SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT

FEDERAL POVERTY-REDUCTION STUDY – HUMA

Tony Martin, MP (Sault Ste. Marie)

Preface

This exceptional report concluding our two-and-a-half year study on the federal role in poverty reduction in Canada maps a way forward for our country.

At the outset of our study, we made it clear that we were not interested in producing yet one more in a long series of reports on how much poverty there is in Canada. Our focus was to be on solutions to poverty, already tried with some success in other countries, as well as solutions already emerging through various strategies in a number of our own provincial jurisdictions. Thanks to hundreds of witnesses and briefs from national or community-based organizations and individuals, we have in this report both a current, updated profile of the face of poverty in Canada and, more important, the solutions that are beginning to make a difference in reducing poverty.

This is the foundation for a master plan in building a just and inclusive country.

Above all, this study as well as recently released Senate reports on poverty capture a chorus of voices from coast to coast to coast calling for national leadership to reduce poverty. The Government of Canada must take the lead role, in partnership with the provinces, territories, cities and Aboriginal communities.  Without that strategy, and without that leadership, we will repeat the mistake made in 1989 when MPs, while acting on good principles and the right intentions, unanimously called for the elimination of child poverty by the year 2000 without also adopting a coherent plan to make it actually happen. Canada cannot afford to make that mistake again.

Legislation

The report, capturing the recommendation of many witnesses, urges the adoption and implementation of legislation to anchor the poverty reduction strategy. We heard from many that legislation ensures an ongoing federal role and responsibility for poverty reduction while demonstrating a lasting federal commitment for action and accountability to citizens for results.

Towards that end, I have introduced my own legislation, An Act to Eliminate Poverty in Canada, C-545 in the 40^th Parliament. The legislation was written following extensive consultations with civil society allies. I believe it is exactly the legislation to anchor a new federal strategy, indeed to be a signature piece for the next progressive government in Canada. The bill may be viewed on the parliamentary government website () or on my own MP web site, www.tonymartin.ca.

An Act to Eliminate Poverty in Canada legislates a comprehensive pan-Canadian strategy within a strong human rights framework, ensuring national leadership, key provincial-territorial partnerships, adequate funding and accountability to all stakeholders and citizens.

Following consultations, I chose legislation that was enabling in nature rather than too prescriptive, leaving it to a round of initial consultations after the strategy is launched to prescribe the specific elements for the poverty initiative. 

I do name its core three elements – income security, affordable housing and social inclusion.

In the preamble to C-545, I make it clear that the poor, as all citizens, are primarily responsible for their own lives. However, I also note that that responsibility is so often compromised by community and social barriers preventing them from living full and productive lives. The “poor bashing” that appears from time to time in the media and that anchors some punitive government legislation completely ignores those barriers.

There are some guiding principles at the heart of C-545:

• The dignity of the human person
• We must leave no one behind.
• An effective poverty plan has to be more than a labour market strategy that, while important, never pulls everyone out of poverty
• A national strategy has to be rooted in community.

I am proposing an amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act by adding “social condition” to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.

I am also identifying groups of people that the evidence clearly shows as particularly vulnerable to falling into and remaining in poverty. While not everyone in these groups suffer from poverty, they as groups have large numbers who are poor. A national strategy must pay close attention to members within these groups living in poverty: Aboriginal People, women, lone parents, unattached individuals, seniors, persons with disabilities, visible minorities, recent immigrants, and other emerging groups such as the working poor.

In this regard, I believe the only goal worthy of our country is to eliminate poverty. Our targets in any poverty strategy have to be 100 per cent, and starting now!  In other words, as important as it is to identify initiatives to assist specific groups, a genuinely national comprehensive plan has to be devised to help everyone living in poverty. 

In this legislation, the lead for the poverty elimination strategy is the entire Government of Canada, specifically through an inter-ministerial committee of senior ministers, co-chaired by HRSDC and Health. A cross-government working group would resource these ministers and the overall strategy. The provinces and territories are key partners, their collaboration to be cemented through multilateral and bilateral Federal Provincial Territorial Agreements.

The legislation introduces a new Office for Poverty Elimination, with sufficient staff and budget, and links for an ongoing working relationship with the Human Rights Commissioner, the Integrity Commissioner and a renamed National Council on Poverty and Social Inclusion, formerly the National Council of Welfare. 

This new National Council of Poverty and Social Inclusion would be expanded to have sufficient resources in staff, as well as research and policy capacity, to serve the new national strategy.

C-545 also legislates looking at all federal legislation to ensure that they are “poverty proof”, i.e. serving the poverty strategy and certainly not making matters worse. 

I finally also lay out a proposed cycle of planning and reporting to deliver and monitor the strategy.

Knowing this legislation could effectively launch the national leadership proposed in our report, I have welcomed the initial enthusiastic support I am getting from many civil society allies as well as members of other Opposition Parties. I have also received encouragement from the co-chairs of the Senate report on poverty and from a number of provincial and territorial political leaders who agree there must be leadership by the Government of Canada. As always, I am most profoundly grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with extraordinary people in our communities striving to make a difference, “to change the wind”.

A federal strategy to eliminate poverty in Canada is all about nation building. The poor are our brothers and our sisters. Together, we live in our communities and in our country. Together, we can recognize that a national poverty elimination strategy is the right thing to do. The evidence indicates it is also the smart economic thing to do.

It is time to act.