Third Session, 41st Parliament

(2018) OFFICIAL REPORT

OF DEBATES

(HANSARD)

Thursday, October 4, 2018

Afternoon Sitting

Issue No. 155

ISSN 1499-2175

The HTML transcript is provided for informational purposes only.

The PDF transcript remains the official digital version.

CONTENTS

Orders of the Day

Committee of the Whole House

Bill 36 — Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 3),

2018 (continued)

Hon. S. Robinson

M. Lee

Hon. D. Eby

Report and Third Reading of Bills

Bill 36 — Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 3),

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 39 — Poverty Reduction Strategy Act

Hon. S. Simpson

M. Hunt

R. Glumac

L. Throness

R. Leonard

J. Yap

Hon. M. Mungall

S. Furstenau

M. Dean

S. Gibson

R. Singh

S. Sullivan

J. Brar

E. Ross

Hon. J. Sims

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2018

The House met at 1:31 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call committee stage debate on Bill 36, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 36 — MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES

AMENDMENT ACT

(N O . 3), 2018

(continued)

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section

B) on Bill 36; R. Chouhan in the chair.

The committee met at 1:33 p.m.

section 31 (continued) .

Hon. S. Robinson: Before we get started on this section, I just want to acknowledge that I have some staff here supporting me today. I have, behind me, Greg Steves, ADM, and Andrew Pape-Salmon and Tricia Daykin to help with this part of the bill.

M. Lee: I wanted to ask the minister…. In terms of the greater inclusion on

section 8(2), we have reference to the “standard set by a provincial, national

or international body or any other code or standard making body” itself. If the

minister can just walk us through the approach in terms of the expansion of

those references and how that will be incorporated as part of the minister’s

powers to make regulations pursuant to this subsection.

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the question from the member opposite. The amendments align the act with the more recent legislation by expressly stating the options available to the minister when adopting materials by reference. It just makes clear that the minister may adopt codes and standards with any changes that the minister considers necessary.

[1:35 p.m.]

It’s important because it is sometimes necessary for provinces and territories to vary adopted materials to suit their unique circumstances. We have the ability to vary codes and standards under the Building Act as well — just to make sure that the member understands that.

M. Lee: As a follow-on question to that, does the minister foresee any challenges with any conflict between the standards? And in which case, which standards would supersede and be paramount?

Hon. S. Robinson: This actually is not a change of practice; it’s just clarifying authority.

M. Lee: Just to clarify that, in terms of: what is the practice,

then?

Hon. S. Robinson: We adopt the most appropriate codes and standards for the technology in question. For example, it’s the Canadian electrical code, and in order to achieve that, there’s consensus across Canada. Being able to adopt that is all this does. It’s just allowing us to stay updated, as necessary.

M. Lee: In terms of adopting a national standard, as the one that the minister just described, what would be another example where the international standard might come into play in the provincial context?

Hon. S. Robinson: Most of the codes and standards adopted for use here in British Columbia are developed at the national level. But in some cases, depending on the technology in question, the best code or standard might be one developed by another body or an international organization of standardization. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, around boilers, is such an example.

Sections 31 to 44 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

Hon. D. Eby: I move the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 1:39 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

[1:40 p.m.]

Report and

Third Reading of Bills

BILL 36 — MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES

AMENDMENT ACT (N O . 3), 2018

Bill 36, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 3), 2018, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

Hon. D. Eby: I call second reading of Bill 39, Poverty Reduction Strategy Act.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 39 — POVERTY REDUCTION

STRATEGY ACT

Hon. S. Simpson: First, I move that the bill now be read a second time.

The Poverty Reduction Strategy Act will require the development of a poverty reduction strategy to achieve targets and timelines and to reduce the rate of poverty in British Columbia.

This is a historic piece of legislation. I know I spoke in this House for the first time about these issues in 2005. I think it was in 2011 that I first introduced a private member’s bill to legislate a poverty reduction strategy in British Columbia. That wasn’t successful. I know my colleagues on this side, when we were sitting in opposition, on numerous occasions reintroduced that legislation for a poverty reduction strategy in a number of forms.

We know, broadly in the community, that there has been a call for a poverty reduction strategy to be legislated in British Columbia and for a plan to be put forward to implement that strategy as we move forward. The call has been for a plan that established targets and timelines that were measurable for how we will reduce poverty and prevent poverty in British Columbia.

Today British Columbia has about the second-worst poverty rate in the country. According to the latest statistics available, which is the 2016 market basket measure produced by Stats Canada, there are 557,000 people who are living in poverty in our province, and 99,000 of those are children. So 12 percent of our population.

We know that over half that number, or at least about half that number, are working poor. They’re people who have a paycheque coming into the house, and they can’t make ends meet. We know that if you have a disability, if you are Indigenous or if you are a recent immigrant, you are two to maybe three times more likely to be on that list than if not. And as I said, we have almost 100,000 children living in poverty in our province, and we know that poor kids means poor families.

The challenge is: how do we begin to address this? These are alarming statistics. I would imagine and expect that these are alarming statistics for every member of this House. They’re statistics that no member of this House can be happy about. Legislating a poverty reduction strategy, I believe, helps to get us there.

This piece of work that we’re talking about today, this act that we’re talking about today….

[1:45 p.m.]

Some people say it’s enabling legislation because it gives us the tools to put a plan in place and to see how that plan will evolve. I consider it, as much or maybe more so, to be commitment legislation. It’s legislation that, in very clear terms, makes a commitment for this ministry and for the government — this government, governments moving forward — to take poverty seriously.

It’s a commitment to embrace the challenge of addressing poverty and addressing poverty in a number of ways — to deal with the questions of affordability, to begin to bring those numbers down but also to look at how we create opportunity for people moving forward, to participate in the economy, to be engaged in the economy.

It’s how we develop a strategy of social inclusion that brings more people to the table and for those people who are struggling and who are living poor to be able to fully participate in our society and to not face the alienation that comes with the stigma of poverty.

The numbers are incredibly inordinate. We know the numbers of Indigenous and First Nations people who are living in poverty. When you have 5 or 6 percent of the population that’s Indigenous and 35 or 36 percent of your poverty list is First Nations, we’re doing something wrong. So how do we make reconciliation be about helping to address those issues and working with First Nations leadership, with friendship centres and with others to address those issues as we move forward?

The other thing that we know is that this has to be a government-wide initiative. If this is an initiative of my ministry, it’s not going to be successful. It has to be an initiative of government. As I noted, there are 557,000 people who are living in poverty. A little bit less than 200,000 of those are clients of my ministry. So that says the majority of people who are struggling with poverty aren’t involved with the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. They’re the working poor. They’re senior citizens. They’re kids, young people who have not been but may very well some day be experiencing a relationship with my ministry. But they’re not today. It’s a large number.

We have 100,000 people on PWD, persons with disabilities, benefits. But there are about

330,000 working-age adults in this province who self-identify as having a

disability. Many, many of them are struggling, and many of them who are

struggling are not directly involved with my ministry. So it becomes a

government-wide initiative.

We know that many — and I’ll speak about this in a minute — of the things that we’ve done

since coming to power have been about a focus on addressing this issue and

moving forward with aspects of what will be incorporated in the plan — not

waiting for the plan but moving and taking action now. We’ll talk about those

in a minute.

When we look at poverty reduction, many people will look at it and say: “This is a social

issue. It’s about dealing with a social justice matter.” That’s true. This is

also very much an economic issue, and it has to be seen as an economic

issue.

When I talk to business groups…. I’ve been travelling and talking to local chambers of commerce about how we generate employment opportunities for persons with disabilities and others, and talking to business groups about this, the Business Council, the chamber and others. I talk about the important economic value of addressing poverty, about an initiative that was first put forward, I know, a number of years ago by the Business Council and the chamber, where they talk about shared prosperity.

Those two organizations, the B.C. Chamber of Commerce and the B.C. Business Council, have

talked a lot about shared prosperity. It’s an initiative that I very much

concur with, and I spoke to their leaders about how we make that work and how

we weave that into the work that we’re doing in my ministry.

This is a wealthy province. There are many, many people, lots of people, doing very well,

but we know there are 12 percent — probably more than 12 percent, but 12

percent identified — in poverty who are facing challenges. How do we share that

prosperity?

[1:50 p.m.]

I know the business leaders in this province, the vast majority of them, are prepared to

embrace that and say: “We want to be part of the discussion on how to do that.”

That’s got to be part of the work we do, and that will be part of the success

of the plan. It’s about employment. It’s not good enough.

We can meet our targets and timelines that we put in this plan, and we can get the single mom with a child to $28,000 a year in income, which will clear the poverty line, but just. It’s not good enough to just get them there and say: “Okay, well, we’re done with you now.” We have to meet the challenge of saying: “How do we give that mom, who has escaped violence with her child, the opportunity to know that she can get the training that she needs?” The door can be open for an employment opportunity, and not so far down the road, she’s not living on $28,000 a year, but she has a good-paying income and a future that she can be excited about for her and her child.

That’s about breaking the cycle of poverty. A strategy has to be not about getting just to the measure. It has to be about how we break that cycle. That’s why, when we set the targets and timelines in this plan — a 50 percent reduction in child poverty in five years, a 25 percent reduction in overall poverty in five years….

We set that challenge there because I know that in terms of breaking the cycle, I am absolutely convinced that we need to focus on young people, on kids, and on creating opportunities for them and their parents to break that cycle in order for them to be able to have those lives that we all want for ourselves and our families and that they want too. We have to figure out how we get there, as we move forward.

The third economic reality of this is a simple equation of net value. If we have people going to work and paying taxes and not needing to rely on government to support them for their basic and fundamental needs, that’s a good thing. We’re always going to have lots of people who are going to need our help. We’re going to have lots of people who are vulnerable. But there are a whole lot of people out there that opportunity is what they need, and if we can create that opportunity, they will be excited to grab it. Their challenge is how they get to that opportunity, as we move forward.

The timing for this…. Maybe just to step back. The reality of this, too, in terms of the work we’re doing and the commitment of the government…. This is a piece of work that we as the NDP have been working hard on for a long period of time, but it’s also a piece of work that fit very much into the agreement that brought this government into place, and that is the agreement with the Green caucus. It is the CASA agreement.

If you read that agreement, you’ll know that what we’ve done here, in fact, is part of that agreement, which says that it’s to design and implement a provincewide poverty reduction strategy that includes addressing the real causes of homelessness, including affordable accommodation, support for mental health and addictions and income security. It’s part of that agreement as well, and I’m excited that the Green caucus wanted this in the CASA agreement. It reinforced the importance of this initiative for me.

As we move forward and look at how we address these, we have other obligations to meet. In the legislation, we speak specifically to an acknowledgment of reconciliation, to the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples.

As we went through the consultation around poverty that we completed, we talked to about…. In the formal consultation, we had 28 sessions around the province. We talked to about 8,500 people, the majority of whom, about 60 percent, are living poor today.

We also had the opportunity in that conversation to talk to key organizations, including the leadership council, the friendship centres, the Métis Nation, and to talk about how we move forward as part of this plan, not just the poverty reduction strategy and the poverty plan as it will unfold in the coming months but also a track of that that is respectful of and focused on the cultural differences and realities for First Nations people.

[1:55 p.m.]

That becomes particularly important when you look at the inordinate numbers of First Nations who are struggling with poverty and the complex issues that revolve around poverty as compared to the general population.

I’m proud of the work we’ve been able to do with the friendship centres. We’ve worked closely with the friendship centres across the province as well as with other First Nations leadership groups — the friendship centres as service providers, the leadership groups — involved them in these conversations, but we know there’s more work to do there. The commitment is that work will unfold as we see how, in practical terms, a poverty reduction strategy becomes a piece of reconciliation moving forward. What are the links and the connections we have to make? We will work hard to make that work.

The requirement of the legislation is that we have a plan released before the end of the

fiscal year on March 31, 2019, and that the plan be updated every five years.

The plan will commence as of January, formally, for the purposes of the target

and timeline. The reason for that, of course, is that there are budget

implications to this work and to meeting these targets and timelines. Most

appropriately, we will incorporate those into the overall budget discussions

for government.

Annual reports will be required during this on an annual basis. We will commence next year. The first annual report will come by October 1, 2020, a little more than a year out from that, to allow that. That’s a report that will talk about the actions that were taken based on the plan, the effect of those actions on people who are living in poverty and what progress has been made on key targets in the legislation and in the plan.

In addition to that, the legislation establishes an advisory committee with a number of key groups that must be represented on that committee. That committee will have the opportunity to have commentary in that report and to speak to the work that government has done — to speak to the plan, to speak to the successes of the plan, to speak to the shortcomings of the plan. Those comments will be independent comments and will be incorporated so everybody can understand views that are not exclusively those of the government.

The targets and timelines are, for many people, the core of this bill. We identified two five-year targets in the plan. The first is for a 25 percent reduction in overall poverty in our province. Based on the current numbers, the 557,000 people, that means 140,000 people being taken out of poverty, using Canada’s official poverty line, now the market basket measure, as was identified in the federal plan that was released recently.

The bill also targets a 50 percent reduction in the rate of poverty for children. In 2016, the latest data we have, 99,000 children under the age of 18 lived in families with incomes under the poverty line. We know that poor kids are poor families. A 50 percent reduction in the poverty rate would move some 50,000 children out of poverty by 2024, the completion of the five-year period.

We’re looking here at 140,000 people as the base commitment that we have made over the

five years. This won’t be an easy target to meet. We have a pretty good sense

of how we will get there and how we will achieve this. It will be meaningful

for people, and it will be meaningful moving forward.

The other issue that will be dealt with in poverty, around this, of course, is around issues of depth of poverty. We haven’t mandated a target for that. It is more complex in some ways. But that is the measure…. The difference between breadth and depth? The breadth of poverty says how many people are below the poverty line. The depth of poverty says how far below that line people are.

[2:00 p.m.]

In the case of children, we have the worst depth of poverty numbers in the country. Deep poverty is considered to be at least 50 percent of the way below the poverty line. We have significant challenges around depth of poverty. That is not an easy matter to deal with.

The bill requires the government to consider both of those issues: breadth and depth. The amount of people below the line who are living with the challenge of depth — that’s probably our most challenging issue, all in all.

The other thing that the bill does is it acknowledges groups of people who are more likely to experience poverty. We have identified the list of those who face the challenges most explicitly and from what we heard in the consultation process. I’ve already said that Indigenous people, those with disabilities, recent immigrants are the most likely to face that.

We also know that rural communities…. It was very insightful to have taken the 28 trips

and meetings and consultations around the province. It was to ensure, also,

that this didn’t become a Metro Vancouver, south Island initiative. We heard

about poverty in rural communities.

The challenges are different than in urban areas, and they will require different

approaches. What we know about this plan is it isn’t going to be able to be a

one-size-fits-all. There are initiatives that we will be able to apply across

the board, but the plan is going to need to be nimble enough to be able to get

at the realities of different communities that face different challenges. The

work that’s ongoing now is to refine what that looks like, heading towards the

plan in February.

As I said before, poverty incomes for people…. The affordability gap is a critical issue, but poverty isn’t only about income. During the consultations, we heard that from a lot of people who talked about all the factors that make it hard for them to break the cycle of poverty. Whether it’s affordability, employment, supports for children and families that they don’t have, we heard about how difficult it is. We heard about social alienation.

I think back to…. I grew up in the Downtown Eastside in a housing project on welfare with my mom and sister. In my first campaign in 2005, I was knocking on doors in one of the B.C. Housing projects in my constituency, and I ran into three people who were my peers at Raymur housing project. One of them was now taking care of their grandkids. This was 70, 80 units, not a big development. I ran into three people that I’d grown up with who were living there, all still living in poverty. Their kids had been in poverty, their grandkids, probably.

They were good people. They weren’t bad people. They were smart people. They could not figure out how to break that cycle. Their kids didn’t break it, and the chances are pretty good that their grandkids won’t break that cycle. So the challenge for us is to figure out: how do we help people to get at that cycle and break that cycle as we move forward?

We heard a lot about social inclusion. We heard about people who felt alienated from what’s going on. We heard about people who said: “I’d love to be able to go to Starbucks and have coffee with my friends, but I can’t afford a $5 cup of coffee, so I stay home and watch TV. I don’t go out and engage, and my confidence erodes.”

As we move forward, we’re going to take what we learned from that process and from those bigger issues. That means that we need to address the questions of affordability of goods and services and housing. We need to look at the opportunities for people to move out of poverty, and we need to look at the inclusion of people living in poverty in communities. The bill addresses the need to do that. I’m hearing that from the advisory forum that I have in place, who are giving me that message as well.

I spoke about the advisory committee that gets struck under the auspices of this bill. That’s a body that will provide a touchstone for me, as the minister, to be able to work to move forward. So we’re heading there. We know that as we move forward to the plan, there will be a lot of work to do.

[2:05 p.m.]

I want to assure people that we as a government have not waited on the poverty reduction strategy and the poverty plan to take action on this issue. You’ll know that the government, since coming to power in 2017, has taken a range of actions that very much are part of a poverty reduction strategy.

It’s the $6.6 billion investment in housing over the next ten years that includes $734 million to fund safe and secure places for women and children who are fleeing violence and abuse and almost $300 million to build the 2,000 modular units that are fully subscribed now to ease the pressures on homelessness, which include 24-7 support services. And 2,500 new supportive homes for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness were also announced.

In addition: closing the renoviction and lease loopholes through the residential tenancy branch and providing new protections for renters moving forward, as well as enhancing both SAFER and the rental assistance program to allow those people who are in the private market but struggling with the affordability of rent to be able to get by.

A critical piece: the first new, significant social program in British Columbia in a

couple of decades, the child care program — a $1 billion investment in the

child care program to ensure that people can afford child care. We know, from

all aspects, that one of the keys to our success is giving people, particularly

single moms with kids, the opportunity to go and get training, to go to work.

That means being able to afford child care.

This child care initiative is very broad. One of the most exciting pieces for me is that families earning less than $45,000 a year will be able to receive free child care.

We have invested in children and families: $23 million of additional and ongoing funding

and supports for women and children fleeing violence; $26 million to expand

legal aid services, including Indigenous and family law; as well, $10 million

for new family dispute resolution; $30 million for agreements with young adults

who are aging out of care — to support that; and, of course, the 50 percent —

next year to be 100 percent — cut in MSP premiums to ease the pressures

there.

We’ve also invested money in PharmaCare, in reducing ferry rates — and certainly for

seniors. Of course, for those people who travel back and forth across the Port

Mann and the Golden Ears, they’re saving upwards of $1,500 a year on the

elimination of tolls.

I’m very excited that after all of these years, we’re able to get this piece of legislation before the House. I’ll be even more excited when we get this piece of legislation passed. But it’s only the beginning to get this done. This is about us being able to enact this, to bring it forward. And as I said, it is not my ministry’s initiative; it’s our government’s initiative.

It’s working with the federal government, it’s working with Indigenous government, it’s working with community, it’s working with business and, together, reducing the levels of inequality and of poverty in this province and giving more hope and opportunity for those 557,000 people who are looking to have their lives affected and changed.

Hon. Speaker, I look forward to hearing the debate on this bill in the House. I look forward to the discussion. I’m very hopeful that we’re going to have strong support on all sides of the House for this bill. I’m hoping we’re going to have strong support and the strong commitment and endorsement that we need to take action moving forward.

[2:10 p.m.]

Then let’s get on with the job. I’m excited about it. I know the Premier and our government are excited about it. We know it’s not easy. We go into this with our eyes open, but we are committed to making the changes to make people’s lives better in real ways and to give them hope that they have not felt for a long, long time.

M. Hunt: I rise today, of course, to speak to Bill 39, which is the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act that is before us.

I’m certain that each and every one of us in this House shares the same goal, and that is making sure that we help people get out of poverty. Where we find disagreements in this House is how we reach that shared goal.

On this side of the House, we believe that growing the economy and ensuring that job creation projects get built are the way to do that. Our record on this speaks for itself — our jobs plan, our technology strategy, our skills-for-training blueprint. The minister even raised the issue of our single parent initiative, where we were helping single parents, taking care of their tuition fees, their child care needs and transportation needs so that they could get the education so they could get the jobs and absolutely break the cycles of poverty.

We delivered nation-leading job growth in our province on our watch. The child poverty

rate, in fact, declined 53 percent from 2006 to 2013, and the total poverty

declined by 24 percent.

Our efforts to get an LNG industry off the ground to connect people to jobs across the north and in every part of this province were all a part of this. I’m pleased to see that the government has embraced this vision and the potential for major investments to change lives. I congratulate them for taking it across the finish line for the benefit of so many people and, ultimately, our province.

I want to encourage the government to keep embracing this type of approach and to get more projects from planning to construction. We should not make any mistake about this. Jobs are an individual’s best and most life-changing path out of poverty.

When it comes to the legislation today, I am simply left wondering why it took so long. Since the members opposite formed government, British Columbians have been told that a poverty reduction plan was in the works. It was coming. Well, first of all, it was the spring of 2018. Then oops, it fell back to the fall of 2018.

Here’s what the minister himself said back in July: “In discussions with members of my advisory forum, there was a strong consensus to include targets and timelines in the legislation that would hold government accountable.” I agreed, though it did mean that the legislation would take a little longer to complete.

Well, here we are in the fall, and the long-promised legislation has landed. It turns out

— well, actually the minister referred to it a little bit in his opening

remarks — that what is before us is almost identical to the private member’s

bill that was tabled by the government when they were in opposition 19 months

ago.

It has taken 19 months since the then opposition tabled the private members bill, which was M225, the Poverty Reduction and Economic Inclusion Act. It included, in

section 2…. I’ll just read that for you. It says: “The purpose of this act is to increase equality and economic inclusion in British Columbia by requiring the development and implementation of a strategy that includes specific and legislated targets and timelines in order to reduce the breadth and depth of poverty.”

The minister refers back to him introducing a bill in 2009. I don’t have that before me. I just went back to the latest one that was 19 months ago. It says specifically “the need for specific legislated targets and timelines.” So how was that part of the delay? That was part of their initiative to begin with.

In that time, what has been added? Well, what has been the result of this delay is, in fact, setting a firm deadline for the actual plan to be released. Of course, that makes sense because back when it was introduced as a private member’s bill, there were no timelines involved. They didn’t know when anyone would act. Now we have the timeline, March 31, 2019.

[2:15 p.m.]

In fact, the minister talks about the consultation program that went on. When I attended the meeting that he held in Surrey, I thought it was a consultation for the plan, not for

an act to create a plan nine months or five months later. Well, actually, now it’s almost a year later. The real change has been less than 50 words — that there is going to be, in general, for the total poverty, a 25 percent reduction and a 50 percent reduction in five years.

Well, that’s not rocket science. We can look at the other poverty reduction plans across this nation, and we can see that that’s the ballpark of what they’ve all been working on and working towards. Certainly, that’s what we accomplished back in the period 2006 to 2013. So I wish that we had had a chance to debate this back in the spring. And I wish that we had seen it in black and white so that we could reach the goals that we all share, that we all want to get to.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. We want to get to it as quickly as possible. Months have slipped away, and the chance of improving lives has as well. What’s so surprising is how the government’s actions on this file…. They said it’s the very heart of their approach to people in this province. So instead of a plan, instead of action, well, we get a delayed and, actually, rewarmed legislation from 19 months ago. Yet instead of concrete action and a concrete strategy, again, we’re now dealing with developing a program, developing a plan. Or should I say it’s a proposal to come up with a strategy to develop a blueprint to come up with a plan.

Actually, it was interesting, because when the government was on this side and the critic of the day was speaking to the then minister involved, her comment was: “Just sign the paper.” Well, I think she has discovered what it’s actually like being on the other side of the House, because she signed a paper saying there’d be no 3 percent hydro increase, and in fact, we have more than that. It is a challenge being on the government’s side. It is a process.

Then we read on. Of course, the minister has said that we want this to make the government

accountable. I find it interesting. What motivation is here to hold the

government to account? If we look at the third-to-last

section of the

legislation, it says: “Section 5 of the Offence Act does not apply to this Act

or the regulations.” In other words, there is no penalty for contravening this

act.

When we look back at the B.C. Liberal government when they took power in early 2000, they were committed to balanced budgets. What they did was they passed a law that said that for the ministers involved, 10 percent of their salary will be withheld, and if they don’t meet the balanced budget legislation for their ministry, they lose 10 percent of their income.

But there’s no incentive here. There’s no incentive for the minister or his following ministers. And I have absolutely no question about the intents of this minister. I absolutely want to make that very clear. But there is no incentive here. This can actually just be ignored. It can just be written off, and ultimately, what’s it worth? Holding the government to account will simply be the continued job of the opposition, and the government doesn’t have to listen to a thing.

As a matter of fact, if we look at subsection 3(4) as we’re going through this

legislation…. I’ll read this page to you.

Section 2(1) says: “The minister

must….” And 2(2) says: “The minister must….” So 3(1) says: “The strategy

must….” And 3(2): “The strategy must….” It goes on with the word “must.” Must,

must — all requirements of what must be in this plan, except when we come to

(4). It says: “The minister must review the targets set in subsection

(1) before December 31, 2023 and, after doing so” — he or she — “may lay a report

before the Legislative Assembly respecting future targets for the reduction of

poverty.” Why is this all of a sudden “may”?

Actually, I’m giving the minister a heads-up of what I’m most likely going to bring up as we go clause by clause through this. Why “may”? Why isn’t it a “must”?

[2:20 p.m.]

Why aren’t we asking and demanding of whoever the minister is that day, when they review it, that they continue this on — that they continue the program on instead of being like we’ve unfortunately seen in some provinces, where this just collects dust on a shelf? I know that’s not the intent of this. I know that’s not where we’re wanting to go, but unfortunately, sometimes those sorts of things happen.

Then we have also in this legislation…. In 3(2), it talks about how the strategy “must include initiatives,” and it says that they are “opportunities for persons living in poverty to move out of poverty.” Again, my question is simple: how are we going to do that? Are we going to do that…? As the minister said, this is not he alone and his ministry alone that’s doing it. This is completely across government. But is it going to be through something like a jobs plan, like we did when we were in government? Or are we going to go the way of Newfoundland and simply send cash? I don’t know. I’m concerned where this is going.

Then we have this

part in the act that also comments about the commitment to Indigenous peoples. Yes, as the minister talked about, we talk about reconciliation. We talk about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the United Nations declarations. But you know, these are simply commitments to nice-sounding words. What’s the commitment to real action?

Now, fortunately, we do have the LNG project that’s happening up north. But my question is: where are the employment and training opportunities in traditional territories for Indigenous peoples? Why isn’t that kind of thing here in this enabling so that we actually see that coming forward in the strategy.

Now, it may; it may not. We don’t know at this time, and we won’t know until March of next year when we see that. But it certainly was a part of this caucus’s intent when we were in government to make sure that LNG and the whole pipeline and everything with it was going to be a part of bringing economic development and economic opportunities for Indigenous peoples here in the midst of this province.

Also, I find it somewhat concerning that in the midst of the legislation, back when we’re talking about the generalities of the initiatives, we talk about initiatives to increase the affordability of goods, services and housing for people living in poverty and other low-income British Columbians. But when we come to 5(2) and dealing with the actual scope of the legislation, somehow affordability of goods and services is missing. It gets buried under something. I don’t know where for sure. Housing is certainly there as one of the listed ones, but where is the issue of affordability? Where are these things? I simply don’t know. I simply can’t see them.

Of course, my hope is that the minister will quickly get to the plan, a plan of real substance, a plan of real action, and we don’t have more nice words being spoken and more delays. Really, let’s get on with it.

R. Glumac: I’m very happy today to debate the legislation, Poverty Reduction Strategy Act. I’d like to speak a little bit about what got us here today.

What does poverty mean to you? We’ve all seen it in different forms. Maybe you know someone that’s living in poverty. Maybe you yourself have been living in poverty. We live in a province that’s so abundant with resources and riches that it does not seem possible that we see so much poverty in this province today.

Poverty takes on many forms. It’s the people that are in line in the food bank, and those lineups are getting longer and longer every year. Poverty is families that have to leave the heat off in the winter because they have to make a choice between their heating costs and saving money for rent or food.

Poverty is an individual…. I’ve heard this story talking to a grocery store owner in my constituency who has run his grocery store for years and years. More and more often he sees people come in with a limited amount of money, $5 or $10. They go down the aisles, and they make every penny count and get as much food as they possibly can for a limited amount of money.

[2:25 p.m.]

Poverty is a family living paycheque to paycheque, seemingly doing fine, but one little unexpected event that comes into their lives and they will not have the rent for the next month, and they may be out on the street.

Poverty comes in many forms. Generally, it’s defined as the lack of sufficient income to provide for basic necessities of life, consistent with the norms of society in which one lives.

The Conference Board of Canada uses low-income measures to assess how people fare compared to the general population, and they define the poverty line as 50 percent of the national median income. In B.C., there are now 557,000 people living below the poverty line, and 99,000 of them are children. This is the second-worst poverty rate in Canada.

Under the previous government, we saw this divide between the rich and the poor grow larger and larger because the rich were very well served for 16 years by the previous government. The top 2 percent were well taken care of. If you had the corporate money to donate, then you had the ear of the previous government, while the voices of those people living in poverty were not heard.

Now we have a new government, and what are we doing to address poverty? Over the last

year, thousands of people have moved into new affordable homes. We’re rolling

out the most ambitious child care plan in B.C. history, which will make child

care more accessible and affordable for B.C. families.

We’re raising the minimum wage that has been left stagnant for far too long. We’re cutting MSP premiums in half, and we’re eliminating them next year. This makes a big difference for people that are scraping to get by month to month. But it’s not enough.

B.C. is, as we know, the last province in Canada to not have a poverty reduction strategy. Now, with this legislation, we will be getting a poverty reduction strategy, and finally the voices of the poorest people in our society that have been ignored for 16 years will be heard.

The legislation that we’re debating today is the foundation of this, the foundation of B.C.’s first poverty reduction strategy, which will be released in early 2019. It sets out the targets and the timelines, defines the scope of the strategy and ensures that the government will be held responsible — not just this government, but future governments. These targets and accountability will be in law and will ensure that poverty reduction will continue to be a priority.

Over the next five years, we will reduce the overall poverty rate by 25 percent and the child poverty rate by 50 percent — and it’s about time. Some in the opposition have criticized us for taking so long, which I find to be incredibly ridiculous, considering they had 16 years to come up with the poverty reduction strategy. And here we are. We’re going to be bringing it forward.

This strategy is informed directly from the people living in poverty today across the province. The reason it’s taken us a year to get to where we are here is that we had to take the time to sit down with the people that are living in poverty across this province and hear directly from them, because they haven’t been heard for so long.

Between November 2017 and March 2018 we held meetings in 28 communities, talking directly to people about poverty. In each of these meetings, there were two questions asked. One question was: what are the issues facing you and people living in poverty right now? The second question was: what would address these issues and help you and people out of poverty?

Given that the voices of people in poverty have been unheard for so long, I would like to take some time to go through and share the issues that were raised and the challenges that were identified through this public input opportunity.

[2:30 p.m.]

There are many different areas that were touched upon. The biggest one, of course, was housing. Everyone knows the lack of affordable housing. Housing is one of the biggest costs that families face in British Columbia. It makes up a significant proportion of the household income. In many cases, rents were so high that people had to make choices and rely more and more on things like food banks and other services just to make ends meet.

The rental market over the last many years has continued to get tighter and tighter, with more and more competition for fewer and fewer units. Finding a place to rent became more and more challenging. If you had any kind of issue that you had as an individual in the past — if you had a break in your rental history, if you didn’t have a strong reference from a landlord, if your credit check wasn’t strong — then you were at the bottom of the pile, and sometimes you couldn’t find a place to rent.

This kind of discrimination was happening in many different areas. Even people that were receiving income assistance were facing discrimination when landlords were making a choice between who to rent to, or people with disability benefits.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

There are prejudices out there, identified through this public engagement, against certain

races or ethnicities. Prejudices against families with children or pets. These

were the challenges that were faced by people that were living with low income,

trying to find a place to rent in today’s rental market. There were even

bidding wars for renting places. Sometimes landlords would take cash payments

as deposits.

If you were lucky enough to have a place to live, and if you lived in a place for a long time, you also faced challenges with economic evictions. With market rates rising, rental rates rising, landlords would often want to introduce steep rental increases in order to capture that high rent.

Either that or they would not make investments that were needed to improve the quality of housing. There were many stories shared about people living in homes that were full of mould and bedbugs and lacked heat, or not providing access to simple amenities like a laundry room.

Other times tenants were faced with renovictions and demovictions. It was identified very clearly that there is a need for more affordable rental housing, social housing and emergency shelters.

Part of the other challenge that was faced by renters and tenants was the pressure from landlords. There was an uneven power…. There is an uneven power dynamic between landlords and tenants. Many people complained about landlords operating outside of the Residential Tenancy Act. It was difficult if not impossible to get access to any kind of legal recourse in situations where they were forced out of their homes or faced challenges getting their damage deposit back.

Sometimes when government increased income assistance, this resulted in a corresponding increase in rents, so that the only people that benefitted from the change were the landlords themselves.

Another issue that we face, which we see every day, especially in urban areas around the province — in Victoria, Vancouver, Kelowna and many other areas — is homelessness. One of the challenges when you’re homeless is trying to not be homeless. Even if you want to get into a situation where you could have a stable home, it’s very difficult to find appropriate housing.

[2:35 p.m.]

A lot of times the housing that was available was substandard, poor quality. Sometimes people were faced with living in shared living arrangements, sometimes overcrowded, living in illegal suites.

Also, the shelter services were inadequate. At these last-resort kind of services, people are coming in and having concerns around their own personal safety, having concerns around security for their possessions. A lot of times people living with homelessness, everything they own is with them, and they have to leave it in these shelters, and they’re worried about losing these things.

Many times these shelters are not open during the day. So what do you do during the day? It’s raining outside, and you’re forced to stay out and wait for a shelter to open, to come back. This leads to more issues of loneliness and isolation.

There are challenges raised around receiving adequate health care, especially among the working poor and seniors on fixed income and seniors quite often facing challenges with increasing health care costs as they age. There were concerns raised about insufficient services for dental work or eyeglasses or coverage for some medications.

Again, we get into this cycle where sometimes…. You need to address things. You need to have glasses in order to get a job. You need to get certain dental work done, and you need to present yourself well in order to apply for a job. These were challenges that were raised and faced by people living in poverty today, as well as a need for stronger mental health and addictions-related services. There were big gaps raised in that area.

Another issue raised in these public input sessions was around food security, not just access to food but access to nutritious food. As we know, nutritious food costs more. It’s harder to get than unhealthy food. It’s easy to get food…. When talking about the situation with somebody coming into a grocery store with $5, are they going to spend that extra little bit of money to get the nutritious food or spend it on just getting more food? Quite often, it’s just the need to have more.

There were issues raised around children — as we say, 99,000 children living in poverty — going to bed or to school hungry. In some cases, some parents are keeping their kids out of school because they’re worried that teachers would recognize that the children aren’t eating adequately and that they would take that and raise it with authorities. Then people, families, would be concerned about losing their children. Food banks were widely appreciated, but again, there’s a limited supply of nutritious food there as well.

Another issue raised was around ministry services, and many, many challenges were raised around trying to find somebody in the ministry that can help them understand what different types of supports are available or help with completing documentation or paperwork. Sometimes when questions came up, people would have to go back two or three times just to help get the issue resolved.

In some cases, the challenges that people are facing are traumatic. To go back over and over to retell the story of what happened to them that got them into this situation, or whatever they needed to share in order to have their questions answered, was, in itself, reliving the trauma and made it very difficult.

[2:40 p.m.]

There were challenges raised around flexibility and lack of flexibility around the application rules and the funding available. Sometimes there were strict limits on certain things, and if you just fall over that limit, then you don’t have the services or the funding that you may need. Many changes were identified as being needed around earnings exemption policies, provision of education support and current asset limits. It was also raised that families, in some ways, were penalized, in that funding levels for families were less than funding levels for individuals.

It was also raised that there were technical challenges around using on-line services or the phone line. Many times people don’t have a computer, and if they have a computer, they don’t necessarily have good access to the Internet. Some don’t even have a phone line. If you do have a phone line, it was identified many times, you could be on hold for half an hour to an hour, just waiting.

Seniors would have these challenges as well, especially with technology and the Internet. There were concerns raised around how sometimes these websites were not designed in a way to make it simple to navigate. Apart from ministry services, there were concerns around community-based services, those services mainly geared toward crisis response rather than preventative strategies, and concerns around the fact that these services quite often are not available in the areas where people live.

It was raised that there was a need for more stable funding for non-profit and community services and a need for coordination among these services — a kind of one-window access. You’d go to one place and get information about where you could go for your specific needs.

Concerns were raised around transportation. It’s expensive to own a vehicle. If you want to have a job, sometimes you need a vehicle. Of course, with insurance rates and cost of gasoline and everything else, that’s quite expensive. So people quite often have to rely on public transit.

There were issues raised, in many areas of the province, around that — the lack of availability, cost of public transit, access and frequency. Sometimes, even in urban areas, you could not get public transit to where you live. Sometimes you can’t get public transit to where the jobs are. Then, the services change, also, on the weekend. If you’re working on the weekend, you may not be able to take public transit at that time. Concerns were also raised for people living with disabilities and the challenges they have in accessing public transit and handyDART services.

One other issue raised is around the criminalization of poverty. Many times people that are forced into homelessness get into regular conflicts with police or security personnel. Their belongings can be taken from them; their basic rights can be ignored.

Sometimes — in the winter, for example — people may choose to commit a crime just so that they could have a warm place to sleep. Then that record follows them around for the rest of their lives, making it difficult to get a job in the future and making it difficult, if not impossible, even to find a place to live in the housing market, as was discussed earlier.

Those were some of the things that were raised — also issues around education and access to education, challenges around upgrading your skills, applying for different training programs and finding information about the types of opportunities available for education. Sometimes for the education that you’re looking for, you may need to move out of the community to find it. There was an interest in subsidized or free post-secondary education for people in need. There was an interest in student loan relief. It’d make a big difference in people’s lives.

[2:45 p.m.]

I grew up in Port Alberni at a time where everyone had a job. My dad worked in the forestry industry. I remember my street, where I grew up, full of kids. Everyone had nicely cut lawns. It was a nice community to live in. Port Alberni today is one of the communities most facing poverty in the province.

While I understand that it’s very important to have a strong economy, that is not the only answer. You cannot abdicate your responsibility as a government and just say, “The economy needs to be strong; it will take care of everything else,” because that’s ignoring the voices of the poor.

That’s not what this government is going to do. We’re going to grow a strong economy, and we’re going to put in a poverty reduction strategy. Together those things will raise people out of poverty. We’re not going to ignore one over the other. We’re going to do both, because we’re here to listen to all people in the province, not just the top 2 percent.

We’re going to do that with listening to people across this province, listening to the concerns that are being raised. As we go along and as we put this plan into place, as we grow sectors of our economy, our ears are always going to be open. We’re always going to have our people across this province talking to each other. We’re going to make sure that we’re going in the right direction, because the days of just the top-down listening to the top 2 percent…. Those days are over. We’re in a new era here with a new government, and I hope we have the opportunity to do that for a long time.

Deputy Speaker: Hon. Members, the member for Parksville-Qualicum seeks leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

M. Stilwell: Earlier in the House, while the minister was speaking, we had a grade 4

class from False Bay Elementary School on Lasqueti Island here with their teacher

Ms. Anna Dodds. I wanted to make them feel welcome, and I didn’t have that

opportunity. I’m putting it on the record today so I can send them the video that

we, truly, here in the House wanted to make them feel welcome. I hope the House

will do that for them.

Debate Continued

L. Throness: It’s a pleasure to rise in the House and speak about poverty and,

especially, about the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act, which is Bill

I want to say, by way of introduction, that in my former life, I was

sort of an academic, a historian. I studied a lot of the 1700s, and I saw what

government offered at that time. It was a nasty and brutal way to live. I can

tell you there was almost no bureaucracy. There were almost no government

programs. There was something called the poor rate, which was introduced in

about 1555. It was for what was called the decayed householder, and it was just

a pittance of a rate that would keep them, basically, from death’s

door.

So to have a government like we have today is an achievement that is

unparalleled in human history. When you think of our budget, think of health

care — $20 billion a year. It is dedicated only to those who are in need. If

you do not need health care, you have no access to health care. But as soon as

you need health care, you get it. I would say that 70 percent of our province’s

budget is dedicated toward those in need. And that, I think, is an enormous

achievement in our western culture. That has never been equalled anywhere in

the world anywhere in history.

We’re already doing pretty good. I would point out that the NDP have

gone on about poverty reduction since 2005. That’s 13 long years. I would point

out that there was no poverty reduction strategy while they were in government.

It was only when they didn’t have to implement it that they had the

idea.

In fact, B.C. was a have-not province in the ’90s while the NDP were in

charge. There was no poverty reduction strategy for the province. When we

compared to all of the provinces in Canada, we were a poor province. But the

NDP had no plan to get us out of poverty, provincially. We were receiving

social assistance from other provinces.

Well, I guess it’s no surprise, then, that there would have been no

poverty reduction plan for children or for adults at that time. They only began

to talk about it when things began to get better under the B.C.

Liberals.

[2:50 p.m.]

In 2013 — and in 2009, I think — in the NDP election platforms, a

poverty reduction platform was promised, and now, finally, ten years later, we

have a piece of legislation before us. What we do not have is any tangible idea

of what a strategy might be. We have a framework. It has some generalities in

it. We have a mandate.

We have a piece of legislation saying: “Minister, you ought to put

together a plan.” But the minister already had that in his mandate letter a

year ago on July 18, 2017. I want to quote from it. It says to the minister:

“Design and implement a provincewide strategy of legislated targets and

timelines.” That was 14 months ago.

Six months ago, in March, the member for Vancouver-Kensington came to

our city of Chilliwack, and she held a consultation session on poverty

reduction and on the plan. I attended. I participated. I sat around a table

with others, as did my colleague from the riding of Chilliwack. We made

contributions to the discussion, but there appears to have been nothing that

came from these discussions. The consultations were done six months ago, but we

still don’t have a plan.

After 13 years and two election platforms, after 13 years of insistently

and urgently demanding a poverty reduction strategy, after listening to

question after question in this House in question period about a requirement

for a strategy, right now, 14 months after the government takes power, we have

legislation — oh, by the way — that gives the minister another six months to

come up with a plan, until March 31, which will be then 21 months after the

election, nearly two years.

We don’t have a strategy today. We don’t have a plan. We have a mandate

for a plan — a second mandate for a plan, even though the minister was given a

mandate earlier. It can’t be all that urgent if the government takes its sweet

time, nearly two years, to develop any concrete ideas about how to reduce

poverty.

It makes me think, in my suspicious mind, that perhaps this is more of a

political talking point than a real plan. We will be looking carefully to see

what comes of it.

I want to talk about a fundamental difference between the NDP and the

B.C. Liberals, because I think there’s a basic difference in perspective

between our two parties. Our party thinks less about poverty reduction and more

about wealth creation and economic development. The phrase “poverty reduction”

sort of suggests that we accept poverty as a fact of life. We’re just going to

reduce its harm by putting a few more of taxpayers’ dollars into people’s

pockets.

It sort of, to my mind, parallels in a very broad sense the debate about

drugs and addiction in B.C. The NDP emphasize harm reduction, that we should

accept people’s addiction and just help addicts live positive lives, which is

what the Ministry of Health officials told me in standing committee. This

entails, for instance, spending $100 million a year on methadone rather than

spending it on treatment to help people get out of addiction. It maintains

people on their addiction. I would rather that we lift people out of addiction

entirely, help them break free from the addiction to live positive and

successful lives.

In the same way, I would rather not accept poverty at all. I would

rather that we lift people out of poverty entirely, help them break free from

poverty to live positive and successful lives.

Now, the emphasis on poverty reduction, to my mind, is more on

government programs, government cheques to people — like raising welfare and

disability rates and offering other programs to low-income people. I don’t

oppose many of these, but it maintains people on low incomes. It doesn’t

actually help them escape low incomes for the rest of their lives. I would

rather take the approach that we don’t accept poverty, that we beat poverty by

economic development and by employment.

The member for Port Moody–Coquitlam was just talking about child

poverty. I want to remind him that between 2003 and 2014 — and I’m using, here,

a graph produced by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which is much

relied on by the present government — using the market-based measure, which is

laid out in this legislation as being the mandated measure by which we measure

poverty, child poverty declined by 43 percent.

Now, why was that? That took into account the recession. There was a

recession beginning in 2008, and yes, we went through that recession, but

still, between ’03 and ’14, it declined by 43 percent. That’s because of

economic development. It’s called prudence by a government that pushed forward

with economic development.

[2:55 p.m.]

That, I think, is why we in the government did not have a poverty

reduction plan. Our poverty reduction plan was our jobs plan. It was the wide

array of economic development initiatives that we undertook, like LNG, which is

the very best antidote to poverty.

I would point out here that the NDP inherited LNG from us. Would LNG

have ever gotten off the ground? Would it ever have even occurred to the NDP to

try to begin thinking about LNG? Probably not. But they inherited that from us.

That’s one of the many programs that we began to help our economy that reduced

child poverty between 2003 and 2014 by 43 percent.

I would point out that the government, after more than a year in power,

after a full budget, doesn’t have a plan for that either. No plan for

provincewide economic development, no plan to create jobs across the province

other than, say, an innovation commissioner, which is a good idea. We probably

get good advice from the innovation commissioner. But that should be one

element of a multisectoral, aggressive plan with targets and timelines, just

like this legislation has, like we had in our jobs plan, to create jobs and

develop our economy to lift people out of poverty.

We have a classic difference between us — the NDP concentrating on

government action and we on this side looking to the market, to personal

initiative in order not just to reduce poverty but to lift people out of

poverty permanently.

Now, I want to go on to talk about the legislation. I have eight points

that I want to make about the legislation before us today.

First of all, the legislation is a tall order for the minister, but I

want to congratulate him for biting off a big chunk. It’s not an easy task that

has been set before him, and I appreciate that there are at least concrete

targets for him to hit — 50 percent in poverty generally and 25 percent for

children.

Interjection.

L. Throness: Perhaps I got that backwards. He has to get 170,000 people out of

poverty, which was defined by the market-based basket measure in 2015 as just

under $20,000 a year. I imagine now it would be probably $22,000,

$23,000.

What kind of idea could we conjure up that might help us achieve getting

170,000 people out of poverty over five years? Well, I would point out that

even the minimum wage, which right now is $12.65 an hour…. You will earn, if

you’re working full time, more than $2,000 a month. That’s 24,000-and-some

dollars per year, which is more than the market-based measure of poverty. It’s

much more than double what you can receive on social assistance. Certainly, the

government could not afford to hand out social assistance payments of $2,000 a

month, but a full-time, steady, minimum-wage job would lift a person out of

poverty immediately and permanently.

But the average wage in B.C. is not $12.65. The average wage in B.C. is

$27 an hour. Probably the job that you would get would not be minimum wage. It

would be well over minimum wage. It would lift a person well out of poverty if

we could just get that person a job. So if we could just find jobs for 170,000

people in five years, then we will achieve the target of the minister, and I

would encourage him to do that.

As I always say, the government can only ever afford to help people

subsist. They can never make people middle-class. People need to enter into the

broad stream of the economy in order to enter the middle class.

I met with a constituent long ago who complained to me. He said: “I only

make $1,400 a month on my government stuff. I can’t travel. I can’t go

anywhere. I’ve just got to sit here.” He had a packet of cigarettes, of course,

in his pocket, but he couldn’t live the lifestyle that he did when he was

working. He felt that the government ought to offer him a middle-class

standard. But that’s really impossible for the government to do on a broad

basis.

The only option for us to lift people out of poverty to the degree that

the minister wants to — and I commend him for wanting to do that — is to

increase the economy. Unfortunately, there is nothing in this legislation

mandating that the government develop a plan for employment and training. That

would do a lot to lift people out of poverty.

The third thing I want to say is that the legislation mandates the

reduction of child poverty by 25 percent in the next three years. That’s 30,000

children. It’s a lot of children. But children are a casualty of parental

poverty. Children don’t become poor by their own actions. They don’t earn

anything.

[3:00 p.m.]

The answer to immediately lift a child out of poverty is to get dad or

mom a good-paying job. There is no jobs plan in this bill, nor is a jobs plan

mandated in this bill. Given the record of the NDP, I’m a bit suspicious as to

whether there will be one. But the minister said some good things, so I’m

thinking good thoughts. I have hopeful thoughts for the future that there will

be a jobs plan in this strategy. We will be watching closely for it and

demanding it of the government.

Four, there’s nothing in the bill before us about affordability for the

taxpayer. How much will the plan cost? This plan is a vessel into which you can

pour massive increases in government spending. I say that because the

government has named all the aggrieved groups who will come to this legislation

with high expectations. It has given them the green light to make demands.

There’s a total of 13 groups who will now consider themselves official group

victims of poverty, and they will throw upon the government the responsibility

to get them out of poverty.

The next thing I have a problem with is that there is no focus on

government help for those who cannot work. Now, I understand that some people

cannot work. I have people come into my office. I had a couple come in who are

probably 75 years old, in ill health, and they would have been on the street

that night if they did not get their welfare cheque. We pulled out all the

stops to get them their welfare cheque that night so that they could go home to

their bed.

These people are precarious. They can no longer work. They’re in ill

health. They’re elderly. The poverty reduction plan should focus on these

people instead of people who are of able body and sound mind and able to work.

I think the plan is not focused. I certainly hope, when the government brings

forth its details that will flesh out what the legislation has before us today,

that there will be a focus on those who are in ill health, who are elderly and

who are unable to work.

My next problem with this legislation is that the government has

developed a major talk shop in this legislation. Just about everybody is

included on a great big advisory committee with nine categories of person on

it. They’re going to travel around the province every calendar year at

taxpayers’ expense, and I expect that instead of action, we’re going to get a

lot of talk and a lot of new demands year after year.

In fact, I think this group will rival the Standing Committee on

Finance, which does its pre-budget consultations every year. I expect that this

new committee will travel around in the fall before the budget, and it will

gather all kinds of political support for new programs and new spending and new

escalating demands on the taxpayer. In other words, we’re building in an

institutional, structural momen­tum for higher and more government

spending.

Do you think that any one of those people on this new committee will ask

for less spending by government? I don’t think so. There is one business person

mandated to be on that committee. And since the minister is appointing

everybody on the committee, I’m sure he will find a friendly business person, a

pliable business person, to join in on the chorus of requests of government

that will be coming from this committee.

The seventh problem? We have yet to see the cost of the plan. I suppose

that the cost of the plan will be in the budget next February. It will be very

interesting to see if the government will be able to balance the budget after

the minister in charge of Poverty Reduction gets through with his

plan.

The next thing is very interesting. I would observe that the government

has given the minister five years to accomplish the goals of poverty reduction.

But that five-year period will not begin next March when his plan begins and

then continue completely under the NDP watch. No, that period began two years

ago. It began in 2016.

In fact, B.C.’s economy has been growing under the B.C. Liberals and

getting better since 2016. Under the previous government, in fact, poverty was

being reduced already, for a year before the government took power. This

government is still enjoying the halo effect from what the B.C. Liberals did in

the last year. Five balanced budgets and a healthy surplus has got to reduce

poverty. They inherited LNG. They inherited a strong growing economy from

us.

In other words, two of the five years of the minister’s mandate have

already passed and will be attributed to the good economic management and

growth provided under a B.C. Liberal government.

[3:05 p.m.]

Of course, the NDP, in three years, is going to claim it all for

themselves, I have no doubt. The NDP doesn’t want to travel under its own

record. It will have to rely on the good economic record of the B.C.

Liberals.

In conclusion, I want to quote from the minister’s mandate letter from

last year, because there’s a good item in there. It’s something I want to offer

the minister. It says: “British Columbians expect our government to work

together to advance the public good. That means seeking out, fostering and

advancing good ideas regardless of which side of the House they come

from.”

I have a great idea for the minister, and that idea is to create a jobs

plan. Create a plan for economic development for the whole province, to offer

training to low-income British Columbians so they can break free from

government assistance, so they can join the ranks of the middle class and

permanently escape from poverty. That’s the best thing the minister could do

for people of low-income B.C., and I would recommend that idea from this side

to him and to his government.

R. Leonard: I’m trying to reconcile the member opposite’s portrayal of a robust B.C.

over 16 years of a Liberal government, because it really doesn’t jive with the

experience of people in my community. I’m happy to report that after 16 years,

the new government that came in July of 2017 began a program of making life

more affordable for British Columbians. I think that we’re headed in the right

direction.

I’m very proud to be able to speak about the proposed very-first-in-B.C.

poverty reduction strategy for British Columbia. We’ve taken so many steps to

make life more affordable for British Columbians, but we really need to bring

together a poverty reduction strategy so that we can actually make real

progress.

We’ve introduced legislation that sets bold poverty reduction targets.

The targets are about raising children and their families and others out of

poverty. The notion of trickle-down economics has most assuredly not worked.

Serving the top 2 percent for so many years, the income gap grew and grew under

the previous government. It’s been a path of not only stagnating wages but

policy that even turned wages back. My children don’t forget the six bucks an

hour as a training wage that lasted for years.

A path of a government which ignored the growing affordability

challenges of the people of British Columbia, which underfunded social programs

and cut services…. All of these things led B.C., a prosperous province, to have

the second-worst poverty rate in Canada, with statistics from 2016 showing

557,000 people living in poverty — 99,000 of them being children.

In my constituency, the use of the food bank grew, as did the use of our

Sonshine Lunch Club. It’s our community’s soup kitchen. I remember the day a

few years ago when visiting St. George’s United Church in downtown Courtenay,

where the soup kitchen operates. Volunteers cooking the lunch reported an

alarming rise in the number of children and youth getting one of their daily

meals there. So many dropped in just to make their food allowances stretch

through from cheque to cheque.

I was once told that you have to pay attention to an issue constantly to

keep it top of mind for everyone if you want to see change. And change is

needed.

So many children are experiencing poverty. We know children who live in

poverty don’t do as well in life because it hurts their health, hurts their

educational outcomes, and they are so often trapped in the poverty

cycle.

In my constituency, the Comox Valley Community Foundation has produced

an annual report called Vital Signs . In fact, the 2018 report was just

launched the day before yesterday. It identifies trends in a wide range of

areas critical to quality of life.

[3:10 p.m.]

I love how Norm Carruthers, the Vital Signs chair, and Jody Macdonald,

the executive director of the Comox Valley Community Foundation, portray the

opportunities afforded by the Vital Signs report: “Vital Signs pushes

our community to ask, ‘What?’ and then, ‘So what?’ and finally: ‘Now what?’” It

is the foundation for action, and a poverty reduction strategy takes the “Now

what?” question to a place to achieve real results.

The Comox Valley early years collaborative uses the early development

instrument as a population health measurement for children’s vulnerabilities as

they enter and go through school. Their report is included in Vital

Signs . There are four scales that are examined — physical health and

well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, and language and cognitive

development. It is distressing to learn that each of the measures is increasing

and that 40 percent of the Comox Valley children are vulnerable on one or more

of the scales. Our children in the Comox Valley who are entering kindergarten

are consistently measuring higher vulnerabilities than anywhere else on

Vancouver Island and, indeed, across B.C.

The collaborative wants to change that trend. Now, I know that at one

time…. I’m not sure where it sits today, but three of the elementary schools in

my community were amongst the most challenged in the province, and it is no

accident that these schools serve many families living in poverty. A poverty

reduction strategy will help the collaborative reach their goal of reducing

children’s vulnerabilities to 25 percent from 40 percent today.

The Vital Signs report also identifies that the income gap for

women is increasing. In just five years between 2010 and 2015, the difference

in incomes between men and women in the Comox Valley increased by over $3,500.

That’s definitely the wrong direction. And where median family incomes are near

$80,000, in lone-parent families, most of which are headed by women, it’s a

mere $42,000, nearly half the take-home pay of families with two

parents.

Of course, averages belie the realities of the many who fall below the

abysmal average — those without full-time work, those working minimum wage

jobs. A living wage in the Comox Valley has been calculated at $16.59 an hour

in 2018, yet many people work part-time, minimum-wage jobs. A poverty reduction

strategy will help make change in people’s lives.

We can also look at one of the most critical pieces of the affordability

puzzle: housing. In the Comox Valley, 45.4 percent are paying more than 30

percent of their income on rent, and 20 percent are paying more than 50

percent. That doesn’t leave much for food, health, entertainment,

transportation and all the other things that families need. B.C. Housing’s

wait-list in the Comox Valley grew from 42 units in 2013 to 147 this year.

That’s a 250 percent increase. That’s people waiting a long time for a

home.

I also want to talk about those without a home at all. The leading cause

of homelessness is poverty. My community has undertaken a number of

point-in-time counts over the past few years. In 2016, it was very surprising

and distressing to learn from the Comox Valley Coalition to End Homelessness

survey that there were more women than men who did not have a home. This year

117 homeless were surveyed, an increase of 13 percent in the count over 2016.

This year still a large number, 45 percent, are female; 32 percent identified

as Indigenous; 29 percent were seniors, aged 55 and older; and 6 percent were

youth.

The absolute count included nine Comox Valley children living without a

safe, secure place to sleep at night. Imagine how hard that is for those

children. Imagine how hard it is for their classmates whose life circumstances

cannot fathom the challenges of their friends who, by accident of birth, suffer

so greatly.

[3:15 p.m.]

One 45-year-old woman in my community reported in the report, Vital

Signs , how she became homeless and had to give up her child. We’ve

certainly heard about other such stories in the Comox Valley — children who are

impacted in life-altering ways by circumstances not of their own making, and

they are not included in the homeless count.

Over the years, many people have lost their lives on the street in my

constituency. Most were relatively young, only in their early 50s. Yet more and

more seniors are finding themselves homeless after a lifetime of keeping body

and soul together — in the blink of an eye, in dire circumstances, underpaid or

without jobs or pensions, often driven into homelessness by physical and/or

mental health issues.

I was told once that if you didn’t have a drinking problem before you

became homeless, you probably got one pretty quick. So there are challenges

that continue to grow when you’re homeless.

Here we are, finally about to embark on a strategy that will maintain

our eye on the prize, making lives better for British Columbia’s most

vulnerable, not only raising people out of poverty but also raising all of us

up as we live with shared prosperity. We all pay a price for ignoring the

suffering of others.

I want to quote Miles Corak, a professor of economics at the City

University of New York and economist-in-residence at Employment and Social

Development Canada during 2017. I’m quoting from an op-ed in the Globe and

Mail from late August, where he was commenting on the federal

government’s new poverty reduction strategy.

He suggested that budgets, programs and money spent are “not good

enough.” He went on further to say that a poverty reduction strategy needs to

be a set of priorities that reflect our concerns with measurable targets so we

can plot a path to somewhere better. As he said, answering the question: “Are

we there yet?” It makes “the connection between actions and

results.”

We will reduce the overall poverty rate by 25 percent and lift half of

the children living in poverty into a place of hope and aspiration within the

next five years. I am proud to support the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act

before us today, and I hope I’ve helped convince everyone.

J. Yap: It’s my honour to participate in this second reading debate on this

bill, Bill 39, Poverty Reduction Strategy Act.

This bill is one which, of course, was a key commitment of the new

government, one that they talked about for many years when they were in

opposition, when the NDP was in opposition. As has been mentioned, they

introduced bills while they were in opposition, private members’ bills, to

promote a poverty reduction strategy. In the last election campaign, this was

one of their key commitments — to introduce a poverty reduction strategy. So

here we are, in October of this year, debating this bill which is meant to move

this strategy along.

Before I get into the substance of my comments, I do want to first of

all acknowledge some of the comments that colleagues have shared. It was

mentioned that this is something that anyone who aspires to public life, to be

an elected official, aspires to — to make things better and to want to get to a

place where things are better for our citizens.

This is a goal that we share, whether you’re on the left side of the

political spectrum, in the centre or on the right. We all want to see lives

improve, the lives of our citizens, of British Columbians.

[3:20 p.m.]

I guess the question is: how do we get there? How do we measure the

results, and what are the strategies that we deploy? I want to recognize that,

yes, there are citizens in our province that do face challenges and, frankly,

struggle. I want to give a shout-out to those that dedicate their time, their

energy, their lives to helping fellow citizens.

I have constituents, as do you, Madame Speaker, in our community of

Richmond who dedicate their time and their lives and their energy to help those

that are less fortunate. I want to give a shout-out to those members of groups

such as the St. Alban’s community, St. Alban’s Anglican Church, and Gilmore

Park United Church and the Salvation Army, who collectively and individually

work hard, day in, day out, to support those in the community who are less

fortunate, who are living in poverty, who need supports. Whether it’s through

shelter, whether it’s through providing a regular community meal, whether it’s

through helping connect people to services, there are people in our communities

that dedicate themselves to this, and I commend them.

Of course, this is something which a government, any government, wants

to focus on, to help those that are in need. I was touched when I heard my

colleague from Chilliwack talk about his recent experience with a couple that

were in desperate straits, who truly needed help. That’s where government can

really make a difference to help those that really need help and are simply not

able to on their own.

As has been said, one of the philosophical differences between the

current government and our side is the fact that we simply have to recognize

that the best path to prosperity, the best path to lifting people up from

poverty, is a job. That is, has been and will continue to be the focus of

members of my caucus.

When we were in government, Madame Speaker, as I know you recall, we had

a number of successive years of success with our B.C. jobs plan that, through

the four-year period when it was implemented, created over 250,000 jobs for the

province of British Columbia and made our economy, B.C.’s economy, one of the

strongest, if not the strongest, in Canada several years in a row.

That is something that we’re proud of, and that is some­thing that

the new government last year inherited — a strong economy, a job-creating

economy. Unfortunately, as we have already heard, a commitment to a jobs plan,

to growing the economy, to growing the private sector economy, is lacking from

this new government. We hear a lot of commitments to spending, to putting more

resources into programs — and some are needed programs; I’m not denying that —

but it’s basically more spending and higher taxes, and we don’t see a credible

jobs plan.

I know this week we celebrated the conclusion of one major investment in

the LNG sector. Our former Premier, Christy Clark, was the initiator, and

members on this side worked hard for a number of years to bring it to a point

where we had the final investment decision that will create 10,000 jobs during

the construction and almost 1,000 ongoing permanent jobs when the project is

completed — a $40 billion investment that will make a difference to communities

all around the province, especially in the north, and that is the single

largest investment, private sector investment, not just in British Columbia’s

history but in Canada’s history.

That didn’t just happen. That happened because of a focus and because of

a dedication to creating an economic climate that would draw investment,

creating a jobs plans. We’re proud of that jobs plan, which helped lift so many

people up the economic ladder, including people who were in poverty, and helped

lift them out of poverty. That’s what is lacking in this strategy.

[3:25 p.m.]

I do want to touch on this, that this is really a…. This act is titled

Poverty Reduction Strategy Act, but in fact, it doesn’t create the poverty

strategy. It does set out the requirements of what will go into this strategy,

this reduction strategy, and that there will need to be consultation and a

committee that will advise the minister. It sets out the diversity required to

go into this committee that will provide the input to the minister.

This sets out a timeline that gives the minister till the spring of next

year, till March 31, 2019, to bring in the strategy, to bring in the plan. That

would be almost two years, 21 months, since this government came in wanting to

hit the ground running, wanting to bring in all their great ideas, including a

poverty reduction strategy.

That’s not what this bill that’s before us is going to do today. It’s

going to give the minister more time to kick the can down the road to the

spring of next year before we actually see the strategy. Now that, I am sure,

will be a bit of a disappointment to those that have wanted to work with this

government and to start to see some things happen.

Yes, the government has already started to make some changes that I

imagine are part of the poverty reduction strategy. But as we have heard, this

is not the strategy. This is a plan to have a strategy by the spring of next

year.

There are no specifics. There is an aspirational commitment. There is a

commitment that’s set out that poverty will be reduced by 25 percent over this

period of time, by 2024, and that child poverty will be reduced by 50 percent

over this period. So that’s in there. But the level of poverty, as we’ve heard,

has already been on a reducing track. We heard, as my colleague indicated, that

during the last full year of the previous government, our government, poverty

actually was on a reducing track. That was the result of a focus on job

creation, on a strong economy, on creating a strong investment climate that

would lead to more jobs to lift people up.

That is something that the new government inherited last year. As I

said, we don’t see any indication of a jobs plan. We see a plan to do lots of

consultation, to do lots of reviews, but sadly, no dedication to growing our

economy.

In fact, we have seen that since this government started, last July, the

number of private sector jobs in British Columbia has been on a declining

trend. Almost 40,000 jobs have been lost since the NDP formed government in

July of last year. That is a troubling trend; that is a troubling

trend.

We, on this side, believe, again, in the power of a strong economy that

will lift everyone up, that will increase wages for all British Columbians and

that would be the key to the development of our great province, where everyone

has an opportunity.

Yes, it is important. We believe that we have to have free enterprise

with a human face. I know you believe that, Madame Speaker. That includes

looking after those that truly need help by creating an economy that creates

jobs, private sector jobs, good jobs that will help individuals, neighbourhoods

and communities all around our province.

Sadly, this is not something that we’re seeing from this government and

certainly not something that is touched on by this poverty reduction strategy

that the minister, I’m sure, has worked hard to get to this point but is

lacking.

[3:30 p.m.]

As we move forward with discussion, debate, on this bill, as we get into

committee stage, I’m sure there will be an opportunity for all of us to drill

down to the actual sections of this bill and to have the opportunity to

question the minister on how this proposal will actually, in a sustainable way

over the coming years, grow our economy and create private sector jobs that

will truly sustain a real poverty reduction plan for the province of British

Columbia. I look forward to that.

Hon. M. Mungall: I really wanted to speak to this piece of legislation. I am personally

very ecstatic that it has finally been introduced by a government here in this

House. I spent several years across the floor in opposition introducing a

poverty reduction plan — five times, no less. Each and every time members who

are now in opposition, when they were in government, refused to bring it to the

floor for debate, much less pass this into legislation. They could have

introduced their own bill, but they chose not to.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

So when I hear members opposite use words like: “This bill just kicks

the issue down the road. It just kicks the can down the road….” What are they

talking about? I spent eight years on the other side, in opposition, watching

them. They didn’t even kick a can down the road. They just ignored it

altogether. They just pretended that poverty didn’t really exist here in

British Columbia, maybe because they were busy working for the top 2 percent of

income earners. They gave a tax break to those people.

But when it came to supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our

community — people living in poverty, people who are struggling — they ignored

them year after year. We got a little bit of movement from them when we brought

forward the issue of the child support clawback, and they recognized that, yes,

that clawback was wrong. We saw $17 million go back into the hands of children

who deserved to see their child support from their non-custodial parent. That

was a little bit of give, but mostly what they did, from people living in

poverty, was take.

The bus pass clawback is a case in point, where they gave with one hand

and took with the other. A raise to rates, the first that was seen in so long,

and then they took it away with the other hand in that very same

budget.

When I hear members opposite, from the B.C. Liberal caucus, talk about

kicking the can down the road, I have to say that they didn’t even identify a

can to kick, much less care about this issue, much less introduce legislation,

much less actually take action, making life more affordable for British

Columbians and making sure that people are being lifted out of poverty. What

we’re talking about with this plan is lifting 25 percent of people who are

currently in poverty and 50 percent of children who are currently in poverty,

out of poverty. That’s what we’re talking about here.

When British Columbia has some of the worst poverty rates in the country

that happened under the B.C. Liberal watch, we’re coming in with solutions to

the problem that they created. I keep hearing the mumblings and the heckles

coming from the opposition benches that it’s all about jobs and you need to

have a jobs plan. Well, I’m very proud of something that happened this week —

the largest private sector investment deal in British Columbian history, in

Canadian history. So $40 billion of investment is coming to the north of this

province.

[3:35 p.m.]

Coming from a background of advocating for people living in poverty and

finding ways to get out of poverty, whether I was the coordinator at the Nelson

Food Cupboard, the community coordinator for the Nelson Committee on

Homelessness, the community coordinator for the Habondia microlending circle or

as a Nelson city councillor or as the MLA for Nelson-Creston….

When I talked to community after community, to First Nations leaders

throughout the north on what a liquefied natural gas plant meant for them, what

LNG Canada was working on and what they were working on with them, it was clear

the leadership from First Nations communities and non-Indigenous communities —

that what they saw as opportunities for pathways out of poverty for them was an

opportunity for their communities, an opportunity for this province and an

opportunity for this country.

Jobs, absolutely, are important. We are the government that’s been able

to successfully unlock the investment that LNG Canada had for this province and

for this country. We have successfully done that. But to honestly think, as the

opposite members do, that a jobs plan is the only way that you would address

poverty — to honestly think that — is to bury your head in the sand. It is to

clearly be working for the top 2 percent, because poverty is so much more

complex than just: “Go get a job.”

It is more complex than that. It is mental health and addiction

services. It is better care in the Ministry of Children and Families. It is

better care in the Ministry of Social Development. It is better health care. It

is K to 12. It is post-secondary education. It is opportunities for training

and apprenticeships — apprenticeships that they have been criticizing this week

in question period.

Interjections.

Hon. M. Mungall: It is about a minimum wage, a minimum wage that they refused to lift.

For over a decade, they refused to lift the minimum wage.

A poverty reduction plan is also about housing. What have we done on

that front? Well, a $6.6 billion investment, over the next ten years, into

affordable housing in this province — something they ignored for years. It’s

also about child care and investing in child care so people can get back into

the workforce. We’re investing $1 billion into a child care program, one of the

most significant new social programs that British Columbia is going to

see.

Poverty isn’t just a simplistic jobs plan that the B.C. Liberals

introduced or still talk about today from the opposition benches. It is more

complex. It requires a complex solution, it requires a coordinated effort, it

requires a plan, and it requires a plan that holds government accountable.

That’s what we’re introducing. That’s what we’re bringing to the floor of this

Legislature and joining with every single other province and territory in the

country with a plan.

Finally, B.C. is among its Canadian partners in having a poverty

reduction plan. No longer is this province ignoring the issue. No longer is

this province burying its head in the sand. No longer is this province simply

working for the top 2 percent. This province, this province’s government, is

working for every British Columbian. The fact that we’re introducing this

legislation today shows that.

I’m very proud to be with a government that recognizes that addressing

poverty is a priority and that we have the courage to take it on. I want to

congratulate the minister responsible, because he’s the member who first

introduced the concept of a poverty reduction plan to this House back in

That he is now the minister and introducing legislation, not as a

private member from opposition but as the minister responsible, is, I think,

very, very exciting. It is wonderful. I’m so glad that he’s had the opportunity

to do that, and I’m so glad that British Columbia has had the opportunity to

finally join with the rest of Canada to take this issue seriously and develop a

plan so that we can tackle poverty in this province and see it reduced, and see

prosperity go to everybody. That’s what British Columbia deserves.

[3:40 p.m.]

S. Furstenau: I’m happy to take my place in the debate on Bill 39, the Poverty

Reduction Strategy Act, and to speak in favour of this bill. The time is well

overdue for B.C. to have a poverty reduction strategy in place. We are the only

province in Canada left without one.

Despite our growth in prosperity as measured by GDP, we have seen

consistently high rates of poverty in B.C. Year after year, poverty rates have

remained unchanged and unacceptably high. We have continued to see poverty

rates above the national average. As of 2015, one in five children in B.C. were

living in poverty.

Poverty disproportionately affects children in single-parent families.

Half of all children living in single-parent families were living in poverty in

2015. Indigenous people, recent immigrants and people with disabilities are

also more vulnerable to poverty.

We also have one of the highest levels of inequality in Canada,

estimated to be second only to Alberta. There is no excuse to let these

unacceptably high levels of poverty and inequality continue in a province as

wealthy as ours.

To take the urgently needed steps to address this unacceptable

situation, I welcome government’s move to implement a poverty reduction

strategy. Both the B.C. Greens and the B.C. NDP campaigned in last year’s

election to implement poverty reduction strategies. We reiterated that in our

joint commitment in our confidence and supply agreement. This is strong

legislation. It sets ambitious targets and ensures accountability for meeting

those targets.

I particularly welcome the target to reduce child poverty by 50 percent

by 2024. We know how critical the early years in particular are for

neurological and psychological development. It’s crucial that we give children

the best possible foundation in life to allow them to live happy and healthy

lives and to meet their full potential. These targets are ambitious, but I

believe they’re achievable.

It’s also important that this legislation enshrines these targets in

legislation, ensuring that future governments are held to account for this

plan. The fact that the minister must provide an annual report on government’s

progress in implementing this strategy provides much-needed transparency. This

is further to the establishment of an advisory committee, which should be able

to keep government accountable to its work.

Moreover, I’m excited at the ongoing work being done to develop a

genuine progress indicator for British Columbia. This will move us away from an

exclusive focus on GDP as a measure of progress towards a measure that reflects

the actual well-being of people. This will also serve to hold government

accountable to this plan.

Yet while this legislation sets the framework for a strong poverty

reduction strategy in B.C., we have yet to see the development of the strategy

and the commitment government will make to see it be successful. This effort

must be wide-ranging, and it will require a whole-of-government approach, from

early childhood education to K-to-12 education to mental health and

addictions.

When discussing the cost of directly addressing the problem of poverty

in B.C., it is important to consider the significant social and economic costs

from the status quo. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives estimates that

poverty in B.C. costs society $8.1 billion to $9.2 billion annually. This

figure stems not only from the cost of social assistance programs to the

government but also the costs associated with the adverse consequences that

living in poverty can create.

People living in poverty have to contend with poorer health outcomes,

higher-than-average levels of domestic abuse, more challenges in school,

leading to lower educational performance and high levels of stress and mental

health problems. The adverse outcomes of poverty lead to increased use of

public health care, more hospitalizations and lost economic activity, all of

which result in higher costs to government.

I also believe it’s critical that this strategy be updated to reflect

changes we are seeing in the economy and the work, which has only just started,

that will bring new insights and recommendations for government on how to

respond to those changes.

[3:45 p.m.]

I’m encouraged that the minister has committed to updating the poverty

reduction strategy based on both the recommendations of the Fair Wages

Commission on livable incomes and on the recommendations of the basic income

committee. Our caucus believes their work is crucial to updating how we

approach poverty reduction from a viewpoint that recognizes the changes we are

seeing in the world of work.

In last year’s election, we campaigned on the need to transition to

livable incomes through establishing a Fair Wages Commission to raise the

minimum wage and advise on how to close the gap with livable wages and through

designing a basic income pilot. These commitments form key parts of our

confidence and supply agreement.

I look forward to seeing the results of the work of both the Fair Wages

Commission and the basic income committee. We will continue to work with the

government to ensure that their findings and recommendations are meaningfully

included in an updated version of the strategy.

It’s important to note that the majority of British Columbians living in

poverty are not welfare recipients. Working poverty is a growing problem across

B.C. as the high cost of living, the low minimum wage and the growth of

precarious employment have all contributed to rising levels of working

poverty.

Changing trends are changing what the face of poverty looks like and

resulting in more widespread income insecurity for British Columbians from all

walks of life. We are seeing more jobs being automated, with a number of

forecasts suggesting the potential for rapid elimination of jobs across a range

of sectors. Some studies estimate that half of Canadian jobs could be impacted

by automation in the next decade alone.

Alongside this threat, we are seeing a huge rise in part-time and

contract work, the so-called rise of the precariat. Many people are suffering

from job insecurity and lower incomes due to lower wages and fewer hours. The

federal Finance Minister even told Canadians to get used to “job churn” —

short-term, contract-based employment and a number of career changes in one’s

life.

In the face of trends like these, we need to rethink and modernize our

approach to combating poverty and income insecurity. For example, raising the

minimum wage is not an adequate answer to reducing working poverty today, given

the changing conditions of the world of work. A higher minimum wage alone fails

to provide financial security to those faced with precarious jobs in contract

work. You only benefit from a higher minimum wage to the extent that you

maintain stable employment with sufficient hours, something that is becoming

more and more difficult for more and more people.

Poverty and income insecurity are becoming more widespread and also more

complex, as people struggle to make ends meet, as jobs become less secure and

the cost of living skyrockets. Absolutely, we need to reduce both the depth and

the breadth of poverty as it exists today. I am proud of the ambitious targets

government has set to this end. I know they will require a concerted effort by

all of government to achieve.

We believe we also need to take a step back and look at how the nature

of poverty and income insecurity is changing and to consider innovative ways to

provide every British Columbian with real security as we go forward.

As a party, we believe government should hold the health and the

well-being of all British Columbians as their primary responsibility. Reducing

poverty is a central part of this responsibility. Together we must address the

unacceptable levels of poverty and inequality that continue to exist in our

province. We must ensure that we don’t allow vulnerable members of our society

to fall so far behind that they struggle to even get up again.

Instead, let’s strive for a province where everyone can feel secure,

where all British Columbians can lead happy and healthy lives without the fear

and uncertainty brought by income insecurity and poverty. I hope that this

effort is something that every member of this House can support.

M. Dean: I’m very proud to be standing here in this House today to talk about our

government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Act legislation, Bill 39. I think it’s

actually been fantastic, given the amount of work that has led to this

legislation being drafted. The minister and the parliamentary secretary and all

of the staff in the ministry have actually taken the time to go around the

province to talk to advocates, to talk to individuals, to talk to people living

in poverty to actually hear about their experiences and what they think the

solutions would be.

[3:50 p.m.]

Our government has given priority to making sure that this fall session

includes our poverty reduction legislation. I’m very proud to be part of the

government that takes the time, puts in the resources and actually gives it

priority and gets it onto the agenda as well.

I have to say, I remember when I first came here as a new immigrant —

yeah, that’s where the accent comes from — many years ago, and I got involved

in the community social services sector. I attended my first Federation of

Community Social Services provincial conference — lots of organizations there,

lots of learning and education, looking at the state of the sector.

We had a presentation from First Call. They were educating us and giving

us their update on poverty — poverty in the province, poverty broken down

relative to adults and children, poverty score and analysis and evaluation of

B.C. in terms of dealing with poverty compared to the other provinces and the

rest of Canada. I was surprised. I was really surprised and disappointed at the

statistics, at what we were hearing and about how dire the state and condition

of poverty was in the province of British Columbia, where I’d just chosen to

come and live.

British Columbia has the second-worst poverty rate in Canada, with

557,000 people living in poverty, and 99,000 of them are children. Until now,

until the action that our government is taking, B.C. was the only province or

territory in Canada not to have a poverty reduction strategy.

Yet our province is wealthy, and the economy has been healthy. In spite

of this, too many people have been left behind. It isn’t a solution to just

grow the economy and hope for a trickle-down effect. We’ve had over a decade of

cutbacks and underfunding of social programs, and that has exacerbated the

inequality in our province and contributed to a high rate of poverty among our

people. In spite of the economy growing, measures of severe hardship, such as

food bank use and homelessness, have continued to climb.

Working-poverty rates are also on the rise. The answer clearly isn’t to

just get a job. Indeed, many working poor and parents in my community have a

job. They have more than one job. They might even have a lodger with them, and

they still cannot make ends meet. In fact, approximately half of those living

below the poverty line are either the working poor or the children of the

working poor.

This government will not only grow the economy; we will also implement a

poverty reduction plan. We’ve been hearing across the province this year and

last year, as part of the consultation of the Legislative Assembly Select

Standing Committee on Finance, about how people have experienced cutbacks and

reductions in services across the spectrum and across the province, how people

are living paycheque to paycheque — living precarious lives where one thing

going wrong could end up so that they can’t pay their rent and they’re at risk

of homelessness. And we’ve been hearing how this has been increasing over the

past decade.

We also need to remember that amongst the poor, there’s

overrepresentation of marginalized groups, and that can also exacerbate the

issue and the barriers to finding solutions as well. This includes Indigenous

people, people with disabilities, people with mental health issues, new

Canadians, recent immigrants and refugees, single moms, single senior women,

queer and transgender people. These people are all disproportionately

represented among the poor.

For example, there are many women who are trapped in relationships that

are abusive, that are controlled. Because they don’t have financial security,

because they don’t have economic self-sufficiency and because they’re poor,

they’re not able to get themselves out of that situation. Often women and

transgender and non-binary individuals are faced with the impossible decision

of staying in that harmful relationship or putting themselves and even their

kids at risk of homelessness.

I will tell you about one woman, an immigrant woman here with her

husband, who came over from Asia and was living in an abusive relationship in

one of the communities in my constituency. She was resourceful. She did the

very best she could with using the household income.

[3:55 p.m.]

She not only managed to steal away some money; she managed to hide it

from her husband for years. It took her two years, and she saved up $2,000. She

was almost reaching the point where she felt that she could get away from that

abusive relationship. Then guess what. He found it. He found it, and he took it

away. She was punished, and she felt hopeless and worthless. Imagine that.

After two years of trying to create her escape strategy. Then it was all taken

away from her.

These issues are compounded, as well, because of barriers to legal

services that are needed to reinforce your legal rights and your financial

rights. Racialized women, in particular, face an elevated risk of economic

insecurity. Of course, we know this particularly applies to Indigenous women,

as well, because of the effects of colonialism, the economic discrimination and

the poverty that is experienced in Indigenous communities.

At the same time, this impact of poverty is felt on a daily basis.

Women, transgender and non-binary people face tangible challenges every day

that stem from their experience of poverty. Some examples: a lack of access to

menstrual products, birth control, medications, bras — simple basics that other

people might think that they can take for granted.

It’s especially worrying that children are impacted by poverty —

vulnerable children. Now, the organization First Call has been tracking child

and family poverty rates in B.C. for two full decades. Their first provincial

report card containing data for 1996 showed that one in five British Columbian

children were poor. And 20 years later, what’s the statistic? How disappointing

is it? It’s the same. Today over 22 percent of those living in poverty are

children. Too many B.C. children — 153,300, or one in five — are growing up in

poverty, including half of all children with lone parents, most of them

female-led.

As of 2015, B.C.’s child poverty rate continued to exceed the Canadian

average, and in March 2016, over 100,000 people in B.C. used food banks. Almost

a third of them were children.

In contrast to common belief that most children living in poverty have

parents in paid work, as I’ve said, these are mainly temporary, low-wage and

precarious positions of employment. But at the same time, as we all know, costs

for essentials have continued to soar, and costs, especially for important

household expenses like housing, your own shelter, and child care, have really

made life difficult for so many British Columbians.

The prevalence of poverty is really contrasted with the most affluent in

our province. B.C. is the most unequal of provinces. The average income of the

top 10 percent of families was 13 times the income of the bottom 10 percent.

This, I can tell you, is an issue that’s been a growing concern in my

community.

My community is fast-growing. It’s a family-based community, and it

comprises a majority of the working poor in the region. I want to thank the

organizations that exist in my community and that serve families and children

and build community capacity in my community.

We have the Esquimalt Neighbourhood House. We have Pacific Centre Family

Services Association. Yet, at the same time, we also have to recognize that

they have been put in precarious situations. Every year, they are still looking

for year-end money, looking for how they’re going to fill that gap, because

they’ve continued to see an increase in need, yet they have not had an increase

in funding to be able to respond to that need.

In the last decade of the time that I was working at the social service

organization that I was running, we were responding to an ever-increasing

request for referrals, for basic support, for shelter, for immediate needs for

food and emergency supports. We were ever increasing trying to find grants for

items to overcome barriers like: pay a final hydro payment demand, buy

appropriate work boots so that someone could get employment, buy a special

needs chair for a youth to be able to concentrate in a work experience

placement.

[4:00 p.m.]

I want to say a special thank-you to the Cridge, which has been

providing services to families in our region for over 125 years. They had a

grant program, and they hadn’t been reaching people in the West Shore

communities. They came to my organization, and they said: “Look, what we could

do is we could give you X thousand dollars a year. You know the people in need

in your community. You could disperse that in your community.”

With that grant program, we were able to pay for just some small

barriers that stopped people being able to have that self-determination, to be

able to make a plan to get themselves out of poverty and to break that cycle of

poverty.

The core services we were offering were counselling services. But

increasingly, people were coming to us desperate, asking us to help with

nutrition, asking for help to just navigate and advocate for services that

would help them with their basic needs. And all the time, we were continuing to

see that services around us were being eroded in the community.

The food bank was growing in response to increasing population and

increasing need in the community, and the school district reached out to us

because they were seeing so many young people coming to school in the morning

hungry. At least 25 to 35 percent of the kids in the local high schools, they

estimated, were coming to school hungry.

We saw that when we ran groups for youth. We would put food on, and that

would be the first thing they would need. They wouldn’t be able to do any of

the therapeutic work, any of the fun work, any of the relationship-building

work. They were hungry. They needed that nutrition. They needed to actually

have something to eat first. They just went straight for the food.

Lily is a disabled woman who’s been living in my community for many

years. Of course, she hadn’t seen her disability rates increase in ten years

either. At the same time, rental charges on her apartment have been increasing

every year. She was trying to live independently. She was trying to be

self-determined, trying to create a future for herself, but she was caught in a

trap.

She had to keep doing more with less. That meant that she went out less.

She socialized less. She bought less healthy food. At the end of the day, all

of this cutting back affected her self-esteem. It affected her general health.

And in the end, that affects her overall prognosis.

What does that do? It then creates more pressures on the system at the

end of the day. This social alienation, the isolation that poverty can create

for people, is another harmful dimension of living in poverty and actually

reducing barriers for people to be able to lift themselves out of poverty as

well.

Mabel is a senior who’s lived in our community for decades. She was

stuck in a poverty trap. As her pension increased, the rent allowance that she

received was means-tested and decreased, so she could never get ahead. Her home

continued to deteriorate. So in her late years, when she should be living at

home with dignity, she was struggling to pay bills. She was struggling to pay

the bills and pay the rent and pay for food.

All of that pressure on her reduced her level of hope, especially

because, in those late years of her life, she couldn’t see a way out. She felt

like she had no options. How was she going to be able to make things better

when she was caught in that poverty trap?

Kaley was in another trap. She worked two jobs. She couldn’t do more

hours because she had a kindergarten kid. She was a single mom, had to take

care of her kid. She could not afford child care, so she couldn’t get

ahead.

She never had new clothes. She was always penny-pinching, especially

when shopping for food. Again, we know that the drive there, then, is to end up

getting less healthy food items. She could only take her boy to free

activities. She avoided birthday parties. She did not want to have the shame of

not being able to buy gifts for those other kids.

These stories in my community we heard across the whole of the province

when the minister and his staff and the parliamentary secretary went out with

their team and did the consultations around the province. What they heard was

that so many British Columbians are looking for help on such a wide range of

issues. Of course — no surprise — affordable housing was the top

concern.

[4:05 p.m.]

People were making difficult, difficult choices. Could they pay the rent

this month? Could they pay the bill? Bills going up. Could they buy food? Cost

of food going up.

On top of this, British Columbians told the minister and the

parliamentary secretary that they were really str