over and over again.
In other provinces, the end of CAP has led to cuts in civil legal aid and services, which affects the ability of low-income people to enforce the rights that they do have in social assistance programs.
By the mid-1990s, we saw a shift from the use of the federal spending power to cooperative federalism. By 1999, we had the Social Union Framework Agreement, which replaced the federal governments' use of the spending power in the development of national programs. National standards were to be established on a consensus basis by provinces and territories and negotiated with the federal government. Trust and cooperation were to replace transparent and enforceable multilateral agreements. That works well where there is political will, but what happens when it becomes politically acceptable to blame low-income people for their poverty; when relying on social assistance is seen as a lack of motivation to work instead of a lack of jobs and opportunity?
One example of the impact of this is the National Child Benefit. The National Child Benefit is often heralded as a crowning achievement of cooperative federalism because provinces, territories and the federal government agreed to bring in a new child benefit to address the critical problem of child poverty. There is no agreement setting out rights and obligations; there was only a public announcement.
This program has a serious flaw. It was designed to exclude children of families that receive social assistance — not because they did not need it or because they already had an adequate income, but to ensure that their parents would always be worse off on social assistance than they would be if they were working. However, this excluded group included parents with disabilities and parents of very young children, who were unable to work.
We believe this program violates section 15 of the Charter by singling out families on social assistance for exclusion. The Ontario Court of Appeal has said that governments cannot discriminate on the basis of receipt of social assistance, but because of cooperative federalism the program was designed behind closed doors with no written agreements and effectively no accountability. That accountability is further complicated by the way in which they were excluded. The federal government provides the benefit and the provincial governments were to claw it back from social assistance payments. Even documents obtained through freedom of information requests do not disclose how or why this decision was made, because information relating to negotiations with other governments is excluded from the process.
Today, the federal government is moving even further away from a position of leadership and accountability on social policy. It announced in its Speech from the Throne and confirmed in the last budget that it intends to draft legislation that would limit the federal government's use of the spending power to establish national programs that might cross the line into areas of provincial jurisdiction, which means most social programs.
The question is, what could the government do? Governments in Canada, federal, provincial and territorial, are all subject to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The federal government has also signed international covenants on social and economic rights and the rights of the child. It has the responsibility to ensure those international covenants are respected by its own government programs of those of provinces and municipalities. The Government of Canada should be as concerned about section 15 and section 7 of the Charter as it is about section 91 and section 92. It can respect the provinces' constitutional jurisdiction while insisting that any use of federal funds by the provinces must comply with Charter obligations. It could do the same with international human rights. You will hear more about this from Mr. Porter.
In order to ensure that those rights are to be protected, the government should also restore the Court Challenges Program of Canada and reinstate a national civil legal aid program that was lost through the elimination of the Canada Assistance Plan.
Bruce Porter, Director, Social Rights Advocacy Centre: Thank you, honourable senators, for allowing me to participate in this very important discussion. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the former special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Mr. Kothari, for the attention that he has devoted to the problems of human rights violations in the area of housing in Canada.
When poor people in the 1990s turned to the United Nations to deal with what was emerging for them as one of the most critical human rights issues in the country, namely, problems of poverty and homelessness, our organizations feared that problems in Canada would seem somewhat insignificant to a international body such as the United Nations, which deals with such egregious problems as poverty, starvation and homelessness throughout the world. However, the response of people such as Mr. Kothari and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has been quite the opposite. It is quite amazing how shocked and appalled international bodies charged with monitoring human rights compliance in Canada have been at what has happened in the last 15 or 20 years with respect to poverty and homelessness.
The standard under international human rights, which is the cornerstone of our protection of social rights in Canada — such as the right to housing and the right to an adequate income — is related to the application of what they call "available resources." That is, the maximum of available resources is to be applied to protect these fundamental rights, linked, as Mr. Creek has made so clear, to fundamental issues of dignity and personal security that are at the core of our notion of human rights in Canada — at the core of our very constitutional democracy. Far from being insignificant from an international human rights standpoint, issues of growing poverty and homelessness in Canada are seen as egregious violations because in this country these are avoidable. They are not caused by a scarcity of resources. In fact, we have seen homelessness and poverty become increasingly worse as Canada has become increasingly richer. These are issues that are fundamentally related to social inequality and, as Ms. Marrone has said, to a lack of will to deal with the issues that Mr. Creek has described.
Where have we gone wrong? What is so interesting about this panel and the topic being discussed today is that we have the opportunity to see the issue of poverty and homelessness not so much as a program of housing policy gone wrong but as a human rights crisis.
It has all of the hallmarks of a human rights issue that is affecting the most vulnerable groups, as Mr Kothari and others have pointed out. It is related to inequality, and it is fundamentally related to discriminatory attitudes toward poor people, as Mr. Creek has described. We need to retrieve our basic notions of equal citizenship in this country, notions that every person is entitled to security and dignity. These are human rights values, and somehow it is the loss of those values that I think is really at the core of what has been described accurately by Mr. Kothari and UN bodies as a national emergency.
International human rights are within the authority of the federal government. The federal executive has ratified these treaties with the agreement of the provinces, so the federal government can legitimately be expected to take a leadership role in the area of housing and poverty where they have human rights dimensions. Certainly many of the issues fall within provincial jurisdiction, but the new idea of cooperative federalism surely leaves an important role for the federal government to stand up for its international human rights obligations and to ensure that all levels of government are jointly and cooperatively working in the same direction.
If we think of this as a human rights crisis rather than a housing crisis, we can begin to see what a human rights framework might be able to do in Canada to start to better address this. The Nobel Prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen really forced us all to look differently at issues of famine and poverty when he pointed out that famine really is rarely caused by a scarcity of food and more often caused by what he called an entitlement system failure or a human rights failure, precisely the types of failures that Ms. Marrone has described to us when we have lost entitlements such as those that existed under the Canada Assistance Plan.
The issue then is to reconstruct within our constitutional democracy what I believe was a traditional commitment to the notions that housing and adequate income are fundamental human rights values in our democracy.
I had the chance a year or so ago to look at the submissions made to the committee chaired by Patrick Boyer, the MP in charge of looking at what Canada needed to do to put into place equality protections once our equality provisions came into force back in 1985. It was striking how many people appeared before that committee and referred to Canada's international commitments to protect women and disadvantaged groups from poverty, homelessness and hunger. These were seen as core human rights values that were to be protected under the Canadian Charter, yet, when poor people have gone to court to try to address these issues of security and inequality, government lawyers have always appeared to say that, no, these are not rights that ought to be protected by courts in Canada.
This has been an issue of concern to the UN. When Canadian governments should be encouraging courts to apply our law consistently with these human rights, our government lawyers have appeared in courts to oppose that type of consideration. Where we have cited concerns from the United Nations, government lawyers have argued that these should not be given much weight by our courts.
One of the first changes that needs to be made is that our government, particularly the federal government, needs to consider intervening in cases where these human rights issues are brought before courts under our Charter and apprise courts of the importance of Canada's international human rights obligations. That would be a fundamental duty of the federal government to honour its commitments.
When Justice La Forest, several years ago, was put in charge of a panel to review the provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the former Justice of the Supreme Court reported that he heard more about poverty than about any other human rights issue in Canada. He recommended that the Canadian Human Rights Act be amended to include protection from discrimination against the poor under the term "social condition." The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has endorsed that recommendation and further recommended that the right to housing and the right to income adequacy and other rights that are binding on Canada under international law should be included in the Canadian Human Rights Act so that individuals have a place to go in order to identify areas of federal government responsibility where there has been a failure to adequately protect those rights. Those would be critical changes that could be looked at by the federal government. The La Forest panel report has not been acted upon yet, after about five years.
When UN bodies, under special procedures such as the one of which Mr. Kothari is in charge, have identified these types of problems in Canada, the response of Canadian governments, provincial, territorial and federal, has been simply to ignore them. We have no process in place in Canada, for example, for parliamentary hearings or federal-provincial-territorial ministerial meetings to review these important concerns, really bordering on alarm from UN human rights bodies about human rights violations in Canada. They have simply been ignored. Every five or six years, Canada reports again to the United Nations on the situation with respect to violations of the right to adequate housing. However, there has been nothing done about the concerns that were raised five or six years previously. We need to have a procedure in place where these concerns and recommendations are heard by a parliamentary committee, and the recommendations, where appropriate, should certainly be implemented at all levels of government through joint cooperative actions.
We can also think, as Ms. Marrone has suggested, about building international human rights obligations into federal government agreements with other levels of government, and particularly in new agreements with cities. Some senators will be aware of the important work that has been done with respect to the development of a human rights charter in Montreal, with a complaints procedure to an ombudsman, which includes issues of the right to housing. These developments are happening worldwide in cities, and this is something that the federal government could encourage by building international human rights obligations into some of the new tripartite agreements that have been entered into with cities.
Finally, the federal government can take an active role in developing a national housing strategy that accepts and implements the right to housing and the right to an adequate income as fundamental human rights that have to be considered by all decision makers at all levels of government. This is the type of change infusing our decision making with these human rights values that could really start to address what has to be seen as a human rights crisis.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Porter, and thank you to you all. In previous sessions of this subcommittee, we have heard from people with respect to the problems and the suggested solutions, programs and policies, but you have given a different dimension to the discussion today by focusing on human rights.
We will now enter into a dialogue with the committee, and I will start by asking a question of all of you.
This borrows on something you have all talked about. I want to specifically focus on one of the recommendations that you made, Mr. Kothari. You said the federal government needs a comprehensive and properly funded poverty reduction strategy based on human rights obligations, and complementary plans should be implemented in the provinces and territories, linked to a comprehensive national housing strategy.
I agree with that. However, one of the difficulties we have here is that even though the federal government has entered into these various conventions and covenants, many of the areas that are involved in social policy and housing are under the jurisdiction of the provinces, or in some cases they are shared responsibility. In many of these cases, the federal government will say that it is a provincial responsibility, even though it is the federal government that signed the document with the United Nations.
I can remember a case a few years ago that related to education and the accusation of discrimination in terms of funding of education in this country. It is an issue certainly in my province of Ontario. Again, the UN was cited. The government, on the advice of its lawyers, said that education is a provincial responsibility. The most that happened in this particular case was, instead of the federal government saying, "We will ensure that we live up to that, and we will ensure that the provinces live up to their end of it," the federal government said, "We will send a letter to provinces and see what they are doing about it."
Depending upon the attitude or approach of the government of the day, we can have more hands-on involvement, or we can have hands-off involvement. A number of you have expressed concerns about the current direction in which we are headed in that regard. It is a concern I share, as well.
How do we meet our obligations internationally when we have a domestic situation that can become a convenient point to be cited by a federal government that it does not get involved in this because it is a provincial matter? There is obviously a lack of political will in this case. However, it still leaves us with a vacuum or with a problem that does not get resolved — as Mr. Porter said, it gets ignore.
What do we do about that, given the federation and jurisdictions we have that are divided between section 91 and section 92 of the Constitution?
Mr. Kothari: This is not an unusual problem. On the missions in federal states — Australia, for example — I have come across similar problems of what I would call "blaming each other." I think that does not really help us.
The responsibility of implementing the human rights obligations falls on all levels of government. For example, the work that has been done in the case of Canada by the Ontario Human Rights Commission is very important. They have taken on a particular responsibility and made suggestions on how this can be done.
I, personally, do not accept the argument being put forward by the federal government that housing is primarily a territorial and provincial responsibility. I look at the amount of funding, historically, and even now with the three major housing and homelessness programs, and that is a sizeable commitment. It is very important that the federal government is accountable to that commitment. It is very clear that, when there is a commitment from the federal level, complementary support exists at the provincial and territorial levels.
I was also disturbed to hear, for example, that when provincial and territorial housing ministers met in February to look at housing affordability, the federal minister was absent. There does not appear to be a commitment; two separate jurisdictions should not be operating in the country.
I think one answer to this is to hold the federal government accountable. The other answer, of course, is to have both provincial and territorial commitment to human rights instruments, including international human rights instruments.
Mr. Creek: A comment we often hear in the poor communities is that it is not the responsibility of this government; it is not the responsibility of a provincial government; it is not the responsibility of the city government. No one wants to take the bull by the horns and get something done.
For years now, we have had this game where we play off each other. We will have to start looking at poverty, housing and human rights issues, especially, with a more humanistic approach instead of a political approach. I hope that can happen.
The Chair: It is a good point. How do we get around this game, if we call it that?
Ms. Marrone: I agree that a comprehensive poverty-reduction strategy is essential, and it is essential that governments work together to do it. Ontario has started the process. However, it cannot act alone and nor can the federal government.
The discussion has to start and has to happen in a transparent way. When you lose Employment Insurance benefits, social assistance becomes more important. The labour market issues cross over between federal and provincial governments. For income security to be achieved, the governments must work together.
This point was raised by Mr. Porter. Having a legal process in place that forces governments to review the comments made by UN committees would be very important. They do not receive much press, and there may be more public will, if not political will from the government, if more was known about what was being said by UN committees.
Clearly, it is a shared responsibility. It is difficult when you have a current government that does not have the political will. If it did, it could lead a process. The constitutional issues can be overcome by leading the process and insisting that provincial governments participate. For an effective poverty reduction strategy, funding from the federal government as well as the provinces is crucial. Again, as we said in our statements, conditions can be attached to that funding that would incorporate a certain minimum standard.
The Chair: How do we get the political will going?
I am trying to be non-partisan in the chair. However, if we accept what you say, how do we then move to get the political will, to get the dialogue with the federal-provincial governments, or even to get the UN into the country to be able to hold hearings or whatever is needed to get this moving?
Mr. Porter: Let me pick up one aspect of that question. We have a situation where polls consistently show that the majority of Canadians do hold these values very dear and would like their governments to respond better in a more cooperative way.
Therefore, we have this gap between what people believe is right and what governments are doing about poverty and homelessness. We are caught by an older paradigm of the role of the federal government, where the federal government has, as Ms. Marrone was explaining, attached conditions to funding in areas of provincial jurisdiction. A high degree of provincial sensitivity exists about the notion that the federal government will set the rules in that way in areas of provincial jurisdiction. It is still an important aspect of the federal role, of course, and conditions should be attached to funding, as there still are in the area of housing.
However, we can also consider a different model in which the federal government takes real leadership in creating new accountability mechanisms with the provinces and cities. For example, instead of saying, "We are going to give you this funding and, if you do not ensure that people on social assistance have an adequate level of income, we are going to cut off the funding," they can say, "We will give you this funding and help you pay for social assistance and housing, these areas of provincial jurisdiction. We will work together to ensure that we are complying with the fundamental human rights obligations."
Therefore, you build the human rights accountability, not so much to the federal government, but to the people who are affected. You could create a mechanism where, for example, if someone such as Mr. Creek had concerns that there were aspects in the way in which the housing was being provided that were not consistent with the rights of dignity and security, he would have a place to go.
It will not necessarily be the federal government; it could be an adjudicative body of some sort, an ombudsperson under the Montreal Charter, et cetera. You can then create a mechanism where governments are holding themselves accountable to these fundamental human rights.
I do not think you would experience the same provincial sensitivity if the federal government said, "Let us ensure that there is a way that, when you expend money that the federal government is providing in transfer payments, it is done consistently with the provinces' obligations under international human rights law." Certainly provinces such as Quebec — where there is a lot of support for international human rights and, particularly, for economic social and cultural rights such as housing — would not experience as much provincial sensitivity under these circumstances. The same should be true with cities.
That may be the direction we could move in terms of finding a different model of federalism.
Senator Munson: I am sensitive to this because I am on the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights. As a former journalist, I have seen situations happen around the world that are encapsulated within the big envelope of human rights.
Recently, the members of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights were in Geneva. This question is to everyone; perhaps Mr. Kothari could answer part of this.
In 2009, Canada will be investigated by, or our books will have to be opened up to, the UN Human Rights Council. I do not know who the three special rapporteurs or the three countries analyzing what is happening in this country will be. However, from my perspective, it seems to be a unique opportunity — as embarrassing and perhaps shameful as it may be — to shake things up in this country through transparent reporting.
We are very good at telling other countries how to conduct their human rights, but we lose the whole debate on homelessness and the other issues. I would like someone to comment on this coming opportunity in 2009.
One would hope our federal government is doing its homework. However, we cannot hide anything. We have serious problems as you witnesses have mentioned.
Mr. Kothari: Senator Munson is referring to the new procedure in the UN Human Rights Council called the Universal Periodic Review. It is a peer review procedure. A government's human rights record is reviewed by other governments, and Canada will come up next year.
The basis for the review will be three documents: first, a compilation of everything that different UN bodies have said on Canada's human rights record; second, a compilation of information from civil society, non-governmental organizations and academic institutions, or what is called a stakeholder report; and, third, a report from the concerned state party.
I agree with Senator Munson that this is an excellent opportunity. It will be a comprehensive review and, I hope, it will generate more publicity than other visits and periodic reviews have generated because of the intergovernmental nature of that review. We all need to work toward that.
I do not know the procedures, but it would be very helpful if your committee could ask the government to prepare a report on what steps have been taken to implement concluding observations from UN treaty bodies and recommendations from special rapporteurs. This is a question that will be asked at the UN Human Rights Council. If the same questions could also be answered by civil society and academic institutions, we would have a good report card to prepare for that Universal Periodic Review.
Mr. Rainer: In the last year, we have called for the creation of an office of a poverty commissioner for Canada given the importance of this issue and the number of people affected directly or indirectly. That really is all of us because the cost of poverty is borne by society as a whole. Those costs are in the order of tens of billions of dollars.
An academic study in the U.S. last year looked at the cost of the child poverty, health care and judicial system impacts and lost productivity from people who grew up in poverty. They estimated the cost of child poverty at U.S. $500 billion per year.
To extrapolate that to Canada, we could say that the cost of child poverty alone is about $50 billion. Then there are other costs around homelessness, et cetera and some estimates are coming out on that. All of this is to say that clearly the cost of poverty on society is enormous. Therefore, we can see this issue as a majority issue and not a minority issue. The question was raised earlier about how to create the political will. Part of the problem is that it is still perceived as a minority issue for Canadians when, in fact, it is a majority issue. If the federal government were to recognize that, its response would be different.
A poverty commissioner whose job was to report annually could be placed in the Auditor General's Office. It would be an objective, independent and thorough account of Canada's actions on its obligations to various domestic or international treaties, et cetera. That would help a lot in the accountability mechanism.
Last year, I heard the British Children's Commissioner speak in Ottawa on the subject of children and health. The U.K. government established this office of the Children's Commissioner as a children's advocate because children are one of the most vulnerable groups in society. I was impressed with how robust it seemed to be and how much weight was given to what that office had to say about how children's rights and health were being promoted, et cetera.
We have called for a poverty commissioner. This would not be expensive for the government, but it would provide an independent and objective means for reporting both domestically and internationally.
Senator Munson: I like the idea of a poverty commissioner. I met the Children's Commissioner from the U.K. when he was here. It is amazing.
That was part of our recommendation of our Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights to have a similar commissioner here to deal with these things. We have to raise the level of the debate on rights-based issues. When we think of human rights, we usually think of the right to protest, to oppose, to vote, et cetera. That is in our lexicon; that is what we do.
Do you feel that perhaps establishing these independent commissioners — it is difficult to be independent these days — will bring these issues forward and elevate the human rights debate?
Mr. Porter: That is a very good point.
I agree with you that there is a growing problem in Geneva and New York with the way in which Canada is presenting itself in relation to human rights values. We have started to sound as though we think we are a paradigm of virtue and that human rights problems exist elsewhere.
Where UN bodies have been critical of Canada, there has been an unfortunate tendency on the part of more recent Canadian governments to be dismissive of those concerns. I am not sure it is known domestically the extent to which Canada is now seen at the UN as being more aligned with the U.S. in relation to rights such as the right to food, water and housing. The U.S. traditionally has opposed the recognition of those rights. They have not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child or any of the international treaties that Canada has played a very important part in developing.
It is very disturbing to see this attitude from Canada at the UN that somehow being on the UN Human Rights Council means our job is to find fault with other countries, but not to pay attention when people find fault with ours.
Senator Munson: We sign these treaties, but we do not implement a lot of them.
Mr. Porter: It is very important to look at the domestic institutional structure required to implement the obligations. Commissioners, et cetera, are important, but our human rights institutions are in non-compliance with international human rights standards.
The Paris Principles say that the Canadian Human Rights Commission, for example, should be able to consider violations of any of the international human rights obligations that Canada has undertaken. The lack of a domestic infrastructure to protect these rights either under the Charter, the way the courts might be interpreting or applying that, the inability of many of our human rights commissions to deal with these issues because it is not within their mandate, these are the issues that will be of key concern when Canada comes before the Human Rights Council in the Universal Periodic Review.
We cannot rely on that type of process to be the ultimate protection for Canadians. The ultimate protection has to be in the creation of domestic institutions that protect and promote these human rights. The Human Rights Council will be very concerned to learn that human rights institutions do not have a mandate to protect social and economic rights; that our governments are going to court in Charter cases arguing these rights should not be protected rather than that they should be protected; and that the Court Challenges Program on which people relied to get to court to enforce their rights has been defunded.
Many of these types of concerns exist, and, Mr. Kothari would agree, it is that lack of a domestic infrastructure that will ultimately be the strongest concern of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Senator Munson: Could you give us examples of what the loss of the Court Challenges Program of Canada has meant to poverty groups that basically cannot afford to go to court unless they have this type of program to challenge their own government? How difficult has it made it to seek equal rights when it comes to homelessness, the right to food and the right to have a place to live?
Mr. Creek: I deal with many people in Toronto who live in poverty day in and day out. One of the scariest things I hear from them is that human rights does not put any food in their tummies. Many people are losing faith in human rights. When that starts to happen, it is the beginning sign of a society that will fall apart. It truly concerns me when people who are living on the edge are no longer concerned about their rights and fighting for them. Parliamentarians should find that equally scary.
Senator Munson: We have lost the Court Challenges Program of Canada and some other programs. I know we are not supposed to be political, but I am a Liberal senator who happens to like the Court Challenges Program of Canada and finds it a shame that it has ended. I am not afraid to say that and, certainly, these situations disturb me.
Rob Rainer, Executive Director, National Anti-Poverty Organization: On the Court Challenges Program of Canada, I am aware that the funding allocated for the current case load is still in place and those cases will proceed. Technically, the Court Challenges Program of Canada is still running, which opens a small window of opportunity to look for other ways to help to fund this program. There is a strong belief that the government should be the principal or perhaps the sole funder of the Court Challenges Program of Canada. Currently, a non-government organization administers the program, and, in theory, they would have options to find additional funding. The Asper family helped to give launch to a similar program that is run out of the University of Toronto.
NAPO is involved with people who are looking at the Court Challenges Program of Canada to determine what can be done to continue the program to mitigate the effects of this latest setback. We presume that if there is a turn in government, the program could be reinstated. Opposition parties are on record as stating that they support its reinstatement. That provides a clarification on the Court Challenges Program of Canada.
Mr. Porter: The Court Challenges Program of Canada was absolutely essential to poor people having any sort of voice to raise the types of issues that we are discussing today when cases went to the Supreme Court of Canada and to other areas. One example is that lots of litigation is being commenced by more affluent groups to challenge the public health care system on behalf of the rights of the more affluent to have their own private health care system. When that was challenged previously, the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues was able to intervene at the Supreme Court of Canada and make arguments that were somewhat similar to those made by the federal government about how poor people have a huge interest in a public health care system maintaining the quality of health care to which all Canadians are entitled.
I do not know what we can do with the litigation that is challenging the public health care system. We have no access to the Court Challenges Program of Canada to develop a way of having the collective voice of poor people heard in the consideration of that issue. It is the same for issues of homelessness and poverty and these people looking at the possibility of taking a case forward around those issues, which Mr. Creek discussed.
Is it not a violation of the right to security of the person to have the extent of homelessness that we have? That should be addressed by the Supreme Court of Canada because it left the issue open and it needs to be adjudicated. The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights has said that it is a critical issue and should be dealt with by our courts. However, poor people have no access to the courts without the Court Challenges Program of Canada to take a case forward. It is critical that the program be reinstated and, if possible, it should be extended to areas within provincial jurisdiction and to include section 7, the right to security of the person, so that these issues can receive a fair hearing.
Senator Munson: Poverty has no borders. This country is very generous in receiving new immigrants, but we have not addressed the issue of poverty. However, some testimony received before the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, indicates that there is a lost generation of new Canadians numbering in the tens of hundreds of thousands. Are you seeing that within your organizations? These people have fled countries where human rights were abused and come to this country of plenty to see it happening again, but in a more covert way with issues such as the right to a place to live and the right to eat. I welcome your comments.
Mr. Kothari: I have met with migrants across the country. Certainly, there were concerns about affordability issues and the discrimination they faced in accessing rental housing, in particular. Migrants face a number of discrimination, accessibility and affordability issues, which is common in many parts of the world. However, it did strike me as something at odds with what I had heard about Canada being a very open and welcoming society for migrants. Certainly, these issues need to be looked at.
It is appropriate for us to be concerned about new Canadians, but it is important in this discussion to remember as well the Aboriginal peoples. I was very struck by the levels of poverty that I saw among the Aboriginal peoples in both rural and urban areas. Perhaps some time could be spent on what is and is not being done. This is one area where it would be difficult for the federal government to shirk its direct responsibility.
The Chair: You have made that point quite accurately. This committee has had numerous consultations with Aboriginal community leaders on these issues. The stark reality is that many of the statistics are much more severe for people in Aboriginal communities than they are for the community as a whole.
Senator Munson: I would like to know what the reality check is.
Mr. Creek: We cannot address poverty in this country without thinking of it in terms of racialization. In Toronto and across the province of Ontario, we have huge numbers of people of colour who are unable to get themselves out of poverty. They come to Canada to find themselves stuck driving a cab or working in other low-paying jobs. We must address this issue because it has been systemic. For example, Jamaicans have been coming to Canada for a very long time and their unemployment rate is still at about 25 per cent. Something is wrong in the system when you see figures such as that. I have many people from Bangladesh living in my community and their rate of unemployment is about 80 per cent. Other groups are racialized in the city and also have high rates of unemployment. It is almost scary to see what is happening.
Ms. Marrone: I will comment on that in agreement with Mr. Creek. Quite a bit of evidence has surface recently about the increasing racialization of poverty and the inability of newcomer communities to integrate in the way that previous generations have done. Our social safety net is part of that. I am sure that all of you have heard the many stories about people who come here with university degrees and cannot find work in their respective fields. We seek out professionals, but, when they arrive, they find they are not accredited to work in their own fields. While they are looking for work, they sometimes need to rely on social assistance. This is where the mandatory work requirement is a particular problem in creating long-term poverty. The theory of workfare is that you take the first available job, which is different than looking for sustainable employment that will lift people out of poverty and allow for long-term integration into the economy.
We have been told by our constituents that this issue is a particular problem for newcomer groups who get locked into the low-paying jobs and cannot enter their own field. The longer they remain in those low-paying jobs, the more likely they are to return to social assistance rather than move into sustainable employment. The type of rules and nature of the safety net that we have is important in terms of long-term prospects for low-income communities.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: This has been a moving presentation. It goes to the core of who we are and who we should be. All that I have heard this morning has touched me deeply.
I would like to make this general observation. You may or may not have time to respond to it. You have responded to it, but to me it is the need to move the consciousness of a nation. We are doing that now, to some extent, on the subject of the environment; young people and different people are engaging in it. It is becoming part of the public discourse. The issues that you spoke about this morning are not nearly high enough or deep enough in the public consciousness today. The presentation you made today was a positive addition.
My direct question is about the National Child Benefit. I agree with everything that you have said, Ms. Marrone. Has any province or territory moved away from clawing this back? I know there have been discussions. Has that happened in part or in whole?
Ms. Marrone: I believe New Brunswick was the first province to refuse to claw back.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: That is what I thought, but it was not mentioned here, so I wanted to ask about that.
Ms. Marrone: My point in the paper is that their refusal to claw back was tolerated, but the program was designed around the clawback. The difficulty is around the lack of transparency in how the program was brought in. We have been told that provinces were told they had to claw back. Again, this is off the record from people who were there and not free to speak about it.
We tried to use freedom of information requests to find out how this program was designed and why the decision was made to exclude people on social assistance. I find it fascinating that it has taken one and a half to two years to get responses to our freedom of information requests. We recently heard from a province. They refuse to disclose any information of the minutes from the federal-provincial-territorial meetings. The federal government has given us minutes from some of those meetings with large paragraphs blacked out when it came to the program design. I find that fascinating on one level, that when we are talking about child poverty that policy discussions are happening at such a level of secrecy rather than in an open and transparent way. This is not anti-terrorism legislation or anti-terrorism policy.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I want to be sure. Was it actually in the regulation or was it designed to exclude children of families that receive social assistance? Is that true? I should not be saying is that true, but I wondered if that is a criteria.
Ms. Marrone: The minutes of the meetings show that an early meeting of social service ministers was looking for an integrated child benefit that would be available to all low-income families including those on social assistance.
The next set of minutes reflects what we have talked about, having this program operate on the assumption that there would be a clawback. The program was designed in such a way that provinces were assumed to be seeing savings on social assistance because there was the assumption that it would be clawed back from social assistance. The focus of the discussion changed to how those savings would be reinvested into programs for children.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Was that actually in the wording of the National Child Benefit, though? Was there specific wording to that effect, or did provinces take the opportunity because they were not forced not to do that?
Ms. Marrone: From what I can see in the minutes of the meetings — and the problem is the lack of transparency — the operating assumption was that there would be reinvestment dollars because there would be a clawback. We have been told informally that provinces were told that there should be a clawback, and it should not go to social service recipients.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Apart from New Brunswick, is there any movement across the land to do otherwise and to take it back? Have any other provinces acted partially? Is there a debate or a discussion?
Ms. Marrone: Yes, since 2003, increases to the child benefit supplement have been passed on. Many provinces were continuing to claw back the original benefit, but as there were built-in increases over the years those increases were flowed through to families on social assistance.
In Ontario, and I believe in other jurisdictions as well, they adopted provincial child benefit programs that claw back through a different mechanism. Social assistance rates are being permanently reduced as the new Ontario Child Benefit is being rolled out. I believe British Columbia did the same.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Thank you. We need to get a more complete picture as of the present.
I am struck through everything that I heard this morning by the fact that mental illness is mentioned so infrequently. For instance, Mr. Porter, from page 1 of your written submission, you state, "Poverty and homelessness primarily affect groups which have traditionally face discrimination."
Two years ago, in this committee, we completed our report Out of the Shadows At Last. I know that mental illness should fit in there. We have people with disabilities and maybe that includes mental illness, but to me it does not necessarily; I see the two as being different.
I want to move on to Mr. Kothari. It is quite remarkable that you are in India and we are here, in Ottawa. Where are you in India?
Mr. Kothari: In New Delhi.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: That is wonderful.
In this general observation in your report that hundreds of people have died as a direct result of Canada's housing crisis, we might have a bit of a discussion. Whether it is a direct cause, I believe it is a broad social problem that leads to death in these instances. Then again, mental illness is a big factor in many of those deaths.
Some people who die on the street actually refuse to go into a shelter. Not that a shelter is a good answer, but often it could prevent a death. I wonder if they died as a result of a broad social problem, of which housing is one factor. Perhaps some others would like to respond to that.
Mr. Kothari: That was referring to deaths of homeless people during the winter, and there are some very striking figures. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, when it reviewed Canada in 1999, was struck by that. They said that something such as that should not happen, and the state party should take positive measures to address this serious problem.
Whatever the reason, the point that must be looked at is why people are out there in severe winter conditions. As you said, senator, why is it that some people refuse to go to shelters? Is it because shelters are inadequate? Is it because they are unsafe? Is it because there is insufficient support that they need? Once again, the striking fact that we face is that this is happening in a country with so much wealth. This is very disturbing.
Of course, Canada is not the only developed country where this happens. However, what struck me about Canada, if I can make a general point, is that unlike some other developed countries — and we will take the U.S. or Australia as an example — Canada has had a history of progressive and successful social housing programs. Canada has had a history of strong commitment at the federal level before with housing programs. All of that has been allowed to erode in the last two decades. That is really the question that we must consider.
When we discuss issues of poverty, and with my experience of also having done work in developing countries, including my own, it is important to look at the national economic policy. That is, what type of economic policy does Canada have? Some have called it a neo-liberal policy. Why is there a policy that is creating a situation, as has been shockingly revealed in the recent information made available by Statistics Canada, where Canadian inequality is growing? Why is inequality growing? This inequality then creates a situation where more and more people face a growing squeeze between dwindling incomes and rising housing and other costs.
We must look at the nature of the economic policy. Is there a thrust at the federal level? Is there policy to allow the market to come up with a solution? We know from experience around the world that that does not really happen. The market cannot provide solutions of extreme poverty. This is where there is often a direct conflict between economic policies and what we would call a human rights approach, which, by its very nature, calls for a strong and responsible role of different levels of government, even if it means intervening in situations to ensure that affordability does not get out of hand.
These are some general points that I think are very important when we are talking about why it is that a country such as Canada has failed to control growing levels of poverty.
Mr. Rainer: Fundamentally, if Canada were to adopt a rights-based approach to tackling poverty and homelessness, we would obviously be in a very different place and have a very different approach. The language that we would be using and so on would be very different. In tangible terms, it really means that people must have sufficient income to meet their basic needs.
Are we prepared to guarantee that for our citizens, for our children, for the mentally ill, for seniors, for adults who are having trouble making a go of it in the workplace for whatever reason? Are we prepared to make the leap to guaranteeing income security? I believe Mr. Porter's paper makes reference to income inadequacy and upholding that as a right.
Our organization is very much involved in the re-emergence of discussion about the concept of guaranteed income. We had a conference call yesterday with some of our partners across the country about this, and a lot of interest is building in this as a possible solution. Of course, the Senate committee in 1971 famously made this one of their central recommendations.
However, we believe quite strongly at the National Anti-Poverty Organization that if we are attacking poverty from a human rights point of view then people have the right to income security and ought to have the right to income security and that right ought to be upheld.
We then come down to how we will make that happen. To us, it seems one of the mechanisms for that is to look strongly at our redistribution policies, or redistribution system. From the great work that has been done around the so-called growing gap in incomes and wealth, we can see clearly now what that means. If we were only prepared to redistribute wealth a bit more in this country, we really could elevate the income security of those who do not have it presently, which is 10 per cent to 20 per cent of the population easily.
Fundamentally, we can look at the redistribution system as a way to uphold this right to income security and to guarantee that those who, for whatever reason, do not have it will have it.
Senator Segal has proposed some detailed study on guaranteed income, particularly the negative income tax as a model and a way for delivering that. We would certainly encourage renewed study of that as a mechanism. Interest in this is re-emerging, both nationally and internationally. A Canadian delegation is going to Ireland next month to attend an international conference on guaranteed income. We do think that guaranteed income is part of the solution, and perhaps a major part of the solution.
The Chair: We are having a round table on that very subject of a guaranteed annual or negative income tax coming up within the next month.
Mr. Rainer: That is very good.
The Chair: That is, within the context of this particular study.
Senator Cordy: This has been an amazing opportunity to discuss poverty. I thank all of you for being here today. Your approach of looking at poverty from a human rights perspective is one that, perhaps, we should be spreading across the country for Canadians to look at it as a human rights perspective as well. As someone mentioned earlier, we are always touting ourselves as being wonderful in terms of our human rights record and pooh-poohing any regulative reports that come before us. Maybe we need a wake-up call. Your way of dealing with it today is one way it can be approached.
Mr. Creek, your comment that poverty steals from the soul is probably the best definition of "poverty" that I have ever heard, because it is more than not having a house or not having food in your house. Your comment is very descriptive.
I used to be an elementary schoolteacher, so I would see that poverty is a determinant of poor health. I also saw that poverty puts children at risk, so there are long-term ramifications. People talk about breaking the poverty cycle. Unless we put enough money into the system and give people their dignity and basic human rights, we will not alleviate the problem.
Is there anything that is working? Are there programs in municipalities or in provinces that are working to eradicate poverty? I know of the National Anti-Poverty Organization; I have heard of it for many years. I know that your representatives go around the country speaking to many groups. I read about a lot of these matters in the newspaper. Are we making a difference? Is anything changing?
Mr. Creek: No, we are on the wrong track. We are always applying bandage solutions when we need to start right from scratch again and have a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy. It will take multiple ministries to solve the poverty situation in the country. It will take piles and piles of work, more than anyone can imagine. For me — and it should be this way, I think for everyone — we can do it. If we have one in six children living in poverty in this country, it is a pretty scary statement. That child will not live as long as other children. That is a fact. Acknowledging that and not doing anything about it does not make us very nice people, whether or not it is a human right; it is just the wrong thing to do.
The governments will have to get together and come up with comprehensive strategies to deal with poverty. Not too many programs out there work. A few little municipal programs are working, especially around the mental health issues; for example, getting people housing and proper supports. This is one area in which we can help in some ways. I see that quite a bit because I do a lot of work around mental health and homelessness.
Mr. Rainer: That is a great question. In a macro sense, if you look at the incidence of poverty or the per centage of people living in low income back to the early 1980s, it has gone up, it has gone down, but it has never been below 10 per cent. Around the time of the 1971 Croll report, it was at 25 per cent.
We are still talking about very large numbers of people living below the low-income cut-off lines over a long period of time, so in that sense, I do not think Canada can claim much success in dealing with this issue.
Certainly specific programs may have benefit for particular individuals or groups for a period of time, but this is a multi-faceted issue, as you know. Therefore, many things can confound that, now with rising food and gas prices, which eat into a rising benefit that the government may have put in place. It is very important that a holistic approach be taken on this.
We have commended the Newfoundland and Labrador government, which you now know much about, in terms of their determination more than anything else, and their willingness to take this on as a key policy priority. That probably stands out the most for us, besides the details of what they are doing.
We only really have the two governments, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, which have official plans of action in place. Ontario and Nova Scotia may create some reasonable plans in the next number of months. However, the federal government must be a partner in those provincial strategies, or, quite frankly, the provincial strategy will be hamstrung if they do not have the federal resources to support the many calls to action that undoubtedly will materialize in Ontario and Nova Scotia, for example.
With guaranteed income, which we are so keen on, if we look at a demographic group that has fared the best in terms of poverty outcomes, namely, seniors, the introduction of the Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement appears to have made a reasonable difference for that demographic group. It again begs the question of whether, if the guaranteed income framework were to be extended to other segments of society, that could also make significant inroads, if not to eradicate poverty then to substantially reduce the incidence or the depth of poverty, which appears to be what has transpired for seniors.
Mr. Porter: In terms of some of the successes that we can build on from a human rights standpoint, it is important to realize that despite all of the concerns that I was raising in my presentation, we have a rich human rights tradition in Canada to draw on, particularly around these types of issues. I continue to be invited to other countries to talk about the important work, for example, that was done under the Charter through the Court Challenges Program of Canada in developing a unique concept of substantive equality in Canada, which would recognize that governments do have obligations to address the needs of disadvantaged groups and ensure that they do not have their dignity taken away and so on.
The High Commissioner of Human Rights at the United Nations, as you know, is Justice Louise Arbour. She has had an important influence on international human rights law in her career, both as a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and now as the highest UN human rights person. We can look at Canada's historic role in this area and the engagement of civil society in Canada on these issues, which is actually quite unique.
The National Anti-Poverty Organization and the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues were the first non-governmental organizations to use the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the way that has now become institutionalized, to actually go there and present information about what is happening. In the 1990s, it was Canada that was seen by other countries as being particularly engaged with these issues because it was on the front page of our newspapers and so on. We were the first affluent country to be held accountable in a meaningful way for emerging poverty and homelessness.
There is a wealth in civil society and a real expertise in social rights that has had a lot of impact in other countries, and we can draw on that in trying to reframe our policies on poverty and homelessness within a human rights framework. We have human rights commissions that, as Mr. Kothari mentioned, are increasingly interested in issues of housing, homelessness and poverty. If we would only give them the tools, we have a lot of institutions that would start to address these issues.
Mr. Kothari: I mentioned at the beginning that when I was on the mission, I came across the institutions, service providers and others across the country that were doing excellent work, providing supportive housing and helping with mental health and drug addiction programs. Almost all the people I met were working under a great deal of stress. Whenever I went to cities and visited women's shelters, for example, I would ask the people directing or managing them if they needed more facilities. They would answer that they needed 10 or 20 more.
It is important to recognize the good work that is being done. However, in terms of poverty, obviously it is very disturbing that an increasing number of people are falling into poverty every day in Canada. The people who are living just above the poverty line are being uplifted and helped. The danger in the current programs, or the lack of commitment at different government levels, is that whatever little amount of support exists is being eroded. The accountability question is very important.
It is important to retain what is there, to recognize the good work that is being done across the country, to support it and to learn from it. I came across, for example, this very interesting concept of housing continuum, where people are helped from becoming homeless, moved to supported housing and then to rental housing, and perhaps progressing to owning a house. Those concepts are there, but a gap seems to exist between recognizing them and then building them up into something that could figure in a national poverty reduction strategy program.
Ms. Marrone: From the perspective of Ontario, we have gone through a period where, beginning in the late 1990s, we experienced a huge loss in the gains that had been made over the years to our social safety net. We saw social assistance rates cut by 22 per cent, a punitive and discriminatory approach to people on social assistance, cuts to the education system, single mothers being expected to go out to work when their kids enter school at a very young age forcing them to live on a much lower income.
We went through a very bad time. I do not think we are there yet in terms of what is now working, but we are at a point where there is the potential for change. I think we are starting to see it. We do not have a poverty reduction plan yet in Ontario, but there has been a commitment to bring one in.
More exciting to me than the commitment of the government itself is the degree of engagement by the community in this process. We are starting to see low-income people organizing themselves and coming out to public events to speak to politicians. We had a meeting in Toronto at Queen's Park just a few weeks ago, and about 470 people attended. That is the beginning of the change that we need to develop the political will so that the changes needed begin to happen.
The second step is that we have to start using a human rights framework — or a rights framework in general — so that when we do make those gains, they are enforceable; and if future governments try to take them away, they cannot be eroded again in the future. It is too hard to bring in all these improvements just to have them taken away overnight by a change in government. We have to build them into our institutional structures.
Senator Cordy: That is an excellent comment because, of course, politicians hopefully react to the general public. If the public makes it so they cannot cut back programs that are being initiated, that is a very positive step.
Mr. Kothari, you spoke about the federal government needing a comprehensive and federally funded poverty reduction strategy, and a number of our panellists here in Ottawa have made reference to the same types of issues. However, we can make all the laws we want, but without political will, if they are not enacted and followed through, then all is for nothing. We have seen reduction of funding for the Court Challenges Program of Canada, which you mentioned earlier, for literacy groups, women's groups, et cetera. I would have to agree with the earlier comment that the political will may not indeed exist.
However, we are legislators and politicians, so what legislation would make Canada go further in fulfilling our human rights obligations for people living in poverty? Where should we start? Are there policies we should implement, legislation we should change that is currently in place that would help to eradicate poverty?
Mr. Kothari: It is very important to have legislation that creates the institutional framework that everyone is speaking about, that ensures that you have ombudspersons and complaint mechanisms that allow people to have a place to express their grievances.
The reason I referred to a comprehensive plan is that it has to have different elements. Specific legislation is required on homelessness, on health issues and on issues related to food. It is for the legislators — who have a great deal of experience — to decide what type of legislation is necessary.
If we follow a human rights approach, it has to be a combination of legislation, policy and budgetary support. We can do a lot without legislation; we can have administrative measures and institutional frameworks to ensure that certain budgets continue. No matter how much the government contributes, it is very important to also ensure that a healthy civic sector exists. If we have independent service providers, for example, there should be a place that they can go to seek funding from government authorities and not only have to rely voluntary contributions.
It has to be a mixture of legislation to avoid the problem that we have globally of a lack of implementation. A system of other means is necessary, whether it is budgetary support or policies or accountability measures that are in place, that allows people to express dissent.
We have a situation in Canada now where I met a number of non-governmental organizations that are afraid to speak out against the government, or who are afraid to be critical because they think that whatever little funding they have will be withdrawn. A climate must be created where there is acceptance of the human rights approach, which includes the right to participate in the decision making and the right to dissent. It has to be a mixture. It is very difficult to have one piece of national legislation; obviously, the provinces have different histories — there are different structures there, and those have to be respected.
All of it also has to be done with full transparency and consultation with different levels of government.
Mr. Rainer: On an annual basis for the past 15 or so years, a coalition of social policy advocacy groups has put together a document called the Alternative Federal Budget — you may know a little about that. In the most recent one, there was a call for a national anti-poverty act, a piece of legislation that would help to enable and drive much of this agenda.
I do not think there is any movement currently afoot to move toward that act being realized. However, it could look similar to the Quebec act to combat poverty and social exclusion, which basically mandates the creation and implementation of a province-wide poverty action plan. It mandates certain inputs from civil society, participation of civil society and reporting back to Quebec residents, et cetera.
The Quebec act is the only piece of provincial legislation that I am aware of that has that sort of enabling ability that civil society and government can reference. Hopefully, that will stand the test of time and cannot be taken away. It would be harder for an incoming government or new government to back away from some of those commitments.
We support the creation of a national act that would help to enable and drive much of the agenda. However, what should go into that act is a subject for discussion by people inside and outside of government.
Mr. Porter: A number of steps can be taken in a concrete way to move forward on this. The one I mentioned before, and it is worth mentioning again, is the Canadian Human Rights Act. We will not have much of a human rights framework for housing and poverty issues if we do not include those issues in the Canadian Human Rights Act in a manner that is consistent with our international obligations and act on the recommendations of the federal government's own Canadian Human Rights Act review task force to start to deal with poverty issues within that human rights framework.
That would put the federal government in a position to encourage provinces to do the same. We would start to then have an effective human rights framework across the country.
As Ms. Marrone mentioned, the Canada Social Transfer, CST, is an ideal opportunity to start to build in some accountability mechanisms to the right to housing and the right to income adequacy as shared, joint commitments, consistent with section 36 of our Constitution. When the federal government transfers funding, it should be in the context of a shared, joint commitment to fundamental human rights. That could be built into transfer agreements. The Social Union Framework Agreement could be revised and transformed into something much more effective, to actually give a remedy to people before some sort of tribunal or agreed-upon body, to hold provinces and the federal government accountable to international human rights law.
With respect to refugees, there is now explicit reference in the federal act to the convention on the rights of refugees as something that needs to be considered and has a certain status within domestic decision making. Although the Supreme Court of Canada has said that any reasonable decision maker in Canada should be considering the basic values of international human rights, such as the right to housing or the rights of children, for their interests to be considered that is not something of which most government decision makers are aware.
The federal government could start to build into all of its legislation reference to the appropriate human rights standards, which should be considered by anyone making decisions in the way of discretionary decision making or administrative decisions. That can really start to make these standards become a reality for people. Many decisions that affect access to housing or access to income are made by administrative decision makers who have some discretion.
Ms. Marrone: I support Mr. Porter's comments. Although we do not solve all the problems with legislation, if there were effective legislation, there would be at least a legal remedy.
I work in a legal clinic where we do have the funding and the ability to challenge governments on income adequacy. If we knew we had a legal remedy that was likely to be successful, that would improve the situation. Our resources are limited, but they are there. When it is built in through amendments to human rights legislation or specific reference to international conventions, that makes it possible for low-income people to challenge inadequate programs around income adequacy and housing.
The Chair: To pick up on that, I notice in your presentation you also mention Employment Insurance, EI. One of the issues evolving around EI is its unequal distribution around the country to people who are unemployed.
That is a particular issue in our city — many of us come from Toronto — and in Ontario generally, where the eligibility is much lower than it is in other parts of the country.
In your legal context, have you challenged that at all?
Ms. Marrone: I am fairly new to the organization, so I was not there at the time, but my understanding is that we did not challenge that directly. We challenged the rules around part-time employment and the disproportionate impact it has on women — that it is women who are more likely to be disentitled to EI than men, and therefore there is a discriminatory impact. I believe that case was not successful; I am not sure how far we took it.
The Chair: I will move along to our final member of the subcommittee, Senator Keon, from Ontario.
We have two subcommittees of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. The other subcommittee, headed by Senator Keon, is dealing with population health. Many of the issues that we talk about here at the Subcommittee on Cities are also relevant to the work that he is doing.
Senator Keon: As our chair mentioned, we will be having a roundtable on guaranteed minimum income of some shape or form, whether it be individual or family.
I have asked this question of virtually everyone who has come before us, and I want to ask you. As far as I know, none of you will be at that round table, so I would like your opinion.
When I put the question in the form you will hear, I have had a negative response with one exception. However, that does not stop me asking it.
It seems to me, with the plethora of programs we have in social assistance and anti-poverty and all of the rest of it, we would be far better off to simply cut to the chase and have a guaranteed annual income for individuals and families, or both. Why are we receiving opposition to that concept?
The Chair: We have not settled on the final grouping for the roundtable. It is a half day, on June 13, and we are still putting that together.
Mr. Rainer: I cannot speak for those who hold that view. The guaranteed income has a long history in Canada and groups on both ends of the political spectrum have been in support of it or opposed to it. Some organizations are concerned about the erosion or the cutting of programs that are perceived to be doing some good and are still necessary.
Our sense is that there is a strong agreement that welfare programs — income assistance programs run by provinces and territories — could be replaced by a guaranteed-income program, provided that the guaranteed income is sufficient to bring people up to an agreed standard of living to meet an agreed set of basic needs.
However, programs such as Employment Insurance are felt to still be necessary even if a guaranteed-income program were to be put in place, partly out of a sense of fairness. A guaranteed income of $18,000, for example, for a single adult, if that equated with a level of basic needs that was agreed upon, would assure someone that they had that at least as a bare minimum. However, if that person, when in the workforce, has perhaps a total income of $60,000 a year, then that person will build a certain lifestyle around it. People will entail certain expenses; they may go into certain housing that obligates an amount of monthly income that goes toward it. To then suffer a loss of employment and potentially drop from an income of $60,000 to $18,000 would be fairly catastrophic.
Therefore, the Employment Insurance program for that individual could be very helpful to cushion that loss of employment. It could be helpful to some people who are not eligible for the guaranteed income for whatever reason but are participating in the workforce. The Employment Insurance program would still be very important for them if they were to lose employment.
An online petition has been started by someone who is involved with this informal national network with which NAPO is involved. It is calling for the establishment of guaranteed income in Canada. It is getting very interesting signatures, both from people within and outside of political parties, economists, academics and a whole range of people. However, it does explicitly mention the retention of certain programs, and it singles out Employment Insurance as one program that is felt to be necessary even if a robust guaranteed-income program were to be put in place to build on what we already have in terms of guaranteed income, such as the Old Age Security and National Child Benefit.
Ms. Marrone: At the risk of moving beyond my expertise, I defer this to the economist that you bring in to your roundtable on this. However, I have been reading about it. Because we are looking at a poverty reduction strategy in Ontario, we are looking more broadly at long-term solutions.
To best of my knowledge, the concern is that it would be so expensive that the amount to be provided through a guaranteed annual income would be so low that it would not be an improvement on existing programs. Also, there is the theory that Employment Insurance would be used to fund it, and that would be a huge loss.
Having said that, there are social policy analysts in Ontario who are very much in favour of it. It may be moving toward in a more incremental basis. They see the Ontario Child Benefit as a step toward this in providing income through the tax system. I know there is movement to provide the same type of benefit for people with disabilities. I know the long-term goal would be for working-age adults to also have a similar benefit so that, over time, social assistance programs would move toward a federally tax-delivered program.
That is compelling in many ways.
I would like to see an impact study on what it would actually look like in practice. In theory, it is a compelling idea. It would remove many of punitive and intrusive aspects of social assistance. At the same, I would want an idea of what it would look like on the ground. That is probably why you are getting some negative reaction and concerns about how it would play out.
Mr. Porter: It is interesting to think about whether guaranteed annual income captures all of what we are looking for in a human rights framework to income adequacy. There is no question that one aspect that haunts us now in our working around human rights and poverty is that, for example, if you look at the shelter component of social assistance in Ontario, it is so grossly inadequate that it virtually guarantees someone will have to take food off the table for their children in order to get housing.
If you ask most politicians what the level of shelter allowance is and if they would be able to survive in Toronto on it, even legislators are not aware of how desperate the situation is. Whenever I talk to someone on social assistance and they remind me of how much they are trying to live on, I am always shocked; every time I hear it I am shocked. You cannot possibly survive on that.
Clearly, we need to deal with the arithmetic at times. However, there is much more to the right to an adequate income or the right to housing than arithmetic. That is the problem. Human rights also has that individualized aspect; the context actual aspect.
Even social assistance systems, for all their faults, when they are working, they do address the individual aspects. If a woman is escaping violence and needs a shelter allowance to buy furniture in order to be able to move into a new apartment, that is something that her welfare worker should be considering and addressing. If someone with a mental disability needs particular assistance in order to get an appropriate living place with the amount of support they need, but also decent housing, that is something a good social assistance system should be addressing.
We have to deal with the individual aspects of these rights in a way that protects dignity. The challenge around the guaranteed annual income notion is to assert the importance of income adequacy as a human right without losing the contextualized individualistic aspect of recognizing that everyone's life and needs will be different.
Mr. Kothari: A guaranteed annual income by itself would not solve all the problems. If you look, for example, at bringing incomes up to a level so that people could afford housing on the market — whether rented or owned — you get into a situation where because there is so much housing speculation, you have to keep raising assistance levels and income. Essentially, you end up subsidizing the market, and there is something fundamentally wrong with that.
I do not think there is any option for housing other than for the governments of all levels to embark on a large-scale social housing program.
We need more places where people can stay in affordable housing. Different types of interventions are necessary, including actual building itself. Just providing an income will not solve the problems.
Mr. Rainer: I want to echo that there is a strong consensus that even if guaranteed income were to be expanded and brought in a fairly robust form, it could not, should not and ought not to be seen as a panacea. A range of program supports will be needed, particularly around housing, as Mr. Kothari has indicated, because of the fluctuations and variability in the market forces; surely a national strategy is needed to supplement other things. We totally agree with that view.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your thoughts and input today. This information has been very valuable to us.
Mr. Kothari, thank you very much for being with us. It is coming up to 10:30 p.m. in New Delhi; we are just getting ready for lunch here in Ottawa. Thank you so much for all that you have done: the two weeks that you spent here, your report and your valuable contribution today. To the rest of the panel, thank you very much as well.
The committee adjourned.