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37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, May 27, 2003

1545

The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.))

Mr. Thomas Townsend (Director General, Applied Research, Department of Human Resources Development)

1550

The Chair

Mr. Richard Shillington (As individual)

1555

The Chair

Mr. John Anderson (Vice-President, Research, Canadian Council on Social Development)

1600

The Chair

Ms. Sherrie Tingley (Acting Executive Director, Centre for Equality Rights in Accomodation)

1605

The Chair

Prof. Christopher Sarlo (Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute)

1610

The Chair

Ms. Linda Lalonde (President, National Anti-Poverty Organization)

1615

The Chair

Mr. David Welch (Professor, National Council of Welfare)

1620

1625

The Chair

Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

Ms. Sherrie Tingley

1630

Mr. Monte Solberg

Mr. Richard Shillington

Mr. Monte Solberg

Mr. Richard Shillington

Mr. Monte Solberg

Mr. Richard Shillington

Mr. John Anderson

1635

The Chair

Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Ottawa—Orléans, Lib.)

Mr. David Welch

1640

Ms. Linda Lalonde

Mr. Thomas Townsend

The Chair

Mr. Sébastien Gagnon (Lac-Saint-Jean—Saguenay, BQ)

1645

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Mr. Sébastien Gagnon

1650

The Chair

Mr. David Welch

Mr. Sébastien Gagnon

Mr. David Welch

Mr. Tony Ianno (Trinity—Spadina, Lib.)

1655

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Thomas Townsend

The Chair

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Mr. Richard Shillington

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. David Welch

Mr. Tony Ianno

1700

Ms. Sherrie Tingley

Mr. Tony Ianno

Ms. Sherrie Tingley

Mr. Tony Ianno

The Chair

Ms. Linda Lalonde

Mr. Tony Ianno

Ms. Linda Lalonde

The Chair

Mr. John Anderson

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. John Anderson

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. John Anderson

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. John Anderson

Mr. Tony Ianno

The Chair

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP)

1705

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Thomas Townsend

1710

The Chair

Ms. Linda Lalonde

The Chair

Prof. Christopher Sarlo

Ms. Libby Davies

Prof. Christopher Sarlo

Ms. Libby Davies

Prof. Christopher Sarlo

Mr. John Anderson

The Chair

Ms. Sherrie Tingley

1715

The Chair

Mr. Richard Shillington

The Chair

Mr. Ovid Jackson (Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, Lib.)

Ms. Sherrie Tingley

Mr. Ovid Jackson

Ms. Sherrie Tingley

Mr. Richard Shillington

The Chair

Mr. John Anderson

1720

The Chair

Ms. Linda Lalonde

The Chair

Prof. Christopher Sarlo

The Chair

Mr. Larry Spencer (Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, Canadian Alliance)

1725

The Chair

Ms. Sonia L'Heureux (Acting Director General, Social Policy, Department of Human Resources Development)

Mr. Larry Spencer

1730

Mr. David Welch

Mr. Larry Spencer

Mr. David Welch

The Chair

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Richard Shillington

Mr. Tony Ianno

The Chair

Mr. Tony Ianno

1735

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Richard Shillington

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Richard Shillington

Mr. Tony Ianno

Ms. Sherrie Tingley

Mr. Tony Ianno

Ms. Sherrie Tingley

Mr. Tony Ianno

Ms. Sherrie Tingley

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Thomas Townsend

1740

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Mr. Tony Ianno

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Mr. Tony Ianno

The Chair

Ms. Libby Davies

Ms. Sonia L'Heureux

Ms. Sherrie Tingley

1745

Mr. John Anderson

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. David Welch

The Chair

1750

Ms. Linda Lalonde

The Chair

Prof. Christopher Sarlo

The Chair

Mr. Richard Shillington

1755

The Chair

Mr. Thomas Townsend

Ms. Sonia L'Heureux

Mr. John Anderson

Ms. Sherrie Tingley

1800

The Chair

Mr. David Welch

The Chair

CANADA

Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

NUMBER 032

2nd SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Tuesday, May 27, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¹ (1545)

[English]

The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.)): I call to order the 32nd meeting of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Today we've called together a very wide and distinguished group of witnesses to talk to us about the market basket measure. I'm not going to go into a whole lot of preamble because we have a great number of you to hear from and I know there will be questions. I'm going to go directly to the Department of Human Resources Development.

If you could introduce yourself and your companion, Mr. Townsend?

Mr. Thomas Townsend (Director General, Applied Research, Department of Human Resources Development) Thank you. I'm Thomas Townsend, director general of the applied research branch. I'm joined today by Sonia L'Heureux, director general of social policy, the group that co-chairs the National Child Benefit Working Group on behalf of HRDC.

On behalf of the department, I would like to thank the standing committee for your invitation to appear this afternoon to discuss the new market basket measure. As you know, the report for the year 2000, based on this new research tool, was released this morning.

Having read the transcripts of May 6 and May 15 from the committee, I would like to address in my opening remarks two questions that were raised by members.

The first question is whether the new measure will be replacing existing measures of low income such as Statistics Canada's pre- and post-income tax low-income cut-offs. The market basket measure does not replace the LICO or the LIM. We will continue to use the two existing measures, supplemented by this additional perspective.

[Translation]

That was made clear at the beginning of the development of the market basket measure. Federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for social services requested officials to examine the feasibility of developing a new tool for assessing low income which would based on a specific basket of goods and services calculated on a sub-provincial level. They explicitly directed officials to carry out that work on the understanding that such a basket measure was to be viewed as complementary to existing low income measures such as the low income cut-offs.

[English]

The second question was about consultation. I'd like to provide a review of what has been done by way of consultation and its influence on the market basket measure.

In March 1998, officials presented the federal, provincial,and territorial ministers responsible for social services their preliminary report on the MBM. Ministers agreed that further work should be undertaken, that the preliminary report should be made available to the public, and that consultations should occur.

The report was made available to interested members of the public, and in March and April 1998 initial consultations were carried out with the advisory bodies of Statistics Canada. In August of that year, a national-level consultation was held in Ottawa, attended by 21 persons representing advocacy groups such as the National Council of Welfare and the Caledon Institute, independent researchers on low-income issues, and representatives from the academic community and the federal government. I have provided a list of the participants to the committee clerk.

The Ontario government representative on the official working group of the MBM also organized a consultation on October 16, 1998, in Toronto. Among the groups represented were Campaign 2000, Low Income People Involvement, the Community Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, and the Child Poverty Action Group.

¹ (1550)

[Translation]

On March 15, 1999 the National Council of Welfare independently issued a public discussion paper, A new poverty line. Yes? No? Or maybe?. This paper sought input from the general public on the basket approach to low income measurement and advanced suggestions for specific components of the basket as alternatives to those proposed in the preliminary report.

A separate transportation component was added to the basket based on the proposals in the discussion paper.

[English]

Data collection work and assembling of the data to form the current report has been the focus of our efforts through 2000 to present. Work is continuing and will continue on the content of the measure. As indicated in the methodological section of today's report, this is not a final or complete product. Indeed, a measure of this type will have to be periodically updated to reflect the evolution of the consumption patterns of our changing society.

The benefit of this type of tool is that it's based on a transparent specific basket of goods and services. It is also reflective of the cost of that basket of goods and services at local levels.

I'd like to conclude with a brief description of the two key elements of the market basket measurement instrument. The basket consists of a number of components: food, clothing, footwear, shelter, transportation, and other goods and services, including personal care items, household supplies, furniture, basic telephone service, reading materials, school supplies, and modest levels of recreation and entertainment.

The income compared to the cost of the basket is the total money income minus the following items: personal income tax and payroll taxes, out-of-pocket spending on child care and non-insured health care services, mandatory payroll deductions, and child support and alimony payments if they're made to another household.

It is important to note that while the amounts calculated for the report assume that all items in the basket are purchased out of the household's disposable income, households may require less disposable income than the cost of the basket to achieve the standard of consumption. This is because some of their needs may be met through services provided by governments, community groups, friends, and family members.

[Translation]

In closing, I want to reiterate the message that this remains a work in progress. We have presented today's report to stimulate feedback on the work to date and welcomed observations and comments on it.

Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Townsend.

I'll next call on Mr. Shillington.

Mr. Shillington, you've been here before. You know the drill.

Mr. Richard Shillington (As individual): Thank you, but I've never been limited to three minutes before.

Thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be here.

I sent two documents through the clerk to the committee, which I think you have. One is a chart on the low-income cut-off. Another is a set of quotes from children who live in poverty in North Bay. I won't speak to them, but you can ask questions later, if you wish.

In my limited time I want to basically talk about our different perspectives and our obligations to low-income people. There are basically right now three broad policy perspectives in terms of obligations to low-income people.

I would say that at one level is the Fraser Institute line, which is fairly clear. They are in favour of a poverty measure that is limited to basic necessities: food, shelter, clothing. It's a subsistence, very minimal level standard of living, and that is what poverty means.

The market basket measure is a more generous basket, and I have only seen this for about four hours, as many of you have. It does have the one feature, though, that as an absolute measure of poverty, it falls short of social inclusion, which the department has said, which means that over time, as our general living standards improve, the market basket measure will not necessarily increase to reflect those increased obligations to low-income people, because it's an absolute measure—not in the way that a relative measure would.

The third perspective on obligations to low-income Canadians is to say that as our general living standards improve, our obligations to low-income people go up automatically. A relative measure of poverty will appeal to people with that perspective.

An example there would be the low-income measure, which is roughly one-half of median income. Obviously as median incomes increase, half of median income will increase as well. This is the measure that the United Nations uses for much of its work.

To illustrate this, I'm going to talk about seniors again for a minute. You know that the old age security and the GIS have been indexed to the CPI since 1984, and there's been no increase other than the CPI adjustments since 1984, which means that seniors who rely on this source of income only have the same standard of living now as they had in 1984. In 1984 that guarantee level was 77% of the median income of seniors. Now it's 66%. In 15 years it has dropped from three-quarters of the median income of single seniors to two-thirds.

Some people might say, well, who cares? As long as they can afford food and shelter and clothing, our obligations have been met; they're not poor. Others might say their standard of living now is the same as it was 15 years ago, so again they're not poor. Others might say, even though their standard of living is the same, they're falling behind the standards of everybody else, and therefore their poverty has increased because they are falling farther and farther behind the norm.

Those are the three perspectives that I think we have to choose from as a society. I might point out that the market basket measure of poverty is very much like the U.S. measure of poverty. It's indexed to prices only. Over the last 15 years, if that's applied to seniors, the situation I described will not get reflected in increased poverty rates because the standard of living has remained the same.

If you use a poverty measure like half median income or like the low-income cut-off, you would expect that the poverty rate for those seniors would inch up because they're falling behind the norm. That's the choice we have before us.

As a researcher, I say those are our choices. As somebody who speaks on behalf of--although no low-income person chose me--low-income people, it's disturbing that the governments of Canada collectively decided they needed a poverty measure that reflected an attitude that our obligations to low-income people should not increase with general standards of living.

¹ (1555)

The Chair: From the Canadian Council on Social Development, John Anderson.

Welcome, John.

Mr. John Anderson (Vice-President, Research, Canadian Council on Social Development): Thank you.

I'm John Anderson, vice-president for research, Canadian Council on Social Development.

[Translation]

I will speak in English, but I would be pleased to answer questions in French.

[English]

We think the market basket measure study confirms the very high rates of poverty and low income that have been identified by other studies, such as the SLID study put out on an annual basis by Statistics Canada measuring low-income cut-offs, as well as the recent census data released just a couple of weeks ago, which showed that poverty rates were very similar to those identified by the market basket measure.

Whether we use an absolute measure such as the market basket measure or relative measures such as the LICO and LIM, we find we achieve relatively similar rates of low income and poverty, and we find these rates are far too high for a very rich country like Canada.

We also know that within these very high rates of poverty, which are between 13%, which the market basket measure looks at in an after-tax look at the rate, and 16%, which the census has identified in a pre-tax rate, are just too high. Within these rates there are much higher rates that have not been identified yet for aboriginal peoples, for visible minorities, and for immigrants.

We think what the market basket measure shows us is that in Canada we've done enough now in terms of studying and measuring poverty, finding different ways to measure poverty, and our main concern should be to move toward action to reduce and eliminate poverty in this country.

We have had over the past decade, as the figures from the census have shown, a plateauing of the rate of poverty; it has basically stayed the same over the last 10 years. Although we don't know, because the market basket measure started only in 2000, the final rate shows that at the height of the boom—2000 was the height of the boom economically—the rate of low income and poverty was the same as the rate measured by the census in 1991.

We believe it's time to move toward policies to deal with poverty. I think the MBM, if it shows one thing very clearly, shows that the welfare rates in this country are far too low. People living on welfare, families with two children, are unable to purchase the market basket measure. They are unable to purchase shelter according to the sums allotted by the market basket measure for this need.

We also note that two persons, each working and living on minimum wage, are also unable to purchase the market basket measure. I haven't done a full study, I only received the report, as the others did, a few hours ago--but looking at the largest cities and just doing a rough calculation of what you earn on a 40-hour week over 52 weeks at minimum wage, it is something just over $14,000 per year in Ontario, for example. If you take two people, that comes to around $28,000. That is pre-tax income. In Toronto, for example, the market basket measure is only slightly below that, and that is an after-tax amount, so you cannot buy that basket. That shows that our minimum wages across this country are too low and we should be working to raising the minimum wage toward a living wage.

It also shows that housing...again, there is a tremendous need for social housing. The housing costs identified by the market basket measure in our largest cities are phenomenally high, over $11,000 in Toronto and Vancouver, and approaching that rate in Ottawa. Clearly, we need to be building more social housing. We need to be developing a social housing program.

The same can be said of the child care rates. When looking at the rates for Quebec, we have not been able to break out the influence of the very good child care program that exists in Quebec to see what influence it has on the lower rates of low income shown in the market basket measure for Quebec, but we think it probably does play an important role. We think this market basket measure is a signal to move toward those kinds of programs on a national basis.

º (1600)

Lastly, I think this shows once again that we have an occasion right now in terms of public policy to deal with these issues of low income with the social transfer. We've created both a health transfer and now a social transfer, yet the social transfer does not have any of the mechanisms of accountability existing around the health transfer. I think it's a time for the House of Commons to turn some attention towards this issue in making the social transfer a tool for dealing with low income.

The Chair: Thank you.

I now move to Sherrie Tingley from the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation.

Sherrie.

Ms. Sherrie Tingley (Acting Executive Director, Centre for Equality Rights in Accomodation): I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee. It's my first time speaking at a federal committee, and on this important issue. Although I've personally spent time living in poverty and have faced homelessness and hunger, I will be speaking today as somewhat of an expert for the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation, or CERA, as we call it.

We are a non-profit human rights organization that promotes human rights in housing. At CERA, we work to remove the barriers keeping disadvantaged individuals and families from accessing and retaining the housing they need.

Early in 2000, we started our women's program at CERA to address low-income women's experience of inequality and discrimination in housing in Canada. Our women's program recently completed a national research report, Women and Housing in Canada: Barriers to Equality. Due to my limited time, I will share with the committee one excerpt from the report:

The revocation of CAP and the introduction of the CHST has exacerbated women’s poverty as it has allowed for the tightening of eligibility criteria for social assistance and the erosion of social assistance rates across Canada. While there were problems with inadequate rates prior to CAP being revoked, it is clear that provincial governments have felt free, perhaps even encouraged, to forego the requirement that social assistance rates take into account the cost of housing and other requirements. Scarce dollars have been redirected to health funding, where national standards remain in place, while social assistance rates have become more inadequate to cover the cost of housing.

You may be wondering what that statement has to do with how we measure poverty. It was very difficult for me to try to compress things into three minutes when reading stacks of reports. But I really can't help but think that the market basket measure might have been somewhat acceptable to me on some level if provincial and federal governments had some kind of commitment to ensure that no citizen would fall below the measure, or if the national child benefit were not being clawed back from families who do not have enough money to afford the basket. But there's no commitment, and instead we have a measure that says we are not committed to achieving equality for people.

In conclusion, I can only say it's a sad day for women who are poor, for people who are poor, and no matter how you measure it, we're in a country with so much wealth, so many natural resources, so much food, but we have no commitments to ensuring or measuring people falling behind.

I look forward to the discussion and I remain optimistic that in the end you will take some steps to move us forward on those commitments.

º (1605)

The Chair: Thank you, Sherrie.

Next, I will call on Christopher Sarlo from the Fraser Institute.

Prof. Christopher Sarlo (Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute): How we define and measure poverty is of fundamental importance not only to the making of intelligent and accountable policies but also to the discourse about poverty and social problems in Canada. It is regrettable that over the last 40 years we have had a huge volume of writing and research on the poverty issue in the complete absence of any credible measures of poverty. Canadians deserve better than this from their academics and especially from their government.

Relative measures such as the low-income cut-off and the LIM tell us about inequality, not about poverty. My research on poverty convinces me that poverty is a condition of real deprivation. It's about lacking basic necessities, and not about your relative position in the distribution of income. Is a hungry child less poor in a particular country because incomes are more compressed in that country?

I am, therefore, pleased to say that the MBM project is a positive step towards the development of a genuine and credible measure of poverty. I think it's essential that poverty lines be based on actual costs that Canadians face in purchasing the things they need. The MBM is a clear and refreshing departure from the conventional relative measures in that regard. While there is really no fully absolute measure of poverty, the MBM would be appropriately placed under the absolute umbrella because of its focus on actual costs of living and general emphasis on necessary commodities.

However, I do have some non-trivial concerns about the MBM that I wish to raise. The difficulties I have are more conceptual than technical.

In the description of the methodology there are some references to the “MBM standard of consumption” as it relates to a given consumption decile. This suggests that the framers of the MBM have a preconceived idea of where they would like to position the poverty line and that they are gearing their methodology to achieve that outcome. Other references in the MBM study to a “creditable” person standard and a “reasonable” standard of living suggest that the exercise is more to determine a goal for the poor than a poverty threshold.

If these lines are to be goals for the poor, then they are too low. However, if the task at hand is to find a threshold that does a good job of distinguishing between the poor and the non-poor, then they are somewhat high. The choices made relating to the second decile, as well as the inclusion implicitly of such things as video rentals, memberships at the Y, charitable donations, and tickets to sports events, would suggest to the ultimate user that this is somewhat more than a poverty threshold. I wonder how we would characterize the situation of folks who would fall below such a line.

My own longstanding view is that we need, as a priority, to be able to determine how many Canadians just can't afford even the basic necessities of life. We need to know that.

My concern essentially is that the MBM was constructed at least in part as something of a compromise among the various competing alternatives. In earlier versions of the MBM report, there was a clear attempt to create some distance between both the basic needs approach, which was erroneously labelled “subsistence”, and the LICO lines, which the provinces found to be far too high. Perhaps the view was that since there was no widely accepted poverty measure, some threshold between the high and the low alternatives might be acceptable. I don't think this is the right way to develop a measure of poverty.

It's really unfortunate that discussions about poverty lines have become highly politicized. The basic needs approach and now to some extent the MBM have been variously characterized as a tax on the poor, as a cynical attempt to redefine poverty out of existence, and lacking in human compassion. On the other hand, those in the social welfare community have been accused of lying about poverty and deliberately exaggerating the numbers to serve their own interests and agenda.

The emotional rhetoric needs to be turned way down. I think we are all on the same side. We want an end to poverty in Canada, but we desperately need an honest and credible measure of poverty that helps us determine the extent of the problem and whether our policies are having any positive impact.

I would like to remind you that in 1995 Canada was a signatory to the Copenhagen declaration, which recommended the use of two measures: an absolute measure of poverty relating to basic material needs, and another measure of overall poverty relating to social needs and exclusion.

º (1610)

This two-part scheme was supported by European social scientists, including the well-known socialist and relativist Peter Townsend, and was designed to combat the differential treatment of poverty in poor and in rich countries. I would urge policy-makers to revisit the Copenhagen agreement. The two measures would give us far more information than we now have about both the poor and the near-poor and would avoid the need to make a political compromise.

Let me just conclude with a rather personal frustration relating to poverty measures. As a member of a board in my local social planning council, I need to be able to describe to business people, to politicians, to concerned citizens, the situation facing the poor in my community. Currently we do not have an official measure that allows us to accurately and honestly relay to others the sense of what it means to be poor. In the absence of any reliable measure, the helping groups in this country are at a clear disadvantage. Despite my concerns about the MBM, however, I am cautiously optimistic that it can be adjusted to reflect the essential character of poverty.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Sarlo.

From the National Anti-Poverty Organization, we have Linda Lalonde.

Ms. Linda Lalonde (President, National Anti-Poverty Organization): Thank you.

Unlike my friend Richard, I am actually asked by someone to speak on behalf of the poor. I am the elected president of the board of directors of the National Anti-Poverty Organization, which is a group that's now 33 years old and which has a board made up of poor people from across the country.

I don't have a pile of statistics for you today, because I'm not a researcher or an academic. That'll be a pleasant relief for you.

I did some exploratory research on the way here from the briefing this morning. This is the size of package of rice you're allowed to buy under the measure. You're not allowed to eat all of it, of course, because you're only allowed to have roughly 60% of this in a week for a family of four. You also are allowed spaghetti, but I notice there was no spaghetti sauce on the list, so I'm not quite sure. There's no salt and pepper; there are no other spices on the list. I guess poor people can't have spicy lives.

I wonder if I could get the water for a moment. It's for a demonstration, Richard, not a drink.

This is a measuring cup, which of course has the wonderful, old-fashioned imperial measures on one side and the metric measures on the other. It doesn't really matter which way around I hold this cup; it has the same amount of water in it. And it doesn't really matter how you measure poverty. There's still the same amount of water; there's still the same number of poor people; there's still the same difficulty that a family has—that Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Jones or whoever has—in putting food on the table, in providing for her children, etc. The other thing, of course, is that this is still not enough water to boil this rice.

I think what we need to recognize is that nothing about the market basket measure is going to change the situation of one poor person in this country. A poor is a poor is a poor by any other name.

The other thing I found very interesting this morning was the things that are missing from the market basket measure. There's transportation for the parents: you're allowed one bus pass each per month and a taxi ride. The children, of course, are running behind that bus when Mom is taking her kids to child care to drop them off in the morning on her way to work. She can't take the kids on the bus with her because there's no transportation money for the kids. They have no transportation money to get to any kind of activities. They can go to camp, but they can't get there.

There's no money at all for school fees. I don't know how many of you are parents who pay out at the beginning of the year. My kid is in grade 6 this year—my granddaughter—and I had to pay $50 to get her in the door of the school in September.

By the way, just to be clear, I do live in poverty. My income is $575 a month; that's child support, and it's too high for me to be on welfare. There's no money for the pizza or the hot dog days; there's no money for the yearbook; there's no money for the agenda. My child is at school with a different agenda from the one every other kid in the class has, because I was able to get it for $1.98 instead of the $7 or $9—I can't remember the exact amount—the school was charging. If you don't think she feels different; if you don't think she feels she's not the same as the rest of the class, I have news for you. There are no meals at all outside the home, of any kind.

I was hit by this particular amount because I have to take her this afternoon, after I get out of here, to go to buy running shoes. As it happens, it's the third pair in a year, so the number is the right number as listed in this thing.

There's $12 for a pair of running shoes. She's almost 13, so she's almost the age of this young man. On my way here, after I passed the grocery store, I popped into Zellers to find out that the cheapest pair of running shoes for a child—and I looked at the kids' size 8, which is not the size my kid would wear; she's wearing adult sizes—was $24.97. So we've already cut; they can only have half as many pairs of running shoes.

The other amount is about $500 a month, and it has to cover all kinds of things—furniture, any other kind of expense you have: household cleaning expenses, toothpaste, etc.—which is about $1,500 per person per year.

º (1615)

The other interesting thing that's not in here, and this is particularly a concern for people who live in either rural or very small communities, is there is no money at all for computer and Internet access. If you have children who are thirteen and nine years old, you know how often they come home with something in the homework line that has to be done via the Internet.

What you're doing is again making those children unable to perform in school, which has of course the result that they have problems later in life.

I'm going to demonstrate something here. I want you to know I didn't put Christopher next to me, so the fact that he's helping me with my demonstration....

This is the social safety net. While we're sitting here talking about the market basket measure, the social safety net is being unravelled continually. People who used to be caught in the social safety net and helped with their daily lives are now no longer able to get the things they need.

I do want to apologize to Christopher. It's not because he is from the Fraser Institute that I asked him to help me unravel the social safety net. He just happened.... Someone else sat him beside me.

That's all I have to say. Thanks.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Welch, you have the pleasure of following Ms. Lalonde.

[Translation]

Mr. David Welch (Professor, National Council of Welfare): It is always difficult to follow my colleague Linda Lalonde.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of Parliament.

º (1620)

[English]

We could say we have a long way to go to improve the lives of low-income people. The MBM may add to our understanding of the issue, but the solutions to poverty are not hiding in poverty measures. No matter which measures we use, too many young Canadians, too many single parents, and too many single seniors continue to live in poverty, as has been pointed out by a number of colleagues here today.

[Translation]

Governments and socio-political groups have waited for this report long enough while discussions on how to measure poverty were in full swing.

The National Council of Welfare hopes the publication of the market basket measure will help transform those discussions into enlightened and useful debates on poverty in Canada. We hope the MBM will help people better understand the problem and help Canadians find solutions to eradicate poverty, regardless of how it is measured.

Today's report is still in its infancy, but we see the MBM as a promising tool that can add new dimensions to the issues. It is clear HRDC has attempted to listen to people. The report makes a comprehensive study of the many basic necessities that people needed to live in Canada in 2000. It makes sense of an issue that is often lost in vague definitions and explanations. Thus, it is an instrument to educate and to make the debate on poverty far more transparent. The components of the basket are by no means perfect, but we believe it is quite thorough in reason, though when policies change, recommendations must be updated. I think the colleagues here today have given a number of examples. The whole work around computers is a good example.

The main problem is that the measure only provides data for the year 2000. Without information covering several years, it is impossible to determine whether the new measure will help us understand the trends over time. We look forward to reading future reports to determine how the MBM can become one of the tools used for social policy research.

[English]

Also, the MBM is the equivalent of post-tax LICOs. It reports only on after-tax disposable income. We need a pre-MBM as well, so people are clear on the amount of income that must be deducted before families can afford the goods and services of the MBM.

Furthermore, we find it unfortunate the three territories were excluded in the MBM. Means must be found that will permit their inclusion in future reports. Our strongest hope is that the new measure will help politicians to create better social and economic policies, not simply more research. In our minds, the only point of more research into poverty is to find a way to end poverty.

[Translation]

The Statistics Canada low income cut-offs are the most widespread measure of poverty in Canada, what are commonly known as LICOs, even though the federal government never recognized them as official poverty thresholds.

In the past decade, politicians, government authorities and journalists increasingly criticized the LICOs as a measure of poverty. One of their criticisms was that the calculations were complex and difficult to explain. They were also upset that the LICOs did not adequately reflect the regional differences that exist for major expenditures such as housing. For example, the LICOs always clearly reflected the changes in economic cycles.

Because the MBM provides data just for one year, it reflects only one facet of poverty. It therefore cannot tell us how the economy will evolve or what impact changes to provincial programs will have.

[English]

The council has always maintained that no poverty line is perfect, though of course some are better than others. All poverty lines are relative and all of them are arbitrary. The ones we choose must reflect our values. We will study the MBM closely and we hope it can be a useful tool. Until then, we believe LICOs remain the most used measure in Canada for many years. The council plans to continue to use LICOs for our poverty research, especially until the MBM develops a stronger base of information.

HRDC should encourage direct participation in future reports of low-income people and various discussions and updates to the MBM in order to reflect more accurately the social and economic reality of poverty in Canada. Low-income groups such as Sherrie's and Linda's were consulted, but we should actually have focus groups with low-income people who participate more directly.

º (1625)

[Translation]

The council thinks it is time to stop talking about how poverty is to be measured and to finally start acting to eradicate poverty in Canada.

We recommend that the federal government take vigorous steps to provide the child care services required for parents to get training or to find and keep a job they need so that they can then bring their family above the poverty line, regardless of how the threshold is measured.

[English]

We recommend the federal government put an end to the clawback of the supplements to the national child benefit and allow more families on welfare to see their incomes inch a little closer to any of the poverty lines. We believe all levels of government must take action to ensure there is enough affordable housing throughout the country for Canadians to live without the fear of losing their homes and peace of mind.

[Translation]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

[English]

The Chair: Ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee, we have approximately 90 minutes remaining. There are ten members sitting around the table, which means we will have eight-minute rounds, but they will have to stick closely to those eight-minute rounds. I would suggest we direct our question to one or two, but if all of them answer, we will never get through.

Mr. Solberg, you have the first question.

Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. It's hard to know who to direct a question to, but maybe I'll start with some observations.

I would argue it is valuable to at least know how much income a person would need to purchase a basket of goods of some kind to be able to live with a standard of living that would be acceptable in Canada. I think that's valuable, and I think the reason it's valuable is to be able to determine whether or not, through our social policies, we are able to lift people out of that situation. If you have a more or less absolute measure, then you can figure out whether or not you really are starting to move people out of that situation.

I think it's completely fair to disagree about what constitutes that basket of goods. I think that's a debate we need to have, because as people have pointed out, we may disagree on it. I think it's important, and I think everyone here has been fair about this. I think they've made a distinction between what constitutes a market-based measure and how we should approach helping people who are at the low end of the income scale, not necessarily suggesting that we help people only to a point where they have enough money to afford that basic basket.

So I think it's important to make those distinctions at the outset.

I guess my question is whether there's anybody represented here who takes issue with that. If you don't take issue, in the interests of time I guess we don't need to hear from you.

I guess what I'm trying to determine is whether there is a consensus that it is okay to understand what constitutes a basic living--maybe, again, there will have to be more discussion about what that is. And if there are people who disagree with that, I'd be interested in knowing what your reasoning is. In my judgment it is important, and I'd be interested in having that discussion with people.

The Chair: Ms. Tingley.

Ms. Sherrie Tingley: You're talking about a point in time--today, what constitutes a reasonable basket of goods that all Canadians should enjoy. So how do we find that out?

I know the research with the previous poverty measures or measures of low income found the person on the street tended to hit those relative measures right on. So it was relative to how well everybody was doing. But to say today, sitting around the room, that we'll come to a consensus that this is the lowest level that all Canadians should fall to....

If I thought by agreeing to that today the levels of hunger and homelessness in this country would instantly end, I might think it would be a worthwhile endeavour, but it's not going to happen. If we set it today, what's going to happen next year, when people have moved ahead, and the measure stays?

So I wouldn't think it would be worthwhile. You know, could we potentially achieve a consensus? I just think it's relative to how well people are doing, and not an absolute. But I might consider it if instantly it were going to happen that nobody would fall below that, but it's not going to happen, not in Ontario.

º (1630)

Mr. Monte Solberg: That's not going to happen necessarily, of course, because first of all, different levels of government have to decide how they're going to approach social policy. But I guess what I'm getting at is, isn't it important that we have some measure that we can all agree on that is the most basic level you have to raise people above?

That doesn't mean that the LICO and some of these other measures would go away; they'll still be there. But there would be a basket that we could all agree on that is the most basic level, that we have to have people beyond that and have social policy designed to at least move people beyond that.

It strikes me that if you don't have that, then the target keeps moving and we don't really have an idea of whether or not we're truly helping people who need help the most.

Mr. Richard Shillington: I'll try to keep it quite short. You hit it on the button when you said the target keeps moving. That means the standard of living is going up and you see it as moving, whereas some of us would say, no, the standard of living is like half of median, so it's not moving; it's all relative.

I'll agree with you totally that there's a subsistence level basket, a tiny basket. Absolutely, in a society like this, it's unbelievable that homeless people aren't living in that basket. That might be a useful academic exercise, but the people who've done that have also said welfare is adequate because it meets that level, so now you're into policy. So these things are not independent of policy.

Mr. Monte Solberg: I think that's an important point, and I don't want to argue with that point, but I'm suggesting that there will be a relative standard that we'll still judge poverty by as well. When we get into that realm, we're talking about philosophical, ideological differences. People have different definitions of what constitutes justice.

Mr. Richard Shillington: That's right.

Mr. Monte Solberg: That is an important discussion, but it can be a separate discussion from what we're talking about here. What I'm trying to discern is whether or not we can reach some consensus that we need that basic measure at least, because it also is a way of addressing an injustice, injustice to people who don't even meet the basic subsistence levels that we would define in some kind of a basket.

Mr. Richard Shillington: Just for clarity, to my mind, it is possible to have a market basket that is relevant. You could have a market basket that's reviewed every year by people who are in favour of social inclusion. The Community Social Planning Council of Torontoused to have a market basket. So it's not the market basket; it's how this changes over time and whether it reflects a constant standard of living or something that moves with general living standards.

Mr. John Anderson: I was just going to say our organization is very much in favour of having multiple measures. That's not the issue for us. We like the fact of having the relative measures and an absolute measure such as the market basket, but the question is, how do we put that measure into place?

Right now, we're not clear as to what's the future for the market basket measure. There isn't any mechanism to ensure the input of low-income Canadians in terms of that market basket measure on a regular basis. There's no mechanism to ensure it's readjusted or reviewed on an annual basis, that it's reviewed in terms of new trends such as the issue has been brought up, computers and Internet access, which is an absolute necessity for any children now going to school, just to get through their school. So that has to be in the basket. It's not in the basket. Who's going to review and ensure that is in the next iteration of that market basket measure?

We think those are very important if we're going to have that mechanism.

º (1635)

The Chair: Mr. Sarlo, I'm going to have to get you in the next round. We've run out of time for this one.

Mr. Bellemare, you have eight minutes.

[Translation]

Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Ottawa—Orléans, Lib.): Thank you.

[English]

I will try this technique: I will put down comments or questions from what I've heard today, and you pick whatever you feel like and perhaps you could give answers or comments there.

I've been up north with my wife, in Iqaluit and Pangnirtung, and we were shocked and scandalized at the price of potatoes, for example. That was 15 years ago. A 10-pound bag was something like $40. I thought that was a real rip-off until I discovered there were transportation problems.

So don't you differentiate, when you decide on the basket, in terms of the climate factor in, for example, Iqaluit, Windsor, Vancouver, or Halifax? What about the purchasing power of someone who lives in Pangnirtung as opposed to someone in Toronto who lives near the market?

I was shocked to hear the word “clawback” when it comes to poor people. Why would we clawback poor people?

Basic living in different regions would probably have different definitions, therefore these measurements that you're talking about confuse me because of the different regions.

Finally, shouldn't we concentrate on certain groups; for example, children? I was touched by the lady's presentation on children. Being a former director of education, I can say kids in school have to pay for things more and more. Should we concentrate on children and the elderly, or how do we do it so that everyone is treated in a fair way?

“Voila.”

[Translation]

Mr. David Welch: You asked several questions. Of course regional differences must be taken into account, which is very difficult. In fact, that is why we made the criticism regarding the Northwest Territories. You can see that the salaries are sometimes very high, but as you just said, the cost of living is also extremely high. So you must always balance the different mechanisms.

If we are to target poverty, we would say that every member of society must be targeted. There is a tendency to speak about poor children, but the children are poor because their parents are poor as well. So poverty affects every age group in society. We keep saying we need a program that existed in the past. Health insurance is an example. That means programs that cover the entire population, to try to improve everyone's well-being.

One must also ear in mind that it is much more expensive to live in Toronto than it is to live in a small town in rural Ontario, for example, even though it doesn't take long to come to that realization.

For example, I have colleagues who work in Quebec and who note—the statistics we have here date back to the year 2000—how much rents have increased in the past few years in Quebec, especially in Montreal. It is due to all sorts of factors. The positive side to that is that apparently things are going better in Montreal. There is renewed prosperity on the one hand, but that does not help the poor people, because they are even poorer than they were before. So you can see that prosperity can lead to greater poverty for some people who cannot get out of the trap.

You are from Ottawa, just like me. You can see how much rents have increased here in the past few years. It is due to the city's prosperity.

So all of those factors must be taken into account. That is why we think there should be an ongoing dynamic process to reflect those differences, while ensuring that it is always a minimum and not a maximum. And if the minimum has to be extended even further, we will just have to ensure that people do not starve.

º (1640)

[English]

Ms. Linda Lalonde: I think one of the things we were quite shocked to hear about the market basket measure is that it doesn't cover the territories. It also doesn't cover aboriginal first nations reserves, which I don't think I have to tell anyone is where we find some of the poorest people anywhere in Canada. So the question of the high prices in the north isn't even being acknowledged in this measure in any way.

On the other question of the clawback, I was very thrilled to see in this year's budget that there will be some conversation with the provinces around the next chunk of money you're handing out to them with the NCB, that there will be some negotiation—I believe “examine” was the word used in the budget—around stopping future clawbacks of the NCB money from, again, the poorest of the poor people who live on social assistance.

I hope there would be a strong commitment by the government to ensure that this does not happen with any future dollars and that the past dollars that are being clawed back now will stop, because again you're taking money away from the poorest of the poor.

Again, if you're measuring.... I won't talk about the commercials I've seen recently on TV—which my 12-year-old pointed out to me, because I don't usually watch TV—about how the child benefit is helping the poorest of the poor, and about how people can get air and water and so on for free, but for things like housing and food some families need help. There is a serious issue here around how this government has not supported the poorest of the poor. That's not taken into account anywhere in this measure, because you don't give in this measure more money to the families that have been clawed back than you do to the families that have not been clawed back.

Mr. Thomas Townsend: I'd like to speak briefly to the question of geography. When social service ministers charged us with coming up with a basket, they asked us to take into account two things. One was transparency, which we've tried to do by declaring what is in the basket. Second was that the basket be constructed in such a fashion that it could reflect differences in price and locality across the country.

We've done that within the limitations of the data we have available to measure prices. The serious issue of not having sufficient data to be able to construct the measure for the three territories and for on-reserve aboriginals is clear. This is something that will have to be addressed in the future.

I think the measure as it's presented here does illuminate the fact that there are some very significant regional differences in the costs of food, clothing, shelter, and other services, so that aspect of the ministers of social services' charge to the working group, I think, has been created. We're going to need to amplify our work in that regard. Right now, we have been able to observe pricing in 19 specific communities and 29 community sizes. But to extend the value of the basket beyond that would require data sources that aren't currently available to us.

The Chair: Thank you.

I'm going to try to give each of you a minute at the end to wrap up, so if there are comments you wish to make, jot them down and I'll give you an opportunity.

Mr. Gagnon.

[Translation]

Mr. Sébastien Gagnon (Lac-Saint-Jean—Saguenay, BQ): Thank you very much for coming today. It is very interesting to hear the opinions of such diverse groups. I think it is important for us, the members of this committee, to form our own opinion so that we can then make certain decisions.

On the one hand, I find your position interesting. This is the first time I have been confronted with this type of indicator, but it reminds me of the inequalities that can exist.

Today we have heard different opinions. Some colleagues have said some elements are missing, which must be taken into account. Earlier on, there was reference to computer systems. I think that is noteworthy. This morning, we also had the opportunity to look at dental care. There are all sorts of imponderables that make it difficult for families to budget. But there are also other variables that you might be able to explain. For example, there is the entire question of single parent families, blended families, etc., which is another major factor when trying to assess the cost of a basket of goods.

There is also another regional factor. This morning, I asked Mr. Townsend a somewhat “narrow” question, a question on the regions. My riding, Lac-Saint-Jean—Saguenay, is somewhat different from the riding of Chicoutimi. Chicoutimi has a big metropolis, whereas Lac-Saint-Jean is still a rural area. In your study, you view Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean as a rural area, but there are nonetheless two differences. These are that when the minister set up an anti-poverty program two years ago, the program extended as far as Chicoutimi but not Lac-Saint-Jean, even though there is a much higher rate of poverty in Lac-Saint-Jean than in Saguenay, in Chicoutimi.

So caution is in order when establishing that type of indicator which may not reflect certain realities, certain micro-realities.

I would invite you to try to reach a consensus, especially since you have such interesting people around the table. To my mind, there is no point in not reaching a consensus on a problem that is as basic as poverty. There is also no point in turning a deaf ear to some elements that would make it easier politically to use one indicator rather than another.

I also liked the National Council of Welfare's chart for 1996 that shows the rate used to assess the post-tax LICO, where there are indeed two different indicators that show the discrepancies. It is dangerous to play the game of using one system and comparing it to another.

Can we reach a consensus? Can we include these elements? Both committee members and our witnesses made several interesting observations today.

Perhaps it would be worth paying more attention to micro-realities, more regional realities, and I think it would have been more worthwhile doing so when the study was being done. At some point—and this is a side remark—, you spoke about transportation costs in Chicoutimi. Why not go even a little further and see how much clothing and other items cost in outlying areas? I would also like to have that information. In any case, can there be more emphasis put on regional realities?

º (1645)

Mr. Thomas Townsend: To answer your question, we had to make a decision on whether to publish the data now or whether we should continue doing studies, and we chose to table the report as is, with the gaps that you mentioned and were discussed this morning. I think that is our job. We can present the information to other researchers and get comments to then improve our work.

But as I said this morning, with regard to the micro-situations you mentioned, we are certainly still unable to present data for all of the regions.

Mr. Sébastien Gagnon: I hope I have at least sensitized you to the problem that I saw in my own riding. I gave you the example earlier of indicators being dangerous because they are used in decision-making on an ad hoc basis that could directly affect people living in poverty.

As I explained, those living in the riding of Chicoutimi were entitled to an anti-poverty program, but those in my riding were not because the indicators were not favourable. So I could do more research to see which indicators were used, but that is a fact. In my riding, the indicators were not taken into account, but I think that people living in rural areas could have benefited from that program even more then those living in Chicoutimi. That is why I am issuing that warning, so that in the future, when similar concerns are raised, that the whole picture is taken into account.

I think there are several people around the table who reflect a segment of our society. It is therefore important to try to reach a consensus and to hear the arguments from those sitting next to us.

Thank you.

º (1650)

[English]

The Chair: Do you have any further comment, Mr. Welch?

[Translation]

Mr. David Welch: Yes. I think you are correct and that is why several witnesses have clearly said today that it is fine to study the question of poverty, but means must be found to eradicate poverty, because at some point, as they use to say, “how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?” That means you can split hairs for a long time. I think that at some point it becomes ridiculous. I have seen discussions where they argued over whether 14 or 15% of the people were poor. In my view, the important thing is to know why 14 or 15% of the people are poor. That is what is unacceptable.

In other words, one can miss the entire point—and I think that is what you are also trying to say. You can try to reach a consensus, but of course some people can say no, but the poverty threshold is now this because that is the minimum required, whereas others will say “wo, hold your horses!” A greater number of variables must be taken into account for a fairly decent standard of living, to ensure that people can live with a certain amount of dignity. People use to say that about the elderly. How can the people live with dignity? Dignity is money, but it is also everything that goes along with money. And it is complicated.

Where you come from, for example, between cities like Chicoutimi and the country, for example in Lac-Saint-Jean, there may be major variables and differences. You could look at the situation elsewhere in Canada and say it is a similar situation, but the cost of living could be very different.

As for housing, I am surprised to see how expensive housing can be in Sudbury, which I know a little, whereas at other times, it is much less expensive because of layoffs in the mines.

That is why a study must be done on a regular basis to see what changes may have occurred in a region. But we must also never lose sight of the major issue, namely poverty and that it must be eradicated.

Mr. Sébastien Gagnon: Unfortunately, the important matter in the decision-making process is that we need indicators, and nowadays those indicators are comparative. If they were palliative, if they were consistent for all of society, we would not be tempted to compare them. That is why it becomes an important exercise. But as you say, it leads to solutions and not means, but I think we do not have any choice but to have indicators to make decisions.

Mr. David Welch: Yes.

[English]

Mr. Tony Ianno (Trinity—Spadina, Lib.): I have a few questions about part of the study--and we spoke earlier today, Mr. Townsend--but I guess in terms of transportation, if you take into account that, according to the statistics I read, 80% of Canadians live in urban centres and if you take the transportation costs, I see from your tables they are roughly in the $5,500 plus for transportation, which adds to the overall number. This brings you roughly to the $25,000 to $26,000 that you need to survive and not be classified as living in poverty.

In most urban centres, even small urban centres with less than 30,000, as long as it is in a village or town or whatever the next title is after that, most people, I assume, are working in a vicinity they can probably reach with a reasonable attempt. I'm not going to talk about people living in rural areas who have to drive very far to go to work. I'm simply trying to figure out how you got the number $5,500.

º (1655)

Mr. Thomas Townsend: Could you direct me to where it's located?

Mr. Tony Ianno: Appendix G. I was reading the other, so $3,900.

Mr. Thomas Townsend: Toronto.

The Chair: Toronto is actually 23, Mr. Ianno.

Mr. Tony Ianno: I'm looking at the less than 30,000--$3,912. I'm trying to figure out how you get some of those transportation numbers.

Mr. Thomas Townsend: Okay. So in rural Ontario, the number here is $3,912. In urban communities, we allowed for public transportation plus one taxi ride a month. In the rural communities, the way the calculation was done is described on page 41 of the report. What we did there to take.... In fact, this is one of the areas of the basket from the preliminary report that was adjusted based on the consultations that were held. The National Council of Welfare had recommended that there be a separate item added for rural areas that would involve the purchase of a used car and the maintenance of that car.

Therefore, the way in which the calculation is achieved is the annual cost based on the amortization of a five-year-old car. That's 20% per year and then the cost of a driver's licence, the cost of registering the vehicle, the insurance of that vehicle, 1,500 litres of fuel and two oil changes.

We chose a five-year-old vehicle based on the advice we received from the National Council of Welfare, then Statistics Canada did a survey of used car dealers in terms of selecting a vehicle that was low-cost and widely available. That is the way in which the basic vehicle price was calculated.

Mr. Tony Ianno: Was that a necessity factor in terms of the scale, the basket, or is it...? Somewhere I read the about the community norm. How does that come into play?

Mr. Thomas Townsend: This was based on the recommendation we received from the National Council of Welfare in terms of what a family would need in a rural location.

Mr. Tony Ianno: Okay, so you have rural there. Then you have Ontario less than 30,000, Quebec less than 30,000, and the numbers are still in the 37 to 39 range.

Mr. Thomas Townsend: Yes. And I think you can note in all of those numbers, where you see them above 3,000 and including, in fact, one municipality, which is Charlottetown, that does not have public transportation, so wherever there was an absence of public transportation, the alternative arrangement, which involves the purchase and running of a vehicle, was used.

Mr. Tony Ianno: In my constituency, where some of the people are challenged economically, most of them don't seem to have a vehicle but they have public transportation. So I'm just trying to figure out, in terms of the number, how that relates. I know that in Toronto you have $2,300.

Mr. Thomas Townsend: Right. That would be based on the bus pass for an adult or the transportation cost on a monthly basis for an adult plus one round-trip taxi per month. This would allow an individual to take home items that were larger than might be transported on public transportation.

Mr. Richard Shillington: Could I interrupt? Two adults.

Mr. Tony Ianno: So the question I have is, because I was trying to do the math at 60 times--is it $89 now, the metro pass? It's something in that range.

Mr. David Welch: Two thousand.

Mr. Tony Ianno: So even if you do 70 times 2, it's 140 times 12. I guess if they do have a Metro pass, I would assume they are working. Or is that not...?

» (1700)

Ms. Sherrie Tingley: Not necessarily. But in Ontario you're required to look for work and to prove that you're looking for work, which would require trips.

Mr. Tony Ianno: It possibly requires a trip with public transit, and the question I have is, would they be looking for 12 months straight through?

Ms. Sherrie Tingley: You wouldn't get a welfare cheque unless you proved you were looking for work every day, and you'd have to be going to your workfare placement as well, in Ontario, in Toronto.

Mr. Tony Ianno: Right. I guess this is addressing other than just welfare, correct?

I guess what I'm trying to figure out is this. If you have two people who are working, low income, would they be working for 30 hours a week at minimum wage? What is the income level when you add all of those numbers up, and then do they meet this on that basis?

I think Mr. Solberg mentioned this earlier. The more you can pick a reasonable amount...and taking into account different provincial governments and their policies and clawbacks and what is the minimum amount they can live on to give them an incentive to go to work, and taking into account different philosophical perspectives. If we can get realistically to what people would think constitutes poverty, I think what can be done is, people can address it a little more so from a political policy perspective.

For instance, we talked earlier today about two seniors with old age security plus that old age supplement. What is that number? Do they meet the quotient here? They're not looking for work. What is the number they require? Are they meeting it? I don't know what the numbers are, but let's assume it's $11,500 times two, or whatever the actual number comes out to, $22,000, $23,000. When you take some of the other issues into account--because here it's for two children; I assume seniors don't have children--does that generally mean that as long as seniors are receiving the old age pension plus the supplement, if they're taking that into account they're not in the poverty level?

This is not really what I find in my riding, because I do see--

The Chair: We have only 10 minutes and we have three people who want to respond.

Okay, let's have thirty seconds each. And you'll probably get a second round, Tony.

Ms. Lalonde.

Ms. Linda Lalonde: Two people working for minimum wage would make about $14,000 gross each. So that's $28,000, which means they're actually below this $27,343 for Toronto, because this is post-deductions.

Mr. Tony Ianno: Plus the child tax credit of $5,000.

Ms. Linda Lalonde: Yes, but you haven't taken deductions off the $28,000.

The Chair: Mr. Anderson.

Mr. John Anderson: On the minimum wage, I think the federal government has abdicated its role in setting the minimum wage. Minimum wage in federal jurisdictions is now whatever the provincial minimum wage is. And there is an opportunity, too, for the federal government to get back into setting a minimum wage in the federal jurisdictions.

Mr. Tony Ianno: What is the variance among provinces? Is it low or high?

Mr. John Anderson: There's a very high variance in terms of--

Mr. Tony Ianno: What's the lowest?

Mr. John Anderson: What is it, five dollars and something? Sorry, I don't have the figures here.

Mr. Tony Ianno: It's Alberta. It's $5.85.

Mr. John Anderson: Yes, It's very low. I could get you the figures.

You have very low minimum wages in some provinces. Even if you take the minimum wage in Ontario, this does not meet the ability to buy the market basket measure for two people, if two people are working on the minimum wage.

So I think there's a role for the federal government, at least in the sectors that are under federal jurisdiction, which is around 9% of the workforce, when we say, why isn't there a federal minimum wage, which is a living wage, as distinct from the provincial minimum wage?

Mr. Tony Ianno: I would challenge you to see that they even have any people working at the minimum wage level in the federally regulated businesses.

The Chair: Ms. Davies.

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): First of all, thank you very much to the witnesses for coming today.

I want to point out that even this new measure, we're told by HRDC, is not a measure of poverty. They state that quite clearly. And we are told that LICOs aren't and we're told that LIMs aren't, so we still actually don't have a measure.

I want to put on the table why I think there's legitimate skepticism about this approach, and that is because usually the absolute measure, which this is based on, is often held up as a quantitative and therefore more scientific kind of thing, whereas the relative measure, such as the LICOs, fluctuates and therefore it has always been held up as being suspect.

I want to point out that the biggest flaw or problem facing us in using the MBM is the question of who gets to decide what is in that basket, which is really what Mr. Solberg and a number of other people have raised. Although it may be something identifiable and quantitative that's being applied, who gets to make that decision? is the critical question. Then, of course, how it's applied in terms of welfare rates across the country is another question, whether or not it will actually eliminate any poverty.

So I have two questions. One, I think, would have to go to the government official.

Based on the MBM, who decided that social inclusion would be excluded? We do have other measures, and there is this very good brochure from the Library of Parliament that talks about the UN human poverty index, which is actually a much broader reflection of capabilities and entitlements.

Secondly, I'd like to ask everybody this, because it seems we're going to be stuck with this MBM. We do know that it's going to be used by the social services ministers now to assess the child poverty programs and so on. So it's going to be used. I'd like people to answer this. How should it be updated and by whom? Again, I think that's a critical question. Is it to be left to bureaucrats? Is it to be left to a few agencies debating whether a car is three or five years old? Should other people be involved in that?

» (1705)

Mr. Thomas Townsend: The decisions on what was included in the basket and what was not included were, in the first instance, the product of the preliminary report done by a working group of federal, provincial, and territorial public servants. The second phase of that was the request by ministers to take that preliminary report more widely. And that became the product of the consultation with the individuals and the groups included in the session that was held in August—the session in Ontario—and the consultations with the Statistics Canada councils.

Ms. Libby Davies: Why would they leave out issues around social inclusion in developing this measure? I don't get it. Unless they want to keep welfare rates really low....

Sorry, I know that's a little leading.

Mr. Thomas Townsend: I have the disadvantage of not having been in the position during the consultative process, so I was just checking. I think the public servants who were working with the measure in the first instance would have wrestled with those decisions for the purposes of producing the preliminary report. In the second instance, it would be the product of the consultations that were held.

I know I'm not answering your question as you'd like.

Ms. Libby Davies: It's not very transparent, actually, is it?

Mr. Thomas Townsend: I think the product we're presenting here has to be taken in the context in which it was created.

The second question that you've asked, in terms of what we do with this as a first offering going forward, I think, is an important and relevant one. For our purposes, we need to return to the ministers of social services with the work. The question of how the basket will be updated, the frequency, and how the content of the basket will be adjusted has not been worked out at this time. So I think that is an important debate.

» (1710)

The Chair: Keep in mind that we are at five minutes already.

Ms. Lalonde.

Ms. Linda Lalonde: As to the question of how it's going to be updated and by whom, without some kind of valid consultation across the country it's going to lose any kind of relevancy it might ever have had very quickly. And if there isn't inclusion particularly of the northern question, you are cutting out a whole bunch of the country.

What I would like to see is some kind of ongoing group brought in on a consultative basis that looks at it and reports back to the government on what is valid and not valid and where the changes need to be made. That should be a broad-based group. It should include poor people. It should include some theoreticians, as we have here. It also should include people who are geographically diverse, so that you don't only have the list that I heard of the consultations before didn't include any rural people. There are a whole lot of people who weren't there at that table.

The Chair: This is a role that this committee might take on in the fall.

Mr. Sarlo.

Prof. Christopher Sarlo: I just wonder whether the basis of your question is a confusion over providing information versus policy. If the MBM is intended to be a policy tool for setting rates and so on, then by all means this discussion is extremely important—how it's updated, what's in the basket, who gets to choose. But do we want to divorce those two questions a little bit and ask the question: do we need to provide some information to Canadians about the levels of living of our fellow citizens; do we need to at least inform ourselves about the different levels? Maybe we need a number of measures, a number of guidelines.

I think we are always getting into this issue of policy and information and getting them confused. I see a real difficulty with that.

Ms. Libby Davies: We were told that that's why this was developed, though.

Prof. Christopher Sarlo: Yes, I understand that.

Ms. Libby Davies: It was linked to a policy issue that they wanted to track. They are definitely linked.

Prof. Christopher Sarlo: I understand, and my whole motivation is for information.

Mr. John Anderson: Yes, we need an independent review committee. It needs to be permanently established and have on it low-income Canadians, and it needs to review the market basket measure on an annual basis. I think only in that manner will the market basket measure over time establish an important role. If it doesn't have that regular updating, and updating by a committee composed of different sections of the population—different both geographically and in terms of income levels—I think it will lose credibility. It can't be simply kept at a certain level and year after year simply added on in terms of rates of inflation. That will not be enough.

The Chair: Ms. Tingley.

Ms. Sherrie Tingley: I would add that a very broad group of people should be included.

I have been active as an anti-poverty activist and never was aware of any consultation that was open to people except by invitation, where specific policy people had been chosen. I think the result is that some of the items in the basket are laughable. There are no work clothes for women there. There is no pantyhose. There is no dress. It's assumed you are out digging ditches, I think, or something. Some of the items in the basket as well as what's missing are quite ludicrous.

I do add that it's very broad and it should be people from a range of sectors, such housing. There needs to be a lot of discussion about taking averages. An average doesn't help you with regard to what low-income people need to pay, if you are trying to rent an apartment in Ottawa where the average rent for a two bedroom is $930 and your welfare benefit is $950. Having an average of low-income people and what they spend, which includes people who own their houses, does not help the single mother trying to find a two-bedroom apartment.

There is a lot of discussion. It seems to be very neutral, but it's not. And I disagree with my colleague Mr. Sarlo that it's just pure information for Canadians. It's not neutral, because there are all those nuances, and I don't think it can be simple.

» (1715)

The Chair: Mr. Shillington, you now have your hand up.

Mr. Richard Shillington: The idea that this is a poverty measure that steps back from social inclusion is absolutely fundamental. I think I'm disappointed that nobody can say where this decision was made. This is an information tool tied directly to evaluating the child tax benefit. If you believe in equality of opportunity for children, then you're believing that low-income children, to the extent possible, should have the same opportunities in life that other children have.

One of the things I circulated to the committee were those quotes about low-income children, about what it was like to live in poverty. They're not talking about starving; they're talking about not being able to participate—not to be able to go to Cubs, not to go on field days, not to go on field trips. It's social inclusion. It's not a small basket.

I'm going to read some information that HRDC--

The Chair: But you're going to have to wait, because we're at 11 minutes. You should have been first, but then someone else would have been cut off. I'll give you a chance at the end.

Mr. Jackson.

Mr. Ovid Jackson (Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, Lib.): Madam Chair, I'm going to think aloud here. I have two questions. The first one is this. Is poverty more than income? It seems to me that we spend a lot of time, whether it's through the bureaucracy or through all these various groups, and the presentations are as different as people are.... Is poverty more than income? That is my first question.

The second one is this. Would a guaranteed income get rid of a lot of this stuff? People would have the money. Of course you can have other problems with that, but has anybody ever thought about the guaranteed income and how would that work? And what kinds of problems would you have with that?

Those are my two questions.

Ms. Sherrie Tingley: I would be worried, if we had a guaranteed income, that the provinces would claw it back. It seems that anything--

Mr. Ovid Jackson: When I say that, I mean everyone would agree—the provinces and the feds. Let's not get into the fed problems. We agree that we have poor people; everybody wants to fix that, so let's assume that they get into it. How would that work?

Ms. Sherrie Tingley: I think that if we had a guaranteed income, I would support that. I thought that was something we were moving towards with the national child benefit, but we see the provinces take it—and everybody kind of agreed. So I'm just skeptical that we could get there. But I would support the guaranteed income. Maybe that's something this committee would want to work on.

Mr. Richard Shillington: In my academic training I'm a mathematician and a statistician so I'm absolutely aware that people measure what's important to them. That's why the Canadian dollar is reported every night, even though it changes very little. Poverty is reported every year, two or three years late.

With respect to your question about whether poverty is just income, of course poverty is far more than income. Assets are vitally important, and one of the real problems with our welfare system is the extent to which not only are people on welfare not allowed to have income, they're not allowed to have assets. We measure poverty using income because it's easy to handle.

There are so many other things—a poor person with a good education compared to a poor person without a good education, with good family contacts and support mechanisms. They're in totally different situations, but we can't get into all that.

You also asked about a guaranteed annual income. We do have a guaranteed annual income for seniors—OAS and GIS. For people who are born and raised in Canada, you have a guaranteed annual income. And quickly looking through this report, the poverty rate using this measure for a single individual senior is as high as 43% in Newfoundland and as low as 5% in Quebec.

Even using a guaranteed annual income for seniors, which has been indexed to CPI since 1984, which we can't say for the child tax benefit, we still have substantial levels of poverty with the guaranteed annual income in some provinces using a program that's operated and designed solely by the federal government, the OAS and the GIS.

Guaranteed annual income is not a magic bullet.

The Chair: Mr. Anderson and then Ms. Lalonde.

Mr. John Anderson: In a sense we already have part of the architecture for a guaranteed annual income, and there are different ways of reaching that. One of them is through bettering the programs we have, such as welfare, unemployment insurance, etc. Another way is through creating more programs like social housing, better social housing, more available social housing, more available, accessible, and affordable child care, because those in a sense allow people on lower levels of income to have higher lifestyles.

I think that unfortunately we have abdicated either the route of simply setting a guaranteed annual income in terms of a monetary value or the development of the social mechanisms such as housing, child care, etc., that will allow people to live on less monetary income because they would have these programs available to support a lower monetary income. I think there are different ways of doing it, but we have abdicated both routes right now. I think we have to make a choice to get back into this area.

There is a start in here to look at poverty as more than income. The other section in here encompasses a lot of items that are more than simply survival or subsistence in the market basket measure. I think that's a positive thing. We have to look at that in terms of revision of the market basket measure to include more effectively such things as health care and child care, which are not included in terms of an average sum that families need. Rather, they are included in a more complex fashion in terms of how they are measured. We think they should be put right into the way the market basket measure is set. In other words, what kind of moneys do you need to provide adequate health care and adequate child care for your children? That could vary depending upon the kind of social programs in place and how much of those you would need in a monetary sense.

» (1720)

The Chair: Ms. Lalonde, anything else?

Ms. Linda Lalonde: He said what I wanted to say.

The Chair: Mr. Sarlo.

Prof. Christopher Sarlo: One of the concerns I would have regarding the matter of an income is whether it's a reliable indicator of how well people are doing. The individual asked about whether poverty is more than income.

We know that, for example, about 15% of income is under-reported or unreported. I would have a concern, if we are measuring something as important as poverty, whether some of the folks who are below the line may not be in that situation because of unreported income. I don't suppose it's my role to ask the experts, but I'm wondering whether that's been taken into account, the whole business of unreported income.

The Chair: Mr. Spencer.

Mr. Larry Spencer (Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is a dangerous topic we're on here today. I've been an anti-poverty activist for the last over 30 years but I've never handed out one single welfare cheque. I've taught people how to live life and how to take some responsibility for themselves and how to overcome situations in which they find themselves.

When we get into the kind of detail we're looking at here today, if we're going to talk detail, I don't see any way of assessing any kind of personal responsibility. I see in this list things that I don't even buy, such a variety that I've never had in my life and never intend to have and wouldn't want to have. It seems to me that we're spinning our wheels and doing a lot of unnecessary detail work to probably make some income for some civil servants more than we're worried about the poverty of the people.

I think the cost of monitoring and adjustments you're talking about—you're talking about all of this that you're going to have to go to—is totally ludicrous. I think we know where the cost of living goes. I think we have ways of knowing. Once you establish what's here, I don't see why we have to get into such detail as to figure out how this fluctuates from one grape harvest to the next. I think we're just wasting a lot of effort here in some of this stuff.

I spent last week in Russia and Belarus. I saw people there who live on $100 a month and/or less. But do you know what else I saw as I observed, as I flew over the countryside? I saw hundreds upon hundreds of little cottages, little places. But with every one of them I saw a sign of that person taking some responsibility for his own life, because there were garden plots from the size of the inside of this area to the size of several times this whole room. They were involved in taking care of their own lives.

Yes, I have a heart. I love people and I wouldn't want to go hungry myself—even though I need to. But we will never eradicate poverty. I mean, that's a wonderful, high-sounding goal. If I understand you right—and that's my first question—is that why we are assessing low income in Canada? Is that why we're establishing this tool? Is that our goal, or did I miss something?

» (1725)

The Chair: Ms. L'Heureux.

Ms. Sonia L'Heureux (Acting Director General, Social Policy, Department of Human Resources Development): Some questions were raised, and Mr. Spencer raised it, about how you use this tool and what utility it has for policy. One of the things that other measures have difficulty telling us is how different ways of going about things are helping people.

As you know, poverty is a very complex issue, where more than one player is active. You obviously have the federal government, the provinces, the territories, and even communities themselves will do things to alleviate poverty any way they can. The instruments weren't refined enough to inform us about what works and what doesn't work. Some initiatives focus either on housing or child care. Another example is people being able to pursue studies or work, or there's transportation. There are various elements that impact on what people have in terms of goods and services they access, so that we weren't able to capture what was working.

Obviously, with one point in time, with the numbers released today, we cannot assess it today. Over time it is our hope that an instrument like this one can help us refine a little bit more the analysis and see if a particular area of the country, a particular community, has taken an action and we can start noticing results. That's important information for policy-makers, and it's in that context that we find this instrument has a great potential.

Mr. Larry Spencer: This still sounds like a make-work project to me. Is the goal to make those in poverty comfortable? Is it to move them out of poverty? Is it to eliminate poverty? Is it to bring them to such a standard of life that they can gain enough strength that they can overcome poverty? I know there are some people who just don't have the ability to do that and I understand that.

I don't know whether you know this or not, but I know for a fact that poverty in more cases than not in a country like Canada is not a matter of no other choice, but it's a matter of a series of many, many bad choices. For us to go to all of these kinds of minute details to come out with simply what it takes to live—I just don't buy all of this.

I think it's a good idea but I don't think it's this complicated. What are we going to do? Are we trying to shave every person down to a ruble? If we give him one ruble too much, it's too much? We're splitting hairs here.

Yes, it's complicated, because one person can take this list and live on it and be just as happy as can be, and the next person can take this list and say, yuk, I don't like any of that junk on here. And it doesn't fit. Yes, it's complicated, but they're not complicating it; we are. Give them a biscuit and a bowl of gravy and some hog jowls and some grits and some things like they have way down south and they'd be happy.

I can see going through the exercise of coming up with a basket. That part I agree with. But looking at the future of going over and over this.... And you still haven't told me what the goal is—eliminate, make comfortable, or to bring them out of poverty. What is the goal?

» (1730)

Mr. David Welch: I don't know what the honourable member is getting at. What people do with this is not a universal thing. There's not a consensus. There's not a party line. People will use this in different ways.

The best we can say is that it gives a certain indication of what some might consider a poverty line or something like that, with all the nuances that have been brought. I think quite a few things have been pointed out that say probably it's too low in terms of actual costs.

But the issue is, even if there are differences between regions, there's a minimum necessary for people. We used to say in French, “on est nés pour un petit pain” . At some point people started saying, we're better, we're worth more than that and we deserve more than a small loaf of bread.

I think that's what we are saying as social people involved in society. People deserve better in a country such as this. If we want to boast that Canada is so wonderful, then let's find the means of helping those who live below the poverty line. And to do that, getting a certain understanding of poverty is useful.

Mr. Larry Spencer: That part I'm not denying. That part I don't deny.

Mr. David Welch: What do you deny, then?

The Chair: That's going to have to be the end of your presentation at this time.

Mr. Ianno.

Mr. Tony Ianno: Thank you.

I'm going to give a political statement for a moment. It's refreshing to see a difference because I'm sure that as Liberals we work really hard in trying to ensure that everyone in Canada surpasses whatever number you come up with. We also understand that there are those who take a different view, and I think you've seen some of that today.

Going back to what we are trying to achieve here is just to get a measure so that we can try, as a government, to ensure that people are beyond any of these numbers. What I've done during the last 10 years as an elected member is work towards any way that we can encourage people to get to work, have a job, have a meaningful job so that they can supply their families and their community with all the wonders they have to offer.

We still have a long way to go. But last year, with 560,000 new jobs, at least it's in the right direction. And we are hoping these numbers are very minimal, whatever the numbers are, because we want to make sure that people are living the kind of dignity in life that we want for all of our families and friends.

Having said that, I want to go back to the seniors. I'm picking two for the sake of just sticking with the concept of this.

I don't know what the actual number is. I should have it right at my fingertips. I think it's $11,500 but what...? Is it $11,500? Roughly there. And they both receive the same, assuming they are living at the low level. If it's two partners living together, it would be still roughly $23,000? No? What's the number?

Come on. Somebody has to have it. I tried this morning. I didn't get it.

Mr. Richard Shillington: The GIS for a couple is less than the GIS for two individuals, right? Don't quote me. I think it's $11,000 to $12,000 for a single person and $17,000 to $18,000 for a couple.

Mr. Tony Ianno: Is that what somebody understood?

The Chair: They allow you around $17,000.

Mr. Tony Ianno: It's $17,000. How does that bear, taking this into account, and again back to the issue of transportation and two children...? What would the number be for seniors? Do we have that for two seniors?

» (1735)

Mr. Thomas Townsend: You can calculate the number for two individuals. The first individual in the household--

Mr. Tony Ianno: That's your 1.4--

Mr. Thomas Townsend: That's right. So you would essentially be at 70% of the number. So you could pick the municipality and it would be--

Mr. Tony Ianno: So roughly 70%. Let's use $28,000 because that seems to be the highest number. At 70% it would be roughly $17,000. So roughly we are almost at that number.

Mr. Richard Shillington: About $20,000, I think.

Mr. Tony Ianno: No, $28,000 times 0.7. It's $19,500, then.

So roughly we are still below for assuming that they have no assets and all the rest that goes along with that, correct? And of course if you are single it's worse, because at that point you are not getting the help of the other source of income.

This was all done pre-income tax?

Mr. Thomas Townsend: The basket itself is essentially the cost of the basket. The way the calculation for the percentages that you see in the report worked is that it was the gross income less a series of deductions, which included income tax, payroll taxes, and child care expenses, alimony, out-of-pocket expenses for dental and medical, and those kinds of considerations.

Mr. Tony Ianno: So going back to where we were earlier when I was asking the question, if you have two people with two children earning $14,000 a year, that's $28,000. Add the $5,000 in child tax benefit, and it makes it $33,000 less taxes on the two individuals. What would they be? What are the taxes on the two individuals, that $14,000? Is it about $1,500 to $1,700 each? That's assuming no child care expenses, because we are not taking into account the medical expenses, the GST credit, the property tax credit, or the provincial sales tax credit. So are we reaching roughly the break-even point of that number if you take all those credits into account?

Does anybody want to comment?

Mr. Richard Shillington: This should be done more carefully. This is too difficult to do off the top of our heads. The GIS is simpler. I think I'm afraid to make a mistake, that's all.

Mr. Tony Ianno: So $14,000 times 2 is $28,000, minus $3,500, which makes it roughly $24,500. Add the $5,000 from the child tax benefit makes it $29,500 plus all the other deductions or tax-back with the medical expenses, GST credit, property tax credit, and sales tax credit, considering that the highest number I saw here was $28,000 in urban B.C.—or $28,750. So it seems to be slightly above that, correct?

In other words, if we get people working, there's a better chance, of course, even with minimum wage jobs, that they will be able to survive on the market basket you've put together in this process. In the end, everything we have to work towards has to be to continue to ensure that people at least have work, which is really what we're trying to achieve.

Ms. Sherrie Tingley: The situation for a lot of single mothers in this country is that because they're single income and they work--

Mr. Tony Ianno: That's why I was dealing with the two--

Ms. Sherrie Tingley: —they also rely on social assistance. For example, in Ontario, probably half of the single mothers who rely on social assistance also work, and work a lot, so their social assistance benefit may be $100. But they do not enjoy a lot of the benefits and we're not helping them with the national child benefit because their welfare cheque is reduced.

Mr. Tony Ianno: I purposely was sticking with just the model that was here because--

Ms. Sherrie Tingley: That's a very few families in Canada.

Mr. Tony Ianno: So in other words, on the percentage of your basket, it reflects what percentage of those in poverty?

Mr. Thomas Townsend: What we've done, using the disposable income by the definition that I've given, is apply a calculation to the basket, but we're using actual incomes rather than.... So we're using a survey of labour and income dynamics as the source of our income data. Therefore, for all of the persons in Canada, the number is 13.1%.

» (1740)

Mr. Tony Ianno: So your 13.1% is those who do not meet the bare minimum, correct?

Mr. Thomas Townsend: Who would not be able to purchase this basket.

Mr. Tony Ianno: So out of the 13.1%, what percentage are single-parent families, female-headed?

Mr. Thomas Townsend: Female lone-parent families are 39.5% of those families.

Mr. Tony Ianno: Roughly 40% of that 13.1%, right?

The Chair: Mr. Ianno, your time is up.

Ms. Davies.

Ms. Libby Davies: The question that underlies all of the discussion we've had, whether we agree or we like or we don't like this new measure, is that if it's going to be used as some kind of benchmark on the one hand, as Mr. Ianno has suggested, to see how people are doing relative to employment or whatever, it seems to me that the other major question is how it is used as a benchmark to actually evaluate whether various government programs and initiatives are failing or not.

We've heard that it's going to be looking at the child tax benefit. Is there any indication of how this measure is now going to be applied to other areas? I want to particularly reference the welfare incomes, because the last report from the National Council of Welfare pointed out that we actually have a shocking situation in this country, where not only is it very complex to understand what's going on and get a handle on some relative understanding about welfare incomes, but there's no transparency.

First, I'm curious to know from the government officials whether or not a measure like this is now going to be used to evaluate how far behind people are in measuring the gap for people on welfare. And second, for the NGOs who are here, do you have some ideas about how you would like to see this used in some way that will actually move us towards eliminating poverty in this country, assuming we've made it the best we can through some other mechanism?

Ms. Sonia L'Heureux: In terms of its use, for example, in the progress report for the NCB there is currently the LICO and the LIM that are being used to measure the depth and the incidence of poverty in families with children. It would also use the MBM to look at how it compares.

Obviously that will be more informative over time. At this point we don't have a whole lot to compare with. We can't really go beyond and start looking at what is impacting. But it would be used in the same way as the other measures except that you're measuring something different, and we'll have to look at it from that perspective.

As for how other governments would use it, that I can't speak about. I don't really know. As we mention in the report, this came out of the table that had the NCB and was looking at the incidence and the depth of poverty, and we wanted to understand a bit better what was happening in different areas. That's why the measure was created. We'll see how the others want to use it.

Ms. Sherrie Tingley: From the NGO perspective, in some of the front-line work I do here in the city of Ottawa, I deal with trying to prevent over 4,400 evictions each year. Those are households. Often those are people who can no longer afford their rent.

From our perspective, we will have to use it any way we can in terms of advocacy. Canada has been condemned by a number of UN committees for its progress on poverty. The UN committee in 1998 recommended that Canada develop a poverty measure, because officials kept saying there was no measure and nobody quite knew.

We've gone through this process, and as you say, it says again that there are no poverty measures. But we will be pushing governments, and maybe there is something we can do. It would be wonderful if we could move back to national standards so that people aren't at the whims of provincial governments as they come and go and show how much they can beat up on poor people.

» (1745)

Mr. John Anderson: Hopefully—I mentioned this before—one of the outcomes would be that the social transfer is one mechanism that could be used to set social standards across the country, just as around the health transfer we've begun to look at that issue of setting health standards across the country. This is a mechanism that is now available. I think this is one area where there could be movement as far as the federal government is concerned.

Ms. Libby Davies: What about the welfare rates? Could we hear from the National Council of Welfare?

You guys were involved in developing this. You've also had a report that's been very critical of income assistance levels and how there's no transparency. I'd like to know from you, do you see this measure as something that will be used effectively to bring some accountability to what's going on, or is it just another thing we've developed and it just becomes an academic exercise?

Mr. David Welch: Well, when we discussed it this weekend with the various delegates and representatives—because we were able to have the report just on the weekend—people's attitude was that, yes, it's interesting. Let's see over a few years what it really shows us. Let's tighten it up. Let's get away from what, for example, Linda was pointing out, where you have the kid running behind the bus, to keep that image; that is, get the real figures. Then based on that, we'll get an indication over a period of time of whether it's realistic.

But the other thing we feel is that it's important that low-income people participate in the process, and not just the organizations. I'm not making any reference to any of the organizations that are here representing low-income people, but the low-income people need to participate directly. That's what they did in Winnipeg. In fact, the Winnipeg research was one of the bases for this report. So I think that's all very positive.

But what people kept coming back to in the discussion, and I think it's come out today, is that once we understand where we can speak of poverty, there is still that percentage of the population, depending upon regions and provinces, living in poverty. We have to address that; we have to deal with it. We have to have the political will to say, let's get rid of poverty.

I think there was a general consensus at our meeting on the weekend that, yes, if there is political will, we can get rid of poverty and show how it's expressed not only economically, but in other ways as well. But very often there hasn't been this will, and it's been especially in some of the provinces extremely punitive. The province we were working in this weekend, British Columbia, wants to cut their social service budget by, I think, 40% from now to 2004, as if you can do that through some miraculous process and not hurt low-income people. We've seen that in Ontario as well.

So I think we have to look at that and decide whether we're going to develop policies to try to get rid of poverty, or is this just another academic exercise? Though I'm an academic, I'm not interested in that, because I'm also socially involved and I believe we have to struggle against poverty.

So I think it's interesting. That's what our reaction was. It's interesting, yes. Let's work with it, but let's also keep a critical spirit around the whole thing and continue collaborating with HRDC and the organizations that want to keep improving on it. However, if we find people are backtracking, trying to “fendre les cheveux en quatre” and trying to go against the spirit, then I think people will have other kinds of reactions in terms of its validity.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Davies.

Before I give each of the witnesses an opportunity to wrap up, I'll just make my own comment.

I come from a very large family, and one of the things I've heard my mother say on many occasions is that truth comes out of the mouths of babes. I've reached the age where children in grades 4 and 5 are what I consider babes. Mr. Shillington provided a list of things from children in North Bay, in grades 4 and 5. I'm just going to take the opportunity to read a little of it, because this comes out of the mouths of babes:

Poverty is wishing you could go to McDonald's; getting a basket from the Santa Claus fund; feeling ashamed when my dad can't get a job; not buying books at the book fair; not getting to go to birthday parties; hearing my mum and dad fight over money; never ever getting a pet because it costs too much; wishing you had a nice house; not being able to go camping; not getting a hot dog on hot dog day; not getting pizza on pizza day; not going to Canada's Wonderland; not being able to have your friends sleep over; pretending you forgot your lunch; being afraid to tell your mum that you need new gym shoes; not having any breakfast sometimes; not being able to play hockey; sometimes really hard because mum gets scared and cries; hiding your shoes so your teacher won't get cross when you don't have boots; not being able to go to cubs or to play soccer; not being able to take swimming lessons; not being able to take electives at school--downhill skiing; not being able to afford a holiday; not having pretty barrettes for your hair; not having your own backyard; being teased for the way you are dressed; and not getting to go on school trips.

That's poverty in the words of children in grades 4 and 5.

I'll have closing remarks from everyone. We'll start with Ms. Lalonde, for about a minute.

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Ms. Linda Lalonde: Okay.

I think I'll also respond to what Libby was saying earlier. I think there's a danger that governments and other funders will shop the different measures, whether they're poverty measures or whatever you want to call them, to decide what programs they will fund, what programs are justified, and for how many people. Obviously, if you have only 75 people in your catchment area that need program X versus 150 under whatever measure we can find that says that, you can reduce your funding.

I've heard several times from various people that it's going to be used only for the NCB. I don't know if you're aware of a thing called the social insurance number; we have legislation that says it's going to be used for government income-related programs only. We have kids in minor hockey and baseball who are asked, as a condition of signing up, to provide a social insurance number. I'm not aware that the Canada Pension Plan covers hockey players who are seven years old.

So I think we have to be realistic about the fact that this is going to be used for many more things than what it is supposedly being introduced for. That's a real concern and a danger that needs to be highlighted.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Sarlo.

Prof. Christopher Sarlo: The sad thing for me about the release of the MBM is that we still do not have an official poverty line in Canada. We have all kinds of measures of low income. What are people in Canada supposed to think of this? What is low income? Is it poverty or is it not poverty? We don't have that. Whoever has crafted this has decided not to do that.

I just wish we could separate information from policy. I wish we could somehow have the courage to tell Canadians something about the poorest of our citizens. How many people just can't afford the basic necessities? How many people can't afford social amenities? Let's find out that information, in the absence of any kind of policy. StatsCan gives us all kinds of information about all kinds of things without it having policy implications. Why can't we do that for poverty?

The final thing I want to say is that I think one of the things we're missing in all of this is we're all middle-class individuals trying to talk about poverty, what constitutes poverty that we need to ask the poor. In the earlier version of the market basket measure they made reference to a survey of social assistance recipients in Australia and asked those folks what they thought of poverty. I'm not going to tell you what they said; I'll just ask you to maybe look at it. It's very revealing about what the poor think poverty is.

The Chair: Mr. Shillington.

Mr. Richard Shillington: I think Mr. Welch just said we wanted to support the spirit of the MBM. I don't want to support the spirit of the MBM, and I'll try to say why.

On May 21, 1985, that Conservative government brought in their first budget with a proposal to de-index the old age security, the child tax benefit, and family allowance. You'll remember there was some dust, and they backed down for seniors, but not for family allowance or the child tax benefit. So from 1986 until 2001, the child tax benefit was not indexed to inflation, eroding 40% of its purchasing value, while the old age security and GIS maintained their indexation to CPI.

I feel very much that today is just like that day, May 21, 1985, when a decision was made that we were going to very slowly eat away at a support program for vulnerable children. The fact that the MBM grew out of the child tax benefit scares me even more, because and I'll read a quote from HRDC the market basket measure will be “sensitive to the changing consumption opportunities of those at the lower end of the income scale, not to what is happening to general living or consumption standards”. What an excellent description of social exclusion, which is not what I want for low-income kids in Canada.

If we are building this, why would we build this in on day one...and I was very disturbed by the response to Ms. Davies' question about where the social exclusion that's fundamental in the market basket came from. I kind of assumed it was the provincial ministers of social services, that they were the bad guys. Now we don't know.

In the long run, it's fundamental how we index this thing, just like it was fundamental back in 1985 whether or not we were going to de-index family allowance and the child tax credit. That decision we made then had a huge effect over the long run. Creating a poverty measure that says social exclusion is okay, that we're going to create something short of social inclusion and it's okay, in the long run will have a huge effect.

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The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Townsend.

Mr. Thomas Townsend: We have two measures that have been used up until now, the low-income cut-off and the low-income measure. The introduction of the market basket measure gives a third tool that can be used. There are two objectives that we look to achieve in terms of the presentation of the measure, the first being transparency. I think some of the criticisms of the measure itself reflect that transparency. Then it would reflect differences in pricing regionally, and within the limitations of our existing data we have been able to do that as well.

I'd like to underscore that in fact this is a tool that complements the existing tools. It was not designed to replace them. Hopefully we'll give policy-makers, parliamentarians, as well as public servants in other groups an additional tool to use to look at the important issue of low income.

Ms. Sonia L'Heureux: I welcome the opportunity we have to talk to you. I hope you've found our answers helpful in explaining why we think this instrument will shed new light on the issue of low income in Canada.

Thank you.

Mr. John Anderson: We have many suggestions on how to improve the MBM as it stands now and we'd like to see it move much more towards a measure of social inclusion, which it isn't right now.

We still think that the MBM can be a wake-up call to governments, as it now stands, not only to the federal government and provincial governments but also to employers, in terms of looking at the economic issues and how we're going to deal with the situation where poverty is at such a high level in our country. What are the measures we should be taking in the next few years around issues such as how to improve welfare rates, how to improve the employment insurance system, the minimum wage moving toward a living wage, ending the clawback of the national child tax benefit and so on?

We see a whole series of things that can be done. We hope this is a wake-up call. There have been a lot of wake-up calls recently, but we hope this is yet another one that will push people in this room and beyond this room to really move on this issue of poverty, because we think the time has now come to really move this issue forward.

Thank you.

Ms. Sherrie Tingley: I don't consider myself middle class. I may be employed, but I haven't quite made it yet. I spent a lot of years as a single parent so I take exception to that insult.

I want to tell you I am really pleased at the interest and the turnout of members. I'm heartened by the attention, so I want people to think about a number of commitments.

Number one is the human rights commitments we've made internationally for our citizens and whether this or our other actions around these kinds of policies are in fact meeting those commitments.

Second is our gender equality commitments for women and the fact that women end up falling short. The outcome is that women fall short, or single parents who are women fall short. I wonder if a gender lens has been used to analyze the market basket measure or the national child benefit program with its clawback, where most of the people who lose the benefits are single mothers, women, and whether there's been a report on that.

I guess if we can't agree on defining poverty, we can continue to point to the growing levels of homelessness and hunger as an indicator of poverty in this country. Unless we take some action to address poverty, those levels will continue to grow, and that's frightening.

Thank you.

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The Chair: Mr. Welch.

[Translation]

Mr. David Welch: Let me just say more or less the same things that Sherrie just said and that others have also said. We can go on studying the matter, to get a better understanding and to see the nuances, but the basic question is whether or not there is any social and political will in Canada to get rid of poverty once or for all? This question still begs an answer.

I think that some are sincere. This is why it is interesting to discuss with the people here today because we can point out many examples of poverty here in Canada. Some say that these people could be put to work, but we must never forget that there are also some classes of Canadian society whose people do all kinds of business and all kinds of work, but none of this work is remunerated. Some of them, as Sherrie said, may be single mothers, but there may also be people who, on account of some intellectual disability, poor mental health or for other reasons, such as poor physical health, are not seen fit for the job market in the properly economic sense.

Now are we going to go on excluding them and treating them like second class citizens as we did in the past? Formerly, people would say that God was punishing them for their sins. Nowadays, they call it bad luck. Either way, it leads to exclusion from society. We in the council believe that there is absolutely no excuse for this in a wealthy country like Canada.

Thank you, Madam.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you.

It's certainly going to help all members of the committee and, indeed, all members of Parliament as they review the just-released market basket measure report, and we will certainly take all your views and concerns into consideration as we review this. Thank you to each and every one of you.

This meeting is adjourned.