:
Thank you, Madam Clerk. I call this meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number eight of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. Pursuant to the orders of reference of March 24, April 11 and April 20, 2020, the committee is meeting for the purpose of receiving evidence concerning matters related to the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today's meeting is taking place by video conference and the proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. The webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee. In order to facilitate the work of our interpreters and ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.
First, interpretation in this video conference will work very much like in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either “floor”, “English” or ”French”. In order to resolve sound issues, please ensure that you are on the English channel when speaking English, and on the French channel when speaking French. I would specifically ask for the witnesses to take note of that. If you plan to alternate from one language to the other, please also switch the interpretation channel so it aligns with the language you are speaking.
Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name, and when you are ready to speak, please click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. I remind you that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.
It's the same rules with respect to points of order. Members, if you have a point of order, please indicate so by unmuting your mike and identifying yourself. If you wish to speak on a point of order that has been raised by someone else, please use the “raise hand” function.
When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When not speaking, your mike should be on mute. As you've heard during the sound check, the use of headsets is strongly encouraged. If you have a microphone on your headset that hangs down, please make sure it's not rubbing on your shirt while you are speaking.
If any technical challenges arise, for example in relation to interpretation or if you are accidentally disconnected, please advise the chair or clerk immediately, and the technical team will work to resolve them. Please note that we may need to suspend during these times as we need to ensure that all members are able to participate fully.
Before we get started, can you all click on your screen in the top right-hand corner and ensure that you are in gallery view? With this view you'll be able to see all of the participants in a grid view and it will ensure that all video participants can see one another.
With that by way of preliminaries, I would now like to thank the witnesses for joining us today. From the Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services, F.A.R.M.S., we have Ken Forth, president. From the International Longevity Centre Canada, we have Margaret Gillis, president; and Kiran Rabheru, chair of the board. Also, from the Migrant Workers Centre, we have Juliana Dalley, staff lawyer.
I understand that our witnesses have some opening remarks.
Mr. Forth, please proceed. You have the floor for 10 minutes.
:
Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you.
I'm Margaret Gillis, president of International Longevity Centre Canada, which I'm going to refer to as ILC Canada. It's an organization that advocates for the human rights of older people, and we are part of a 16-country global alliance and are partnered with the LIFE research institute at the University of Ottawa.
Attending with me today is Dr. Kiran Rabheru, chair of the board of ILC Canada. He's a professor of psychiatry at the University of Ottawa and a geriatric psychiatrist at the Ottawa Hospital.
We are here today to study our government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many Canadians, I am grateful for the unprecedented teamwork we have seen across party lines here in Parliament, and between the federal, provincial and territorial governments, placing the needs of Canadians before partisan and jurisdictional politics. We are also grateful to have HUMA pause to reflect and seek some initial views from Canadians in response to the COVID-19 crisis; however, this is but a first step in what we believe should be a longer process.
We all know that older people have been the most severely impacted group worldwide in this crisis. We know that the rights and contributions of older people are often overlooked, both in politics and in practice. Canada needs to take a leadership role in rectifying the horrible treatment of seniors during the pandemic through, among other actions, the sponsorship of the United Nations convention on the rights of older persons, which would work towards ensuring that older persons' rights are not ignored.
While it is vital to be vigilant right now, it's premature to think that narrowly focusing on Canada's response in the middle of an evolving crisis will provide us with a full assessment. There will be a need for meaningful and lasting change, and it is probably like trying to build an airplane mid-flight, so we need to continue this and keep it going. We will need a comprehensive process to identify lessons learned, and this process must involve looking at all aspects of the COVID-19 crisis. We're talking here about prevention, preparedness, response, where we are now and recovery.
The challenges we are facing, as illustrated by the systemic problems in long-term care, the rise in elder abuse and the patronizing ageist attitudes towards older people in the press and in our society, have become more visible and urgent during the pandemic. We must embrace this unprecedented reality and boldly move forward to support human rights. We must be jointly accountable for results for Canadians. Instead of pointing fingers, we must all own part of the situation and move quickly to fix it.
We were encouraged by the words of when he said, “We need to do better. Because we are failing our parents, our grandparents, our elders—the greatest generation, who built this country. We need to care for them properly.”
Indeed, we do need to do better, and we must find a way forward that reinstates and reinforces Canadian values. It is time to be bold. It is time to embrace the new post-COVID-19 era. Canadians want answers, Canadians need leadership, and Canadians must demand accountability for seniors. Time is everything, and the stars are aligned at this moment for Canada to make the difference.
I would like to use today's discussion to advance ways we can strengthen the rights of older persons to ensure that their lives, health and well-being are not overlooked during and after the pandemic.
As I mentioned, there is no comprehensive, binding international human rights convention for older persons as currently exists for women, children and persons with disabilities. ILC firmly believes that a binding international convention would provide stronger protection for older persons—protections that have been so lacking during the pandemic. We should discuss how a convention could help by examining two important examples of rights: the right to health and the right to affordable, accessible long-term care.
Think for a moment about what we've seen in the last few weeks: older people left to die in their beds without medical assistance, dealing with a virus that results in tremendous suffering; or older people dying of dehydration or malnutrition, or being left in filthy beds. How can this cruel and unthinkable treatment be happening in Canada?
Who can forget the images of family members standing outside long-term care facilities, hoping to get a glimpse of a loved one whom they have not heard about for days, only to hear that they have been abandoned and left to die, unaided, in this most horrific manner?
Is Canada a country that leaves its most vulnerable to die, a country that has left a system so incapable of handling a crisis that it has to rely on the army to rescue vulnerable people? Where are the human rights of those people?
Ask yourself also if we would allow this to happen in our schools, our day cares, our hospitals or any other institution. There's a very basic lesson here, and it is that human rights cannot be an afterthought in a pandemic, or ever. Human rights need to be front and centre in all that we do.
According to the latest data, 79% of the deaths in Canada during the pandemic have occurred in long-term care. We need to call this for what it is: a human rights violation, which is reflective of systemic ageism and the devaluing of importance in contributions of older Canadians. While we can all claim to be saddened over the loss of lives, not many of us can say we are surprised by what's taken place.
You would have to be living in a bubble to miss the multiple reports of abuse in long-term care: the blind 94-year-old woman locked for two weeks in a room full of bedbugs; the sickening murder of eight residents in Ontario, which would have gone on had the murderer not told her pastor; or the multiple reports of choking, beating and neglect that have, in some cases, led to deaths. All these clear human rights abuses took place before the pandemic.
The treatment of older people in Canada is nothing less than a failure of human rights in our own backyard. It is heartbreaking to see how front-line workers have struggled in the most impossible of situations. We need to take steps now to ensure that never happens again.
ILC Canada encourages the Canadian government and all parliamentarians to work together to protect the rights of older citizens by leading the movement for a convention on the rights of older persons. Acting in this manner would go a long way to re-establishing our reputation as a country that values the lives of all citizens. Why? Because a convention would see older persons as rights holders. It would combat ageism. It would allow the public to hold governments accountable for human rights abuses by giving them access to the UN Human Rights Council, and it would educate the public and empower older persons.
A convention would also help to promote and protect the rights and dignity of older persons. The impact of the pandemic has made it crystal clear that policies and mechanisms currently in place are inadequate and insufficient from a human rights perspective. Such actions have had a severe impact on the lives of older people.
We have all observed the changes in attitudes towards people with disabilities, and in the actions taken by countries that have resulted from the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which I'm assuming this committee is very familiar with. We are certain that a UN convention on the rights of older persons would have the same positive influence and impact. We call on Canada to lead the convention in order to foster a better understanding of the scope and meaning of human rights for all people.
This move would be in keeping with the long, proud history Canada has in protecting rights at the United Nations. ILC Canada has been at the forefront of the movement for a UN convention. For the past six years we have been working actively at the UN open-ended working group on aging. In doing so we have continually encouraged Canada to act decisively. In 2018, ILC Canada brought forward a petition to the UN to have Canada lead and support the convention. We were very encouraged when the Canadian delegate to the United Nations announced that the door was open to Canadian support, but unfortunately, there's been no movement since. The door's open, and we're hoping that you will step through.
During the pandemic we began a writing campaign to Ministers and , asking that Canada lead and support the convention. Our letter was tabled with the committee today. We have been successfully reaching out to other groups. We have had momentum from public and political support, including from prominent Canadians, such as Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, whose letter of support I've also provided to the committee.
We see the opportunity to speak to all of you today as a great sign that there is an openness to make the needed changes to better the lives of older Canadians. We sincerely and steadfastly hope you will support our call to defend human rights for older Canadians.
Finally, honourable members of HUMA, I would like to leave you with three key takeaways.
One, Canada needs to grow and learn from the treatment of seniors in this pandemic. We need to bring about profound and substantive change to such treatment because there is no best-before date for human rights. They begin at birth and end at death.
Two, Canada needs to lead the development of the United Nations convention on older persons. This convention is about fundamental human rights. It is in perfect alignment with our Canadian values, which we all hold deeply.
Three, time is of the essence. We can’t afford to wait to do the right thing for the human rights of older Canadians. We need to act now.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Chair and the HUMA committee, for asking me to appear today.
My name is Ken Forth. I’m a vegetable farmer in Hamilton, Ontario. Our family has been farming for many generations. Currently it’s me and my son’s family.
I also serve as president of the F.A.R.M.S. operation, the Foreign Agricultural Resource Management Services. We do the administration and logistics for the movement of 25,000 to 30,000 workers to Ontario, Atlantic Canada and Manitoba.
The fruit and vegetable business is very much a hands-on business. As an example, we have been employing people for over 100 years on our farms. Our farm has been involved in SAWP, the seasonal agricultural worker program, for 50 years, having workers from Jamaica.
The workers who work on the farms mean the world to us, much like family. They come here to help farmers, and for that matter, to help Canada to produce food. The result of their work is that they have a better standard of living back home, including education for their children.
The virus that has engulfed the world is most concerning to everyone. I can assure you that all farmers take this very seriously. There is much oversight on our program for the virus, including Service Canada, provincial ministries of labour and the real experts, the local public health officials and departments.
ESDC came out with a protocol just after the April 20 announcement, and the protocol was satisfactory. It was common sense and it worked for everybody. Most of us have been inspected and scrutinized many times this season through the various protocols. Our employees are very pleased with what they have seen, what they have heard and what we’re doing on our farms.
Let me be clear: We are very concerned that our foreign or domestic employees remain safe. How else could we think? We isolate new temporary workers for 14 days. When working, we stay apart as much as we can. When there is any way we will be any closer, workers wear masks, glasses or face shields. Farmers have gone to extraordinary lengths, not to mention thousands of dollars, to give confidence to our workers that it is safe. Farmers are very inventive, often going beyond what is required. As an example many have placed barriers in bunkhouses and on farm equipment to ensure a safe working environment.
In closing, the Government of Canada, provinces and local health officials should all be proud of the protocol they have put in place in very short order, and the farm community who responded to it. But here's a final word of caution: This has been very paralyzing for farmers. We have done the things demanded of us and beyond, and if we think we can be even better we do that. But we have five agencies scrutinizing us now. Any further scrutiny or add-ons will drive farmers away from this industry—some have already left—and make the job impossible: the job of the production of food for Canada.
We’ve seen the federal government, as an example, have the backs of landlords and multi-billion dollar multinational corporations. We would like them to have the backs of farmers the odd time, and we think we need it now. We are all for the security methods they have put in place to isolate our workers. As an example, on our farms our workers never leave the farm and they don’t want to leave it. They tell me they come here to work. They don’t want to get infected at a shopping mall or whatever. They put in orders to the local grocery store, and the local grocery store has the order ready every Friday. We pick it up and deliver it to them, and they’re very grateful for that. We believe they’re really safe and we believe that farmers are doing a better job than they’re being given credit for.
That’s my presentation to you, Chair.
Thank you very much.
:
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the committee for the opportunity to appear before you today.
My name is Juliana Dalley. I am a staff lawyer with the Migrant Workers Centre. I'm joining you from Vancouver, on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples. I will be speaking to you today about the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on some of the most vulnerable workers in Canada—migrant and undocumented workers.
I'm representing the Migrant Workers Centre, a non-profit organization in Vancouver that is dedicated to legal advocacy for migrant workers. Established in 1986, the MWC facilitates access to justice for migrant workers. We provide free legal advice and representation to over a thousand migrant workers each year. We also provide public legal education and do law and policy reform and test case litigation.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants and undocumented workers across the country work in our grocery stores and as cleaners, care workers, truckers, farm workers and in many other occupations. These workers are on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Migrant workers grow the food we eat and make sure it reaches our shelves. They build our homes, schools and workplaces and keep these spaces clean and safe. They take care of our children, the elderly, those who are sick and those with disabilities. They are some of the heroes that we have been applauding every day.
The COVID-19 crisis has shown how essential these front-line heroes truly are. It has demonstrated the level to which our society depends on migrant workers to perform these low-wage jobs, yet migrant workers are uniquely vulnerable to abuse and exploitation in their employment. Many of them have no means of becoming permanent residents of Canada, as their work is not considered by the government to be skilled enough.
The structure of the temporary foreign worker program renders migrant workers vulnerable to abuse. This is important to understanding the impacts of COVID-19 on migrant workers.
In order to apply for a work permit, a temporary foreign worker must first secure a job offer, employment contract and an approved labour market impact assessment, or LMIA, from a Canadian employer. This process can at times take up to a year. Workers must then apply for a work permit from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC. The work permit they receive only authorizes them to work for that single employer, in that single job, in that single location. If the worker loses their job, they have to start the process all over again.
It's important to note that migrant workers cannot perform any work to support themselves or their families while waiting for a new work permit to be approved. If they begin working before their work permit is approved, they risk arrest, detention and removal from Canada. This system makes migrant workers uniquely vulnerable. They are unable to speak up about abuse in the workplace or unsafe working conditions for fear of losing their jobs.
Undocumented workers face similar challenges. Many have contributed to the Canadian economy for years, filling labour shortages by working in low-wage and dangerous jobs that are undesirable to Canadians, yet their lapsed immigration status makes them vulnerable to abuse. In addition, they have limited or no access to workers' compensation or publicly funded health care. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these vulnerabilities. At the Migrant Workers Centre, we have seen our clients impacted by COVID-19 in numerous ways.
For workers in essential services, including farm workers, they are at a heightened risk of exposure to COVID-19. We have all seen the tragic reports of outbreaks at farms, nurseries and meat processing plants. Many of these workers are migrants or undocumented workers. They are putting their lives on the line so we can eat. Many of them are afraid to go to work, but they can't speak up.
Particularly for farm workers, many of them work in conditions that few Canadians would tolerate. The guidelines published by Employment and Social Development Canada for employing migrant workers during the COVID-19 crisis, in our opinion, do not go far enough to protect these vulnerable workers. I'll return to this point later in my remarks.
On the other hand, many migrant workers are at risk of becoming undocumented because of the COVID-19 crisis. More temporary foreign workers are losing their jobs, and they can't work because they have employer-specific work permits. These workers want to work. We have clients who are health care workers and who want to be on the front lines of this crisis, but they can't. We have clients who want to work on farms, but they can't if they lack the proper work authorization.
Temporary foreign workers who lose their jobs can't renew their work permits easily because they can't secure a new LMIA. Again, the process for applying for LMIAs is complex, long and costly, and many employers are unwilling to go through it, particularly in light of the uncertainty we face due to COVID-19.
If a migrant worker has lost their job due to COVID-19 and still has status, they can apply for the CERB, but if their work permit expires and they lose status in Canada, they will become ineligible for the CERB. If they lose their status, they're in an impossible situation. They can't work to support their families. They can't apply for EI without status. They can't apply for the CERB without a SIN, and they can't leave Canada due to travel restrictions and closed quarters. We have had workers in this situation approach our office, and we have had to tell them that there are no viable legal options for them to work and renew their status or for income support.
We estimate that there are tens of thousands of migrant workers across Canada whose permits may have expired or be expiring since the COVID-19 crisis began. These workers will lose their status through no fault of their own without changes. This will result in many people becoming undocumented. At the same time, we know that employers, particularly in the food supply chain, are facing labour shortages as a result of the crisis. There are solutions. The Government of Canada has the tools to provide relief to the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in Canada.
I'll now turn to our recommendations.
First, issue open work permits to workers during the COVID-19 crisis. Granting open or unrestricted work permits will allow workers to continue working or return to work in available jobs and to maintain their status in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. IRCC should automatically renew work permits to an open work permit during this time or restore workers to an open work permit if they've already lost their status.
Workers with secure status may be less afraid to come forward and report symptoms or to speak up about health and safety concerns in their workplaces. This will reduce the spread of COVID-19. In addition, we know that employers are in desperate need of workers, yet fewer workers are arriving in Canada. Granting open work permits will allow migrant workers who are already here in Canada and who may have lost their jobs to fill these labour shortages quickly and efficiently. This will benefit everyone.
Second, we recommend that ESDC improve its compliance system to prevent abuse of low-wage migrant workers and reinstate in-person inspections. ESDC has a mandate to ensure that employers comply with the regulations imposed on them for hiring migrant workers. However, ESDC has stated that it will not be doing in-person inspections as a result of COVID-19. In our view, this is unacceptable.
It is possible and necessary for ESDC to do in-person and unannounced inspections with appropriate safety precautions. This is a matter of life and death for workers. ESDC has a duty to ensure that workers are kept safe during this pandemic. With no in-person inspection to ensure that employers are complying with the guidelines for hiring temporary foreign workers during COVID-19, we will have a growing public health crisis on our hands. We had seen dozens of cases in our office prior to the pandemic where workers bravely decided to come forward and report abuse to ESDC, only for their complaints to go nowhere. This cannot happen during this crisis. Migrant Workers Centre has endorsed recommendations for improvements to ESDC's guidelines, and we would be happy to share these with the committee.
Third, we recommend that a new permanent residency program for migrant and undocumented workers be created. Even though they are performing essential work that we depend on, many migrant workers such as seasonal agricultural workers, cleaners or grocery store clerks have no way of become permanent residents of Canada. They should be allowed to apply for permanent resident status. If they have lost their status, they should be able to regularize it by applying for an open work permit. For too long Canada has relied on migrant workers as a disposal workforce. This needs to change. If migrant workers are good enough to work in Canada, they're good enough to stay as permanent residents. MWC has written to and calling on the government to make these changes.
Finally, we recommend that undocumented workers be allowed to access the CERB. During the pandemic, every worker in Canada should have equal access to the CERB. The CERB should be open to people with an expired SIN, or the government can issue a temporary SIN to anyone who applies by suspending the requirement to prove one's status in Canada in order to apply. This will allow undocumented workers to access the financial support that they need and deserve during this crisis.
These are our recommendations for the Canadian government to both respect and value undocumented and migrant workers during this crisis.
Thank you.
:
Stephanie, thank you very much for the question.
I just want to set the stage that while this COVID pandemic has really opened up the wounds, or the scabs, shall we say, within our system, we need to go to 40,000 feet and start with the question: Who are we talking about?
If you look around you, I know there's no one sitting with you, but if there were, one out of the three of you will have dementia by the time you're 80 years of age. If you think it's not going to be you, you're in massive denial because it can be anyone. We all know people who have it.
Secondly, we're all getting older. Ageism is very insidious and we are all subject to it, 100% of us. Therefore, we're not talking about someone outside, someone who's from somewhere else, about a virus. It is part of our society.
COVID-19 has just unmasked some of those symptoms that have always been there. Beyond the physical impact of the virus, there has been a substantial increase in non-COVID related issues as well, such as social isolation and the mental and physical disability mortality and morbidity associated with it. There's a lot of work that needs to be done once the pandemic starts to settle, but we really need to look at how we can make our system such that we don't ever have to subject our parents, our grandparents or ourselves in a few years to going through this again. We must do something about this now.
As I was saying, I am an assistant professor of disability studies at King's University College at Western University in London, Ontario, which situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lunaapéewak and Attawandaron peoples.
My research and teaching practice at King's seeks to excavate the cultural construction of disabled subjects and the ways that popular culture and policy frameworks naturalize and reinforce sane, masculine and able-bodied supremacy. I am also a person born with a physical impairment, a rare form of muscular dystrophy, who identifies proudly as a disabled person. I have used an electric wheelchair since early childhood to make trouble in our world.
While the global COVID-19 pandemic has only recently been recognized as a world-altering event in need of critical resources and policy redeployment, the virus has been on my mind since it has spread beyond the borders of China. COVID-19 represents a unique, exigent and existential threat for someone like me with muscular dystrophy, a disease that most often proves fatal due to pneumonia. With lungs that function at approximately 30%, it is unlikely that I would survive this virus. It is for this reason that I have been attempting to live in relative isolation since early March. But this attempt has proven uniquely challenging, given the fact that I cannot physically live independently. Significant reduction in muscle mass means that I cannot provide for myself the day-to-day requirements of life, from eating to hygiene to repositioning at night. All of these things require daily care routines, tasks that are all delivered in close proximity.
My PSWs, funded through the self-directed funding program in Ontario, drift in and out of my orbit throughout the day. Many of my PSWs are reliant on public transit, as their low wages can make personal vehicle ownership a luxury out of reach after covering the costs of living. At any moment, my staff could accidentally bring the virus into my home and, because of PPE and sanitizer shortages, I have struggled to erect adequate barriers between me and the outside world. At times, my catching the infection seems like an inevitability.
Aside from the obvious physical and viral challenges of COVID-19, a nagging terror felt by me and many of my friends with impairments revolves around whether or not care will be delivered should we become infected. As the primary fear of imminent death slowly burns away, I, like many others with underlying medical conditions, now fear that the illness is not the only thing that may end our lives during this pandemic. Failing support systems may be just as deadly.
For someone like me, the COVID-19 pandemic draws into focus the feeble and unwinding threads of sociomedical entanglements that struggle, at the best of times, to carry the weight of my disabled existence. Access to technicians able to service my adaptive devices, from my electric wheelchair to my cough-assist machine, becomes fraught in a world of social distancing. Early in the pandemic, the ADP, the assistive devices program in Ontario that funds the purchase and repair of this equipment, was deemed non-essential and shuttered.
If I catch the virus, workplace safety standards will require all of my staff to wear non-existent PPE to continue to safely deliver care in-home. If I'm hospitalized, strict visitation restrictions will mean that I will lose access to my support team, becoming fully dependent on overworked nurses to provide the near 24-7 care that I cannot do for myself.
As we heard several weeks ago, in British Columbia, in the case of Ariis Knight, admission to hospital could mean profound isolation, being cut off not just from social contact but also from the delivery of necessary hour-to-hour care that keeps us safe from a whole host of other comorbid threats to body and mind.
We are told that, depending on our ability to flatten the curve, hard decisions will need to be made about who can and who cannot be saved. We may be asked to debate the value of a person to determine how productive or survivable one must be to merit receiving care. Those of us most at risk, disabled people and seniors, are now facing the cultural and legal pressures of necropolitics, asked to sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of those deemed more valuable. While we may have vilified the word “eugenics” after the Second World War, the ideology remains alive and well in Canada, lurking under the auspices of triage and the way of nature.
In the here and now, what do disabled people in Canada urgently need? The answer to that question is absolutely massive, but I do have several recommendations derived from my own experience and those whom I am in contact with.
First, I think it is vitally important, in overt and unequivocal opposition to eugenic rationalities, that the Canadian government affirm the rights of Canadians with disabilities to fair and equal access to medical care and prohibit any type of value or quality-of-life-based triaging of medical equipment or supplies. These types of policies, I believe, are antithetical to the spirit of the open, diverse and caring country we have tried to build over the past century. Remember, without disabled Canadians, the world would not have marathons of hope, a newscaster turned lieutenant governor, or the Back to the Future trilogy.
We must also ensure that, once a vaccine is developed, distribution is prioritized to those most in need, such as front-line workers and those with underlying conditions, and not just based on economic or productive value.
To ensure the safe isolation for those needing in-home care, easy and affordable access to personal protective equipment is critical, including masks, gloves, and alcohol-based sanitation supplies. We also need to consider increasing funding support for the types of increased care that may be needed at this time, as some tasks that were previously able to be done independently may now require help from the outside. I believe that we need to validate in-home care staff and family caregivers as vital members of an individual’s health care team—not as a social visitor—who can provide important additional support in a time when our hospitals struggle with capacity issues.
We must secure our long-term care facilities to prevent the spread of the virus from unit to unit and from facility to facility. Supporting provincial efforts to care for the caregivers is critical, including increasing PSW staffing numbers and providing regular paid time off for recharging of batteries or fighting off sickness. Scaling up the number of people working in these roles, I believe, is critical. This also means, though, a need to re-examine past practice where we warehoused disabled people of all ages in medical facilities, not because they need medical care but because of a lack of affordable accessible housing.
We need to ensure access for those seeking cognitive, intellectual and emotional therapies or services for pre-existing or newly developing mental illness or distress. Many of these services were deemed non-essential in the early days of the pandemic, with hospital resources being redeployed elsewhere, but it is important for us to get these services back online quickly for those who really do depend on these services and programs.
I think we should also reflect on the federal government’s determination that those without work need about $2,000 per month plus up to $1,000 in earnings to weather the storm. Meanwhile, programs like the ODSP in Ontario have long expected disabled people to subsist on a little over $1,000 a month. Why is the cost of living for those with and without a disability presumed to be so different? What does this tell us about the fairness of these programs that are aimed to provide a life for those unable to labour in a physically or attitudinally inaccessible economy?
When I was young, I loved to play with Lego, but not really the building part. I wasn't very good at that, but I was really good at tearing things apart. There’s something really special or magical about those moments, not just the wanton destruction, but because of what it signals, that in the ruins of the destroyed project lay the building blocks of the next great edifice.
In confronting this threat, we need to ask ourselves not just how we survive today but how we will live with ourselves once it has passed. COVID-19 may mean that the world we knew several months ago is gone, but maybe that isn't all bad news.
What if in post-COVID Canada we spent more time enabling people rather than disabling them? What if we reimagine our health care systems to be ones of plenty and not austerity? What if the flexible and digital work arrangements currently offered to non-disabled employees were extended permanently for employees with disabilities who have long been asking for this type of access? What if we provided Canadians with the things they need to thrive, regardless of their cognitive or physical ability?
I look forward to imagining some of these possibilities with all of you today.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to join you today. I'm Jennifer Robson, an associate professor of political management at Carleton University.
To try to minimize some of the technical problems that I've been aware of in recent meetings, I am going to deliver my remarks today in English only. I do apologize in advance, particularly to Madame Chabot and and Monsieur Lafrenière, but I just know that I will make a mess of things if I try to think about what I'm saying and click different languages back and forth. I do apologize.
My remarks today are informed by my research on Canadian social policy and by the countless inquiries that I've received from Canadians about the emergency income supports during the pandemic. Members of the committee may be aware that since March 25 I've been regularly updating a plain-language summary of income benefits. In fact, I just posted an update to that before beginning the testimony today. Finally, I'm also speaking as a mom of three who, like millions of parents, has been trying to figure out how to juggle full-time work and home-schooling at the same time.
I've previously described the economic shutdown due to COVID as a medically induced coma. As a country, we might be slowly starting to come out of that coma, but we're still not able to do much without some kind of life support. As we regain consciousness, there are some important truths that we need to grapple with.
COVID-19 hasn't hit all Canadians equally, whether in health or economic effects. I'm going to focus on four different kinds of inequalities that have mattered in the crisis and will continue to matter during the economic reopening and eventual rebuilding.
The first one is inequalities in information and technical capabilities. There has been uneven information and help for individual Canadians to understand and use government benefits. At the same time, it has been evident that government has not always had adequate data or IT systems to be able to launch or adapt programs as nimbly as policy-makers, or the public, might want.
The second one is inequalities in the financial resources that households have to self-insure against an income interruption and the inevitable need to wait, even a short time, for government help.
The third one is inequalities in how COVID has impacted paid work. There are people whose work has been largely immune to the shutdown, workers who were suddenly deemed essential, too many Canadians who suddenly lost all or most of their paid work, and then there are those whose pre-COVID unemployment has been significantly prolonged.
Finally, the fourth one is inequalities in the responsibility for unpaid care and unequal opportunities to fully participate in the economic reopening and eventual rebuilding.
Let me add a little more detail and offer some recommendations to the committee.
The Government of Canada does not have enough information about Canadians or the computer systems to be able to design and deliver income supports in a way that can nimbly handle big month-over-month changes in employment and income. The fact that the back-end system that runs EI was able to ramp up from processing an average of five claims a minute to processing 1,000 a minute is nothing short of a public administration miracle.
As you heard from the deputy minister himself, there is much we cannot do as quickly as we should, or even at all, because our IT systems cannot handle rapid changes or fine-grained exceptions to general rules. While many have touted a national basic income as the right answer, the fact is there is no magic list of Canadians to be able to find and send a cheque to everyone, let alone whoever would meet the eligibility criteria that Parliament might set. Therefore, I hope this committee might support a plan to invest significantly, and for the long-term, in the back-end capacity of government so that we are better placed to not only prepare for the next macroshock but to also address the wide range of needs of Canadians who experience microshocks all the time.
Too many Canadians find government programs confusing. They are confusing. Online frequently asked questions and call centres are no substitute for personalized guidance and help. I don't have to tell you as MPs how important it is that Canadians have access to local, accessible and accurate help to use government programs. You and your constituency teams have been playing a vital role in connecting people to the help they need, but you can't do it all. No one network could.
We need to build a properly resourced web of non-profit, no-fee services to answer questions, problem solve and advocate for clients who can't do it themselves. Here I would encourage the committee to look into the Citizens Advice bureaus in the United Kingdom or the Financial Empowerment Centers in the United States as sources of inspiration.
Many Canadians are going to continue to need income support for the next while, and they will need active measures to get them back into the workforce. We have to hope that the emergency wage subsidy will mean that some share of layoffs won't become permanent. However, many sectors that were the hardest hit in job losses, sectors such as accommodation and food services, retail trade and education services, are also lower down the list for reopening in provincial plans. We want to incentivize work, but work that is safe to do.
The emergency programs such as CERB are going to have to be wound down gradually and likely morphed into more nimble designs that can handle a wider range of cases. This is going to be hard to do, in large part because of the same gaps in federal data and IT that I mentioned a moment ago. Work should also be under way now with provinces to adapt and expand active-measure employment programs so that they can be more effective, handle increased demand and work within the constraints imposed by social distancing, which is likely to continue for some time.
One-third of Canadians came into this crisis without enough liquid savings to pay for even a poverty-line standard of living for one month, let alone keeping themselves at their usual level of consumption. A bit of additional liquidity in the form of mortgage and tax deferrals will have helped some, but part of the rebuilding phase is going to have to be rebuilding household finances, and I hope the members of this committee will work with colleagues on the finance committee and others to find better tools to help households reduce debt and build emergency savings.
Finally, too many families with kids are going to face awful and unreasonable choices during the reopening, as they continue to juggle unpaid care and returning to paid work or a job search. By best estimates, two-thirds of the lost employment in March—and we'll get updates on Friday in terms of those lost hours of paid work as well as jobs—was among women, but it is moms who lost the most paid work, more than other women without kids and more than dads.
Provinces are taking a range of approaches to reopening, but it increasingly looks as though most elementary schools will not be able to reopen until September. Child care services that were already unable to meet demand precrisis won't be able to operate at full capacity for some time to come. I worry about the potential loss of child care spaces as operators lose revenue and lay off staff. I worry about mothers being left out of work or job hunting, even as governments lift public health restrictions. I also worry what will happen to household finances if, on average, 40% of the earned income of the family vanishes because mom has to stay home with the kids. This isn't a private problem for families to solve; it's a macroeconomic disaster waiting to happen.
With provincial agreement, federal support should be directed at protecting existing child care spaces when current revenues put a centre's viability at risk. We should also increase the number of child care programs that can work within provincial health guidelines so that parents, and moms in particular, can participate in the economic reopening and eventual recovery.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, committee members.
I feel my comments follow on well from Ms. Robson's.
I speak on behalf of the Mouvement autonome et solidaire des sans-emploi, or MASSE. We are a coalition of around fifteen organizations in Quebec spread across most of the province's regions. Most of our groups are particularly active on the issue of employment insurance, but a few also work in related fields, such as income security, social assistance, and workplace health and safety.
We offer a variety of services: individual support for those involved in a review process or a proceeding before an administrative tribunal, general legal information, and training and information sessions for other stakeholders, particularly in the union movement. Personally, I represent the Mouvement in dealing with political bodies and other stakeholders in the field.
Our network is fighting for a fair and universally accessible unemployment insurance system. Let me remind you that this has been an important goal of ours for a long time. Let me also remind you that the employment insurance program has been under attack since the 1990s and, since then, it has not been substantially improved, despite periods when the unemployment rate was quite low, particularly in recent years.
This background is important because, at the beginning of the crisis, we were very concerned about the government's capacity to meet the demand that was expected to be, and indeed was, very strong. MASSE had already begun to make representations regarding unusual delays in processing claims. Since November, several groups have spoken out about the situation. The 28-day period was being exceeded for an increasing number of files. We were concerned and wondered how Service Canada would manage to meet the high demand that was coming.
We also wondered what happened to claims filed before March 15. Were they processed, or were they late due to the subsequent influx of claims? This is a question we are currently asking the government.
In this context, we appreciated the announcement of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, or CERB, and more importantly, that it was assigned to the Canada Revenue Agency, which probably allowed for more efficient processing of claims. We applauded...
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Pardon me, did someone say something?
What people particularly appreciated about the CERB is that a great deal of effort went into simplifying the process and that a somewhat unusual eligibility criterion of $5,000 in income was introduced. The rationale is slightly different from the employment insurance program. It is also a shortcoming in the current employment insurance program to which we have been objecting for a number of years. The criterion has given many part-time workers access to the CERB.
Another positive feature of the CERB is that it has helped the self-employed, who in fact make up more than 15% of Canadians. The vast majority of them would not have been eligible for employment insurance because, in many cases, they do not pay into the plan. Even today, the system is not tailored to them. For us, this is a positive measure, but it also proves quite clearly that the employment insurance system needs a complete overhaul. This is something that we will have to consider later, because it has still not been done.
On the other hand, we note that some irritants arise from the CERB, including the question of voluntary leaving, which is still not allowed under the law as we understand it. In our opinion, this is a step backwards because it is permitted under certain employment insurance rules, subject to certain conditions, of course. One of the conditions involves health and safety. When health and safety are at risk, voluntary leaving is allowed. It is not allowed in this instance, and in our view, that clearly puts certain employers' workers at a disadvantage.
I know that this is not the case everywhere in Canada, but in Quebec, we are starting to talk more and more about lifting the lockdown. We get the impression that this could give an undue advantage to some workers, especially since, to our knowledge, the wage subsidy rules are not very restrictive for employers when it comes to protecting their employees. They could take advantage of them to chip away at certain working conditions.
In addition, we welcome the subsequent expansion of the CERB. I am thinking specifically of the addition of workers in seasonal industries. I am also thinking of all the people who had suffered significant financial losses, but continued to receive a modest portion of their usual income. We can also add people who recently reached the end of their employment insurance benefits, and were faced with a job market that was almost non-existent in some sectors.
We can only deplore the fact that it took the government a little while to add these people to the original program. This has caused a sense and a period of uncertainty, particularly among people in areas where, of course, seasonal work is important.
We were a little disappointed with the CERB for students, which provides a smaller amount than the CERB. We have been very involved in the debate around this issue. It seems that certain things were not taken into account. For example, given the minimum wage in Quebec, $1,250 represents, roughly speaking, part-time employment income for three days a week. That is not the kind of job most university students are looking for at this time. These are mostly students with modest incomes who need to earn an income in order to continue their education. We found the rationale that this would be some kind of disincentive a little bizarre. That is not what we see with the majority of these students, who are struggling to study and working hard to get there.
What we also object to with the CERB is that there are still no legal regulations. To give you a concrete example, we still do not know whether there would be any recourse for someone who has been denied the CERB. It really bothers us because we sometimes need to represent people.
We are concerned that we do not know whether or not a recourse mechanism is in place and that, if there is, we are unaware of it.
We also deplore the continued shutdown of Service Canada offices across the country. Of course, we are not asking that the offices reopen completely and normally, but we consider it an essential service that must be provided to the public.
It should be noted that the unemployed who are most likely to turn to this type of service are the most vulnerable groups in society. They include low-income individuals in remote areas with limited Internet access—I must say that in Quebec, we are still experiencing difficulties in that respect—as well as people with little education and seniors who have trouble with digital technology.
I will conclude my presentation by saying that MASSE was also quite disappointed with the government's lack of consultation, particularly with our agencies, both from the Minister's office and from Service Canada. We understand that the situation was urgent and that decisions had to be made quickly. These were major measures that needed to be implemented quickly, and we understand that very well.
We have read that the emergency programs will only last a few months, but the recession is coming and it will hit hard. However, we hope that, moving forward, the government will set up measures to consult with civil organizations to help it reflect on future programs.
I will simply conclude by thanking you once again for your invitation to appear, on my behalf and on behalf of all our member groups.
Of course, I will be happy to answer any questions about my presentation or other aspects of employment insurance that I did not have time to address today.
:
First of all, with respect to the Service Canada locations, I must say that I am not a logistics expert. I know that the locations vary in size, but it is possible to open some, at least in most of the mid-sized cities in Canada, because there is a need.
In terms of the impacts of that, I don't know if it is happening everywhere in the same way, but as I mentioned, right now it is impossible for some people to use the Internet because they don't have access to it at home and they cannot go to the usual community centres where they can use a computer for an hour or two. As for the telephone information line, it is only just starting to calm down. However, in the first few weeks, people were calling us constantly to say that they were simply unable to get an answer, despite many attempts, or that they had been waiting for hours on the telephone. The service is inadequate and that needs to be rectified as soon as possible.
Since the government was unable to meet the demand, our groups had to do it. For instance, in the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean region, we sometimes filled out online applications for people by obtaining their information over the telephone. Those are the kinds of repercussions that have affected our groups in a concrete way. So this situation is not easy, especially for our groups, who, like just about everyone else, are working from home. They have had to reorganize at home. The vast majority of them are not even in their usual workplace.
With regard to the CESB, if I understood your question correctly, I would say that we would prefer a measure similar to the one that was finally introduced for the CERB, that is, to take a small amount into consideration. I don't know if it would be $1,000 as it is with the CERB, but if they can prove that they have lost or expect to lose income, we feel that students should have access to it. For them, as I said, it's also an income that will allow them to continue their studies. This issue has not been raised much in the debates. Personally, I have not heard much about it. That whole dimension must be considered as well.
As for what happens next, we certainly need to ask ourselves that question. Although we immediately think of the restaurant sector, which is often mentioned, there are entire sectors that will take time to reopen. There are even sectors we do not necessarily think about that export some of their products. When will they be able to start exporting again? It is all well and good to get people back to work, but will they be able to sell their products?
There may be a long period in which businesses will recall only part of their staff or reduce their work hours. We don't yet know how this will play out, but we need to think about it. I feel employment insurance will play a central role. I do not know how the government will finance the employment insurance fund, but at the rate things are going, if we take the money out of the fund, very soon there will be nothing left. We have to get the program up and running again anyway, and we have to discuss how it will be done. We have to debate it as a society, and we need to invite stakeholders to express their views on it.