HRPD Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DES RESSOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, May 28, 1998

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.)): I want to make a couple of quick comments before we get started. I've undertaken to point out a couple of things, and I'd like the clerk to mark this, because I want the Reform Party to know.

As Steve and John know—the rest you may or may not know—there had been a request some time ago.... Steve, John, and I met several months ago about having a meeting with the council, because of the importance of the council to the work we do and to public policy in general in Canada. When this date was chosen, we were unaware at that time that the Reform convention was starting. Last week, when we became aware of that, we attempted to move the meeting to next Tuesday. This evoked, shall I say, a strong response from your chair, who pointed out to me that it wasn't simply he and Steve who were coming here; it was all of you.

This is something we're all very interested in, but in fairness, I have to note that the Reform members are not here, and that is not an indication of their interest in this topic. They are very interested in this topic and they wanted to be here. They have requested that, subsequent to this meeting, perhaps John and Steve could meet with them to go through the material with them. In fairness to them, it's just important to note that.

They have their national convention, and there is a convention around here that we give way to each other's conventions to allow people to have that unimpeded. So I did want to say that.

Other than that, welcome. I know many of you. I know other members here know others of you, and I certainly know the work of this council, going back at least until the mid-1970s. I suspect, John, you have a few things to tell us. We have copies of your most recent reports, and I suspect there will be the odd question. Hardy can answer the odd questions; you guys can answer the straight ones.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. John Murphy (Chairperson, National Council of Welfare): Thank you very much, Reg.

I'd just note that I was talking to Diane Ablonczy yesterday or the day before, and we already have a time set to meet with either the Reform caucus and/or those three members who are missing. So we'll catch up with them.

It's indeed a pleasure for all of us to be here. I understand we're going to have a free-wheeling discussion about some of the issues that you and we are grappling with.

I'd open this with a statement, Reg, if I might.

People know, maybe, that I am John Murphy, and I'm from the metropolis of Canning in Nova Scotia—500 people. I'm chair of the council. A lot of you know me. I was a member of Parliament in 1993, in the 35th Parliament.

The Chairman: A damn fine one too, as I recall.

Mr. John Murphy: Thank you.

I want to make a few remarks about our council, the report, and the profile of welfare, and then Armand, who is our vice-chair, will say a few words.

I wonder if I might, Reg, have our members introduce themselves.

The Chairman: That would be most interesting, particularly if they'd indicate the regions of the country they're from also.

Mr. John Murphy: Yes, exactly. Maybe they might just say where they're from and give a bit of their background, because we have a very talented, energetic, knowledgeable group of people on this council.

We could start with Bruce.

Mr. Bruce Hardy (National Council of Welfare): My name is Bruce Hardy. I'm from Vancouver, British Columbia. I'm on my second term with the council. Back home I work in the area of child welfare, particularly working with young families in crisis and pregnant and parenting teens. I work in a non-profit society doing direct service to families, and I also do a fair bit of teaching on the topic through a variety of community colleges and universities.

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[Translation]

Ms. Doris Bernard (National Council of Welfare): My name is Doris Bernard. I come from western Quebec.

This is my first meeting with the National Council of Welfare. My last 20 years of volunteer work have been devoted to the status of women, as was my paid employment. Thank you.

[English]

Ms. Lorraine Tardiff (National Council of Welfare): I'm Lorraine Tardiff. I'm from Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories. I'm Métis. I'm a social worker and I work with a variety of groups. We have a generic caseload, so we provide services to families and children, to aged and handicapped, and to individuals and groups.

The Chairman: For the benefit of members, this next person is from Winnipeg, and we've been trying to put him out of business for years, but unfortunately we haven't been able to.

David.

Mr. David S. Northcott (National Council of Welfare): I'm David Northcott from Winnipeg. I used to work for a trust company; I was a savings and lending manager. I now work for a food bank. I've been doing food banking work for about 14 years. I was one of the founders of the Canadian Association of Food Banks, and I've been aggressively involved in Winnipeg in trying to close the doors of the food bank.

Ms. Joanne Roulston (Senior Researcher and Policy Adviser, National Council of Welfare): I'm Joanne Roulston. I'm the researcher at the council.

[Translation]

Mr. Armand Brun (Vice President, National Council of Welfare): My name is Armand Brun. I'm from Shediac, New Brunswick, which is the world lobster capital as you all know. I am the Vice President of the Fondation de l'hôpital Georges-L.-Dumont, in Moncton, and President of the Shediac Co-operative. I made my mark as a teacher and school principal. After 37 years, I ended up as principal of the Polyvalente Louis-J.-Robichaud, in Shediac. I have been on the National Council of Welfare for two years and I am now Vice- President.

[English]

Mr. John Murphy: I'm John Murphy, and my background is as a psychiatric social worker. I ran a mental health system for about 30 years and taught at Acadia University during that period of time as well. I am now working in the Department of Health's mental health division, working with the rehab and the long-term clients and patients, and obviously the chair of this committee.

Mr. Steve Kerstetter (Director, National Council of Welfare): I'm Steve Kerstetter. I'm the director of the council secretariat.

Ms. Dana Howe (National Council of Welfare): I'm Dana Howe. I'm the commissioner of social services with the City of Windsor in Ontario. I've been there for 28 years and I've been the commissioner for the last 17. I'm also co-chairing the provincial Hard-to-Serve committee in Ontario. I think I'll leave it there.

Ms. Olive Crane (National Council of Welfare): Hi, I'm Olive Crane and I'm from Prince Edward Island. I work for a health authority in the capacity of the director. We provide services in the area of income support, job creation, and employment enhancement.

Ms. Helen Margaret Finucane (National Council of Welfare): Hello, my name is Helen Finucane and I'm from Regina, Saskatchewan. I've spent the last 18 years working in a private, non-profit, residential treatment centre for very troubled adolescents. I've just been seconded to our associated charity, and we're providing housing to low-income families.

The Chairman: Perhaps the members of the committee can introduce themselves.

Libby.

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): Hi, my name's Libby Davies and I'm the NDP member on this committee. I'm the critic for children, youth, post-secondary education, and social policy.

The Chairman: And we've separated Libby and Bruce just to get the B.C. perspective from both.

Bonnie.

Ms. Bonnie Brown (Oakville, Lib.): I'm Bonnie Brown. I'm the member for Oakville, Ontario and I'm the vice-chair of the committee. Prior to coming here I did some municipal political work, and I also was head of Parents Anonymous, was on the board of the Children's Aid Society, and was chair of the Child Abuse Council. People like me in your communities do all these things; we have our fingers in all these pies.

Mr. Larry McCormick (Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, Lib.): Hi, I'm Larry McCormick, the member for Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington riding in eastern Ontario, and I'm from the Liberal Party. My background is in small business and community involvement. That's how I was directed here. I've been a member of this committee since late 1993. I took part in our SSR review, where we met some of you people and your colleagues across the country. I'm looking forward and recognizing the fact that we need to do more and learn more from you. I'm glad to have you here.

The Chairman: Brenda, we bypassed you at the beginning.

Ms. Brenda Chamberlain (Guelph—Wellington, Lib.): Hi, I'm Brenda Chamberlain, member of Parliament for Guelph—Wellington and proud to be a Liberal. I also was in education and business.

The Chairman: And I'm Reg Alcock. I'm the chair of this committee. I've worked for Bruce and David alternately throughout my career.

Keith.

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Mr. Keith Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Keith Martin, a Reform member of Parliament for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.

The Chairman: Stéphan.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphan Tremblay (Lac-Saint-Jean, BQ): My name is Stéphan Tremblay. I am the Bloc Québécois Member for Lac-Saint-Jean, and I am also the critic for training and youth.

Mr. Jean Dubé (Madawaska—Restigouche, PC): My name is Jean Dubé, and I am proud to be the Progressive Conservative Member for the riding of Madawaska—Restigouche, New Brunswick. It is a very beautiful part of the province. So Mr. Brun, from New Brunswick, is most welcome.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Murphy.

Mr. John Murphy: That done, let me say that the council brought an entire federal-provincial database of welfare statistics into the public domain for the first time. It's this report, and now you have all received it. If you haven't, certainly we'll get you a copy. The profile was all possible because of the cooperation of the federal government and the ten provinces.

The report is really a gold mine of factual information about welfare, and we hope it will dispel many of the myths and stereotypes about welfare and people who are on welfare.

There are literally hundreds of observations that could be made from the database. We chose, for brevity's sake, to highlight three observations here.

First of all, there's no such thing as a typical welfare case. Stereotypes about welfare are certainly inappropriate.

Secondly, welfare is a vital support for children, as well as adults. At last count, there was something like 1.1 million, and that has risen, in fact, to I think 1.5 million children who are on welfare. Obviously they're on welfare because their parents and guardians are on welfare.

The third observation is that welfare has become a long-term source of income for a surprisingly large number of Canadians. In more than half—54%—of the welfare cases in March 1997, people were on welfare continuously for 25 months. That's a horrifying statistic.

From our work over the years, we know welfare reform is, in the best sense of the word, a complex business. What's needed is secure federal-provincial funding for welfare, adequate welfare rates, more help for people making the transition to the labour force, labour market policies to create more and better jobs, and the disability insurance plan as an alternative to welfare for people with long-term or permanent disabilities.

For welfare recipients who are able-bodied, welfare reform means providing supplementary health and dental coverage for people moving off welfare, and more reasonable tax breaks and tax-back rates for welfare recipients when they earn income.

For welfare recipients with disabilities, I already mentioned the idea of a national disability insurance plan. It would also be helpful if we had early retirement options for the older welfare recipients who become disabled or develop chronic health problems.

For single-parent mothers on welfare—and often we think of that group as having a number of children, but the statistics show it's between one and two children—part of the answer is affordable day care for them and better arrangements for alimony and child support.

We've made dozens of recommendations in those areas over the years, and I trust that the committee will read this report. We'd be happy to come back the next time we're in town and talk about it in more detail.

What I'd like to say, too, Reg, is this is, for us, a starting point. We would like to engage more with your committee, because we have 10% of our population, 2.7 million people, on welfare. That's a disgrace in a country that we say is the finest in the world.

We've made some start: child tax credits, and so on; the deficit is down. Now is the time that we begin to work together, and we'd like very much to be a part of that dialogue, part of the solution.

I'll ask Armand if he would do the poverty profile, which is our most recent document. And by the way, we've had excellent coverage around the country on both of these documents.

Armand.

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[Translation]

Mr. Armand Brun: I am happy to be here today to present a report that was released to the press on May 11. You probably received copies of it. It is entitled: Poverty Profile 1996. I did not have the pleasure but instead the responsibility of presenting this report, because the message was not very encouraging. But it was nevertheless a responsibility that had to be carried out, and I was pleased to do so on the part of our president.

Each year, the Council publishes this specific update on poverty in Canada, using data from the Statistics Canada Survey of Consumer Finances. The factual information included in the poverty profile is a basic tool used in research throughout the country. As the United Nations declared in 1996 the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty, the content of this year's report is of particular importance.

We have chosen to focus on five facts which, we believe, are particularly important for understanding poverty trends in 1996.

First of all, although the last recession ended in 1991, poverty rates have constantly increased since then. We expected that the poor would get their share when prosperity returned. Instead, we have noted that poverty rates slowly rose after the recession, reaching 17.6 p. 100 in 1996. Thus, more than five million people, 5,190,000, were living in poverty in 1996.

Secondly, 1996 was also the year where the federal government replaced the Canada Assistance Plan with the Canada Health and Social Transfer. Federal government support for welfare, social services, health care insurance and post-secondary education dropped by almost $3 billion from fiscal year 1995-96 to fiscal year 1996-97.

Thirdly, these cuts have had a serious impact on poor people. Total income for the poorest 20 p. 100 of Canadians dropped significantly in comparison with 1995, while the richest 20 p. 100 got even richer in Canada. Statistics Canada concluded that this state was due to a combination of factors such as reduced earnings and reductions in transfer payments by governments.

Fourthly, child poverty also hit its highest level in 17 years, reaching 20.9 per cent. Almost 1.5 million children were living in poverty in 1996.

Fifth, families headed by single mothers with children under the age of 18 were at a greater risk of being poor. The poverty rate was 61.4%. In the case of families where the head of the household was a single mother under age 25, the poverty rate hit the almost unbelievable rate of 91.3%.

The National Council on Welfare is saddened to see poverty increase, particularly at a time when Canada is experiencing a period of financial growth. The fact that the poverty rate increased and that the federal government has considerably reduced funding for programs designed to help poor people during the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty raises serious concerns about Canada's commitment to overcoming poverty.

The Council believes that the best advice it can give you, as members of Parliament and as members of this committee, is to devote much more serious efforts to honouring your commitment in pursuant to with the 1989 House of Commons resolution, which was adopted unanimously and which sought to put an end to child poverty by the year 2000. We feel that Canada can and must put an end to child poverty.

Now that the deficit has been eliminated, the government is in a better position to support programs and policies that will enable Canada to measure up to its international commitments with respect to children and their families. To eradicate child poverty, we need good social assistance programs and other forms of income support, as well as broad-ranging efforts to reduce unemployment and strengthen the job market.

So we invite the federal government to devote its next budget to reducing child poverty.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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[English]

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

We're going to keep this relatively informal. I would invite other members of the council to jump in, if they're interested in a particular topic.

Monsieur Dubé, do you wish to begin?

Mr. Jean Dubé: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I have a couple of questions for the committee. I've read your report and I have taken a few points out of it.

In the council's latest report, Profiles of Welfare: Myths and Realities, and the poverty profile of 1996, it's noted that the child poverty rate is at an alarming high 17.6% or 1.5 million children. The federal government, with the provinces and territories, is now working on a national child benefit system that would, among other things, remove children from the provincial welfare systems and reinvest these provincial savings into other support systems.

In the council's Profile of Welfare it is stated that other provinces talk of improving government benefits for children to take children off welfare, without acknowledging that it is impossible to do so without taking their parents off welfare at the same time.

Could the council expand on their concerns, and your concerns in this regard? Do they have suggestions on how to improve the national child benefits system? Does the council believe this is the way to go in alleviating child poverty?

Another point I took out of your document on the council's report, another look at welfare reform, is on page 120:

Whatever deal is struck by governments to replace the Canada Health and Social Transfer should contain ironclad guarantees by Ottawa to honour its financial commitment to the provinces and territories. Federal-provincial relations have been poisoned in recent years by arbitrary and unilateral decisions by the federal government.

On the same page the report says:

In return for legislation to guarantee a predictable federal financial support for social programs, provinces and territories should agree to minimum national standards for social programs.

As you are aware, the Progressive Conservative Party advocated a Canadian covenant, as a way for the federal government, with the provinces as partners, to establish national goals and common standards. What would be the most significant impact on social programs, if such a system were implemented?

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. John Murphy: We'll start and I'll ask council members to jump in.

On the tax benefit issue, of course we're hoping this partnership between the federal government and the provinces will give us an opportunity to work toward getting financial assistance for all the poor—people on welfare and the working poor. I think that's very important.

We're not really clear on the kinds of agreements that are being drawn up between the provinces. I know, for instance, in my own province we just had the Speech from the Throne and they're talking about the reinvestment. For us the reinvestment has to be put back into children and their families. That's a position we would want to take and obviously work with the federal government along those same lines.

Does anybody else want to add to that?

Ms. Dana Howe: I'm from Ontario, and the Ontario social services has new legislation just coming out called the Ontario Works Act and the Ontario Disability Support Act. But you may be aware that in Ontario social assistance rates were cut 21.6% in 1995, and that is creating a tremendous pressure on people who are on social assistance to live.

I wouldn't even exclude the singles from that, because they can't find places to rent for the money they now get. Certainly sole-support parents are having a very big struggle with the fact that the rates not enough to provide for their basic needs. They're using their food money to pay for their shelter. The rent controls have been lifted, so the poor are very poor.

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The fact that the federal government has made the commitment for the national child benefit I think is wonderful. Whether it will work or not will be based on whether or not the provinces decide to claw this back. If they do claw the child benefit back, we're therefore budgeting the child benefit off the welfare cheque, and then ultimately I would fail to see how the poor would be better off.

I think it's important that the provinces join in the partnership and actually have the benefit accrue to the poorest of the poor. If it's clawed back and given to another group of poor, in terms of working poor in Ontario—where they're intending to give a child care credit of I think $400 for the first child—well, we already have subsidized child care. In fact, by giving a child care credit so that people can obtain informal, unregulated child care, it could in a sense be undermining the quality child care system with the rebate from the child benefit.

From my perspective anyway, I think you've gone a long way to make a good thing happen, and it's really important that the provinces continue that.

The Chairman: You're from what province?

Ms. Dana Howe: Ontario.

The Chairman: Is it a Conservative government there? Yes.

An hon. member: They're Reform-a-Tories.

The Chairman: Keith.

[Translation]

Mr. Keith Martin: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

Thank you very much for coming today. I'm very happy that you're all here.

I have some really significant questions and queries about the direction you're taking. We've heard a lot about strengthening the welfare state, but there are two populations of welfare individuals: those, as you know, who truly need the welfare state, because they cannot work, for reasons that are beyond their capabilities; and a significant population of individuals who are abusing the system. We have a population of individuals who are able to work, but what we've done for that population is created a culture of welfare, a culture of dependence. I'd really like to hear what you're actually actively doing right now to get this population of individuals off the welfare rolls.

If you look at the U.K. system that exists right now, they've put these people's feet to the fire. They're saying “You have options. You're able-bodied; you're young. Here are the options. Here are skills for you to go and acquire in order for you to be employable. If you don't do that, you're not going to get your welfare cheques. But while you engage in activities and actions to get yourself off the welfare rolls, we're going to help you to do that.”

Giving people the tools to get off our welfare rolls is, I would hope, going to be one of the two primary activities you will engage in, giving people the incentive to go and get off these welfare rolls, because then you're also going to have more money to help those people who can't work and can't help themselves and desperately need the help that we have.

We cut globally on welfare rolls, so what happens is those people who truly need it get hurt, and become even worse off than they are, which is a profound tragedy. And those people who don't need it, who think the whole welfare system is a joke and abuse it flagrantly—and these people I personally know and have lived with—these individuals don't care. They couldn't care less.

What active roles are you taking to decrease the culture of welfare that we have created in a certain population of individuals? What innovative things are you doing to give people that incentive to go and be employed, and really put their feet to the fire in saying “You get off the welfare rolls. Here are your opportunities, or you're not going to get anything at all”?

Thank you.

The Chairman: Could I just jump in here before you reply, and just make an intervention? I think what Keith raises and the manner in which he raises it is an important starting point for the discussion that you have on the myths. There are a number of urban myths about welfare that I think it's important to deal with, and I know that the council has done a lot of work, and that there are people here who have a great deal of experience in the reality of those situations. I would invite us to take a little time on that. We've got some real experts here.

Mr. John Murphy: Bruce.

Mr. Bruce Hardy: A couple of points. First, I would suggest that a good read of the welfare realities and myths really helps to set the tone for how much real abuse there is in welfare and how much urban legend there is about abuse.

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Unfortunately, what has happened in Canada I think has been that because there is some abuse of welfare, governments have a tendency to decide to punish everybody on welfare; that way they can capture anybody who is abusive. I think of the Ontario experience as rather indicative: that to avoid welfare fraud you cut everybody by 21.6%. I think it does, indeed, probably catch a few folks who are abusive. It doesn't seem to do much for those who aren't.

I agree with you. I don't think anybody supports the idea of welfare fraud, but I think we have to divide it into two broad areas: welfare fraud that is committed by individuals on welfare, and welfare fraud that is committed by people taking advantage of people on welfare. Those are very different pools to work from.

If you're going to eliminate welfare, I think you need to do it through education, giving people the opportunity and the tools. Giving people the opportunity for short-term McJobs doesn't provide long-term benefits and the ability to get off welfare.

The B.C. provincial government just announced recently that they were going to suspend all costs to adults in the province of B.C. looking to upgrade to a basic grade 12 education. To me, that was a relatively concrete thing to do to address the issue of people coming off welfare. It may seem that a couple hundred dollars for courses would not be a lot of money. If you're living in poverty, it is.

To date, I have not seen a lot of really concrete information about the number of people who commit welfare fraud. I read a study a couple of years ago that indicated that the number of people who commit welfare fraud is roughly the same as the number of people who cheat on their income tax.

I think that people will find ways to take advantage of systems—some people. We can find creative ways to capture them. But when you're spending more money to capture people who are cheating on welfare than you're regaining by capturing, I would have to take a look at why you would do that.

I look at the Manitoba experience of black billboards across the province that talk about turning in a welfare cheat. At the end of the day, you ended up with a significant number of disgruntled former partners turning in their wives because they were angry about the break-up of the relationship, and it quietly disappeared when it stopped getting good press from the media.

Mr. Keith Martin: The people who are doing this recognize that there's no accountability in the system, and that's why they get away with it. And if you sit down with them—I do emergency medicine as a profession—they'll tell you, quite frankly, what a joke it is. They'll laugh right in your face, and this is not one person. This is going back with a 12-year experience in this matter.

The Chairman: Ms. Howe, you come in from Windsor and you deal directly with this.

Ms. Dana Howe: Yes, I would be really happy to respond to this, because I think, Mr. Martin, you do people on social assistance a very great injustice by suggesting this misperception is common in the whole population.

If you were in business and you were trying to promote your business, would you concentrate on the 98% of your customers who are the kind who will buy your product, or the 2% who aren't going to? We're trying to build a social services system in this country based on misperceptions about the poor.

The fact is, in Windsor, at the height of the recession, our caseload was around 6,800, and now it's around 3,700. The caseload is down 42.7%. On average, across the province it's down 27%.

Ontario Works started in 1995 to put people's feet to the fire. The caseload went down 27%. We just started with Ontario Works in Windsor in January of this year, and our caseload is down 42.7% without the feet-to-the-fire process.

My experience is that most people want to work, and when we go through a very intense recession, as we did in 1993, and the costs go skyrocketing and the unemployment rate is double what it is today, people are disadvantaged by that process and as a result they end on social assistance.

In the 28 years that I have been in this business, I have not found anybody who likes being there. They don't like being poor. They don't like living in substandard housing. They don't like not being able to have three meals a day and not being able to join in the mainstream life activities that everybody else joins in. I think it's very unfortunate that some parties are promoting this misperception to such an extent that the people who are on are having such a problem, and—

Mr. Keith Martin: As your colleague just said, Madam, there are no adequate statistics as to who is abusing.

As I said in my comments in the beginning, there are two populations of people, those who, as you mentioned, would like to get off welfare rolls and those who do not. And that population is not insignificant.

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Ms. Dana Howe: But you mentioned that was a significant population. If there are no statistics to support that, I don't know how you're using the word “significant”.

I would suggest to you that after 28 years in this business, the number of people who are abusing the system is very insignificant. In fact, when people ask me about abuse, I say “Are you talking to me about client abuse or vendor abuse?” I've had as much—

Mr. Keith Martin: I'm speaking about a culture of welfare that we've created in this country.

Ms. Dana Howe: We have people who don't understand what the dimensions of the problem are and therefore spew out all of these misperceptions that undermine providing services to people who really need them. If you really want to move people towards independence, you have to provide them with the personal and family-strengthening supports that are going to help move them along the continuum towards independence.

I've never found an effective way that helps support people by punishing them. That is not what helps people move to independence.

Mr. Keith Martin: That's not what I was referring to either.

Ms. Dana Howe: Oh, I think it was.

Mr. Keith Martin: I think what I said very clearly—and I'll just finish up—was that you have to give people options. Look at the British system. Most people do want to get off welfare. Most people do want to be able to have the tools to get employed. But they don't get those, and some people are not actually forced to have those options.

Furthermore, the options simply are not there right now. Rather than creating the culture of welfare that we have had for so long and trying to strengthen it for everybody, strengthen it for those who need it and give people the option and the choice of getting off it but in a very constructive way.

The Chairman: Let me just come in for a second, Keith—and I don't want you to stop either. I think this is an important issue and one that we should air fulsomely.

Keith has been very progressive and very helpful on a lot of issues over the years I've known him here in the House. I think what he's raising, though, is an issue that does drive policy decisions in this information vacuum. This group does have some of that information.

I'm sorry I can't see your name tag. I'm terrible at names. Yes, Dana. I remember the meetings we had in Windsor with you and your group. This was one of the most sophisticated, aggressive, active welfare programs we have in this country, doing exactly what you want. But I also think her point about the myth-building driving public policy decisions is one we have to try to get out.

David, I'd like you to come in on this.

Mr. David Northcott: I work at a food bank in Winnipeg. I used to be a savings and lending manager at a trust company before it was bought out and I got turfed out.

I know full well the transition to a safety net. I'm quite proud of our safety net. It includes health care; it includes education; it includes welfare. That's part of the fabric that makes Canada quite unique. I like that. I like to be able to have a sense that my government is there to catch me when I fall.

One of the food bank participants right now is an ex-MP who has not been able to find work and is a team member for Winnipeg Harvest.

I agree with some of your sentiments, oddly enough, and I find it quite refreshing to be very candid about it. But I think we need to drive the sentiments based on fact and information, and not innuendo. I think that's where you have to be really cautious. Innuendo moves to partisan stuff.

I'm quite delighted, to be very candid, that there is such a range of cultures, English, French, and preferably some aboriginal, I hope, that sort of goes back to that community and various parties. That shows respect to the depth of poverty we have throughout the country.

At Winnipeg Harvest, we struggle with two issues. One is that we think the abuse rate is 100%, in that anybody who has to use a food bank is being abused by Canada. They should not have to use a food bank at all. That means, last year, just over 3.2 million Canadians ate food-bank food at least once. We feel that they were abused. Of that mix, almost 44% are children. Are children abusers of food banks? No.

We also ask ourselves the question, what is the national standard for abuse rates of programs? The challenge we saw is that Revenue Canada had done some surveys and determined that about 44% of the people surveyed answered the question, yes, they consciously paid cash to avoid paying the GST. That's a 44% abuse rate of that particular issue.

So if that's the national standard for abuse issues, and retail food stores and retail stores have abuse rates of anywhere from 8% to 28% of theft and employee shrinkage, all that kind of stuff, if those are abuse rates, the abuse rate on welfare, the abuse rate on poverty as we see it in Winnipeg, is about 0.5%, and there is a very strong system in place to make sure. So if that's the case, then yes, I agree that I would rather have an abuse rate of zero. I would quite agree with that.

The transition steps from a safety net that catches you—that used to catch you, that is not catching you very well any more, because too many people are using food banks—to an employment situation that allows people to participate in our economy is a struggle. We're not seeing that transition do very well.

• 1200

We're seeing people go to a minimum-wage job in Winnipeg at less than what they were making on welfare. To reduce welfare to the minimum-wage job doesn't work, because they cannot participate at all in the economy, and they turn to other means to acquire things—maybe illegal. We've seen a growth of illegal activities and stresses and strains on families, as people have very well articulated.

So the safety net needs to be strong enough to at least catch people and be able to put them back into an economy that can include them. That's the neat thing about the council: being able to look at that in that broad streak and say yes, there has to be a safety net that can honestly catch and provide for families—we recognize children live in poor families—and provide an economy that rewards a business person. Rather than have a grower in Manitoba pay less than minimum wage—which they do—we need to be able to say yes, we respect that this family needs to survive and needs some tools. We'll show that respect and help you move them back into the mainstream.

So I agree with you. My sense of impatience is great, and I agree with that impatience I hear from you. But I get very, very impatient when people tell me at the food bank, “For God's sake, David, don't close the food bank until I know where else I can go.” That's what worries me daily.

Thank you. I appreciate your comments.

Mr. Keith Martin: Yes, I agree with you.

The Chairman: Okay. Libby.

Ms. Libby Davies: First of all I'd like to really thank you for coming, because I understand this is the first time you've come to this committee. It's really important that you're here today to present factual and objective information about the situation with welfare in Canada.

The other thing I want to say is that I represent a riding, Vancouver East, that has many low-income neighbourhoods, including the downtown east side, where something like 60% of the population is on some form of income assistance. One of the things that really bothers me, and a new struggle we have to take on, is not just growing poverty but the growing attack on the poor. We've just heard it here today from the Reform Party. We get it from the Fraser Institute, on the low-income cut-offs. We get it from the media. There's a growing sense of the victimization of people who are on welfare or the working poor even, and just how things are characterized.

Child poverty is okay. We can focus on child poverty. Kids who are poor—that's something we can all get around. But forget about their parents, who might be unemployed if there's a high unemployment rate. That's one thing that really is of huge concern: this systematic attack on poor people that's been growing in the last few years. We really do have to look at government policies that actually create the growing poverty we have, not just the absolute poverty in numbers but the depths of the poverty.

I know some of your reports have dealt with that. I would just like to ask Steve or others to talk a little bit more about this huge phenomenon now of the depths of poverty and what that means.

I'm a new MP. I've tried to raise anti-poverty issues in the House, and whenever I do, the response I get from the government over and over again is the child tax benefit. It just makes me really mad, because the child tax benefit, as has been pointed out here today, doesn't apply to people on welfare and is not indexed. There's just no indication that we're dealing with the real issues around poverty, which are high unemployment, income support programs that are being severely cut back, UI cutbacks, and the list goes on and on.

We have this resolution from the House of Commons—a great resolution—but there's also a reality that poverty is actually a conscious part of our society as part of a low-wage strategy. We have to have this huge group of people who are poor in order to keep wages depressed. I don't think that comes out very much.

I know there are a lot of questions there, but I'd really like you to comment on the depths of poverty and just how that's changed over the years, any of you who want to comment on that, and to talk about poverty as it relates to government policy and what we need to focus on in that. Then if anybody wants to talk any more about this growing attack on poor people as individuals and scapegoating people, that's a very important issue as well.

Mr. Steve Kerstetter: There are a number of very important questions there. There's a chapter in Poverty Profile on depth of poverty that I think members will find interesting for some of the details.

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The broad-brush outlines of the situation are that the poverty rate and the depth of poverty have fallen quite significantly for seniors over the last 20 years or so. That's been one of the great success stories of our generation. Unfortunately, the other half of that is that people under 65 who are living in poverty tend to live at a great distance below the poverty line. Trying to solve poverty for the under 65-crew, for families or unattached individuals, is a huge challenge.

In our poverty profiles, from time to time we talk at some length about poverty among seniors. The kind of argument we would raise on that is that poverty among seniors just didn't disappear of its own accord. It disappeared because governments got together in the 1960s and improved the old age security pensions, they started the guaranteed income supplement, and they started the spouse's allowance and the Canada Pension Plan in cooperation with the provinces and the Quebec Pension Plan.

All these programs represented a concerted effort by governments at both levels, who said, “We have a serious problem here with poverty among our older people, and we have to do something about it”. Because they got together and agreed to work together, the result has been a poverty rate among seniors and a depth of poverty that have steadily diminished over the years.

The case we're trying to make in terms of child benefits or poverty among other groups is that we don't think poverty is going to go away on its own. There might have been a time in Canada's history when poverty rates would fall dramatically as the economy improved, but that doesn't seem to happen in the 1990s.

The lesson we're trying to draw from this is that if governments really want to do something about poverty for the younger groups of Canadians, they're going to have to make a conscious effort to do it. They're going to have to do it in cooperation with each other, and they're going to have to do it by committing resources—which means dollars—to these programs. That's the way, in our view, to solve poverty.

Ms. Libby Davies: All right. Do I have a chance just to follow up?

The Chairman: Yes.

Ms. Libby Davies: I think that's a very good example, where government policies have actually decreased the level of poverty, and lack of policy or negative policies have actually increased it in other areas.

Just to follow up on that, on this resolution that we have from the House from 1989 that talks about setting a goal to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000, what we've tried to do in the NDP is really focus on the issue of establishing targets. Because having a goal is great, but it seems to me that we have to have very real achievable targets, whether it's for child poverty or poverty overall, or whether it's for unemployment rates, so that we can actually begin to sort of work down those problems.

I just wondered if you have any comment about how we might go about doing that in terms of setting realistic outcomes and targets around programs and policies, so that we can actually begin to eradicate poverty.

Mr. John Murphy: Just let me state that it's one thing to set targets—and I understand clearly what you're getting at—but to set targets, you have to set policy, so that you can do something about those targets.

Some of the things that have been said in this document about the myths—and it's been alluded to already, that partly what we've done is we've built policy around some of these myths. We tried to, in our report, be factual in bringing out what some of these myths are. That then turns the corner and says to me and to the council that we have to be looking at new and creative solutions based on the real issue—not the myths, but the reality of welfare.

Certainly from what Steve is talking about—the seniors—we did in this country set policy that did something about the seniors, and I think we can do the same thing with children and families.

I would encourage this forum. We would like to work with your committee in looking at some of those creative solutions that can help us then maybe get to the target you're talking about. But unless we have looked at creative policies....

I would hope to suggest one of many meetings we would have would be one that would take away the politics and bring forth the issues of poverty that exist in this country, which are abominable.

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Maybe somebody else wants to add—

The Chairman: There's no politics in this room.

Mr. John Murphy: No.

The Chairman: There's nothing but love here.

I think before I let Steve and Dana come in, I'm going to ask Stéphan to jump in, because we haven't heard from the Bloc yet, and I know he has a great interest in these issues.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphan Tremblay: I think that the basic problem today is an ideological one. We are facing economic crises that are getting broader in scale, and that have led many people in our society to see the creation of poverty as being inevitable if we want to grow as a society. This is something that upsets me a lot.

Another ideological trend that I often see here and in other societies is the attempt at overcoming the welfare culture, as my colleague said earlier. Moreover, when employment insurance reforms are undertaken, and I do not want to get political, eligibility criteria for young people are tightened up, based on the premise that if we give them too much money, they will be less inclined to look for work and we will end up with an idle society.

But along with this ideological trend, we also have a problem. You know as well as I do that the best way of distributing wealth is through employment. We are facing an employment crisis or a technological revolution—call it whatever you want. I will give you an example. In my riding, a new Alcan aluminum plant will soon be built. It will generate three times as much wealth, three times as much aluminum, but with the same number of employees. No one can tell the young people in my riding that they will be able to get a job there because there has been an investment, the largest in Quebec and even in eastern North America, because there will be no jobs created. So wealth will be generated, but it will not be redistributed.

Can the government redistribute it? Of course, the ideal way of redistributing it would be in the form of employment to avoid promoting a welfare culture, but the flip side of that is that we still have people who are dying of hunger. Do we give them cheques? Personally, I think that the challenge for the next century will be to redistribute wealth; people will receive money coming from wealth that will be generated collectively, even though these people will not have really participated in generating this wealth.

I talked about smelting aluminum. How will the young person in my riding who does not have an opportunity to work at that smelter earn a living? It's the same thing in the fishery sector, for example, where fish stocks are on the decline, etc. I think this is a challenge that goes beyond the political approach of setting up programs here and there. Instead, there must be an historic change, I would say. We will have to ask ourselves some very serious substantive questions. What do we do? How can we redistribute the wealth?

Mr. Brun, I would like to hear your comments on that.

[English]

The Chairman: Twenty-five words or less.

[Translation]

Mr. Armand Brun: I hear what you are saying and I fully agree with you that job creation is not easy. For example, in New Brunswick, an incident occurred. A sugar-processing plant that employed 220 people decided to move to Montreal. Both the New Brunswick government and the Quebec government were fighting over those jobs. In the end, the Quebec government paid $20 million to create about 40 jobs in Montreal. On my way back in the plane, I read the magazine entitled Les Affaires. The editorial said that a lot of money had been spent because the plant was going to be put up in the east end of Montreal which, as we all know, is poorer than the other end, that a lot jobs had been lost in that area and that it was worth spending $20 million to create 40 jobs, which equalled $500,000 per job. That is exorbitant.

In New Brunswick, when a company wants to set up shop in the province, it looks for places where there are fewer jobs because there are workers available. When a textile factory sets up shop and offers 50 to 100 minimum wage jobs, applications come in by the thousands. There are thousands of people who line up to get a job. So that runs somewhat counter to what the gentleman said earlier about people wanting to stay on welfare.

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They're ready to work, even at the minimum wage. They penalize themselves in some cases, because at the end of the day they will have less disposable income by working.

Mr. Stéphan Tremblay: But what will the young person who does not have a job do? Young people stand in line. They look for jobs. It is almost a question of luck now. Finding a job is almost like winning the lottery in some sectors. Should we develop an ideology whereby the state would distribute cheques without requiring them to work? We are not going to let them starve. We're talking about collective wealth.

Mr. Armand Brun: People go elsewhere. This is a phenomenon we see back home. They go work somewhere else. There are jobs in Alberta and in British Columbia. There are perhaps fewer in British Columbia now, but Alberta is booming. A lot of our young people go there to work. So emigration occurs, and it is unfortunate. Even in Mr. Dubé's riding, north of Campbellton, last year, entire businesses moved to Alberta because there was work there, and not at home.

Mr. Stéphan Tremblay: That is not a long-term solution.

Mr. Armand Brun: I know that it is not a long-term solution.

Mr. Stéphan Tremblay: Thank you.

[English]

The Chairman: I'll take an intervention from Mr. Hardy, then Mr. McCormick, and then Dana.

Mr. Bruce Hardy: One of the things that an enormous amount of energy has been put into is both arguing and debating what the poverty line is, what the real level is, and when does poverty start and stop. The other one is how many people are cheating on welfare systems.

If we put aside those two issues for a moment and assume that there are some people in Canada living in poverty and that's unacceptable, part of the fear I have is that the costs to deal with keeping children out of poverty are small in comparison to the long-term outcome of letting them live in poverty.

Any of the statistical reports we've studied and researched have indicated that children who grow up in poverty do less well in school, and thus their opportunities for work are lessened, and they have significantly much more use of the health system over the entire length of their lives. Those costs tend to be outstanding in comparison.

We've done a paper on babies' healthy parents, where we talk about a simple example of a small amount of money put into something like the Montreal diet dispensary, where a little bit of money at the front end reduced the rate of premature, undersized births. For a pittance of dollars for those families, those kids cost the health system little or no money down the road. When that program was cut off to save a little bit of money, the long-term costs were horrendous.

So we would appeal to some of our issues, without worrying about moral grounds or ethical grounds or philosophical grounds, on pure economic grounds: it costs less to deal with children than it costs to deal with adults. Put the money in now, deal effectively with the children today, and down the road those children have a better chance of working, of not being sickly, of being able to contribute to society.

The Chairman: Mr. McCormick.

Mr. Larry McCormick: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Again, welcome, and thank you for being here.

As Bruce just said, we pay now or pay later. We've heard that so many times.

You get somebody like me. I'm very new to politics; I've been here four years. You get cynical and even wonder whether so many people across this country involved in making decisions have ever been among the working, let alone the working poor, or exposed to welfare. That's a slap against ourselves, the government.

One of my concerns in my life.... My riding is a very rural riding in eastern Ontario. Much of it is comparable to New Brunswick, Quebec, and the east, and I often lend support to programs, because people are hurting the same.

I've even, in my flippant times, said that the people who make up these statistics.... And you people who have so much knowledge on this visiting our rural areas would realize, as many of you do, Lorraine and others—I don't know you all—that even more of our working poor are actually welfare cases. Some of us grew up that way, at times, and didn't even realize it, of course.

• 1220

I believe there are advantages in living in rural Canada, and sometimes we can make use of some of those natural resources—and our people are very skilled at doing that—for survival.

But of course the federal government transfers money to the provinces, and yes, the federal government has cut too much, but we hand over these transfers in block, and there's always great concern as to how that money will be used. Now, here in Ontario, of course, following the federal budget—and not that Mr. Harris would have to learn from us—education is in, and some people would even say sexy, and health is in, and that's so necessary. And all this applies to welfare. The welfare and the working poor are out. We don't see that addressed in the same way.

So I wonder, from your view—and you people have so much knowledge—what's the next step? What's the greatest move we can make as a federal government to get some of our resources, which are yours, to the right spot? I know it's not that simple, but I want to give you an opportunity to give us some input, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Brun.

Mr. Armand Brun: If I may respond briefly, I think Mr. Martin did us a favour today by raising the point of abuse. That point was raised at the beginning of the 1980s. When Monique Bégin tried to pass the Canada Health Act, everybody was saying there was terrible abuse, and the only way she could pass the Health Act was through research and educating the people.

When the people of Canada found out that there was 4% abuse in the health field, they said that's okay, that's not bad, because any corner store will tell you that 4% of their goods are being stolen.

So 4% is not abuse; it's normal for any society. And if we can convince the people of Canada that there is not that much abuse—there is abuse, but not that much—I think the people of Canada will voluntarily dig in their pockets and help these people.

So we'll either have to increase taxes or cut some other places so that transfers can come to the needy people.

The Chairman: I'm going to let Ms. Brown come in. I know she hasn't had a chance to raise a question. And Dana, you still want to speak, and I want to raise a point.

Ms. Bonnie Brown: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for coming.

Unlike our very generous chair and our very patient guests who responded, I'm not happy that this committee has provided another forum for the promulgation of hatred against the poor.

I actually have less hope today that the number of poor people will shrink, even as the economy improves, when I consider the millions and millions of dollars that have been spent over the last 10 to 15 years by people in whose interest it is to spend it, to create bogus studies in non-thinking-tanks and trying to sell these ideas, and promulgated by publishers of newspapers whose main audience and whose main purpose are among that very small percentage at the top who have most of the money.

It seems to me, and it probably seems to you on some days, that you're fighting a battle against an army that has nuclear weapons and you still have slingshots. That's how I feel.

I'm sorry that our committee has allowed more of that uninformed, ignorant, anecdotal evidence to be placed on the public record, when we actually have in our midst people who do know what they're talking about.

The reason I think we'll have trouble shrinking the number of poor people is that in the face of all the other problems they have to become independent, as you put so well, Dana, we know they have problems of people who have been made to feel, if they read the newspapers and if they read the political pamphlets that are put around, that somehow or other they are now the new enemies of the people, the enemies of the state, maybe even slightly less than human, because that is how they have been portrayed.

• 1225

While Libby has been upset about the child tax benefit being child-oriented, those of us who tried to bring that in thought it was pretty good politically because we know that adult poor people have absolutely no sympathy from the public in this country, but we might be able to sell it, we might be able to get the money if we could target it to the image in Canadians' minds, which luckily is still intact, about a poor child needing help.

The money is for poor families. It's for adults and children. We call it the child tax benefit specifically to get around the hatred that has been built up against poor adults. It was a political and strategic move to do that.

Anyway, the reason I think the poor will have more trouble is because they're trying to rebuild their self-esteem even when the economic opportunities emerge, as they have in my riding. Luckily, my riding has a very good industrial base. We've had to put in special programs to get single moms and young adults who were caught unemployed in the recession to believe they had something to offer. So we had to do a whole psychological set of programs to build up their self-esteem.

One person who had no hope was put in a one-week program. At the end of the week, she came out a tremendously happy person. On the Tuesday of the following week, she got a job for $50,000 a year, but 10 days before that, she felt she had nothing to offer because she had been on welfare for two or three years. So this hatred has also a long-term effect.

I don't want to go on theorizing so much. I want to ask this question. The child tax benefit, with all its faults—I know it's not perfect—is still a success from the point of view of the federal political will of putting aside $1.7 billion for targeting toward that group. The implementation and delivery of it exposes the problems we have as a federal government in getting the money into the hands of the poor people.

For me, from Ontario, I personally do not want to transfer two cents to the Mike Harris government because of the ruthless measures they have taken against the poor, including cutting back the food supplement for pregnant mothers. Anyway, they've been so ruthless, cruel, and mean that I don't want to give them two cents.

I'd like to ask each of you in turn whether you would prefer that the federal government, through some mechanism that we may have to create anew, send money directly to poor people or continue this system of sending it to the provincial governments, some of which are doing an excellent job, I should point out, while the others, if you give them money for day care, they'll probably build a road to the day care centre or bridge over the river near the day care centre, but there won't be any new day care spaces or any new day care workers.

In any case, just tell what you would prefer, one at a time. Do we send it directly from the federal government, or do we transfer it to the province?

The Chairman: Bruce.

Mr. Bruce Hardy: I've applauded the federal government's work in the last couple of years, particularly with bridge-building with the provinces. I think it's important that it's not an adversarial relationship.

But at the same point in time, I think it's absolutely critical for the federal government to set standards for federal transfers. In the event that standards are not adhered to, they should reconsider their options.

Ms. Bonnie Brown: We gave that power years and years and years ago. The best way to have a complete uproar of all the provinces against the federal government would be to try to re-establish those kinds of strings on the money.

You see, I've given up on that. We worked for four years here trying to get around that curve. One of the reasons the child tax benefit worked was because it gave the provinces a big lump of money they weren't going to get, so then they were all happy.

So now we say we have good relations. Well, wait until we have good relations when we say we've got another $100 million or another $1 billion for you but by the way, we've got some national standards. There'll be an absolute uproar. That's why I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that a cheque from the federal government to the poor person might be the best thing to do.

Mr. Bruce Hardy: I don't think we're talking differently at all. I think what I was saying was that I would ideally like to see the provinces acknowledge the role the federal government has in things like standards. In the event that they can't adhere to that, then your second option is direct financing. Ideally, I'd like to see you work directly with the provinces on it. You should work hand in hand on it.

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The Chairman: Could I just make an observation? Bonnie has asked everybody to make a comment. That's a lot of people, and time is beginning to become constrained. Mr. Martin wants to say something. I suspect—I only suspect—that on the issue of national standards, Mr. Tremblay may have something to say. Also, I, abusing the position of the chair, have something to say.

Let me just give each one an opportunity to briefly comment on the question that Bonnie has raised. Why don't we just start right over there with the person whose name tag I can't see? Doris.

[Translation]

Ms. Doris Bernard: I agree with Bruce. There should be an agreement with the provinces, even if it is difficult to achieve.

[English]

Ms. Lorraine Tardiff: I would think that a cheque from the federal government to the recipient would be the way to go.

Mr. David Northcott: The challenge we've got in Winnipeg is that I would love to have standards to help hold the feet to the fire for the provinces. We're seeing great damage done.

The big caution though for the federal government is for it to be very careful of partnerships that are not provincial in nature. For example, the non-profit sector and the voluntary sector may come to you to deliver many programs. There you could help set national standards and use those relationships and partnerships.

Mr. Armand Brun: The national standards could be similar to those in the Canada Health Act.

The Chairman: John and Steve pass. Dana.

Ms. Dana Howe: I don't think there's a simple solution to poverty. I think that certainly before we can deal with self-sufficiency and moving people toward self-actualization, we have to meet their basic needs. They need to have their housing needs met and be able to feed their families. Then they have to move toward being independent.

Just to give a simple answer, I think that with the caseload down so much in Windsor and the residual caseload being so difficult to serve, we need to provide a strengthening strategy that will provide people with the tools they need to become independent. Along the way, we need to provide them with sufficient income so that they can feed their families and not create a whole new generation of problems with their children.

I believe we're planting the seeds of destruction for Canadian children by not feeding them properly or nurturing them properly. I also believe—I'll throw this in—that we haven't begun to see the extent of child abuse in this country that we're going to see because of the seeds we've planted.

The Chairman: Thank you. Olive.

Ms. Olive Crane: I'm not so sure I'm going to respond to the question at hand, but I'll offer a bigger challenge.

I come from down east. We struggle a lot with the difference between structural unemployment and cyclical unemployment. I know about the lady who spoke about being lucky, because right now there are a lot of jobs there in the industrial sector. The big challenge is that not only are children poor, they're not getting the tools they need to be able to take up the jobs the knowledge economy creates.

I think one of the big challenges to our group, as we look toward solutions, is to pay a lot of attention, in some areas, to the caseloads of social assistance people and the working poor. I think that about 50% of the people in P.E.I. who are on welfare actually work for minimum-wage jobs. But as those jobs totally leave the economy, the biggest challenge is for people to have grade 12 and more.

So I think I'll leave that challenge for us to think about.

Ms. Bonnie Brown: I'll ask you to try to stick to how to get the money into the hands of poor people, not more about the programming they need. It's the “how to” we want.

Ms. Helen Finucane: In Saskatchewan, I think we have a provincial government with a social conscience, but it wasn't always that way. A few years ago, we had a government that didn't have a very good conscience.

If this group, the powers that be, are saying that the provinces can't be trusted, then knowing that at some point we could have a change in Saskatchewan and a government that didn't have as big a heart, then I would say the cheque has to come from the feds.

The Chairman: Okay, let me just note a couple of things. I'm going to have to absent myself shortly. In fact I think we need to wrap this up, given the shortness of time.

Keith and Libby have asked to comment, and I suggested that Mr. Tremblay may want to comment, although I'm afraid we may not have the time for an enlargement of this discussion.

• 1235

I wanted, however—given that everybody else has had a chance—to raise one thing. I do want to come back to this issue of the image of poor people and abuse.

It strikes me that this argument is not a new argument. I was working in settlement houses in downtown Winnipeg in the mid-1960s, and people thought then that people who were receiving welfare were abusing the system. You know all the arguments—that they were taking the money and spending it on alcohol and so on. None of that language has changed very much.

I think we have gone through a period of time, as governments have downsized—and all governments have done it, including our own—of vilifying something in order to make cuts. You have to make it a bad thing. It's easy to do it with poor people, because everybody jumps into that one. We've done it with universities. We've done it with hospitals. We attack hospitals and nurses all the time right right now, but it's just an excuse. We make them bad so we can cut them.

Ms. Bonnie Brown: We don't. The provincial governments do. They choose that.

The Chairman: We carry a piece of this pie ourselves.

There's another thing that's been interesting to me. I flag it simply because David Northcott is here. I worked in child welfare more latterly in my professional life, and it was David who introduced me to another feature of this—how poverty has changed. We note the emergence of food banks. Prior to about 1981 or 1982, I don't recall there being, other than the Salvation Army soup kitchen for the downtown alcoholics, a food bank in Winnipeg. They emerged as we went into that very severe recession, and we've never backed off of that.

I recall, David, you demonstrating to me, showing me, introducing me, not to the welfare family who was stuck in the cyclical problem because of low education and all of that, but to the young woman who had done all the right things, who had gone through school, had gotten married, was raising kids at home and all of a sudden got into a divorce and broke up and there was nothing. So you have a person who for all their life has lived the Canadian dream and all of a sudden they're down at the food bank because they need food to feed their kids, and they don't know what to do. There's another element here, as the safety net has disintegrated, that has brought a whole bunch more people into the system, and we don't have adequate mechanisms to get them back off.

David, let me give you a couple of seconds to respond to that, and Keith, I'll let you come in then.

Mr. David Northcott: Thank you very much.

That's exactly right. We've seen the “nouveau poor”, for want of a better expression. Oddly enough, in Winnipeg, the majority of people who use the food bank aren't aboriginal, and yet most people think they're all native people with a drinking problem who live on Main Street. We've not seen that. We've seen family break-ups. We've seen job decreases. We had a man in the parking lot who had three kids at university. He used to work at a good job in a hospital and is now trying to find part-time work pumping gas. He can't put his kids through school. He was in the parking lot, in his early fifties, crying.

We're seeing family break-ups. The person who answers the phone with us right now was forced to take early retirement. He's volunteering for us and is allowed to take home a food hamper regularly.

We're seeing a whole new face of things. One of the challenges, though, is to measure it well rather than to just tell you anecdotal stories, and to be able to say here is exactly what we're looking at. But that group is not very keen on being surveyed. They're surveyed to death already.

The Chairman: Yes.

Keith, John, and then I'll go back to you. Unless I get seriously brutalized by members of the committee, I may just wrap it at that point.

Yes, I'll let you speak.

Ms. Bonnie Brown:

[Editor's Note: Inaudible].

The Chairman: Listen, would you just settle down? Would you take a pill or something? God, you've just been on me....

Keith.

Mr. Keith Martin: Thank you, Mr. Alcock.

Both of your examples were perfect examples of people who are suffering far too much in our community through no fault of their own. The challenge is, how do we strengthen the social safety net for those people who truly need it? How do we enable them to get the skills to be able to become integrated members of society again?

I would ask you a couple of questions. One, do you support work skills for welfare? And two, do you support providing incentives for work? There are people who go into McJobs and who are worse off because of a lack of health care and other options. So they decide to stay on welfare for very pragmatic reasons.

Are you in favour of producing innovative solutions to try to ensure that these people get back into the employment force while still enabling them to go and get the skills they need to become employable so that they can be the best they can become and can get the self-respect that work enables a person to have?

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Ms. Dana Howe: In my organization right now, I have a program using our child care centres as work-and-learn centres for the parents. We have some very young moms, some as with as many as three children, who are working for up to six months in the child care centre. They're working four days a week in the centre and on the fifth day they're receiving life skills.

We've developed work modules for those mothers that they pass through. They work in the kitchen with the cook and learn nutrition skills. They work in the classroom with the teachers and learn parenting and child management skills. They work with the clerk and learn their own little personal management filing skills. They also work with the janitor and learn about cleaning and get all kinds of information they need. They're learning transferable skills.

We just graduated the first group of 12 moms, and we're having very good success at getting them into part-time work and training. Some of them have decided to go back to school as a result of this. But even more important than that, we've seen a substantially increased capacity in their ability to parent and understand what the principles are of raising their children in a healthy way.

I certainly think that is a very good vehicle to help people learn the kinds of skills that are necessary. We are paying them a top-up on top of their social assistance, which is being budgeted back by the province to the tune of half of what they're earning. But the fact is they are moving forward. So one of the things we need to do to strengthen people is provide the kind of training and support they need to move forward.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dana.

John.

Mr. John Murphy: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As I listen to our discussions, I'm wondering what the committee's work plan might be for the next while. Maybe you could articulate that for us. If there is something in that work plan you will be doing, is there a way we can chip in and be of assistance in partnership in all of this?

Having heard that, I would also like to say we look forward to coming back another day to sit down with you again and begin more dialogue on this. We're just getting there. Some of the issues that have arisen here today need much more discussion if we're going to be creative.

The Chairman: Let me respond to that in a couple of very quick ways.

This committee is holding a round table on June 11 on that issue of youth and readiness to learn. One of the problems, and it has been mentioned here, is that the policy divides: the federal government is responsible for this and the province is responsible for that. There are areas where we can go and where we can't go. In this area of pre-natal care through to school entry there is obviously a need, and it cuts across many areas, such as crime prevention, maternal child health, day care and everything else.

We're going to launch that discussion, and I can't say where it will go. It will probably be the last piece of work this committee will do before the summer recess. We will reconvene after striking the committee in late September. In late September or early October there will be the first meeting of this committee. It will probably be a lengthy steering committee meeting to look at the agenda for the fall. Part of the agenda is driven by the House and part of it is driven by what we choose to do.

I asked the researchers while we were having this discussion, particularly in that area of youth, to speak to the people who are organizing the round table on youth and see if it wouldn't be useful to have one of you come to that round table and address us. I can't answer for the committee, but I suspect, just given the interest in the discussion here, that having you back and starting to look in more detail at this area of how.... I'm a little shocked, frankly, by some of the information in here, particularly in the profiles in this, as opposed to the.... I personally would be interested in going into that. We'll have to see what the committee decides to do.

The government issued a challenge in the last election, and as we get to a balanced budget the question of reinvestment is before us and where to reinvest is very much a question we struggle with. It is a question that will probably be a useful discussion with this group.

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I'm going to close for reasons of time, but I'd like to also say this. On a personal level, I have used information from this council for almost its entire existence. It's been one of the few sources in Canada of at least some comparative and overview information. We value the work you do, we value the information you bring to the table, and I would very much hope we can reconvene in the fall.

I realize this is a gentle and caring group that meets here, and I'm sure Bonnie, who will probably chair the next meeting, will continue in that same vein.

Mr. John Murphy: I'd just add, Mr. Chair, that the council, through Joanne, is embarking upon the same issue that you are on June 11. Maybe she could just say a quick word.

Ms. Joanne Roulston: Bruce had mentioned the “Healthy Parents, Healthy Babies” paper, and we're planning a whole series of papers on children. So by the fall, we hope to publish something on pre-schoolers and look at those issues.

The Chairman: Would you be ready to speak on some of that as soon as June 11?

Ms. Joanne Roulston: Very possibly, yes.

Mr. Steve Kerstetter: Are you free today?

The Chairman: Well, we don't need to book the appointment; the researchers will be in touch with you to have that conversation.

Keith, is it a further question on the discussion?

Mr. Keith Martin: This will just take one second. I just wanted to let you know that this week the national head start program motion passed.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Libby, because I gave him a statement, you can have 30 seconds.

Ms. Libby Davies: Just very quickly on the national standards, it's an important question, and I just wanted to point out, because it has to be said, that we shouldn't be making the provinces the scapegoats, because we have seen something like $7 billion cut out of transfers. So this whole issue about whether it should be a direct cheque from the federal government or whether there should be national standards.... I do believe there have to be national standards, but the money from the feds has to be at the table. That's what allows you to bring in the national standards. I just wanted to say that.

The Chairman: There's no policy like an old policy. Thank you.

Ms. Libby Davies: That's a good policy.

Mr. John Murphy: I want to thank you all very much for having us here, and I'm looking forward to our group coming back. We'll participate, if we can, on June 11. We're on the same agenda, we're on the same page, and we'll be in touch with your chair. So thank you very much for having us.

The Chairman: Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.