Proceedings of the Subcommittee on Cities
Issue 5 - Evidence - Morning meeting
ST. JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR,
Monday, August 11, 2008
The Subcommittee on Cities of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 9 a.m. to examine and report on current social issues pertaining to Canada's largest cities.
Senator Art Eggleton (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I call to order this meeting of the Subcommittee on Cities, which is part of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science, and Technology. Here we are, meeting in the summer, and let me first say good morning.
The subcommittee is conducting a study of major Canadian cities with an initial focus on poverty, housing, and homelessness. In undertaking the study, we are building upon some previous work of the Senate and the matter of poverty. The 1971 report headed by Senator David Crowe comes to mind, as well as the 1997 report by Senator Cowan entitled Sounding the Alarm: Poverty in Canada. At the same time our study is complementary the study on rural poverty which has recently been completed by the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
Our subcommittee has completed hearings with witnesses in Ottawa, and at the end of June issued a first report that sets forth the major challenges, the issues and the options concerning poverty, housing and homelessness.
The next phase of the subcommittee's work, which starts today, is travel to a number of selected Canadian cities coast to coast to hear from the provincial and municipal governments, as well as various organizations and individuals, focusing we hope on the 103 options outlined in the report.
I would like to introduce Senator Munson from Ontario, Senator Cordy from Nova Scotia, and Senator Trenholme Counsell from New Brunswick. With us today is the clerk of the subcommittee, Barbara Reynolds as well as Brian O'Neal and Havi Echenberg, who are researchers from the Library of Parliament. They do all the real work in getting us ready.
I am very pleased to welcome the Honourable Shawn Skinner, who is Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, the Minister responsible for Persons with Disabilities, Minister responsible for Labour Relations Agency, the Minister responsible for the Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation. He's also the lead Minister for the Poverty Reduction Strategy, which we have been hearing a bit about and are anxious to hear more about today. Minister Skinner has an awful lot of responsibilities. Minister Skinner is accompanied by Lynn Vivian- Book, who is Assistant Deputy Minister, Income, Employment and Youth Services; Aisling Gogan, who we have seen before in Ottawa, Director of Poverty Reduction Strategy, and Cynthia King, Manager of Affordable Housing, Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation. Welcome to all of you.
Hon. Shawn Skinner, M.H.A., Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador: Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak before your committee, and thank you as well for your interest in our Poverty Reduction Strategy and some of the things that we are doing here in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
You have already recognized the people who are with me today, and as you indicated, appeared before you last spring. At that time, they provided you with some details about the structures, goals, and objectives of our Poverty Reduction Strategy.
I will focus on responding to some of the ideas put forward in your report entitled Poverty, Housing and Homelessness: Issues and Options.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, both urban and rural poverty are significant issues. With increasing prosperity, our government is working to ensure we avoid the type of poverty we see in other major urban centres. I believe it is critical that we are acting now to ensure that all those in our province can benefit from our increasing prosperity.
When we look at the most recent LICO data available for census metropolitan areas in 2005 data, we see that the poverty rate in St. John's is similar to that in Vancouver and Montreal in terms of the per cent falling below the cut offs, however, the depth of poverty is much lower.
Your report includes 103 options for tackling poverty. This reflects how complex an issue poverty is and why building consensus on how to tackle poverty is not easy. Many partners and long-term commitments are needed to alleviate and reduce poverty in a meaningful and sustained way and in particular to prevent poverty. The federal government has an important role to play and I look forward to increased involvement and action on poverty on behalf of the federal government.
At the Council of Federation meetings in Quebec City last month, the premiers announced that in the coming year Newfoundland and Labrador will be hosting a symposium for policy developers for community-based agencies and experts to identify the most effective ways for addressing barriers and disincentives to employment and for better integrating services for marginalized and vulnerable groups. This will be an opportunity to share lessons learned and best practises for tackling poverty.
Senators, 2008-09 is a pivotal year for Newfoundland and Labrador's maturing Poverty Reduction Strategy. This fall, we are undertaking a second round of comprehensive consultations to get feedback on what is working and what needs further work, as well as plan for the next phase of our strategy. In 2008-09, we will also be releasing our first progress report and our Newfoundland and Labrador Market Basket Measure. In partnership with Statistics Canada, we are the first jurisdiction in the country to develop a provincial market basket measure. This will be a powerful tool to help us monitor and track our progress, as well as target our initiatives.
The long-term vision and commitment to a comprehensive approach are critically important elements of our strategy. In 2003, we made an election promise, which we reaffirmed in 2007, that by 2014 we would transform Newfoundland and Labrador from a province with the most poverty to the province with the least. In the 2005 Speech from the Throne and Budget 2005, our government committed to develop a comprehensive government-wide Poverty Reduction Strategy. We committed that this would be done in consultation and collaboration with community based groups. Their input has been essential.
From the beginning, we also made explicit the need to pay attention to the connection between poverty and a variety of determinants. Factors such as gender, education, housing, employment, health, social and financial supports, and tax measures, as well as the link between women's poverty and their increased vulnerability to violence, are all important to understand as we develop and implement solutions.
Examples from other countries, as well as our own, show clearly that unless we take a comprehensive approach, we will never make a significant positive change to our poverty levels. Our government has made substantial investments to meet our goals and very much sees our Poverty Reduction Strategy as a living process, and one that we build on each year. To date, the total ongoing annual investment in new initiatives to support our Poverty Reduction Strategy exceeds $100 million per year. Some of the initiatives we have implemented are particularly relevant to the issues raised in your paper. One focus area has been improving our Income Support Program, both in terms of strengthening our social safety net and removing disincentives for income support clients to go to work.
In 2006, we raised income support rates by 5 per cent, and then starting in 2007, we indexed rates to the Consumer Price Index. We have increased our additional assistance for shelter rates as well as rates for health benefits, things like glasses, dentures, special diet allowances, and so on. We have also eliminated our lower renting from relatives rate. Equally important, this year we are undertaking a comprehensive study of our Income Support Program rate structures so we can take a holistic look at the benefits we provide and the extent to which they meet basic needs. Other examples include improving access by simplifying our application process, doubling the number of liaison social workers to ensure that clients with complex needs are connected to the full range of services available. We are getting ready to release a plain language guide to programs and services offered by our government that are of particular relevance to those in low income.
In terms of supporting income support clients to work, we have increased earning exemptions, simplified the process for clients to report employment earnings, and implemented a job start benefit. We have adjusted our rent-geared-to- income formula for social housing tenants with employment earnings, and we have partnered with the Metro Business Opportunities Corporation to assist income support clients who are self-employed. At the same time, we now provide prescription drug coverage for low wage earners who leave our Income Support Program. Lack of prescription drug coverage had been the biggest barrier for many clients to leave income support and go to work. We have also raised the minimum wage from $6 per hour when we first formed government in 2003 to the current $8 per hour, and in consultation with business and labour, we have scheduled increases up to $10 per hour as of July 1, 2010.
Additionally, we are increasing and strengthening our supports to help people enter the labour market and find work. We have announced fourteen new Career Work Centres that will be located in all regions of our province, both urban and rural. We have strengthened our capacity to develop and disseminate labour market information and are negotiating with the federal government to create a labour market development agreement that better meets the needs of our province.
Our government is working on solutions to challenges, such as our low literacy levels, our high rates of chronic disease and obesity, mental health and addiction service challenges, as well as long term care and community support of services. In concert with our Poverty Reduction Strategy, our government has made significant investments through our Wellness Plan, our Early Learning and Child Care Plan, our Mental Health and Addictions Policy Framework, our Violence Prevention Initiative, and healthy aging and senior's strategy.
We are currently developing a new strategic adult literacy plan for the province. This will challenge us to examine the programs we currently have in place to ensure these programs are providing optimal success for adult learners and to make sure we are addressing their unique needs and circumstances across all regions and communities of the province.
Through the Poverty Reduction Strategy, we are also addressing the need to work internally and with our community partners to provide a more coordinated approach in delivering programs and services for clients with complex needs. Individuals with complex needs are often shared clients of our health, our community services, our justice, our income support and our housing systems, both in government and in community-based organizations. This year we have identified the issue of complex clients as a priority for further research and action. In particular, we are working to develop more responsive and coordinated policies, programs, and services. Involvement of our community partners in this process is critical, as individuals with complex needs are usually more effectively served by community- based groups.
Housing and homelessness are an increasing concern in St. John's, as well as some other areas of the province. Our government is committed to increasing the availability of affordable housing and works with community-based partners, such as the St. John's Community Advisory Committee on Homelessness, the St. John's Housing and Homelessness Network, and Stella Burry Community Services, and various other transition housing centres and shelters across the province. In 2008, an additional $1.4 million is being dedicated to improve access to housing, particularly for seniors and those working for low wages, by addressing the wait list for Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Rent Supplement Program, and changing the rent-geared-to-income formula to decrease rent for tenants in not-for-profit housing.
I believe that the provision of quality affordable housing is essential in a healthy society, and our government is therefore currently developing a provincial housing strategy to guide us in our actions to address key housing needs. The strategy, which is being developed in consultation with our community stakeholders, will be completed this fall, and is one of only four housing strategies in the country.
The federal government has offered some short-term cost-shared commitments to programs such as the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program commonly referred to as RRAP, the Affordable Housing Initiative and the Affordable Housing Trust agreements. RRAP is a much-needed home repair program for low-income homeowners, particularly in our province where there is a high rate of home ownership. The people served by this program are mainly seniors with incomes averaging about $11,000 per year, living in homes that are about 40 years old that need repairs and accessibility modifications. This is reflective of the extraordinary demographic shift toward an older population with increasing needs for accessible accommodations, combined with supports to help them remain in their own homes. By doubling our investment in our own Provincial Home Repair Program, we are now able to serve over 2,500 households each year. Federal support accounts for one-third of these households. Since the 1990s, the only new housing that has been created has been through the federal-provincial cost shared Affordable Housing Initiative, and the Affordable Housing Trust agreements, in cooperation with community organizations and the private sector. Despite the success and the need for these programs, federal commitments have been unpredictable, and, therefore, do not facilitate a stable, long-term approach to tackling the issues. Again, despite demonstrated success, these programs are currently being evaluated at the request of the federal government and their futures are uncertain at best. This is unfortunate.
Supportive housing is a positive emerging trend in this province. Since 2005, we have been able to create some new supportive housing units through community organizations using funds from the cost-shared Affordable Housing, the Affordable Housing Trust agreements, and RRAP, as well as the federally funded Homelessness Partnering Strategy. The province is committed to supporting these projects on an ongoing basis through the provision of operating funding. The provincial housing strategy will make recommendations that will solidify the interdepartmental collaboration that is critical to the success of these initiatives. However, without federal support for capital development, there will be limited opportunities to add to the current stock of supportive housing units in our province.
In addition, the housing needs of Aboriginal peoples in this province living off reserve are currently being evaluated through a needs assessment. This study is being carried out with the full participation of all Aboriginal groups in the province. It will provide us with useful information to guide any future funding decisions. I believe, however, that to address fully the existing needs, the federal government must commit to reinvesting financial resources in housing.
From the 1950s to the early 1999s, the federal government cost shared the creation and operation of social housing with the provinces on a 75/25 per cent split, with the last of the new social housing being built in the early 1990s. In 1997, this province signed an agreement with the federal government that resulted in the devolution of responsibility for social housing to the province. This has resulted in a steady decrease of funds from the federal government. Devolution of administrative responsibility was meant to ensure that our province could develop and ensure programs and services in a way that best meets the needs of our province. It was never meant to result in the federal government shirking its responsibility for housing. The federal government has an important role to play in ensuring a supply of adequate and affordable housing in our communities.
The financial demands associated with maintaining the existing social housing stock of over 5,000 homes are the greatest housing challenge of this province. By the year 2039, the federal government will realize a nationwide cost savings of over $20 billion through the reduction of spending on housing in this country. The provinces want to see this money reinvested in the social housing stock to ensure its long-term sustainability and availability for future generations.
Along with Minister Solberg, I am the co-chair of the federal-provincial-territorial housing committee and see the mandate of this committee as essential to addressing poverty in Canada. Plans are underway for a meeting this fall; however, the federal minister has not met formally with the provinces since 2005. Earlier this summer, after I might add a considerable degree of badgering by provincial and territorial ministers, Minister Solberg finally agreed to meet with our group for about one hour. It was not a productive meeting. It did not address the substantive issues the provinces and territories face concerning the many housing issues across the country. This lack of commitment to discuss the issues has resulted in an uncertain future for a much-needed federal involvement in housing. Similarly, we have not been successful in having Minister Solberg come to the table since May of 2006 to sit as federal co-chair, for Federal- Provincial-Territorial Meeting of Ministers responsible for Social Services. I share this role with my colleague, Minister Wiseman, in Health and Community Services. This group has a critical role to play in addressing disability and child care issues, as well as poverty as a whole, yet we have not been able to bring the federal minister to the table since 2006.
There are many other areas I could discuss, such as persons with disabilities, youth at risk, and early learning and child care, but I know you want to spend most of the morning asking questions.
I will end by emphasizing that to address the many issues facing Canadian cities that are outlined in your report, we all need to be at the table; the federal government, the provincial governments, the municipal governments, business, labour, community based groups, and those living in and vulnerable to poverty. We all have to work together to develop a coordinated and integrated approach to alleviating, reducing, and preventing poverty in Canada.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you. We very much echo your closing statement of working together. We have also heard a great deal about the frustrations many people in this country have about the uncertainty about housing programs beyond the end of the upcoming fiscal year. It is good to see that you are in a position to co-chair the committee, but I am dismayed when I hear you are not getting any further than anybody else has been, to this point in time in any event, and I certainly hope you will be able to progress in that regard. It has created a great state of uncertainty for people in the housing sector to not know what the programs are going to be doing in future, if at all.
You have outlined a very active, ambitious program. It is comprehensive in terms of dealing with these issues. I am also interested in how you measure the outcomes. I am interested in how well the indicators are working. How far along are you in that area? Have you reported any of them out yet, or is it still early stages?
Mr. Skinner: I will defer to Ms. Gogan to give you a bit more detail, but I will say that we did find that some of the standard measures were not appropriate to measure some of the things that needed to be measured. Therefore, as I referenced in my notes, we created our own Newfoundland and Labrador Market Basket Measure in consultation with Statistics Canada to help us customize what we needed to be able to measure and report on.
Aisling Gogan, Director, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador: There is no one measure that adequately captures everything that poverty is made up of. We have been looking at LICO, the Low Income Cut Offs as the most common measure. One of the problems with that, as well as HRSDC Market Basket Measure, is we cannot report beyond the provincial level as a whole. That does not allow us to understand what is going on in the areas in which we are making progress, and in areas that we need to find other ways to address.
One of the innovations of the Newfoundland and Labrador Market Basket Measure is that we have taken the HRSDC methodology, but we are using income tax data rather than survey data. In that way, we can get that right down to the community level and look at what is going on in terms of who is falling below the cut offs in terms of being able to afford that basket of goods and services. That is one measure, but that is not the only approach we are taking. When we look at the different initiatives that we have implemented, we are able to monitor and track their progress. For example, we can look at how many of our income support clients are working while they are on income support. We can look at how many are leaving income support altogether and availing themselves of benefits such as our job start benefit. We are starting to see a lot of success there. When we look at the first year of our job start benefit, we see a 40 per cent increase of income support clients leaving on a monthly basis to start work.
The Chair: Forty per cent are leaving the program.
Ms. Gogan: There is a 40 per cent increase in the number that left in the previous year.
Minister Skinner mentioned that this year we are going to be releasing our first progress report, and that will highlight some of these overall measures like LICO, and our Newfoundland and Labrador Market Basket Measure. It will also highlight the sort of progress that we are seeing in our income support caseload, for example. We are looking at high school completion rates, all the sorts of things that you would expect, and we have been looking at what Quebec is doing in its reporting. We are also looking at what other countries are doing. We have seen successful reporting models from Ireland and the U.K. We have been trying to look also at case studies of different family types. One of the most important factors is taking a holistic approach and looking at how all the different initiatives add up. If you just look at individual initiatives, you will never see their combined impact.
The other issue is that we have a very strong preventative focus, and, of course, the benefit of some of those initiatives will not be fully realized for a generation or more. We are also looking at ways to measure our progress along the way and things like high school completion rates, attendance rates and higher grades. Those sorts of things are important indicators of being on the right track there as well. In the progress report that we will be releasing in this fiscal year, we are really looking broadly at challenges, trying to make sure we are getting at our preventative initiatives and making sure that we are on the right track by looking at the steps along the way.
The Chair: I think you have set 2014 as the deadline for moving from where you were to where you want to be in terms of being the province with the least poverty. How will you know when you are there? What kind of measurements will tell you that you are there?
Mr. Skinner: Part of what we are going to do in our second round of consultations is discuss how we should measure ourselves. We are seeking input from the community groups as to the kind of factors they believe we should be using to hold ourselves to a standard. Initially, in the consultation that we did in the creation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy, there was a lot of discussion about the definition of ``poverty'' and how to measure it. People said to us, ``Let us just get on with it, start the process and work some of this out as we move along,'' so that is what we are doing. We do not know all the answers to that very complex question.
As I said, you have 103 recommendations in your report. Every time I meet and talk to different groups about poverty, it brings up all kinds of other things. It is like an onion that you just keep peeling layers of skin off it. What we do know is that we are moving forward, we are moving forward with the community, and the second round of community consultations that we have will help us focus a little bit more on that. As I said in my remarks, it is a living document, and as it matures and as we move forward, I think we will get closer to everybody agreeing on how we should be measuring ourselves.
The Chair: Let me ask you about the federal government involvement in your program. You have talked a bit about the federal government and housing on a federal provincial territorial level. I want to zero in on your program in Newfoundland and Labrador, because you outlined it in your action plan in 2006. In that plant you identified a number of areas that you considered a priority in strengthening a relationship with the federal government. What progress has been made in that regard? In what areas has the federal government provided more assistance? What areas are not working?
Mr. Skinner: I think the provinces and territories are having good discussions about how we can collectively work together try and address some of the areas that we are facing and some of the challenges that we see that are common to each of us. We are trying to engage the federal government in some of those discussions. In programs that currently exist, particularly in the area of housing, the ones that are due to expire next March, we have had some good successes. When the federal government has been to the table with us, we have been able to mobilize and show results. There is no doubt about that.
In my opinion, the issue is one of the federal government not coming to the table and being a part of the process. The federal government remains distant, and by remaining distant, we are left unaware of any upcoming plans. That leads to a whole lot of uncertainty in some of the things that we are doing.
We believe we can enhance and have better successes with federal government participation. Unfortunately, at this stage, the government has not participated with us very much. The government is leaving us hanging in the sense that some of the agreements that we talk about are set to expire, and there has been no indication whether or not they will be continued. There has been tremendous pressure, for lack of a better word, brought to the federal government, to the minister, to try and make him understand why we believe in more consistency in this area. We have not seen a lot of that. He has told us that he will respond before the expiry of the agreements, but we do not know what the response will be, and we do not know what direction he is looking at. We think the government needs to come to the table; until now, the government has not done so. The provinces and territories are doing fine in terms of being able to move forward, but we are not seeing the federal government really play a significant role in that.
The Chair: You mentioned that you are not receiving the type of participation from the federal government that you expect. You named a number of programs including the Labour Market Development Agreement, student loans, literacy programs and Aboriginal programs. Are you saying that the level of cooperation and participation is not there?
Mr. Skinner: We are in ongoing negotiations about the devolution agreement and the new Labour Market Agreements. That is moving along and I would suggest to you that we are having some good discussions on that item. I do not want to leave you with the wrong impression that there is not cooperation. There is cooperation. My point to you is that I feel that the federal government should be more involved, should be more open to consultations with the province.
The Chair: The government is not exactly a partner with you in this program.
Mr. Skinner: I feel the government could be more of a partner.
Senator Cordy: Mr. Minister, I congratulate you and your government for the work that you are doing in this whole area. Past provincial and federal governments have had the best of intentions, but you have a plan that is being implemented.
I would like to come back to the role of the federal government. In your presentation you talked about the complexity of the issue of poverty, you cannot say that if you build houses, it is going to solve the problem, you cannot say that if you work on education, it will solve the problem. Poverty is all encompassing and you have to look at all of it, you cannot separate the issues. That is something that we have heard repeatedly and you have reiterated it this morning.
When we look at this federal government, we have had cuts in literacy funding, we have had cuts in programs for early childhood learning and child care, we have had the court challenges program cut, which certainly has a major impact on low income earners and those who are most in need. We have the Affordable Housing Initiative and the whole housing program being evaluated by the federal government and those of us from Atlantic Canada always get a little bit nervous when programs are being evaluated because we tend to believe in historical data that this means the programs are not going to have increased funding, but usually decreased funding.
In your response to Senator Eggleton's comments about the federal government partnerships, if you are co-chair of this committee and you cannot get meetings with your other co-chair, then indeed that is a huge challenge for you.
What leadership role should the federal government play in this complex field of poverty? You have set outcomes and determined your Market Basket Measure, but that is something that you have done in Newfoundland and Labrador. What role should we play? This is not only a problem for Newfoundland and Labrador, but also a problem across the entire country.
Mr. Skinner: Again, the federal government has participated with us on some of the things that we are moving forward. I mentioned the Labour Market Agreement. Just the fact that we have our own Newfoundland and Labrador Market Basket Measure, the federal stats agency has assisted us with that. Through the tax department, there have been things that we have been working on. In fairness, there are some things happening.
I want to make sure that I present some balance here to you. I will just use my position of co-chair of housing as an example. A group of provinces have agreed on an approach to the housing crisis, but the federal government is not present in this group, and the government is not telling us when it will come to the table. We have asked. It is not a matter of we will be there in three months, six months, or nine months. In British Columbia in late January-February when we got together for our FPT meetings, the federal government did not show up — the minister did not show up. We contacted him. He agreed to meet us in April, which he did, after much badgering as I said. We asked him if he would meet with us in the fall because an hour is not enough time to discuss the kinds of issues we need to discuss. We wanted to meet again in the fall. He would not make a commitment to meet in the fall.
There are things that the federal government needs to do. It can show leadership, it obviously has an opportunity as the largest government to work with all of us to help us in whatever ways we as provinces and territories wish to be helped, but the first thing we want the minister to do is to start the dialogue. I feel it is very unfortunate that we cannot get a federal minister to come to an FPT meeting to discuss with his or her colleagues the crisis that we are facing in this country. I can take you five minutes up the street and show you people who can be better served with the federal government at the table working with us who are not because of the fact that the federal government is not sitting there. That is unfortunate.
Senator Cordy: I agree it is unfortunate, and I think many of my colleagues can go not too far and see the effect that poverty has on people.
As a former schoolteacher, I have to talk about education. Children that live in poverty live with greater challenges because the family often wants the child to leave school in order to help support the family. I am not referring to the cost of tuition for university; I am talking about the cost of just finishing a high school education. Because the family is poor, the child may be encouraged to leave school and often teenagers will do so just to have some money for themselves.
What are you doing for drop out rates, what are you doing to help keep children in school? Without an education, it is likely that the cycle of poverty will continue.
Mr. Skinner: I will mention a couple of initiatives. We now provide all of the necessary schoolbooks for children from kindergarten to Grade 12. Parents or caregivers do not have to worry about that expense any longer. In some of our housing units where we traditionally have lower rates of high school completion, we have some students who would be 18 years or 19 years of age in high school, and we provide a financial benefit through Newfoundland and Labrador Housing. I believe it is $25 a month to those families for those children to stay in school and try to complete their education.
One program I should mention is the Futures in Skilled Trades and Technology Program. We have made substantial investments in that program. Our labour market information has shown that because of the economic opportunities that are occurring in our province, we are going to have a shortage of skilled tradespeople. In response to that information, we have brought this program into the high schools. Students have the opportunity to explore the various trades before they go on to post-secondary education. They are exposed to a number of different trades and have an opportunity to think about studying one of them in college or university. They also receive information about the opportunities, the income, and the kinds of careers that they can have if they pursue a trade.
We have a pilot project for reconnecting disengaged and at-risk youth. As you are probably aware, we have high dropout rates and low literacy levels. We are doing a pilot project to try and reconnect with those youth and to try and get them back into the school system, whether in the formal school system or through some other method to make sure that they get an opportunity to complete their education.
I also mentioned our new literacy plan. This plan targets the adults because our adults also have literacy issues. Many of our adults have gone beyond normal school age years and are experiencing challenges in the workplace. Employers are facing challenges with low literacy rates and the difficulty these adults experience in adapting to the new technology. The adult literacy plan is something that we are working on as well.
Senator Cordy: The highest dropout rate is not Newfoundland; it is Alberta, interestingly enough.
I am just wondering is there any way that you can look at children who are most at risk for dropping out of school. Oftentimes these children have grown up without role models; they have not seen a person graduate from high school and go on to post-secondary education.
Is there anything in your program that you have looked at for a mentoring program for those most at risk for leaving school?
Ms. Gogan: We have been looking at this issue. If you look at the overall numbers, we look quite good by across Canadian comparison. Overall, we actually have a good high school completion rate, but we have certain pockets of low completion rates. We find these low rates in our social housing areas. We have neighbourhoods in the city where the high school completion rate is only around 50 per cent, and some of those areas are in the minister's district, so he is very aware of the problem. Similarly, in our Aboriginal communities, we have some of those same issues. It is how to deal with the particular problems as they exist, and one of them is, of course, lack of role models. In some instances we have second and third generation relatives who did not have positive school experiences and it is difficult for these people to support their children's educational needs.
The pilot project that the minister referred to is one of the ways that we are looking at trying to address that problem, specifically in social housing neighbourhoods where we know there is a generational problem.
Overall, we have been through our Department of Education trying to monitor attendance at the provincial level in the younger grades. The previous system did not monitor this information. We know if you look at any studies and research, teachers will tell you, and sadly, prenatal experts can identify risks, but certainly by about Grade 5 and Grade 6, you can look at attendance rates and tell children that are really at a high risk of not completing high school. A new attendance system is being developed, and I think it will be implemented by next year, and one of the things we are looking at is using that information to try to intervene with the children who are at the most risk.
Through the Poverty Reduction Strategy, we have also increased funding and the number of community youth networks. Children have homework havens and other supports. These are places where young people like to go. There is always a big screen television and I think there is often a pool table. Those items draw them in and once they are there, there are also healthy snacks and things like that and help with homework. There are some amazing success stories from that mentoring program. Peer-to-peer mentoring can be very successful with some of these at-risk youth. They are a huge success story.
Every community that does not have a Community Youth Network wants one and we have been increasing the budgets for the existing networks and increasing the number of community networks. We have received funding through the Canadian Tire Foundation for Families through their Jump Start program because we also find that children who are involved in extracurricular activities and sports are much more likely to be connected to their communities and their schools and stay in school as well. We are trying to take a holistic and broad approach in terms of engaging youth.
We are also embarking on a youth retention and attraction study here in the province. Canadian Policy Research Networks is the lead in delivering that study. This weekend, in this hotel, young people were trailed as youth facilitators. They will go on to lead sessions across the province to talk to youth about how they see their needs. We have a number of different things going on for children and youth.
We increased our instructional grants to school with the purpose of eliminating school fees. We found that the cost of textbooks was too expensive for single parents and that often their teenage children dropped out of school because of the cost.
Our improving labour market has many service sector jobs and it is no problem for a young person now to find a service sector job. In some cases students who are on the edge see these jobs as very attractive and drop out of school to work in the service industry. The job can seem like a very attractive option if they know that the textbooks and school fees are too expensive for the parent.
We have tried to remove those pressures and we have been having discussions with our Youth Advisory Committee on ways to mitigate this draw of low wage low skill employment for young people. That is a new challenge for us and we are trying to learn from other jurisdictions. We certainly do not want a situation like in Alberta where they high school dropout rate has increased as their labour market has become so hot.
Senator Munson: Mr. Minister, you used the word ``unacceptable'' when referring to the federal government's attitude dealing with housing. You remarked that the federal government is distant and leaves the provinces hanging. You said that the government should be more involved. You said that you could take us five minutes from here and show us people that could be helped with the help of the federal government. Could you be specific for us to give us a description of what is five minutes up the street that is not being tackled and how it would be tackled in the proper way if there were federal cooperation?
Mr. Skinner: The instance that I was referring to there would be a housing related issue. We have people who are inadequately housed in our city. These people are on a wait list for us to provide services to them. If we had more federal engagement, i.e. if the federal government were sitting at the table with us and maybe matching the funds that we are putting into our housing programs, we would be able to respond in a more timely manner to the people who are out there waiting on us to respond. What I am referring to in that particular example is being able to respond to a wait list by having more access to funds to provide the kinds of infrastructure and services that we need to be providing.
Senator Munson: You are saying ``show me the money.''
Mr. Skinner: Yes, but it is not all money. The cost-shared agreements are set to expire next March. These agreements have been very successful in allowing us to address some of the challenges that we face with our housing stock and with the individuals that are looking for appropriate, affordable, accessible housing. We have had success, as I said, but the federal government wants to study these results again. We, as provinces and territories, do not understand why we need to study it to death. It works, we know it works, we have seen it work, we have the results, let us continue doing it.
Senator Munson: If the federal government does not come to the table, what happens five minutes up the street?
Mr. Skinner: We continue to invest, we continue to charge ahead and do what we can. We have increased our monies in our housing budgets; we have doubled our Provincial Home Repair Program; we have increased the modernization and improvement budget, doubled that in the last couple of years. We continue to put money into it because we need to protect that asset. We have 5,000 social housing units in this province, but we still have wait lists.
Senator Munson: Is there a philosophical difference between federal and provincial governments? I cannot speak for the federal government obviously, but perhaps the federal government wants to get out of this business and let it devolve and say your holding, you are closer, you do it, you spend the money?
Mr. Skinner: That I cannot tell you for sure because they are not sitting at the table talking to us, but probably yes to all of that. The devolution agreement that was signed in 1997, as we understand it, was an administrative agreement that we would be responsible to have the appropriate mix and the best mix of responses for our needs. It did not mean that the federal government would disengage itself from its financial commitments as well.
Senator Munson: In your opening statement, you talked about negotiating with the federal government to create a Labour Market Development Agreement. What do you have to negotiate? Your preamble was announcing 14 new career work centres. What has to be negotiated to meet the better needs of this province?
Mr. Skinner: The negotiation is a federal provincial co-managed agreement. When we want to use the funds that are available to respond to labour market needs, the federal presence at the table oftentimes will want us to look at responding to needs across the country that are labour market needs that may not be needs here in this province. We would sometimes like to put the money into very unique Newfoundland and Labrador situations. There are sometimes some pull back and forth as to how we should be responding, and then there are just the technicalities of there are individuals involved with the federal government who would do this and do they transfer over, and where we provide these services. There are many intricacies, but the main negotiation, for lack of a better word, is that we want to be able to localize and customize the responses that we are providing vis-à-vis the labour market agreements to our marketplace. With the federal co-chair at the table, sometimes we believe that does not happen as much as it should, given that they look at it more from a national perspective.
Senator Munson: There seems to be a forgotten group of people age 50 to 64. I asked these questions in Ottawa, and I ask them on behalf of many friends of mine who somehow, whether in the high tech industry, in the oil industry, or whatever they have done, all of a sudden you are nobody at 55, you are finished. You can have all the education you want, but nobody will hire them. How do we address that issue both provincially and federally of those in that bracket who fall below this post-tax period since 2003? Do you have a better idea today as to why this age group is affected?
Mr. Skinner: That is certainly a big issue, yes. No doubt about it, there are many of them, you are quite correct. In our case, because of our traditional reliance on resource-based industries, we have a large number of individuals who would fall within that 50-plus age bracket who now have to transition themselves into other forms of employment. How do we do it? We are doing it by trying to analyze the opportunities that we see coming in the future, trying to match up the skill sets that these individuals have. Many of them are very skilled individuals, very experienced individuals, maybe not necessarily would they have the certifications and paperwork that they would need. We are trying to work with labour groups, employer groups, to identify opportunities where these people may be able to transition into other types of work. We have examples from the Burin Peninsula. Former fishermen, fisherwomen, and plant workers have transitioned into other jobs with local manufacturing companies in that area. This has been done in small numbers, but again it is a start for us being able to transition people. It is about identifying the skill sets and the experiences of the older workers and trying to match them with the employers' needs.
Senator Munson: It seems the federal government had many of these programs but it seems that there are too many people in one market. I will use hairdressers as an example: there are too many of them, they have certificates but there are just too many hairdressers. I suppose we should learn to deal with this problem in a different way.
In 2006, the province said that it intended to work with the federal government in order to develop an income support program for people with disabilities. Have you managed to make any progress in that regard?
Mr. Skinner: In our recent budget, we announced the establishment of an office for the status of persons with disabilities. We will begin consultations in the province this fall. We are in the process of staffing that office right now. It seemed to be a very positive thing in the province. I have had many informal discussions with advocates and disability groups and so on. They are all looking very forward to us beginning in the establishment of that office, but it is in its infancy right now, it is in its early stages.
Senator Munson: You will be dealing with intellectual disabilities as well as physical disabilities.
Mr. Skinner: Correct.
Senator Munson: Some of our witnesses talked about strengthening the link between human rights and poverty reduction. In 2006, you announced you intended to make changes to the Human Rights Code to prevent discrimination based on source of income, such as income support. Have you made this change? If so, what impact has the change had?
Mr. Skinner: Yes, we have and in terms of impact, I will let Ms. Gogan make a few comments.
Ms. Gogan: One of the things is the housing market here is tight right now and the rental vacancy rates in St. John's and in some other communities are really low. We were hearing complaints even before that happened with people being discriminated against when someone found out they were on income support or relying on student loans, they would not rent to them. It is now written into our Human Rights Code that you cannot discriminate against someone on that basis. It is a fallback for people and property owners are aware that the change was made.
Senator Munson: Are other provinces doing this, what you have just done, or is this something new?
Ms. Gogan: I am not sure of the answer to that question. I know you have a panel this afternoon with some community-based groups. It would certainly be good to get their perspective on the extent to which that change has helped. I have heard some positive things from people about that change and some of it is just having done that and what it means. It was important for people symbolically, but also practically. I am sure this afternoon some of the people in the room could speak more to the practical impact of that change.
Senator Munson: It would strike me to be significant if it were national, if each province had something like this.
The Chair: I think we should check into that. I thought Ontario had something along those lines. There may be varying degrees from this, I do not know, but we should check into that.
Ms. Gogan: I am sure there are officials in our Department of Justice could answer that question, but I do not have the answer, although we certainly could get the answer for you.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I especially want to thank you, Mr. minister, for your very generous time with us this morning, and all of the experts at the table; it is very reassuring.
I think more and more we are looking to Newfoundland for solutions, a very dynamic, progressive province with much success. I am a physician and I remember you being the leader in telemedicine, thanks to at least one of your outstanding physicians.
I think that it is quite exciting to come here, not only to realize the great economic advancements, but also your enthusiasm and what we can learn from you.
We are here because of cities and in listening to this conversation, I am not sure whether your poverty issue is predominantly in the city of St. John's, which we are focusing on in our study, or is it largely a rural and smaller community issue?
I was just wondering about the cities versus rural in Newfoundland. Secondly, a determinant of poverty gender is put first. There is the saying ``Go west, young man,'' and perhaps fewer and fewer of your young men are going west. I know many New Brunswick men are going west. You do not hear ``Young woman go west,'' or ``Young girl go west.''
I would like you elaborate more on the poverty issue for women here. Of course, if there is time, I would love to hear more about your Early Learning and Child Care Plan because that is certainly a passion of mine, as it literacy.
Can you tell the committee a bit about your youth centres? Are they open after school hours?
Mr. Skinner: In terms of city poverty versus rural poverty, I referred to the Newfoundland and Labrador Market Basket Measure. We have not even released it publicly yet, but we have been working on it. We are going to be releasing it very soon. It is very important to us to be able to identify on a community level, even a neighbourhood level, where poverty is occurring or where people are below the ability to be able to purchase this basket of goods, if that is how we are going to define poverty. By working with Statistics Canada, we believe we are much better able to target certain geographic areas, be they communities, cities, or neighbourhoods. Everyone thinks the city of St. John's is doing very well and is very prosperous. Look around, there is construction happening everywhere, things are going great, but I can show you using our Market Basket Measure that there are pockets of people in this city that are very, very destitute and poor in terms of their ability to provide for themselves.
It is not just a city thing, it is right across the province, in urban and rural settings, but we are able to be very specific in identifying where the pockets or poverty are occurring based upon the work we have done with Statistics Canada and using the income tax data as opposed to survey data. It is much more accurate, it is real, and we are able to do all kinds of analysis based upon that information.
It is not just a city issue; the issue of poverty is occurring right across our province. We have had some tremendous out-migration that has led to some of this poverty. Many young men and women have left the province and many will not return. This has left the older people behind and without the economic base the younger people had provided for them. In some cases this money comes back to the province but not always.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: As you focus, Mr. minister, is your greatest concern on this city, and to a lesser extent maybe because of the numbers, other cities, or is it rural poverty? Which is the most pressing issue for you?
Mr. Skinner: I would say to you at this point we do not distinguish between urban and rural poverty. We are addressing the poverty as we see it throughout the province and we are trying to target our initiatives to address that issue throughout the map.
Ms. Gogan: Poverty is increasingly an urban phenomenon in Canada, and it is true here in Newfoundland and Labrador, but to a lesser extent than the rest of Canada. We are very concerned with both urban and rural poverty and we are trying to make sure that we are addressing both. I guess the other issue is sometimes what can seem to be good is not. In that some of our rural communities, if you look at a measure like LICO it looks really good, it looks as though very few people falling below the poverty line. However, when you look at the reasons why the numbers are like that it is because all of the young people have left, and all the people left are on CPP and OAS and everything that puts them just above these cut-offs. It looks like a good news story if you look at a community and you see, wow, very few people are falling below whatever cut off you pick, but when you really look at what is going on, it is because everybody left. All of the seniors are left in the community and all the young people are gone, so it is not really a good news story. When you look on the Northern Peninsula and some other areas, we see that going on. That is a concern when you look at that degree of out-migration.
When we look at our initiatives, we are always trying to think of how the issues are different in urban and rural areas and make sure we are addressing both as opposed to seeing one as more critical than the other. Each area has its own types of problems and we need to make sure we are addressing both. Sometimes it is the same solution in both places, and in other cases it is not. In our rural areas, we have a very high rate of home ownership, the highest in the country. We do as a province as a whole, even in our urban areas, but it is very, very high in rural communities.
With respect to housing, for example, we have different kinds of issues. We have a many older homes that need repairs and we need to help people keep and maintain their homes. We had that problem here in St. John's and other urban areas. We also have a lack of housing. We need to be looking at our initiatives and making sure they are addressing all the problems that are out there and that is a challenge.
Gender is the other piece. You tied the gender question to out-migration. We certainly have seen many more men than women leave the province. This out-migration does not matter so much when the person is young, but as they age the greater number of men leaving does make a difference. In some cases, these men leave their families behind and this creates many social problems.
As Minister Skinner noted, sometimes the money in those cases is coming back to the province and sometimes it is not. Sometimes women think it is going to come back and it does not. That certainly is a problem.
The relationship between gender and poverty is very complicated. If you take LICO, for example, the numbers falling below are not that different for men and women. However, the depth of poverty that women face is not much higher than men, and there are many more women facing what is often called severe poverty in the literature, and that is they are falling more than 50 per cent below whatever cut off you are looking at. If you just look at the overall numbers, women's vulnerability can be hidden.
The other issue we are always trying to address is that link between women's vulnerability to violence and poverty and that is a very complicated relationship because it runs in both directions. Women end up trapped in violent relationships because they are poor, or sometimes they are forced to make the choice between poverty and violence. We have been looking at that issue through our Poverty Reduction Strategy in conjunction with our Violence Prevention Initiative in making sure that women have options so they are not choosing between violence and poverty for themselves and their children.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: That information is very helpful. Your words about the depth of poverty and the vulnerability of poverty, I think, are very sensitive and very important words that we need to remember.
Ms. Gogan: We are trying to ensure that women have access to jobs in non-traditional occupations, particularly when we look at what is going on in our labour market. Women have had a very difficult time finding decent paying jobs in the oil and gas sector. We have a number of different initiatives. Through our environmental assessment process, we have defined the environment broadly to include socioeconomic factors and through our environmental assessment legislation have required companies to have employment plans in place that include training and employment initiatives for women. These agreements are similar to what you see in some agreements for Aboriginal people as well. We have initiatives of all different types, given the complexity, and particularly in trying to take a preventative approach. Similarly, the high school trades and technology program that the minister referred to is presented in such a way that girls as well as boys are attracted to the trades.
Lynn Vivian-Book, Assistant Deputy Minister, Income, Employment and Youth Services, Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador: I can speak a little bit with respect to the Early Learning and Child Care Plan, which has been building over a number of years. The focus of the plan is around affordability, which relates to subsides for families. The subsidy base is at an income of $27,500. A full subsidy is available to families.
Another very important area is recruitment and retention of early childhood educators. That is a huge issue from the perspective of training options and increasing the number of qualified educators. We have put in place several initiatives to support that, including an educational supplement and a credential process. So if you have a level one, you can access in the area of $2,000 in that year, and that increases to a level two or a level three, to provide that supplement, and that has seen an increase in the number of individuals moving into early childhood education.
A third area is in terms of increasing the number of options of child care. In this province, we do not have many models at this point in rural child care and family home child care, and looking at models, there have certainly been some additional dollars for some community based projects. Several family resource centres have worked to expand their roles into licensed child care and some options around that area. Most of the group child care in this province is private. Therefore, you see mostly group child care as you would expect in more urban areas and larger centres. They are trying to find models to support families in rural areas.
Another area is inclusion of children with disabilities in child care, and the lack of supports and the lack of training that child care providers had to try to move in that direction. There have been some supports in that area as well. A fifth area is developmental and quality and enhancing the quality of child care.
Those are the streams for the last several years and with each investment we have continued to build in those areas. The Early Learning and Child Care Plan is very strongly linked to the poverty reduction initiative as well as to the wellness plan. As we talked about poverty as being very complex and very broad, we are trying to move these forward in a way that complement each other as we move forward.
The Community Youth Network was built on the success of the family resource centre model for age groups from prenatal to age six. With that model in mind the province set out to create a network for youth ages 12 years to 18 years. We set out to create an environment supportive of youth with the appropriate staffing model and the appropriate ability of that community to do needs assessments and be flexible in the type of programming and services they offer. These services can be very different depending on the part of the province, but you will always find a hub, whether that is in a community organization like a Boys and Girls Club, or a neighbourhood centre, or a school. In that hub there will be staff, volunteers and adult mentors. They focus on health, education, employment, recreation, and all of those things link together. We do bring the groups together across the province and feed off one another in terms of the types of programming. They are not all just after school programs but they vary in terms of what kinds of supports are needed in the summertime, what kinds of supports are needed on the weekends, and are very different depending on the part of the province. All have been highly successful.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Do many of them open just after school because you mentioned homework?
Ms. Vivian-Book: Several of them have homework haven programs as one of the programs, but they do have full time staff. Minister, you visited many of these locations. They are not only open after school.
Mr. Skinner: No, lots of them are open during the day. They could be doing other activities, but the focus in terms of programming is after school when children get out of school. They are open on Friday nights, weekends, those kinds of things, so that it is not just sort of an after school program. It is meant to be much more than that.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Do you know if any other provinces have these youth networks like this? I think this is very important. The concept is new to me.
Cynthia King, Manger of Affordable Housing, Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation: I am not sure if there are these types of centres in other provinces. I just want to expand a little bit as well. The Community Youth Network is one way low-income neighbourhoods are served.
For about 20 years, Newfoundland and Labrador Housing has really focused on social development in neighbourhoods. Minister Skinner mentioned earlier that there are pockets of poverty within larger centres, and most of those pockets are social housing neighbourhoods where people, because they live in social housing, have low incomes.
About 25 years ago, we recognized it is not just enough for us to provide housing to people, we had to look at the whole person. We provide $100,000 a year to eight community centres in the province. Some of those actually host Community Youth Networks when they work within our neighbourhoods. Our community centres provide service right from early childhood, probably prenatal, right through the whole life cycle. A part of that life cycle, of course, is youth. Our centres provide programs and services after school, as well as evenings and on the weekends. Evidence for the success of our community centres is almost all anecdotal. Even after 20 years, we do not have any data in terms of how many people we have supported or what the success rate has been. However, we have anecdotal evidence, from the youth themselves. We have heard, ``If it was not for a particular community centre manager and the fact that I could go there and do my homework, I never would have gotten through school,'' or ``I would have ended up as a drug dealer,'' or ``I would have ended up not getting an education.'' A number of university students find that this is the best place to study, and they provide mentorship then for younger children in the neighbourhoods. There is a high level of success in the social program. Unfortunately, we have not been able to capture it in numbers, but they are not the sorts of things that you can capture in numbers. I just want to add that piece in terms of what we are doing in the province around helping youth stay in school and that sort of approach.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I do not want to give the impression that I did not know there were youth centres, but it is the network, and it seems to me that you have really advanced and the network is the key word.
The Chair: The characteristic of homelessness in Newfoundland and Labrador seems to be a little different from other parts of Canada. It is a very conspicuous problem in my home city of Toronto, but I understand it is more hidden here; more of what we might call ``couch surfing.'' Can you characterize it for us, and also what you do about it?
Ms. King: You are right. In this province, it is not as obvious as in larger cities in terms of people sleeping on sidewalks in sleeping bags. What you do have in this province are people who cannot find affordable adequate housing who are living in crowded situations. They are living with other relatives, combinations of families living together. Many youth are ``couch surfing''; they do not have a fixed address, they are moving from place to place. In our northern communities, there are an awful lot of overcrowded families living together in overcrowded situations. The characteristics are not as obvious, but people are still in need for affordable adequate housing. Many live in slum conditions in terms of overnight shelters and things. People are living in bedsitting rooms that are really inadequate and unsafe, no locks on the doors, people are afraid for their lives, afraid of fire and things like that. Women, in particular, are living in very unsafe conditions in bedsitting rooms, which if you look at affordability, you think they are living in a place that is affordable, but it is not suitable or adequate and does not meet their safety needs.
The Chair: What are you doing about it?
Ms. King: Under the Affordable Housing Program and with the help of the federal government, we are building 500 new affordable housing units. They are mostly one and two bedroom units. Of course, with no further commitment by the federal government, those programs will not continue.
The Chair: How do you identify these people if they are hidden?
Ms. King: We do it through the shelter system. There is a way that these shelter workers do keep a count. That system is HIFIS, the Homeless Individual and Families Information System. It is a federal system that was created through the Homelessness Partnering Strategy. I know our shelters here in the province do keep those statistics and data. Maybe when you speak to them, they will be able to tell you a little bit more about that information system.
Ms. Gogan: One of the other things we are working on and it is related to the Newfoundland and Labrador Market Basket Measure, is looking at ways to get at risk of homelessness. We are trying to find a better name for the sort of measure we have come up with, but you can look at what percentage of someone's income they are paying for housing in terms of one measure of that risk of homelessness, and then as Cynthia mentioned, we have other ways of getting at adequacy. I know one of the organizations coming this afternoon works closely with youth as do the community centres and so on, and they are aware of youth who they know are couch surfing and do not have a permanent address. You can look at it from both perspectives.
Senator Cordy: Congratulations to you on your child care plan because it certainly is a plan when I look at all the different avenues that you have discussed. You mentioned the credentials of the workers, which are extremely important, and the retention of those workers. Child care workers often leave that field of work because of the low wages they earn. You mentioned the options for rural child care inclusion. I congratulate you on your plan which compares well to the federal program. In the federal program child care is delivered by the postal worker with your monthly cheque. In that plan, businesses were supposed to create space and, in fact, zero spaces have been created since that program has come into effect. Congratulations to you on the complexity and all encompassing nature of your plan.
I was also struck by the fact that you are simplifying the application process because this is something that we have heard over, over, and over again about the federal programs is that you need a PhD or you have to be a chartered accountant to fill out these forms. I am also struck by the fact that you have increased the earning exemption for those who are on social assistance or income support. I am on a committee also that is dealing with seniors, and we heard repeatedly that seniors should be allowed to earn a certain amount of money before it affects OAS and the GIS. I am wondering how you manage to work that so that people could earn because, of course, if you want to get out of the cycle, then you should be allowed, in my opinion, to earn a little bit of extra money to allow yourself to get off the treadmill. How did you go about doing this? How is it accepted by your finance minister, and what is the amount of money that people can earn, what do they have to do in order to determine it? Perhaps you could explain that because I think it is a great idea.
Mr. Skinner: Initially it was a flat rate that people were allowed to keep when they were earning, and it was, I believe, 10 per cent. In this budget year, it is up to 20 per cent. The reason we did it, I guess, or the reason why the government accepted it is quite simply that when we had people who were on income support who started to work, who went out and got some income, it transitioned them into more hours, they wanted to take on more work, they wanted to become more engaged. People who are on income support do not want to be there, contrary to what some people's mindsets are. It is not how they want to be, it is where they find themselves. It is not where they look to go, it is where they end up. By allowing them the opportunity to have the stability of an income support system and transition into making some money and being able to get back on their feet and to engage in all of the things that come with being employed, people transitioned off income support. Our income support caseload is declining and is continuing to decline, not just because of that, but that is one of the factors we believe that is causing the decline.
In terms of how do we sell it to the finance minister, I guess it was simply a matter of saying that the investment that we are making by allowing people to remain on income support while drawing some other sources of income is paying off in the long term. We see these people leave income support eventually, or have less reliance on income support in some cases because of the amount of earnings that they have.
Senator Cordy: I think it is a great idea. It also makes people feel good about themselves.
Senator Munson: In a previous life, I covered a story in Labrador on Davis Inlet and what was determined to be third world poverty. I am just curious because in 2006 you indicated that your province did not collect specific information on the experience of poverty among Aboriginal peoples. Have you been able to make much progress in this regard in a collaborative approach? Has the federal government been of assistance to you? Just from my own curiosity since I have not been back there for some time, do you think much has changed.
Mr. Skinner: I can speak specifically from housing because I spend a lot of time working on housing arrangements and housing agreements and so on. There is a lot of consultation, there is progress happening there with our Aboriginal communities. The federal government is involved in that with some of the agreements that they have, but again they are going to expire. Some progress is happening there, but we still have a lot of work to do. Our Poverty Reduction Strategy with the Newfoundland and Labrador Market Basket Measure will allow us to identify challenges that we will have in our Aboriginal communities because we can get down to a community level, but we have work to do in that area. We are making progress but our Poverty Reduction Strategy is a 10-year strategy, so we have some work to do in that area.
Ms. Gogan: In terms of working with Aboriginal people the other area that we have made some progress is with Aboriginal women. There are a number of forums that the province has helped support, an annual Aboriginal women's conference, and through that we have been hearing the concerns of Aboriginal for themselves and their communities, and trying to look at ways to work with Aboriginal people to address the issues in their communities. In our consultation process we are looking at ways to make sure we are engaging Aboriginal people to further that dialogue in terms of how we might work together. As you can appreciate, it is really complicated in terms of relationships, the role of the federal government, our role, and the role of Aboriginal government, and with land claim agreements and other changes in the province. This is a difficult time in some ways to engage in a formal way. Certainly, in developing our initiatives, we are always looking to make sure that they are accessible and will also meet the needs of Aboriginal people.
The Chair: Thank you. It has been a very productive and useful session for this morning. We appreciate the time that you have given us, minister, and to those who are here to assist you as well. It is a good beginning, but we have got more people to hear from. City officials are coming in next, community people will be in here this afternoon, and then after a site visit tomorrow, we will be off to Halifax and continue on there.
Mr. Skinner: On behalf of the other people who are here with me, I want to thank each and every one of you for your interest and for your questions. We appreciate the opportunity.
The Chair: Good luck to you and continued good work.
We are happy to greet our next witnesses as we try to get more information and feedback, particularly on report entitled, Poverty, Housing and Homelessness: Issues and Options that we put out after hearing from many different groups in Ottawa, groups that came from right across the country. Now we are going across the country to hear more opinions and to be able to see firsthand some of the issues that are confronting us concerning this topic of housing, homelessness and poverty.
Let me introduce to all Councillor Shannie Duff, whom has a wealth of experience given her municipal career. I remember when I was in municipal government. In addition to serving as a councillor, she is a former mayor, a former member of the House of Assembly and a champion of architectural heritage. She has been a catalyst for the preservation of downtown neighbourhoods. Throughout her career, she has stressed the importance of heritage preservation and affordable housing and urban development. David Blackmore, Director of Building and Property Management, Emergency Operations Centre Manager with the City of St. John's, accompanies Ms. Duff.
Shannie Duff, Councillor, City of St. John's: It is nice to meet you in your new role. I am more familiar with you as the Mayor of Toronto, but I have followed your career at many levels of government and I am very happy that you have come, all of you, to St. John's as part of your consultation process.
The City of St. John's commends the members of the Senate Subcommittee on Cities for their initiative in examining and reporting on the social issues pertaining to Canada's largest cities, and in particular for selecting for first consideration as a social capacity building block to focus on poverty, housing and homelessness.
Adequate and affordable housing is identified as a stabilizing and facilitating requirement for dealing with the many issues and effects of poverty, health, and social welfare. It is a basic human right. If we accept this as a fundamental requirement, then we must accept the principle that the government has a responsibility to assist in the provision of safe and adequate housing to those in need.
Newfoundland and Labrador is on the brink of significant economic growth. I am sure you are aware of our premier's little brag that we might be giving equalization payments to Ontario this year. Hopefully this new prosperity will for the first time in many years allow for significant reinvestment in health care, education, public infrastructure, and other public services. While the new prosperity and growth will benefit many sectors of society, real concerns are being expressed about a growing affordability gap and the ability of municipalities and the non-profit service providers to meet the needs of the most vulnerable members of the community as the cost of shelter and basic necessities escalates. In St. John's, we are already experiencing significant increases in the cost of housing. Continued public support from all levels of government is essential to ensure that the rising cost of shelter does not worsen the situation of those on the economic margins of our community.
Municipalities, and in particular small municipalities, are tasked with the challenge of providing basic services for their citizens. The City of St. John's, while not a large city in comparison to many throughout the country, has many of the amenities and attractions of larger centres. The city is limited by virtue of both its population and the limited access to sources of revenue other than the regressive property tax, in its ability to provide the level of services demanded by a modern society.
The City of St. John's is fortunate in that services such as policing, health care, and social services are provided at the provincial level in Newfoundland and Labrador, although some fear that the trend of government downloading may eventually lead to some form of delivery of these services by the municipality.
The City of St. John's, while having little ability to directly deal with the issue of poverty, has played an active role in attempting to deal with the effects of poverty through the delivery of its services.
Like other municipalities, the City of St. John's has strived to make access to services, such as recreation and core services available to persons of fixed or limited income on an equitable basis through subsidized programs and taxation management. The city also provides grants and subsidies to many not-for-profit groups that provide the direct support services to those in need.
The city also provides a direct contribution to housing projects undertaken by the not-for-profit groups through the waiver of development fees and permit charges, and in some cases provides direct contributions to operating agreements. Another avenue of support for the non-profit housing agencies has been the transfer of surplus land for the provision of housing or support services.
We provide grants to community groups and tenant associations. We operate a number of community centres in low-income residential neighbourhoods and partner with our Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation, which is a provincial housing agency, in providing cash grants to the tenants associations so they can directly deliver the services that are required.
The City of St. John's was one of the first municipalities to partner with the Government of Canada in the delivery of the Neighbourhood Improvement Program and the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program. We also took advantage of funding under non-profit housing programs to construct over 400 rental units in order to provide direct delivery of affordable housing. We still own and operate over 400 assisted housing units.
The municipal city plan encourages higher densities in the urban core and the provision of in-fill housing in established neighbourhoods, and the rehabilitation and protection of the city's older neighbourhoods in order to maintain existing housing stock. The Department of Building and Property Management actively enforces minimum property standards and regulations to protect those residents and neighbourhoods from negligent property owners.
Our most recent initiative, which is sort of hot off the press just in the past year, was to commission a comprehensive report on affordable housing in our city, a need and demand study that is supposed to take us into the next 10 to 15 year time line. In order to assist the city with the implementation of the report and to improve coordination and communication between stakeholders in the housing sector, the city has established an Affordable Housing Action Committee. This consists of members of all three levels of government, the private and not-for-profit sector, and I think this is very much in line with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities action plan.
Just looking directly at your options, which you have asked us to comment on, housing is identified as a stabilizing and facilitating requirement for dealing with the many issues and affects of poverty, health, and social welfare, and we totally agree with that concept. We also agree that if it is a fundamental requirement, then there is a responsibility on government's part to assist in the provision of safe and adequate housing to those in need.
Throughout your report, the need to involve all the players from the users of housing and income support service, service providers, housing agencies, NGOs, the private sector, municipalities, and multi-departmental structures of government resounds. It is a very strong message that is coming through.
The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador is to be commended for its proactive approach in developing a Poverty Reduction Strategy recognizing the need to bring together not only the collective wisdom of these agencies external to government providing housing and support services to those in need, but also for its direction in bringing together departments within government who in the past have worked in isolation from their partners.
The City of St. John's has demonstrated that it is a willing partner in the provision of services to its citizens and recognizes the value of the non-government organizations and the private sector in the provision of housing and support services. However, municipalities together with its on-the-ground partners cannot do it alone. The federal government must continue to support housing through the renewal of its housing programs, and has an obligation to sustain the housing stock that it has developed with its partners over the years.
With reference to Option 69, many non-profit and cooperative housing portfolios are coming to the end of their subsidy agreements and many of these have struggled to keep up with maintenance challenges. Without an infusion of capital improvement funding, many of these affordable units will continue to be a burden on the providers and are subject to continued degradation and possible loss.
The redevelopment of existing housing stock and the re-profiling of agreements is a requirement for government to protect against the loss of valuable affordable housing units. Many of these existing portfolios may be reconfigured or re-profiled to increase the supply of new units.
With relation to Option 58, programs such as the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program, and the Rent Supplement Program, have allowed Canadian citizens to remain in their own homes or to afford decent private accommodation. Such programs should not be lost, while we search for new answers to newer problems, as these programs have proven track records and work for a large segment of the population.
The issue of homelessness and its interrelationship with health care and societal issues has placed new demands on service agencies. Housing and health care providers and municipalities at the ground level, those working closest to the issues have had time to focus on what is needed with little ability to provide the resources, and many deserve much appreciation for providing so much with so little.
The committee has asked for comments specifically on Option 92 and 94. Option 92 deals with tri-level government arrangements involving federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments. Agreements of this nature have existed between the various levels of governments for many years and have worked well in some instances, and in others, we are now looking at the sustainability issues of such programs. The Urban Development Agreement, UDA, has a well-established track record as being a good tool for dealing with specific issues, bringing parties together on priority projects, and identifying roles and responsibilities. However, it must be made sustainable if we are to avoid problems with continuation of the momentum. The Urban Development Agreements that have been structured to renew in five-year cycles provide for a refocusing and a retooling at the end of the five-year term providing flexibility for dealing with changing issues. They lack the long-term funding commitments required for housing sustainability.
Option 94, is another good model for intergovernmental discussion and action provided the NGOs and support agencies are well represented at the local level. A concern with this model would be the potential for loss of priority for issues of poverty, housing, and homelessness, to the many demands and challenges local municipalities face and may bring through the FCM. If this model is to be considered, all parties would have to agree to dedicated resources to the issue and stand separate of a committee representing intergovernmental affairs.
An option not highlighted for comment is Option 102, a national poverty reduction strategy. This option should be given careful consideration as it addresses such a wide spectrum of issues affecting those most at risk. A collaborative approach is required to deal with the multifaceted issues raised in this report. If municipalities are to consider taking on more of a role in the provision of social services to its citizens, they will require the expertise of those working at the ground level. Municipalities will require the full support of provincial and federal governments, including a dedicated source of revenue to fund new programs, enhance or retool existing programs, and deal with the issues of aging infrastructure.
The report highlights that no one group can work in isolation of the other and that a collaborative approach is required to deal with these issues. The report also clearly demonstrates that the issues affecting poverty, housing, and homelessness are global issues, and as such, we need programs that are given priority at the highest level. A municipality cannot address these issues without the support of government; yet if left unattended, have a detrimental impact on the quality of life of all its citizens.
Municipalities must be involved in the program and work with government and service providers to address these issues. The City of St. John's has demonstrated its willingness to be an active partner in the delivery of housing services; however, as the committee has heard, municipalities like the non-government agencies do not have the capacity to go it alone.
The Chair: That is an excellent presentation and thank you for very specific comments on some of our options. That is going to be quite helpful to us. I am quite familiar with much of what you say about the need of resources, the need for collaboration. It is an old story, but it is very true today in these areas as it is in so many others.
On the issue of collaboration, you praised the province for its Poverty Reduction Strategy. How involved are you in their strategy? They have a cabinet-level committee, and they have committees below that. Mr. Skinner was here earlier as the chair. How involved are you in the work that they are doing?
Ms. Duff: We were invited to present a paper as part of a consultative round table when they were in the developmental process on that strategy. When we did our own housing study and set up our committee, the government was very ready to put people from the Department of Health, Social Services, and Newfoundland and Labrador Housing on that committee. The committee is one of the arms through which we intend to collaborate, but for years there has been silence, as I do not need to tell you, and neither the province nor the municipality has the resources to overlap or let things fall between the cracks. I would say that it is only in the last 10 years that there has been good collaboration and that communication and it is improving. Minister Skinner, was a former municipal councillor and he is very familiar with the problems.
The Chair: Good training.
Ms. Duff: It always helps when you multi-task in your career. I think you do have good insights. Right now, we are working well together. From our point of view with the municipality, there are many things we can do. We do not have the resources to give a lot of income support to people in low incomes, but we do have regulatory authority and through our planning and zoning there are ways in which we can facilitate the development of new housing. There are real concerns about the continuation or the silence on the continuation of some of the existing programs, and we are concerned about the sustainability issue. It is no good building it if you do not have the resources for maintenance. We found that in one of our buildings. We lost two elevators in one year. It meant the roof did not get fixed on another one. Funding for ongoing maintenance and sustainability has not been there. I guess we are, in a sense, pleading with the federal government to stay in. The federal government was a very good partner some years ago, but then backed off. This issue is not only important to those who are very vulnerable and on the margins and needing support, it is very important to the economics of our country and our city, and Canada's image of itself. Canada has to be able to ensure that everyone is decently housed because if you are not decently housed, that has a tremendous spinoff on all of our systems, on health care, justice, and everything else. So, we would like to keep the priority on affordable housing if we can.
The Chair: You raised this issued of the fact that the federal government is yet to let anybody know the future of the housing programs, and these programs are coming towards the end of their life at the end of the fiscal year, so there is this great state of uncertainty at the moment. How are your housing agencies and NGO groups, groups that are supportive of affordable housing, how are they coping, what are they doing, is everything at a standstill?
Ms. Duff: They are very concerned, and we are really fortunate in the City of St. John's that we have some nationally recognized NGOs that are doing a fabulous job in terms of directing to specific groups, whether it is homeless women or people coming out of the justice system or the mental health facilities. They have been working very hard and with tremendous dedication. The fear is that they are going to lose momentum. We have a number of new projects and a number of others that are in the planning stage. All that expertise, all that passion, all that coming together that has developed over the last number of years is in jeopardy. It is causing a huge amount of uncertainty and I think it undervalues the work that has been done by the NGOs. We feel it too, as a municipality. Mr. Blackmore can add to that. We cannot afford to lose that momentum because the issues of homelessness, housing, and poverty have not gotten better, if anything, they have gotten worse. I think it is urgent that the government step up to the plate, tell us what they intend, and hopefully do what we are asking.
David Blackmore, Director of Building and Property Management, City of St. John's: Many of the issues within our portfolio are bricks and mortar issues; bringing this aging infrastructure into the future; being able to maintain the properties so we can still provide the services. We work with many of the non-governmental organizations and they actually have clients within our units. The NGOs provide the ongoing life training, employment training and some additional subsidies that we cannot provide. We do not have the ability to provide, and we cannot operate without them. The future of maintaining our housing stock, while it is not only detrimental to us, it is also detrimental to the other support service providers as well. We are very concerned that if the housing agreements are not continued, where we are going to go in the future.
The Chair: Let me ask you a couple of things about your particular housing situation. I recognize what you say about resources and you do not have control over all these things, but one thing you do have at the municipal level is a lot of knowledge, a lot of on the ground knowledge. You know and understand the community's needs and where improvements are needed.
I understand that social housing provides units for families, but providing housing for single people, particularly women between 55 years and 64 years is an issue today. Are there changes being made to try to adapt to the new realities of providing housing for large families, but also dealing with this issue as well?
Ms. Duff: I think that is where the biggest change has come about and that is where our NGOs are doing the most wonderful job in identifying these groups with special needs. Some of them are shelter beds, some of them are transitional beds, some of them are more permanent, but they are not only providing the roof, they are providing the supports, whether that is training, guidance, all of the things that are needed. We do not have that ability because we are not a social agency and we do not have the responsibility for health or social services. We can help with the roof and the maintenance and we can partner with them, but we need the NGOs because of their specialized services, and because they are on the ground, they are oftentimes the first to see the signs. They were the first to see that we needed an actual specialized shelter for AIDS victim in our city. They are now trying to work to be in front of the fact that we are looking again at de-institutionalizing some of our people suffering from mental illnesses. Hopefully that is going to be done with sensitivity and a lot of community supports this time because we had a disaster the last time, a lot of them ending up in boarding houses without proper care.
Working with the NGOs like the Mental Health Association, if we work with them and the government works with all of us, I think you will get a good solution. We see those problems of single men, single women, youth at risk, people with mental illnesses, people who are disabled in one way or another; they are not going to be picked up by the tide that is going to perhaps bring a lot of the rest of the community up. They are going to be in greater need of housing unless we are very alert and out there in front of those needs as they occur.
The Chair: Finally, let me ask you about homelessness, and this is similar to a question I asked this morning of the provincial officials. I understand homelessness is more hidden here. Certainly, in Toronto it is very conspicuous, as it is in many major cities, but here we have fewer people on the street, as we have people either couch surfing or doubling up or living in couch in the front living room. How do you think that needs to be tackled? You may not have the resources, but you have the knowledge.
Ms. Duff: Actually, we are getting homelessness that is a little bit more visible. You do see kids here sometimes sleeping on a park bench or sleeping in a doorway of some of our stores, but it certainly is not at the level as it is in Vancouver or Toronto. That may be one of the blessings of a bad climate, but it needs to be tackled by meeting the people with the need where they are. It is not an easy situation. You cannot say, okay, we are building a shelter and you are all going in it. Unless you are prepared also to provide the support services, and when I say meet them where they are, you have to do it without judgment, you have to do it being very sensitive to the reasons why people may be homeless, and there are very different reasons.
We, as a municipality, try to work with a group like Choices for Youth, which has developed a really good track record of identifying the issue, trying to put the supports in place, but doing it in a way that is not heavy handed, it is not the police, it is not saying you have to repent, it is none of that. They have several layers. They go out in an outreach, but they have drop in centres, and when the young people are ready, they are ready to move them to the next step.
I do not think there is an easy solution to the issue of homelessness because it is not one issue. There are as many different issues as there are reasons why people are on the street.
The Chair: Yes, a lot of individual attention and advocacy.
Ms. Duff: I think a lot of it is related to mental health issues. That is a biggie that has to be dealt with at a different level than just shelter, which is why the whole thing about communication and collaboration is so important. You have to know what all the resources are, you have to know what the needs are, and then know how to bring them together in a sensitive manner.
Senator Cordy: What exactly do you mean by in-fill housing?
Ms. Duff: In our downtown area, I do not know if you have had a chance to go and look at it, we had many issues. The downtown became very deteriorated, but it had a scale, it had a cohesiveness neighbourhood, so when houses were lost either through fire or demolished because of the condition, the city used its involvement in a non-profit housing program to rebuild right on the spot in a manner that was very compatible and very sensitive to the existing neighbourhood. You would not know that we were building a housing project; the new house just fit in with the neighbourhood. It is just like having a tooth replaced. It has been very successful from the point of view of integration in a seamless way. Before that, there was a tendency to build enormous projects, and because you did not get the NIMBY syndrome if you were building next to a project, they kept doing that to the point where we actually had to put a moratorium on that kind of housing. The social problems were becoming evident which is what happens when you have a large conglomeration of people with problems together. We took the need to provide housing and our desire to reinforce and fix our established neighbourhoods and put them together, and did a program that has worked amazingly well. You would not be able to walk down the streets of St. John's and know which of these houses were subsidized and which were not.
Senator Cordy: Does this reduce stigma?
Ms. Duff: Yes, very much so.
Senator Cordy: Would it also give people a better sense of neighbourhood? I am from Halifax, so I know exactly what you mean. In Halifax, the Uniacke Square, as an example, do you get a better sense of neighbourhood in people being included in the neighbourhood when it is the in-fill housing?
Ms. Duff: You do, and because you have many of your services, your shopping services, your churches, your schools were all in those areas; it kept the downtown alive and brought people to where the services were rather than putting them far out where they had to have transportation to get to where they were going. It just is easier to live if you are in an established neighbourhood because the things you need are there.
Senator Cordy: You also talked about grants to community groups for centres, and a few years ago, I was here and went to a centre. I am not sure if it was the same thing. It was for those who did not have good mental health and it was a wonderful centre.
Ms. Duff: It was probably the Pottle Centre.
Senator Cordy: Is this the type of thing that you were referring to?
Ms. Duff: We do give grants to the Pottle Centre, but what I was referring to are centres that were established in areas that have a concentration of low-income families. They were Newfoundland and Labrador Housing projects, some of the bigger ones that I referred to, and the government set up the centres sometimes taking up three or four units and converting them so that they provided day care, services to new mothers, clothing banks and recreational facilities for young people. We started in this at recreation, but we have gone beyond that now to providing either direct grants to those agencies for their services, and also establishing some of our own centres in areas where you did not have Newfoundland and Labrador Housing, but you still had a concentration of lower income families. The idea being that if people have places to gather, what we tried to do is allow the tenants and the citizens to take control of them. We provide the backup, we sometimes provide the staff and help with programming, but they are directed and run by the tenants associations or the community groups, and we just find that that works better than us coming in with a heavy hand and saying this is what you need.
Senator Cordy: When it provides child care, is that child care for women, and I say women because in many cases it would be the women using it, who are using the facilities of the centre, or is this available to women who might have a doctor's appointment?
Ms. Duff: It is available for both.
Senator Cordy: I am also wondering about what age groups are most affected by the need for safe, affordable housing. We heard about couch surfing which would be the younger people. I have also heard, not in St. John's, but I have heard in other areas where there are seniors waiting for two years to get safe affordable housing because the home that they are currently in may not be a safe situation for them.
Does it cross all boundaries or have you done studies to see which age groups or which particular segments of society are most in need of housing, or does it matter, they just need housing?
Ms. Duff: That is part of what we did when we did our affordable housing study, to try to identify where the needs were, and where they were likely to be because we have changing demographics here too. The most acute needs are with our youth at risk. Some groups find it harder to be housed because of the fact of the reputation or stigma, or problems real or imagined. There is not a great antipathy to housing seniors. Affordability is what affects them. People with AIDS, people with mental health illnesses, single men sometimes, people coming out of the penal system, all these groups are very hard to house, and fortunately most of them have good support or advocacy groups behind them, but there still is an acute housing problem for those people.
One group here, in particular, Stella Burry, is in the process of setting up a place. It is not transitional housing so much as bachelorettes for single men because the need for such accommodations was identified as a very strong need. We have just opened another facility, and when I say ``we,'' I am talking about these groups, for youth at risk. They are really helping, but they are only starting to be able to address the need that has been identified. I think it will get worse as housing slips out of the reach of people who are on low and fixed incomes, and we are seeing it happening now. The price of housing is starting to rise. I do not know if we will ever be a Fort McMurray, I hope not, but it is always something that you have to try to get ahead of and not try to be scrambling when you have a crisis on your hands.
Senator Cordy: We are going to Stella Burry's tomorrow. It is a wonderful facility and they are doing amazing work.
Ms. Duff: They are wonderful, and because they have such a good reputation, we have been able to put a fair concentration of their facilities in established neighbourhoods. We might have had a lot of push back if it had not been for the fact that people know that if Stella Burry is running a facility, it will be well run. The NIMBY syndrome is as alive here as anywhere.
Senator Cordy: You commented on it, and the minister before you commented on it, and we have heard it before from others, the subsidy housing agreements with the federal government are ending. Minister Skinner said that they are experiencing great challenges in trying to meet with the federal minister. They happened to get him for one hour, and, in fact, the minister is co-chair of the federal provincial territorial committee, co-chairing as the Newfoundland and Labrador minister, and yet they are having great challenges trying to get the federal government to the table to talk about what is going to happen. You referred to it this morning. Municipalities, in fact, have their feet on the ground; they know what is going on, they are probably more aware than any other level of government of the needs of the people in their particular area. If we do not have these subsidy agreements, if something does not happen soon to resolve this issue, whether they are going to continue as is or with changes, does it not create a feeling of uncertainty and no long term plans can be made without this. I always get a little bit nervous. The federal government is examining the federal housing plans, and we get a little bit nervous about that in Atlantic Canada because it often means the end of these programs. Is the lack of information coming from the federal government affecting your long term planning?
Ms. Duff: It is. You cannot do long term planning in any really meaningful sense until you know what resources are there, and I totally agree with the minister. I did not hear what his comments were, but I have spoken to him often enough to know of his concerns. I think he is dead right. I am sure the federal government will come up with something, and I do not know exactly why it is hesitating, but until it does, there is a time lag. We know the will not have their whole strategy in place on March 31, 2009. I think they are under some obligation to provide a continuation of the existing plan or some form of bridge. Otherwise, there will be a serious loss of momentum. For those in need of affordable housing, I think that is unconscionable.
Senator Cordy: I agree with you because to not know seven months before the agreements expire is really —
Ms. Duff: It sounds like a game, and whatever game it is, I do not like it.
Senator Cordy: I agree with you.
Senator Munson: I wish there was a reporter here to hear what you just said.
Ms. Duff: I guess I am lucky there is not.
Senator Munson: You never know. These things are reported. You did say it will get worse. What would worse look like?
Ms. Duff: What worse will look like is there will be more people who will not be able to afford the housing that they perhaps now can afford. When housing prices rise and there is a bigger demand at the upper end, you are seeing already neighbourhoods becoming gentrified. That is good for our tax base. It looks good, but unless there are some alternatives for people with disabilities, we are going to see a real influx of people with mental handicaps or mental disabilities in our community. If you are not ready to receive that with appropriate, accessible and affordable housing, where do they go? Do they add to those who are couch surfing? Do they get into private sector boarding houses that really are not geared for dealing with that kind of situation? That is what I mean by getting worse. We will see many people who are living in marginal housing without any housing. I do not want to see that happen. It does not need to happen if the agencies and the government levels get on it and do something about it.
Senator Munson: A committee chaired by Senator Kirby highlighted mental illness and now we have in the process a Mental Health Commission of Canada. We see people suffering from mental illness on the streets in Ottawa and other Canadian cities.
I do not like to use the word ``homeless,'' but are people walking around without adequate backup and care and if so, are their numbers in the hundreds? I would just like to get a picture of how you deal with it, how do NGOs deal with it, how governments deal with this very sensitive and real issue?
Ms. Duff: I think the Department of Health and Social Services, which is directly responsible and which has these people as clients and knows who they are and where they are; will probably be the better agency to ask that question. Where we see it is, if you walk down Water Street, I can introduce you to many of them. These are people oftentimes who are in that revolving door situation with our mental health institution, who when they are out, are living in a boarding house and for whatever reason, sometimes because they do not want it, cannot accept it, or maybe because they are not well connected, are just there. They will be down panhandling or whatever. Some of them are picked up by agencies like the Pottle Centre, which again is non-profit agency and doing a really good job. Again, it is meeting people where they are and providing some ability to get in out of the rain, to socialize.
We also have another place run by the Sisters of Mercy called the Gathering Place, which is specifically geared to pick up the people who are coming out of boarding houses that maybe besides giving them a bed and a meal, do not have anything else to offer. They can get a good meal, get a bath, sit down in a room and get a bit of counselling or a little bit of quiet time. Some of that is happening, but I think the capability of those particular types of NGOs will be heavily stretched unless we are getting ready for the de-institutionalization which we know is coming; it is in the plan.
Senator Munson: Senator Cordy asked quite a few questions I was going to ask. I am always curious, though, about the issue of disabilities. Do you feel that you have a good enough program in place in St. John's to deal with accessibility and with people who have intellectual and/or physical disabilities?
Ms. Duff: No, we do not. That has been identified as seriously lacking. For some particular physical disabilities, there are not enough handicap accessible units. We need to create more or adapt some of the ones that we have. That has been clearly demonstrated by the NGOs that advocate, and we picked that up as well in our study.
Senator Munson: In your statement, you write, ``The City of St. John's is fortunate in that services such as policing, health care, and social services are provided at the provincial level in Newfoundland and Labrador, although some fear that the trend of government downloading may eventually lead to some form of delivery of these services by the municipality.''
Ms. Duff, cities are on the front lines of all this sort of thing. If there were enough money set aside by provincial and federal governments, should you not be on the frontline providing, maybe not the policing aspect here, but health care and that social service?
Ms. Duff: We would not have the resources. If you are looking at the property tax, which as you know is regressive, and as you know, it is a very bad tool if what you are looking at is income distribution. To have that responsibility without the resources to fulfil it would make the situation worse than it is. You would need a very different fiscal arrangement between your federal and provincial governments and your municipalities before municipalities would be able to be an adequate partner on that level. We are not equipped to do it with the financial resources that we currently have.
Senator Munson: Like many cities in the country, I guess.
Ms. Duff: Like most cities in the country, I think.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Councillor Duff and Mr. Blackmore, I thank you for being here. I am very impressed by what I have heard. When I see the word ``must,'' it is very compelling: ``The federal government must continue to support housing.'' Let us say this help does not come through, are you really in dire straits? You know, the timeline of agreements and so on, is it desperate from your point of view without that continuing support?
Secondly, listening to you, there was also real angst for the future in terms of the increase in the need. I think I am still a perpetual optimist and I have that hope that along with better mental health programs and services, the mentally ill will be cared for. We know that most people with mental illness can live productive lives if they have the care they need and if they adhere to the programs that are essential for them, such as rehabilitation and medication. It is the same for children with learning disabilities, of whom a great many, when they become adults, end up in our penal system.
In the long term, because I think Newfoundland is a province of great hope, do you also have hope that 20, 30, 40 years from now that we see these numbers going down if society can change for the better?
I am just wondering if you have a hope when you say it is all going to get worse. I think I heard it is going to get worse.
Ms. Duff: The affordability gap is going to get worse. Unless the community supports and physical housing supports are put in place in anticipation, we are going to have a problem. Hopefully we will not. I think that federal government resources will definitely be needed to assist the province and municipalities and the NGOs to do this.
I was a nurse and a social worker by profession before I went into municipal politics, and I do remember very clearly, what happened with all the optimism of de-institutionalizing our mental hospital here. We do not call it that now. I think it is called the Hospital for Mental and Nervous Diseases. However, what was intended to be a very liberating, humane exercise turned out to be very problematic because the support services did not go along with the de-institutionalization. I guess the point I am making is that they have to be in place. The places to receive people where they can live in dignity with adequate affordable housing have to be in place. Otherwise, it can be worse, and I agree with you that the ideal would be that everyone who can possibly live in the community, whether it is collectively or singly, should be allowed to do so and helped to do so. It is not magic. It does require resources and it does require advanced planning, and that is what concerns me.
It is serious when you have a situation like the one right now with no commitment on your continuation of programs. I just cannot understand what they are thinking when they do not come to the table to work with their partners on the ground.
It is not our problem, or our province's problem, or the fed's problem, it is everyone's problem, and collectively we have to work at it. Our bottom line is we cannot do it alone. We can see the problem, we can have the best intentions in the world, but we do not have the resources to do it without federal help.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: With regard to the housing, is St. John's expanding outwards? What is the average cost of a home in St. John's right now?
Ms. Duff: It depends what you are looking at. A basic three-bedroom bungalow in a new subdivision, which would have cost about $139,000 five years ago, is now getting toward $200,000. That is where you are seeing the first escalation. We have broken the million-dollar mark on housing which is unheard of here in some of the very upscale housing. That is fine. If you can afford it, you can do what you like. It is the starter homes and the homes for people who cannot afford that where we are going to get into the crunch.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Is it just as true here as in bigger cities, that generally speaking people need two incomes to afford these houses?
Ms. Duff: I would say yes. David would probably know that.
Mr. Blackmore: That is true.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: That is one place where the question of child care comes into it. Is that a stumbling block for young families; are they still able to find arrangements?
Mr. Blackmore: I guess people are making arrangements, but certainly, if you are working in the community and you have children, it is a challenge when you are looking at day care. It is a real balance as to what your take home pay is versus what you are paying out for child care, and for some it becomes an option to stay home versus going into the workforce.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Do you know the birth rate in Newfoundland compared to other provinces?
Ms. Duff: I think ours is the second lowest in the country next to Quebec, which went from being the highest, but not all of these things are as simple as they appear. We lost our breeding stock. Many of our young people, our educated young people, who would be starting families left for Alberta or Ontario for work because our economy was very depressed. I think you might see some of them come back home. I sincerely hope so. We lost that demographic that was producing the babies, which is partly why our birth rate went down. Newfoundlanders are still producing, but they are just not producing in our province.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: These are all factors leading to the whole societal situation.
Ms. Duff: Yes, it is not simple. Housing is one part, and that is what we are addressing today, but it is very interrelated.
The Chair: When we think about social housing, most often, we are talking about rental or co-op, but we have had people that have come to us, to Option 60 actually, talked about home ownership for low-income people and maybe tax incentives to the private sector. How do you think that would go over here? Do you think that could be a valuable tool in the whole scheme of providing affordable housing and home ownership?
Ms. Duff: I think it would, but I am a little bit prejudiced when it comes to Habitat for Humanity. We work with providing home ownership to the working poor. We work with many different tools, but the home ownership option, if you can make it work, has other benefits in terms of getting people out of that poverty cycle and giving them some equity. We have found it worked very well, at least the Habitat for Humanity. We have 30 houses and we have seen the improvement in the self-esteem of our families. I think it is certainly an option worth considering, but I do not think it is the panacea for all the requirements of affordable housing.
The Chair: Setting aside Habitat for Humanity as a not-for-profit community organization, are there any private sector groups that with tax incentives might provide this service?
Mr. Blackmore: Home builders certainly would promote that they are building affordable housing units within the community, and in St. John's, there is an 80 per cent take up on new home ownership.
Making home ownership affordable on the capital side is one thing, but if you are dealing with the working poor, they must maintain that house on into the future, and I do not know if that ability is actually there. A lot of the home ownership we are dealing with right now, new homes that are being purchased, are being purchased by families with two working individuals in the unit. Getting to a level where the working poor can afford a new home, I do not know that we are there yet, other than with Habitat for Humanity.
Ms. Duff: We had what I would call private sector affordable rental housing. Many of our affordable rental housing units were taken out of the market and ``condominiumized'' over the last 15 years, and there has been no new rental housing built in St. John's to any extent except the odd basement apartment for a long time. That is one place where people who do not necessarily need social assistance could find adequate shelter, but it is a thing that happened in the market that is a bit of a concern because it is all part of this continuum between direct home ownership and assisted rental. There is a big gap in the middle.
The Chair: In your presentation, you mention RRAP and some of the other programs, how important they are for housing. Rent supplement, you did touch on that. Is that something that needs to be part of the equation, or do you just need to build more affordable housing, period?
Ms. Duff: I think both, but I think rent supplement definitely has a role. That has been very helpful for senior's housing particularly. We have some very good projects that have assisted the tenants. I think there are many tools. I would not say one has worked to the exclusion of another.
The Chair: Let me ask you finally about youth at risk. There are a number of dimensions to this kind of issue, and a lot of it would be provincial level government jurisdiction, I am sure, but it affects the quality of life in your city when you have youth at risk, as well, of course, their quality of life. The statistic for St. John's on poverty is much higher than the national average. The figure I have from Statistics Canada, this is the definition of those below the after tax LICO, and it is 16.1 per cent here. The national average is about 10.5. It is 18.4 in Toronto. All the big cities have higher than the national average, and what we certainly find in Toronto is that there are pockets, there are neighbourhoods, and I think we identified 13 neighbourhoods as being areas that have particular challenges. How does that relate here, and how does it particularly relate to at-risk youth, young people who drop out of the school system and then become at risk? Tell us a little bit about that problem and what solutions we might use.
Ms. Duff: First of all, I am not an expert on that. You are going to be meeting perhaps with a group called Choices for Youth. They would be the far better people to talk to. We do work with them and try to support them because we recognize that they are doing a really, really good job. Part of our youth at risk problem here is drug related, and if you listen to the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and the youth serving agencies, they will tell you that that problem is getting more serious. Some of it obviously is due to dysfunctional families and these sorts of issues, but I would not be the one to give you the definitive answer on that. Are you going to be meeting with Choices for Youth?
The Chair: They are coming this afternoon.
Ms. Duff: They are a frontline group that are doing an excellent job.
The Chair: Do you have neighbourhoods in St. John's where poverty is particularly severe?
Ms. Duff: We do. Some of them are legacies of the projects. In the early post-war years where there was this big building boom of affordable housing. Some of the neighbourhoods today were built in that period where large numbers of social or assisted housing occupants were housed together. We are working with agencies and community centres to try to fix some of the problems. There are other neighbourhoods that have problems with drugs, or that sort of thing. I would not say it is as severe here as it is in cities like Toronto, Calgary, or Vancouver. Because we are a smaller community, there is still a very strong sense of cohesion in the neighbourhoods. We are lucky in that sense. I hope that does not change if we do get all the things that were promised. Sometimes prosperity can be a two edged sword.
Mr. Blackmore: With respect to neighbourhoods, certainly they are not as bad as they used to be. I have been with the city 30 years and we had an era of slum landlords, but those days have gone, certainly not as prevalent as they used to be. However, when you speak about the neighbourhoods where you do have problems, it tends to be in the older neighbourhoods, the lesser quality existing housing stock. We have referenced programs like RRAP. RRAP was very instrumental back in the early 1980s in improving the quality of the neighbourhoods, and if you improve the quality of the neighbourhood, you improve the quality of life. However, with the homeowner RRAP now and the rental RRAP, we do not see the level of funding going into these areas like we once did, and it is certainly becoming a challenge. Some of the homeowners that live in these older neighbourhoods still have challenges in maintaining their properties.
I deal with two sides of that issue because I am also the guy who tells them to fix it up, the regulatory side. We also deal with the challenges that homeowners face. We witness landlords buying up properties and renting substandard properties until they are caught. Then they have to rehabilitate the properties and so on. Unfortunately, many people living in the rental units have other life challenges; many are consumers of mental health services. I am glad to see with the province's Poverty Reduction Strategy, they are bringing together the departments within government to deal with these issues. For many years, we saw the disconnect, we saw cheques being issued for people to purchase accommodation in the city, however, the support services did not go along with that. In some cases, levels of rent supplements were raised to take the person as opposed to providing the support service for the person. I am glad to see that those issues are now being addressed.
The Chair: One of the instruments for dealing with specific problems concerning geographic areas is something called an urban development agreement, which would involve three orders of government, and we are looking for collaborative ways of joining up the different orders of government in solving some of these problems. The two that I know of are Vancouver and Winnipeg. Has that kind of an instrument been thought of here? Does it have any value in dealing with any of these issues, either on a geographic basis or a general policy basis?
Ms. Duff: I think it has value. I do not think we are actively considering it here right now. You just mentioned it briefly in your report. I do not know as much about it as I probably should, but in principal, I agree with it. We would like to have a little more discussion around how it would be delivered at a local level.
Senator Cordy: I just want to go back to your comment about the few apartments being built in St. John's. That is certainly a national problem, I guess we can say, for people who need that type of housing. In fact, the 2006 census showed there were 39,000 fewer rental units across the country than there were in 2001. That is a significant number because you would think, in fact, that the number would be increasing. In the 1970s, incentives were provided for builders to build apartments, particularly for lower income earners. We have heard comments from developers that this should be returned. Would incentives to build more rental units be helpful? Halifax has the same problem with many new condominium developments, but in many cases, they are over $200,000. Low-income earners would need a significant amount of money as a down payment and so the high priced units eliminate a high percentage of people who just do not have the money. Would it be helpful to go back to some of the programs in the 1970s or variations of it where developers would be given money to build affordable apartment units?
Mr. Blackmore: Without some level of incentive, there would be no desire from the private sector to do it. Obviously, building condominiums eliminates the risk for the developer, who passes the risk to the purchaser. They take out their profits and move on to another project. Without some sort of incentive, I cannot see it reversing back to the days of building apartment buildings.
Senator Cordy: With the condominiums, you are getting your money back immediately, you are not waiting for 20 years to get your money back.
You made reference, Ms. Duff, when you talked about the lack of affordable apartments, sort of a gap in between. What about the working poor? They are feeding their families, they are holding down full time jobs, they have a reasonable lifestyle, but they do not have $30,000 to put down on a house or condominium. You mentioned before the double-edged sword. The economy in St. John's is certainly starting, we are hearing about it, you see it, the vacancy rate is extremely low, but if you are working class poor, whether the economy is booming or not, you are still working class poor. You do not have the resources no matter how good the economy is. What programs are in place for the working poor who often fall between the cracks? Their income is high enough so they do not qualify for many programs, but it is not high enough to be able to afford housing.
Ms. Duff: I do not think there are many programs in place. The only one I am aware of is Habitat for Humanity, which is directly targeted to the working poor. That particular group is at the edge of vulnerability when housing prices escalate without escalating incomes at the same time. People in the service industry, people on fixed incomes, people who are retired, people who are vulnerable to unemployment that now can probably manage, might be knocked out of that housing market and fall into the need for assisted housing as house prices rise. This is already happening here.
Senator Cordy: On a personal note, did you get your Order of Canada for your work with people in need?
Ms. Duff: I got it for community service, but I have been involved in so many things, I have been around a long time, partly for my work with Habitat for Humanity, but also for what I have done in fighting for the rehabilitation of inner-city neighbourhoods throughout my long and varied career. I was very glad to get it.
The Chair: Thank you very much for coming and for giving us your perspective. We got the provincial perspective earlier, and now we have the city perspective, the municipal perspective. We will hear from the community groups this afternoon, and that will give us the total picture that we need in response to our issues and options paper.
Ms. Duff: Thank you for your interest in these issues and for your interest in what happens to cities in Canada.
The committee adjourned.