BRIEF FROM THE COLOUR OF POVERTY
CAMPAIGN AND METRO TORONTO CHINESE
& SOUTH EAST ASIAN LEGAL CLINIC
Executive Summary
There is growing marginalization of racialized communities across
Ontario, which results in increasing racialization of poverty. The Federal
Government must take a leadership role to address this issue by develop a
comprehensive national poverty reduction plan. The Federal Government must also
avail itself of greater revenue by increasing corporate tax and personal tax
rates at the top income tax bracket in order to pay for the needed services and
programs for people living in poverty. Finally, the Federal Government should
collect and track disaggregated in order to identify racialized and other
structural and systemic disadvantage, to be accompanied by goals and specific
benchmarks and indicators to monitor the progress of poverty reduction plan.
I. About the Organizations
The Colour of Poverty Campaign/Colour of Change (COPC) is a
province-wide initiative made up of individuals and organizations working to
build community-based capacity to address the growing racialization of poverty
and the resulting increased levels of social exclusion and marginalization of
racialized communities across Ontario. The Colour of Poverty works to build
concrete strategies, tools, initiatives and community-based capacity through which
individuals, groups and organizations ( especially those reflective of the affected
racialized communities ) can better develop coherent and effective shared
action plans as well as coordinated strategies so as to best work together to
address and redress the growing structural and systemic ethno-racial inequality
across the province.
The Metro Toronto Chinese & South East Asian Legal Clinic
(MTCSEALC) is a community based legal clinic which provides free legal
services to the low income Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian speaking communities
in the Toronto area. Established in 1987, the MTCSEALC has become an important
advocate for immigrants and members of racialized communities, particularly
those who are low income, in order to advance their social, political &
economic rights and interests in Ontario. MTCSEALC is also a founding member of
the Colour of Poverty Campaign.
II. The Role of Federal Government in Poverty Reduction among Racialized Communities and other Disadvantaged Groups
As is well documented the gap between rich and poor in Ontario is
widening, but what is much less well understood is that the impact of this
growing gulf is being much more profoundly felt by racialized group members ( ie.
Aboriginal or First Peoples and communities-of-colour).
For instance, a recent report by the Wellesley Institute and
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives confirms a "colour code" is
keeping “visible minorities” out of good jobs in the Canadian labour market. The
Report found that visible minority Canadian workers earned 81.4 cents for every
dollar paid to their Caucasian counterparts.
Based on the 2006 census, researchers found that earnings by male
newcomers from visible minorities were just 68.7 per cent of those who were
white males. The Report also confirms that such colour code persisted for
second-generation Canadians with similar education and age, though the gap
narrowed slightly - with visible minority women making 56.5 cents, up from 48.7
cents in 2000, for every dollar white men earned, while minority men in the
same cohort improved by almost 7 cents, to 75.6 cents.
In 2006, during the boom years, visible minorities had an
unemployment rate of 8.6 per cent, compared with 6.2 per cent for white
Canadians. Even more disturbing is that visible minorities were under-represented
in public administration, where 92 per cent of workers were white.
The increasing “racialization” or “colour-coding” of all of the
major social and economic indicators can be gleaned not only from the
statistics on income & wealth, but also from any one of a number of
different measures – such as the inequalities with respect to health status and
educational learning outcomes, higher drop- out or “push-out” rates among
racialized learners, inequitable access to employment opportunities and
over-representation in low-paying, unstable, and low-status jobs in which their
rights as workers are often poorly or totally unprotected, higher levels of
under-housing and homelessness and the re-emergence of imposed racialized
residential enclaves and the increasing rate of incidence and ethno-racial
differentials with respect to targeted policing as Aboriginal and men and
women-of-colour are ever more over-represented in Ontario’s jails and prisons.
All of these are products of the long-standing and now growing social and
economic exclusion of racialized groups from the so-called mainstream of
society.
Given such stark realities, it is imperative that political leaders
in all levels of government discuss the reduction if not the elimination of poverty
by referring directly to actions to address and redress the increasingly racialized
and otherwise differential character and experience of poverty.
Canadians urgently need a comprehensive national poverty reduction
plan that integrates a broad range of universal initiatives, accompanied by
specific targeted measures to remedy the different underlying sources of
vulnerability that expose racialized – and other disadvantaged communities – to
disproportionate poverty.
More importantly, any national poverty reduction plan must
specifically name and address racialized poverty.
Recommendation 1: The Federal government must take a leadership
role by acknowledging and addressing systemic barriers to inclusion as well as
persistent experience of racial discrimination. This should be achieved by developing
and implementing a national poverty reduction strategy with targeted,
time-specific and measurable mechanisms and by adopting a racial equity outcome
measure to evaluate all its legislation, programmes, public policies as well as
all its budgetary decisions.
III. Enhancing the Capacity of the Federal Government to Address Poverty
In this age of austerity, politicians of all stripes and from all
levels of governments are trying to convince Canadians that governments have to
get out of the business of governing because of the budgetary “deficit’ they
face. Canadians are told, repeatedly, that the only way to address such deficit
is by cutting public services and funding for public goods, be it public
libraries at the municipal level, legal aid at the provincial level, or
childcare at the federal level. This is so, even as politicians themselves acknowledge
that services being reviewed for possible reduction and elimination are “core
services” that Canadians need to either maintain their basic health and well
being and/or to foster the development of an inclusive and democratic society
like ours.
Yet at the same time, as Canadians are being asked to make personal
sacrifices in the name of deficit reduction, corporations and individual high
income earners are expected to share an ever declining portion of their profits
through the continuing corporate tax cut and the ever present tax loopholes. These
tax cuts, or tax credits, are directly responsible for the creation of such undeniable
phenomenon as “the rich get richer and poor get poorer”. To name just one proof
of such growing inequities, according to the 2006 census data released by
Statistics Canada, between 1980 and 2005, median earnings among Canada’s top
earners rose more than 16 per cent while those in the bottom fifth saw their
wages dip by 20 per cent.
The annual cost of the corporate tax cuts alone that have either
taken effect under the last two terms of Government or are scheduled to take
effect in the future will reach $14.2 billion by fiscal year 2012-13. If that
fiscal capacity was to be made available to the Government of Canada, it would
have a substantial impact in terms of support for important public services
that all Canadians need, but especially those who are at the bottom of the economic
totem pole.
The ever decreasing tax revenue directly and negatively reduces the
capacity of the Federal Government to provide or fund programs that are essential
to members of the most marginalized communities in Canada. Programs such as
affordable housing, national childcare program, programs for women and other
disadvantaged communities, as well as specific programs to bring about
substantive equality, including the Court Challenges Program, etc. have all
seen their funding reduced, or have been eliminated completely.
As a further example of such inconsistent and incoherent economic
policies, the Caledon Institute has estimated that the Canada Child Tax Benefit
could be increased to $5,000 per child for an annual cost of $4 billion. It is
clear that the constraints on public resources at the federal level caused by
tax cuts – implemented and pending – are in fact contributing to the effective
withdrawal of the Federal Government from all areas of public expenditure.
As racialized communities in Ontario are considerably
over-represented among the poor, they are thus more likely to have benefited
from these public services, had they been properly funded. Thus, the focus on
tax cuts – for both corporate tax as well as personal income tax – had resulted
in and will continue to have a differentially negative impact on these
communities.
Last year the Scottish Government commissioned a study to look at
the impact of reduced public services spending on vulnerable groups. Entitled
the Equalities Budget Report, this evidence based review was undertaken by the
Employment Research Institute, Edinburgh Napier University. The overall aim is
to review and summarise UK and international evidence on the impact of reduced
spending on equalities groups. Emphasis is given to evidence on what has
happened in the past, although note is made of estimates of what might happen
due to reduced spending in the future.
Among other things, the main conclusions of the report were:
· Equalities groups are especially vulnerable to public spending
cuts as not only because they are well represented in the public sector
workforce but are also significant users of public services.
· Individuals can fall into multiple equalities groups, therefore
exacerbating their vulnerability to cuts in public services. Additionally cuts
in one area can impact on other equalities groups.
· Certain individuals will be especially vulnerable to any cuts as
both public sector employees and public service users.
· The effects of public spending cuts will be felt by those working
in and using services delivered by community organizations and across sectoral
boundaries.
As these austerity measures continue to take effect, members of
racialized and other disadvantaged communities will continue to bear the brunt
of public service cuts.
Recommendation 2: The Federal Government should not only reverse
some of the tax cuts that have been implemented to date, but in fact increase
corporate taxation as well personal taxation at the top income tax bracket so
that more revenue will become available to provide needed services and programs
for all Canadians, especially those living in poverty.
VI. Measurement, Indicators and Report on Federal Government’s Contribution to Poverty Reduction
With the exception of Toronto, there is a serious lack of data and
research in many local communities across the nation about the issue of
racialization of poverty. For example, federal initiatives to increase take-up
of Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) are often
cited as an example of success in reducing poverty among seniors. But no one
knows to what extent this has benefited seniors from racialized communities. Nor
do we know if immigrant seniors from certain countries face any systemic
barriers in accessing this benefit, and whether those from racialized
communities have seen their living conditions improved as a result.
Specifically, the lack of desegregated data means the Federal
Government does not have a clear picture of who are indeed the poor and how are
they affected by government policies and programs. Without such data, the
Government is also unable to calculate the “default” costs of doing nothing,
from an economical as well as social perspective.
As such, COPC and its partners would like to make the following
recommendation to the Standing Committee:
Recommendation 3: The Federal Government should collect and track
disaggregated data across all Ministries, Departments and relevant institutions
in order to identify racialized and other structural and systemic disadvantage.
With respect to poverty, we need to develop and use clear and common
definitions and indicators, in order to get a full and complete picture as to
who are the poor in this province, while identify goals and specific benchmarks
and indicators on a cross-sectoral basis, to monitor the labour market related
differentials specifically and the progress of any poverty reduction plan as it
relates to racialized and other historically disadvantaged and marginalized
communities.
V. Conclusion
Canadians expect their governments to play a critical role in
providing a safety net for all Canadians, especially those who need a helping
hand. Canadians believe in fairness and share a collective sense of responsibility
that we owe each other in a democratic society founded upon such principles as
equality, respect for diversity and human rights. Fair minded Canadians know
and accept that, with rights, come responsibility. As part of our basic
responsibility, Canadians are willing to abide by and contribute to a
progressive tax system which takes into account the ability of individuals and
families to pay tax, while imposing an appropriately weighted obligation on
corporations to share profits.
By focusing only on expenditure reduction measures in this budget
consultation without seeking input on appropriate strengthening of the taxation
schemes, the Federal Government is thus denying itself an important source of
added revenue, while losing out on a great opportunity to remind Canadians
about the importance of public goods as building blocks of an inclusive society
and the role of the Government in strengthening public services so that all
Canadians - regardless of who they are and their income status - will have a
decent standard of living and an equal opportunity to succeed.