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 (NO. 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.

On 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 (NO. 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.

In my ministry, we invested over a three-year period about $750 million to provide the $100 increase in rates, to increase earning exemptions and to put a transportation supplement in place for persons with disabilities. And we’ve invested $100 million in eliminating tuition for adult basic education and English language learning, for providing tuition support for former youth in care, for reducing interest rates on student loans and for an additional investment in Indigenous skills training.

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 39.

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 2011.

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 struggling with child care costs, with legal aid, with health care needs and that it was really tough to find not necessarily a job — a minimum-wage job; a part-time, precarious job — but to find good-paying, family-supporting jobs where they could live and contribute to their community as well.

Deb moved here. She came here to British Columbia independently for work, so she had no supportive family living close by. She used her truck for her job in the trades. So she’d be out there being a professional woman in the trades by day, and at night, she slept in that truck. She couldn’t afford the rent in the community. She moved around the community to make sure she didn’t come to the attention of the authorities. Of course, she was out of the rental market. Those rents were going to go up faster than her wages.

Beth, in contrast, grew up here. She worked in the service sector. She knew loads of people in the community. She also couldn’t afford rent. What did she do? She found ways to make ends meet by couch-surfing. She was moving around between different people that she knew in the community and sleeping on the couch in their houses, putting herself at risk of harm, of exploitation and of homelessness.

We know that tackling this depth and breadth of poverty is a question of priorities. It’s about the will to make a real difference to children and their families, to the people of British Columbia. That is why we are developing British Columbia’s first poverty reduction strategy. I am so proud of our minister setting targets in legislation. It’s his commitment, and he’s setting that commitment to hold future ministers to account as well.

We’ve introduced legislation that marks a turning point for our province. This is an historic first step that sets out bold poverty reduction targets. The legislation is the foundation for B.C.’s first poverty reduction strategy, and that’s going to be released in early 2019. It sets out targets and timelines. It defines the scope of the strategy and ensures that government will be held accountable. Establishing those targets and that accountability in law means that poverty reduction will continue to be a priority for the province under this and future governments.

These targets that are set over the next five years are to reduce the overall poverty rate by 25 percent and the child poverty rate by 50 percent. These are more than just numbers; these are people’s lives. This is about 50 percent fewer children going to school hungry. We know that children who live in poverty don’t do as well in life. Poverty negatively affects their health, their education outcomes. What does that do, ultimately? It traps them in the poverty cycle.

This means we can break the cycle that keeps people trapped in poverty from one generation to the next. When you invest in children, you lift up the entire family.

Our plan is a cross-ministry approach to lift British Columbians across the province. It’s not just a jobs plan. It’s about creating jobs, building the economy — creating jobs that are good-paying, family-supporting jobs. It’s about making sure that our children have good education, from early years all the way through, from K to 12. It’s about building apprenticeships, creating access to services where and when people need them, lifting the minimum wage.

B.C. has the second-worst poverty rate in the country. It took many years of neglect to get here, so it’s going to take time to repair the damage to families and the most vulnerable in B.C. We have already started to take action. We’ve taken action to rebuild our social programs, and people are seeing a difference.

Over the last year, thousands of people have moved into new affordable homes, had their daycare costs reduced, had MSP premiums cut in half. The minimum wage has gone up. People with disabilities have seen an increased rate of support, an increase in the earnings exemption and funds provided for transportation.

[4:10 p.m.]

Now, I thought the criticism that might come would be that we should actually eliminate poverty entirely. I know lots of people would join me in saying that at some point, I hope we will be able to say that we’re going to totally eliminate poverty. These targets are the first step on that path, and they will benefit hundreds of thousands of people in our province. I’m so proud of the work that our minister and his staff have done.

S. Gibson: I want to thank my colleagues from Surrey, Richmond and Chilliwack for their earlier comments on this legislation. I won’t repeat all of the good remarks they have said.

I want to put this in perspective, if I may, and I want to thank the minister for his laudable intentions. Having gotten to know the minister a little bit, I believe that his intentions are good, but of course, it all plays out in the execution, as we might expect around here with our different perspectives on the way that we do government.

A little personal perspective so that we all realize that I speak from my heart on this. I have a special needs daughter, and the challenges of having a special needs daughter equip me, I think, to comment a little bit on this issue. And my dad, for part of his life, was a social worker. So this is something that I take seriously and with interest, but also I bring my own perspectives as a member of the official opposition and the positions that we have enumerated here today, which I think have hopefully been helpful to government and to the minister.

Interestingly, all of you will know that I come from Abbotsford. Mission is also my riding. But let me ask you this: what is Abbotsford famous for?

An Hon. Member: Barbecues.

S. Gibson: No, that’s Chilliwack.

Interjections.

S. Gibson: Blueberries? Raspberries? Yeah, their MLAs.

This is actually quite serious. I appreciate the lightness of the comments, and I find that encouraging. But Abbotsford is the No. 1 community in Canada for generosity. Check it out — No. 1.

Now, why do I mention that here today? Often when we’re looking at trying to solve social problems, we turn our eyes towards government. We say, “Government can help here,” and it’s true. We, serving as MLAs, believe that government can do a lot. But there’s a whole lot that can be done by the private sector. That’s where we, as the official opposition, would encourage government to remember that it’s a vibrant economy, a booming private sector, that allows the funds, the revenue, to stream into government to be able to assist those folks that sometimes can’t help themselves.

Now, I’m a former entrepreneur on a fairly small scale. I owned a small manufacturing company. We only had 13 employees. Those of you who’ve had your own business know how stressful it is to have your own company, if you’ve ever had to meet a payroll. We would hire folks that were struggling, chronically unemployed. Did they work hard? Yes, they did. They were thankful for that job, so we were privileged to be able to hire folks that were chronically unemployed.

My office is located in Mission, which, as you’ll know, is the north side of the Fraser River, right on the main 1st Avenue storefront. All day long my assistants help folks that are struggling, some of the people we’ve been hearing about today — unemployed, chronically unemployed, addictions and other issues. You see, I want to suggest today that if we look at unemployment, if we look at the social issues, if we look at alcoholism and drunkenness and some of the tragedies that we see out there, part of those are creating the challenges that we face with poverty today.

[4:15 p.m.]

Recently I was talking to a lady. Unfortunately, her marriage broke up, tragically. I don’t know all the circumstances, but I got to meet this person as an MLA. As we know, and I believe that the minister will affirm this, when you have families breaking up, that’s when the poverty arrives, right? Thank you for acknowledging that.

The challenge is: how can we keep those families together, mom and dad together? We’ve heard today…. I think the figure that the minister shared was 100,000 young people in poverty. Well, they’re not in poverty. It’s the family that’s in poverty. So I think that part of the issue that we need to face here — and I would encourage government to look at that, with respect to the minister — is how we keep families together. When you have families splitting apart, the next challenge, of course, is poverty. The single mom can’t take care of herself very easily, and she has the kids sometime with her.

I want to also comment a little bit, if I may, on the foundation for success. When I was teaching at university, I also was asked if I could teach adults who are unemployed — a kind of summer program — and I was happy to do that. As I got to know many of these unemployed people — some of them were chronically unemployed — I found that all of them had their stories, whether it was addictions or family break-up or issues from their home life. I concluded that this was also a part of the systemic challenge that faces families today leading to poverty.

We’ve heard a lot on our side of the House about a healthy economy. I want to endorse that, and I want to echo that, because without a vibrant economy, there’s not the funding, there’s not the taxation that comes in to provide those funds to support the social programs that we need, especially for the folks that are really struggling.

I think, too, that when we look at the foundations, as I referred to, of success…. What are those? Can we make a checklist? Now, you’ll notice that I am reviewing the act here, and there’s a list of all of the various people, agencies that will be spoken to or met with — for example, working with children and youth, persons living with disabilities, etc.

I’d like to encourage the ministry, and the work that’s being done, to also talk to those people in the volunteer sector, not working for government but working in the volunteer sector that I call the people with the big hearts — the Salvation Armys of this world, the MCCs. There are many generous people, not just in Abbotsford, who are willing to contribute their time, their wealth, to support programs. I know that in Abbotsford, we have many programs that are supported by volunteers. They’re not on the payroll, but they help out. And those philanthropic people can be a part of the poverty reduction strategy.

When I was teaching at the university, I had many Aboriginal students, and I would put a little extra help into them because they were going back to school after being out for a while — many mature students. One thing that I did notice about these folks who were obviously struggling with poverty, frankly, was that they were lacking confidence in themselves to some extent. I don’t want to be overt about that, but that applies to many people and Aboriginals as well. One of my goals as a university instructor was to try to boost those positive attitudes, because when you feel good about yourself, you’re more likely to get out of poverty. So that was something that I felt was something kind of helpful.

To summarize, I just want to thank the minister. I think he’s well-intentioned. I’m concerned, however, that it looks like a bit of a policy kind of continuing on without some fairly formal approaches. I know that this government takes this seriously. Frankly, all of us around this room worry about poverty. We see it as a major concern.

Our government had the lowest unemployment rate in Canada. We had the lowest taxation for middle- and low-income earners. Those are two good criteria, I think, to acknowledge and put forward as a barometer of a healthy economy, which means, likely, less people in poverty.

[4:20 p.m.]

Thank you, hon. Chair, for allowing me to make these few remarks today. I do appreciate it. I know we’ll have more deliberations as the days and weeks progress.

R. Singh: It gives me immense pleasure to speak on Bill 39 today. I just don’t know where to start. I’m feeling extremely emotional.

I came to Canada in 2001. I chose Canada and, obviously, B.C. as a place to move my family because I was looking for a better life for myself and my husband and my young son. I had never imagined, living in India, where I came from, that in the country I was going to and the province I would be going to, I would see poverty there too.

Obviously, as a newcomer, I experienced poverty myself. It was not that I was not working or that I was on welfare. I did find a job, and so did my partner. The job was in community social services. But unfortunately, the job was not full-time. It was a part-time job. Community social services was one sector that was extremely underfunded by the government of the time. There were a lot of funding cuts. The wages were very low. Not just me, but many of my colleagues working at that time were struggling.

They were struggling to make payments. It was not that they were not ready to work. Some of them were working full-time. But always I would hear from them how hard it was for them to make ends meet. We used to get a paycheque every two weeks. The paycheque would come, and they wouldn’t realize where that paycheque had gone, because there were so many expenses — housing, food, transportation.

Every minute when we were not working…. I would really like to mention that in community social services, it’s mostly women working, so we are talking about the intersectionality of poverty. It affects all, but the people who are most affected are the marginalized communities, and women are one group that gets most affected. My colleagues and I were always talking about what we should do.

As the years went by, yes, I was, I think, very fortunate to come out of that cycle. But I see the effects of poverty every day of my life, coming from the community of Surrey, which welcomes more than 1,000 people every month, most of them newcomers to Canada. These are the people who struggle every day. So many times, I’ve heard from people….

Seniors come to my constituency office, and they talk about how hard it is for them to live on the income they are making. They are not able to pay their rents, and the rents — obviously, we know about the housing crisis that we are dealing with — are increasing every day. They are looking for some kind of support. In my capacity and with my staff, we try to help them in every possible way, but sometimes it’s difficult to find resources for them.

That’s why I’m so glad that our government is finding the solutions for those people, who have been neglected for far too long. For so many years, we have underfunded so many of our social services, obviously, our social programs, and that has led us to have the second-worst poverty rate in Canada.

The numbers are shocking. We have 557,000 people living in poverty. It is very, very sad to say that 99,000 of them are children. I was just going through a report. Surrey, the community that I come from, has the highest number of children living in poverty. That is a higher number than any other jurisdiction in Metro Vancouver.

[4:25 p.m.]

We have, at this time, 23,840 children who live in poverty in Surrey. That’s a child poverty rate of approximately 21 percent, which is higher than the provincial average of 19.8 percent.

I’m just thinking: “Why is this happening?” As I mentioned, I made Surrey my home, and so many newcomers make Surrey their home. Why is this happening? Why were people being left behind? When we were talking about a great economy, why didn’t everybody come up? Why was that economy working for just 2 percent of the population, while so many of us were left behind? And these are newcomers, these are our Indigenous populations, these are people with disabilities and, obviously, our children.

In Surrey, every day we hear about gang violence and how worried we, as a community, are with what is happening to our children and our youth. But I feel, with all this, looking at the statistics, that poverty has a big role to play in that.

We have families that are struggling, that are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet. These are the families who are not able to put their kids into sports or extracurricular activities that they want to go into. Then you have children that go AWOL, children that go down the wrong path. Who do we blame here? It’s not the families. Most of these families have come here to make a better future for their kids, but somehow they fall into this trap of poverty that they are not able to come out of. This is a vicious cycle that we are dealing with.

I’m glad that, since last year, our government has come up with plans to make life more affordable for people. In Surrey, we eliminated the tolls. We have cut the MSP in half, and we have increased the minimum wage, which was very important. For so many years, we had a wage that was frozen, and people really were struggling. They were doing so many different kinds of precarious work but not able to make ends meet.

We still have a long way to go. I’m so glad that our Minister of Social Development and our parliamentary secretary are working together to make that happen, to bring these people up, to break the barriers that so many people are facing in British Columbia. They made so many rounds of consultation. I know they came to Surrey a few times, and I was glad to be part of that consultation.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

I’m so happy that with all the consultation and all the hard work and all the resources that they put in, we have a plan that will be in effect and will be able to bring people up. And it is to bring all the people up, not just 2 percent of the population.

Once again, I just want to say how happy I am with this initiative of our government. I support it wholeheartedly. Congratulations.

S. Sullivan: I’m very pleased to speak to Bill 39, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act. Of course, I’m happy to support any effort to reduce poverty. We may differ on methods, but I certainly think this is worth trying out.

I’d like to share some of my own insights and suggest some possible areas to explore. I, myself, had an experience with poverty when I became disabled at the age of 19. I ended up on welfare. What I found…. Well, I was very amazed at the whole welfare system, very impressed. I remember having a visit from a welfare worker who explained that this would be…. I think it was 328 bucks a month that I was receiving at the time.

[4:30 p.m.]

I thought: “Wow, what an amazing society. This would be a great stepping-off point to really kind of get to explore my abilities and skills and have at least some foundational amount of money to work from.” She said: “Well, I don’t know if you understand, but if you make any money, you have to give it back. If you don’t, it’s a serious issue legally. If you do make as much money as the welfare amount, then you will be cut off welfare. Then not only will you lose your 328 bucks a month, but you’ll lose your medical supplies, your housing subsidy and your transportation, etc.”

I thought: “Oh, that’s a lot different than I had assumed.” I didn’t quite understand why they had people who were hired to make sure that I did not make any money when I was on welfare — or, as we called them, the welfare police. It was quite remarkable that society should hire people and that a person with a disability making money would be such a threat to society that it would require people to police this.

I did go through a number of years of idleness, which was very demoralizing. I eventually decided to break out, and I got a job for $100 a month. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was completely illegal, as well, because it was far below the minimum wage. However, this was a great boon to my life because it enabled me to explore my skills, to develop networks and, probably most importantly, to get a work ethic, to be able to focus on productivity.

I realized that the welfare system has built into it this incentive system, or this disincentive system, that forces people into idleness, and that many people with disabilities are afraid to make money because it will jeopardize the only support that they really can rely on. As I started to study this a bit, I realized — I was studying psychology, etc. — that there’s a question: are people risk-averse, or are they loss-averse? The original question was: are people risk-averse, or are they risk-seeking? The answer was neither. They are loss-averse.

According to behavioural psychology, the welfare system accentuates the worst impulses in humans, this loss-averseness, the willingness to give up potential gains in order to prevent losses. I realized that there was something inherently built into the welfare system that is very negative to people who are in that system.

I certainly experienced it myself. I ended up lobbying for some exemption: that people with disabilities should be allowed to make $100 a month without losing that. I was very pleased when the minister showed up to one of our events and announced that that would be the case. Over the years, I lobbied to increase that. We got it to $200 and $300. It’s now, I think, about a thousand bucks a month that a person with a disability can make. This was fantastic. I thought it was a brilliant move by government to try to offset some of these negative disincentives to the system.

Now, when I checked recently, there were about 120,000 people with disabilities on welfare. Of those, about 22,000 have declared some income in at least one month of the year. So about 20 percent of people with disabilities have actually taken advantage of this opportunity to make money.

[4:35 p.m.]

It appears that the average of that is about $400 per month. That’s what people are actually making — averaged out, these 20 percent — clearly, well under the amount that is possible.

Fortunately, in some of my studies — I studied economics — I saw this issue of how incentives can be built in to the welfare system and to society in general, which creates challenges for people who are in poverty.

One of these problems is, in fact, the minimum wage. You could actually see that many of the 120,000 people with disabilities are people who cannot produce at the minimum wage. In order to receive an income of minimum wage, they have to produce at that amount. For many people with disabilities, either employers aren’t willing to take a risk, or they are not able to produce at that rate at the beginning.

One of the ways to get a decent-paying job is to start at a poorly paying job. A person who works at a lower-paying job will learn and become better and understand the system and understand what’s needed. As they move up that job ladder, their well-being improves greatly. The problem is you have to get on the ladder somewhere. For many people with disabilities, if they are producing below the minimum wage — it’s just the law of supply and demand — they won’t be hired.

My own personal thought on this is that if people with disabilities were allowed to keep all of their benefits and be able to negotiate whatever wage they can, to find an employer who’s willing to take a chance and let them work at whatever rate they can negotiate, this, I think, would at least get some people onto the ladder.

One of the things that I would recommend for the minister is that they have an economist on this advisory committee, someone who could understand and describe and communicate what’s going on economically and how the minimum wage can, in fact, harm the lowest and the most vulnerable people. And I do believe that out of the 120,000 people with disabilities…. I haven’t found much research on this. Are these casualties of the minimum wage?

I think it has to be done very carefully, and I know this is a very, very sensitive topic, because you don’t want to be making some declaration that a person is not worth as much. The idea is that people need to be able to have some flexibility and freedom to work and to not be mandated to produce at a certain level. I personally have benefited inadvertently from accepting work that was far below the minimum wage. It gave me so much — networks, work ethic, the exploration of my own skills and abilities. I know it is a sensitive issue, but I think it’s worth exploring. We haven’t had success.

I’ll just note that it was 1996 when a law came in to make it illegal for people to make less than a minimum wage, and what happened at that point is all of the sheltered workshops across British Columbia shut their doors. I don’t necessarily think the sheltered workshops were the ideal. I think there are many other ways to do that nowadays, but I can tell you that it was a terrible blow to the many people with disabilities who had some kind of productive work that they were able to participate in.

I will commend these ideas for the minister’s consideration and wish him all the best on this effort.

[4:40 p.m.]

J. Brar: I’m very pleased to speak to the historic bill, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act, introduced in this House by our government this week to make life better for people, particularly people who are the most vulnerable.

I’m really proud to support this bill because this bill is based on the values that people of British Columbia believe. Those values are fairness, equality and economic justice for all British Columbians. Everyone deserves to live with dignity and respect, and that’s what we’re trying to do with this bill.

This year marks the 26th anniversary of the declaration of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty by the United Nations. This was a call for action to fight to end poverty everywhere and a path forward for progressive and inclusive societies.

Former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt once said: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have enough. It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

It’s my respectful opinion that all members of this House wish to reduce poverty in our rich province, blessed with tremendous resources for all of us. But the reality is that we haven’t made any progress during the last 16 years of greed. Greed remained the driving force for defining public policy, the policy to make the rich more rich. That was the policy for the last 16 years, and there was no focus on the people who are struggling, who are working for minimum wage, who are on welfare and particularly kids who are living in poverty.

I have a story to tell. In the year 2011, Raise the Rates, a coalition concerned about poverty, inequality and homelessness in British Columbia, invited me to spend a month living on welfare. After much consideration and support from my family, my supporters, stakeholders and colleagues, I decided to accept the welfare challenge to experience firsthand what life is like for 557,000 B.C. families and individuals in poverty.

And 99,000 of those are children, according to the latest data we have available in the province. As the father of two young children, it’s very hard for me to imagine that in a province as wealthy as ours, we have 99,000 children living in poverty. It’s completely unacceptable. It’s hard for me to imagine that almost 100,000 people in British Columbia use the food bank every day. Particularly, the number came from 2016.

Almost one-third of those using the food bank were children. That’s the reality of this province, and that was happening when the previous administration members sitting on the other side were telling everybody that we had the best economy on earth. That was the situation on the ground for the people who were living in poverty.

[4:45 p.m.]

It’s hard for me to believe that the gap between the rich and the poor, or the rest of British Columbians, has widened to the point that the top 10 percent of B.C. families now earn considerably more than the entire bottom half of families. That’s why I chose to live on provincial income assistance for a month, beginning January 1, 2012.

Over the month, I met with people living in poverty and on welfare and listened to their painful and heartbreaking stories. Each story has a message for all of us. The message is very simple. We cannot afford not to take action to address the growing gap between the rich and poor. We must start taking action. We must start addressing inequality with a pragmatic approach, with clear targets and timelines. That’s what we’re doing.

Before moving on to my next page, I just want to tell you a story. I met a person in Vancouver, and this is a person that represents the First Nations. When I was walking on the street, he came to me and said: “Mr. Brar, I want to speak to you.” I said, “Sure,” and he said: “Listen to my story.”

His story was this. He said: “I was around 50 years old when I came to Vancouver.” He found a job in the construction industry, and he worked very hard for almost ten years. He was a hard-working British Columbian, a dedicated British Columbian.

After ten years, he said, the construction company went down, and they laid him off. Because of his age and because of who he was, nobody else wanted to hire him at that point in time. And he was only skilled for doing work in the construction industry. There was no other hope, and his end point was going on welfare. He ended up going on welfare.

He told me that he lived in that building, which was at the corner of Hastings and Main streets. He pointed to a building, and he said: “I live in that building.” In that building on one floor, there are 50 rooms we call SROs. He occupied one of those rooms, and he said that there’s only one washroom for everyone.

That’s the situation we have in this province. If you tell that story to somebody who comes from a Third World country, it is hard for them to believe that that’s happening in this province, but that’s the reality.

We must start addressing inequality with a pragmatic approach and with clear targets and timelines. We have a wealthy society, and we can do better. I’m sure the people of British Columbia want us to do better. We have a collective responsibility to bring about a more stable and a more prosperous society, a society in which every person in our province can reach their full potential.

This government has already taken some crucial steps to make life better for people. We have established three key priorities to build a better B.C. First, make life more affordable for the people of British Columbia. Second, improve the services that people count on. Third, build a strong and sustainable economy for everyone in the province of British Columbia, an economy where everyone benefits, not only the top 2 percent of people.

Our public services have been eroded over the past 16 years. We can clearly see the impact that those bad policies have had on the people of British Columbia. There’s a significant increase in the number of people who are homeless, an increase in the number of people who are working poor. Housing, as we all know, in many B.C. communities is just not affordable anymore.

People struggle to support themselves and their families, even if they’re working on a minimum wage. Child care cost is another thing that can impact a person’s ability to join the workforce, because it’s too high.

[4:50 p.m.]

We cannot continue down that path, because that path is wrong. That’s why the people of British Columbia chose a different administration to lead this province into the right direction. We must change that direction. We must make an investment in people, in communities and in a sustainable economy that works for everyone. We must make investments towards programs and services that make life better for the people of British Columbia.

Now we are ready to start work on B.C.’s first poverty reduction strategy. That’s what this bill stands for. We have consulted the people of British Columbia throughout the province, going to communities, talking to people, talking to stakeholders, talking to different organizations to make sure we put together a strategy that’s practical, that’s doable, that’s workable, that supports equality and that provides equal opportunity for all people.

We asked people what we can do as a province, as communities and as citizens to reduce poverty and to foster economic and social inclusion. We listened to people. We consulted broadly with the people of British Columbia to make sure we are on the right path to reduce poverty in the province of British Columbia.

Where we are right now is the outcome, because years of ignoring and underfunding social programs has led to B.C. having the second-worst poverty rate in Canada. As I said before, people heard time and again that we had the best economy in the province during the last 16 years, but the economy is best only that benefits everyone in the province, not only the top 2 percent. That was the case during the last 16 years.

With 557,000 people living in poverty, 99,000 of them children, we cannot claim that we have the best economy in the country. There is something wrong, and that needs to be fixed. That’s a very sad statistic for a province as wealthy as ours. Things haven’t been working for too many people at the bottom end of society. That’s what we have to change.

That’s why we’re developing B.C.’s first poverty reduction strategy. We have introduced legislation that marks a turning point for our province. It is a historic first step that sets out bold poverty reduction targets. Over the next five years, we will reduce the overall poverty rate by 25 percent. Over the next five years — I’m going to repeat — we will reduce the overall poverty rate by 25 percent, and the child poverty rate will go down 50 percent.

I think it’s very important to understand that we are investing money for children to make sure that we bring child poverty down 50 percent. I know I’ve spoken to the minister. The minister has done a very wonderful job. We want to break the cycle. You can only do that if you invest your money in children. That’s what we’re doing under this strategy.

These are just a number of things we are doing. There will be more in the coming days. We know that children who live in poverty often don’t do well. We all know that in life. Poverty negatively affects their health and education outcomes, which traps them in the poverty cycle.

I’ll just tell you another story. When I lived in poverty for 31 days, after 31 days, although I was eating three times, and although I knew that this was a temporary thing for me and that I would go out after 31 days, I lost 26 pounds, which is almost one pound a day. That’s what I lost. Imagine a child living in that situation. I cannot even imagine what that child goes through every day.

[4:55 p.m.]

I still remember the first day I went to a church to eat. They were all adults sitting in that room with the exception of one mother and one child. There was one child in the middle of that 50 or 60 men sitting who came there just to eat. It was heartbreaking for me to see a child almost as old as my son at that time sitting in that crowd and then eating at the church, because they didn’t have any place, didn’t have any roof to live under, and he was sitting there. That was completely unacceptable.

We need to focus on the children. It means that we can begin to break the cycle that keeps people trapped in poverty from one generation to the next one. That’s why this strategy has focused…. We have more focus on the children, and that’s very important to understand.

When we invest in children, we lift up the entire family, and that’s what happens. That’s what we’re trying to do here. I’m sure that working together, all of us, we can do better. We can reduce poverty, and we can, of course, break the cycle, as I said before, and we can make this province a better place for everyone.

During the 31 days, I heard story after story from a lot of people. I want to say a few things to the members here and a few things to the people who are listening to this debate.

I know there are a lot of myths about people who are poor in this country and particularly in this province. The myths are that they are people doing drugs. They don’t want to do work. Those are the things we always hear about them. I can say this with confidence: that is not true. That is absolutely wrong. That’s only true for people who are ignorant. If you don’t want to learn that….

Let me tell you a couple of stories so you know what I’m talking about. The very first day, when I started my challenge, I went to a place known as Front Room in Surrey. That’s a place where people who are homeless come. They have a sitting area, and they can have a cup of coffee. They have one washroom there. They can just be inside and spend some time during the day. These are people who are…. The majority of them are homeless. And it was winter. It was January 1. It was the day when people were celebrating the new year, and on the other side, you see in the same country people struggling to find a place to just have a cup of coffee.

I went in that room that day, and that was my first stop after I started my challenge. When I went in that room, there were probably…. The room was full. There were 50, 60 people sitting in that room, and some of the people were standing and waiting for their turn for the washroom because there was only one washroom.

I started going from table to table and talking to people. I did that, and then I came back and sat at one table and started playing cards with the people who were already playing cards there. After some time, there was one person, who was a very healthy-looking person, looked like a very normal individual to me. To me, he seemed a bit unfit for that situation.

After a few minutes, when they became friendly to me, I asked him a question. The question was: “Why are you here?” He laughed, and he said to me: “Do you really want to know?” I said: “That’s the purpose of this whole exercise, because I have accepted the challenge to tell your story, tell the real story of the people so that I can break some myths out there and misinformation that is out there among the people.”

He believed me, and he said to me: “Okay, this is my story.” He said: “I used to live in Winnipeg with my family. I was married, had a wife. I had two daughters. All three of them were killed by a drunk driver.” He lost his whole family.

[5:00 p.m.]

He said he tried to live in Winnipeg, even in that situation, and just come back and continue working in his life. He said that he tried, but he couldn’t do that for too long because every corner in Winnipeg was full of memories about his family. So everywhere he goes, he remembers something that brings back some memories to him.

He decided to move to Vancouver, which he did. He came here, and he found a job as a truck driver. He was also working part-time as a bouncer at a pub. He started doing that, and he did that for ten years, for ten long years.

He said after ten years, he developed a disease. The disease was that he sweat. In maybe five seconds, his whole body sweats. Because of that disease, he lost both jobs. He lost the job as a truck driver. He also lost the job as a bouncer. He could not find a job anymore, and he said: “That’s why I’m here.”

If you look at this individual, there will not be many people who could go that far, where he could go, after losing his whole family. It’s a big shock when you lose your family and you lose your daughters and wife. He still stood up and tried to walk and live a normal life, but he was hit with a disease, and that’s why he ended up on welfare.

We say these people don’t want to do work. He tried to do work under any circumstances. I see him as one of the best citizens we have in the country, but his situation is very unique. We need to support people like that.

I have story after story about that. I remember that I went to…. I had to find a house. I lived in a house in Surrey. This was a house occupied by people who were on income assistance. Eleven people were living there, and I was one of them. We were sharing the kitchen and all of that.

Before I found that house, I went on a hunt to find a house. I was taken there by Options, an organization based in Surrey. That’s the service they provide to people who don’t have a house. They help them find a place.

I went there, and they gave me a list of housing available in that area and asked me to call. I made phone calls. I went through all the calls, and I found some positive response. I didn’t have a car or anything. During that time, I was walking everywhere because my total amount was $625. So I could not afford to take a bus or a car. They took me to that place to show me the housing. I saw, of course, that those were…. For a lack of words, I would say they were pretty dirty places to live, but they don’t have a choice.

One of the places was kind of eye-opening for me. I almost cried standing in front of it. It was a room just like a shower. It was a room probably seven feet long and three feet wide. There was a bed inside the room, and there was no other space. There was one stair to step in, and you go in and go straight to your bed. End of story. There was no window, nothing. It was just a box.

He showed me that room too. He said, “This will cost you $400,” which was basically what we were paying, at that time, to the people on welfare, under the shelter allowance. I said: “Who is living here?” You know what they told me? The person who is living in that room was a person who was basically released from the hospital after an operation — people living in that house. That was a very emotional moment for me, that this was what was happening in this country and this was the situation we were facing.

Coming back to the main thing, we have now, finally, put together a bill here that clearly defines the targets which are doable, very practical. I commend the minister and his staff for doing an excellent job.

[5:05 p.m.]

I strongly believe that if we cannot serve the people who are poor, who are working at minimum wage, particularly the 1,000 children…. If we cannot lift them beyond poverty, I think we need to ask questions, all of us, of ourselves, whether we are working for the people of British Columbia or not. Because we will work for rich people. They will make us work for them because they have resources. But these people have no resources. These children have no resources. It is not their fault at all because they are children born into a poor family.

That’s why I think it’s a good day for the people of British Columbia. It’s a good day for this government. I think it’s a good day for this House that we are doing something that is noble, that’s doable, that’s very important, that’s very ethical and that’s long-standing. This bill will actually bring a lot of hope into the lives of people who have been waiting for too long, particularly the poor children of this province.

I wholeheartedly support this bill. I hope the members on the other side stand up and support this bill, because this bill is very important for the people who have been waiting for something like this for almost two decades.

Thank you, Madame Speaker, for the time and for the opportunity to speak in support of this bill.

E. Ross: I thought it was quite fitting that I get the opportunity to speak to Bill 39, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act, because every time we hear somebody talking about an initiative to reduce poverty, First Nations poverty always comes up, whether it’s on reserve or off reserve.

Initially, when I first got elected to council in 2003, one of the first initiatives I was tasked with was a poverty reduction initiative. Being naive and ignorant, which is a bad combination, at that time, I rolled up my sleeves and dug in. I was full of energy. I was full of vigor. And I wanted to reduce poverty for my people. There was, at that time, 60 percent unemployment in my village, and it ranged anywhere from 60 to 80 percent over the last 20 years.

It didn’t take more than a year before I became disillusioned. Not because of our efforts. We had a lot of good, smart people working on it, and we had a lot of good capacity, a lot of good staff. I became disillusioned because I realized how hopeless it was for the individual in our community that didn’t have a job at the end of the initiatives that we were trying to force them into or trying to encourage them into.

Part of that initiative, of course, was education. It’s always education. I’m hearing this: “If you educate people, then you can resolve poverty.” Well, that’s not true, based on my experience. You can educate people if you can convince them to take the education in the first place. Remember, this is all based on my experience. If you can encourage them and succeed and get them into a desk and get an education and get a diploma and get a trade — get anything else, for that matter — that doesn’t guarantee a job. If it does guarantee a job, you’ve got to leave your territory because there are no jobs in your territory anyway.

When you talk about First Nations communities — everybody should know this, especially those that have a First Nations background — no First Nation wants to leave their territory. They leave for a job, but ultimately, their goal is to get back. So not only are you trying to convince them to get an education; you’re trying to say: “Okay, get an education, and then leave your territory for the rest of your life and get a job.”

Now, this is heartbreaking, not only for the individual that has to leave but for the family that doesn’t want that member to leave in the first place. Then we wonder why First Nations can’t succeed in the outside world. Some of the best athletes I have ever met were First Nations, but they can’t succeed in college because they can’t stand being away from home.

[5:10 p.m.]

You have to remember, when you’re talking about First Nations poverty, especially in the context of what we were going through back in 2003…. Try to imagine our council being in poverty and trying to help the individuals who were in poverty. You’re trying to fix something that can’t be fixed. Our band council had no money.

Everybody else, in terms of outside political organizations and external forces, doesn’t even understand the nature of the Indian Act, where at the end of the year you’ve got to be broke. You have to come out at a zero balance. You can’t come out with a surplus because Ottawa will punish you. You can’t come out with a deficit because Ottawa will punish you. There’s literally no room in the Indian Act to get your people out of poverty, let alone try to get your council out of poverty.

Council poverty. I’m going to use that term more often. When you add to what we were going through, our council was $3 million in deficit. If you don’t know what that means under the context of the Indian Act, that means Ottawa is going to come in and say: “Okay, you’re too incompetent to manage money. Go home. We’re going to take over. We’re going to pay bills on your behalf, and we’re going to provide the health services, the social services for you. We don’t need you anymore.”

That’s what it means under the Indian Act. That means, basically, the bank coming to you and kicking you out of your band office and saying, “It’s not you anymore; it’s us,” with third-party managers that make a minimum of $500,000 just to come into your band office and pay the bills. Council poverty is a reality.

This idea of a poverty reduction that’s somehow going to fix the First Nations poverty…. I truly hope that the minister takes it into consideration and goes and talks to real, credible leaders who have tried to address this, given their circumstances. Talk to them about their successes, and talk to them about their failures.

Believe me. I am partially ashamed of my failure at addressing poverty. I’m just glad I didn’t spend the last 14 years trying to develop a poverty reduction plan. It was one year before I realized I couldn’t get anywhere with it. Those were pretty dark days because you can’t stand to see your friends, your family, your elders, your youth living in poverty. You can’t stand it, yet you’re elected to try to alleviate it. If you’re lucky, maybe in one year you realize you can’t do anything about it. On average, though, it takes two years for people to realize the true nature of the Indian Act politics.

In our spare time, and with no money, we were devoted to economic development as a way to alleviate poverty. But under the Indian Act, and in our deficit, we had no capital. We had no access to capital because we had no credit. For us, there were very few of us that understood what a business plan was. So everything that we tried, even in theory, failed.

The only solution was an unexpected one, and I’m grateful for the timing. By the time I realized that a poverty reduction plan couldn’t work for my people, for my organization, it just so happened that the Haida court case on the duty to consult and accommodate came out in 2004.

One year I spent trying to reduce poverty, trying to reduce the welfare lists, trying to get our people education and realizing it can’t be done. So I devoted my full attention to understanding what rights and title was, trying to understand what section 35 of the constitution was.

That is one complicated subject, let me tell you. If you can understand that, if you can understand Aboriginal rights and title and if you can understand section 35 of the constitution, then maybe you can explain to me the principles of the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous people and how it applies to native poverty and how we get First Nations in a position where they can address their own issues on their own terms. It’s an extremely complicated subject, and it’s just getting more complicated as the days go by.

[5:15 p.m.]

The only solution, as I say, was an unexpected one, based on the foundation of rights and title on the duty to consult and accommodate. It was LNG.

In 2004, I looked at my first LNG project proposal. It got flipped a few times over the years. We now know it as Kitimat LNG, owned by Chevron and a few partners. The reference to the major FID announcement in Kitimat is actually under Shell and their partners, LNG Canada.

Through negotiating day and night, day after day, seven days a week, travelling to Vancouver, travelling to Alberta, travelling to Victoria, we came up with an agreement with LNG Canada that for the first time in our history gives us the ability to walk away from Indian Act funding. How many bands in Canada can say that?

You think about the average funding that comes to a band like mine to provide services — anywhere from $5 million to $7 million per year. That’s just to keep the lights on, just to keep the water running. That’s it. If you think about that and then you think about the agreement that was signed between my band and LNG Canada and you think about the agreement that we signed with the previous B.C. government, we could say no to Ottawa funding.

I could care less about the Indian Act. It’s irrelevant. If you have the opportunity to sign agreements, it’s irrelevant. The only hold that Ottawa has over First Nations of B.C. is the funding agreements that First Nations have no choice but to sign on to.

Fast-forward to the good times. The local aluminum smelter, through negotiations with the Haisla band, finally got to the point where they could modernize their plant. Now, this is one of the dirtiest smelters in B.C. In fact, I went to Beijing, and you couldn’t see down the block because of the pollution. Well, that’s what it was like inside this dirty smelter. You couldn’t see down to the end of the building just because of all the soot.

People criticized us for supporting the modernization of this smelter and not getting a big paycheque. That wasn’t the point. The point was to get them to stop dumping all this stuff into our environment. So the talk over the years about how it’s so reckless to sell out to these big corporations, and a lot of these big corporations that build…. It’s not true.

Come to Haisla, and you’ll see a working example of how we balanced economic development with the environment, under the foundation of aboriginal rights and title. We did this with the cooperation of the B.C. government, because the federal government offered no help. They’re too far away. B.C. doesn’t matter to them anyway, let alone a little Indian band of 1,500 people living on the west coast of B.C.

When we saw this, we knew we were on the right path because our people started getting jobs. Then something miraculous happened. Poverty got resolved. We had given up our project eight years prior to reduce poverty. We had given up on it. Nobody even talked about it anymore. Now the stories are coming in about how many people got off welfare. Now all they want council to do is to stay out of their way and guarantee mortgages for on-reserve housing. With most reserves in Canada, you can’t get a mortgage on reserve unless your council signs an agreement, an overarching agreement, that guarantees the payment.

I’ll give you an example of how shocked I was, because council had nothing to do with reducing poverty except for opening the door to economic development. That’s all we did, and I was shocked at how much we reduced the welfare list. If you wanted a job, you could get a job, because at the same time, LNG was doing the groundwork for their projects.

[5:20 p.m.]

It was the only time I can remember in my lifetime where you could quit a job where you’re making $60,000, $70,000 a year and get a better job, making more money, within two weeks. This was for uneducated people with no education like a college degree or anything. These were labourers. It was a great time. I didn’t actually realize this when I was listening to the stories of my people telling me how happy they were. They were buying trucks. They were buying houses. They were buying a lot of things that they were proud of.

I was down in our mall, which was busy for once, and I met up with one of my councillor’s daughters, who is a single mother and has two children. I asked: “How’s it going?” I could see that she wanted to complain, so I listened to her complain. This was a single mother who’d never had a job before.

She told me she was cleaning in the camps. She was working six days a week, 12 hours a day. Could I do something about it? My band had signed up to be a joint venture with the camp provider, in terms of the services of the camp. My band was a joint venture partner. That’s how she got the job. We made sure that our partner hired Haisla people.

Amidst this conversation, I realized that she was not complaining about a six-day work week, 12 hours a day. She was complaining that she used to work seven days a week. Why did they take that one day a week away? I didn’t know what to say. She explained to me that she could never provide things for her kids. Then she bought a van. She was looking at a house. They were going to go on vacation. She could buy her daughter an iPad.

That solidified what I thought was the right route to take. We made the right decision, even though we have been criticized to death over being sellouts. I mean, if you ever read Facebook, right now the lateral violence of natives against natives is outrageous, and it’s hypocritical.

If a First Nations community succeeds in getting out of poverty, we’re referred to as apples, sellouts, colonialists. We’ve been assimilated. Yet I don’t see anybody out there running around in loincloths, living off the land with bow and arrows. In fact, the only people I see going through the airports with canoes and bows and arrows are white people. Indians use powerboats and guns to hunt.

In our community, the only people that couldn’t work were those that were severely disabled, and our band council, through the revenues, found a way to directly get them out of poverty. We didn’t ask government for anything. We asked the B.C. government to support us in negotiating with the private sector. That’s all we asked for.

We asked for a better relationship with the Crown, and we signed a protocol that is still in place today. It’s not an encyclopedia. At its basis is just a clause that says that if we have an issue with a permit or a referral or an environmental assessment, my staff should be able to pick up a phone and talk to the B.C. staff and we should be able to resolve it. We shouldn’t have to make it a political issue. It works tremendously. It saved all these trips to Victoria. Everybody knows how hard it is to get down here and how expensive it is. When you’re a band that has no money, it’s a hardship.

I hope this House understands my anger, my frustration and my outrage when I heard comments coming out of Victoria regarding LNG, considering what I was going through. When I was thinking about Victoria and the comments coming out of here, I’ve got to admit, I was ignorant too. I was naive. I thought that the people I had just got through meeting with downstairs had basically said, the next day, that they didn’t support LNG.

It took me hiring a political adviser out of Vancouver to explain to me the differences between the parties down here. I thought Victoria was one big government. I thought everybody in here was all on the same page. Actually, he took me down here to tour. I actually sat up there and watched, and he explained to me how it works.

[5:25 p.m.]

Then I understood the nature of what goes on here, and I understood, kind of, why the comments coming out of Victoria, on one hand, supported LNG fully and, on the other hand, didn’t. I understood it. But what really disappointed me was that nobody came to me to hear my side of the story and what I was trying to resolve. In all the First Nations from Kitimat to Prince George, nobody came to me to hear the stories of poverty.

I believe we could have been at the FID day years ago if this place had cooperated and understood that there’s a lot of people living in poverty right now that we can address, and we can get them out of poverty. If you want proof of it, come to my community.

Two months ago the employment level started going up again. LNG Canada had been quietly signing contracts and bringing employment back to Kitimat — 250 people on site two weeks ago. I had no idea. The contracts that were coming out of Rio Tinto Alcan were continuing. Our people were still working. It’s turning into a great time again.

I mean, you hear these heartbreaking stories of poverty. You hear them all the time, and we bring them down here for context. Well, I lived it. I grew up with it. I didn’t know I was in poverty. It had to be for me to come down here and read a graph and hear some academic talking about it for me to understand that, yeah, I was in poverty. I didn’t know that.

It shapes you. I’ve talked about this before. The culture of my community is poverty. You’re taught how to apply for welfare. You’re taught how to abuse it. You’re taught how to get more money out of it. And you’re also taught how to make money under the table. That’s our culture.

You want reconciliation with First Nations people? Understand what they’re going through right now, and don’t be political about it.

Interjection.

E. Ross: Thank you. I do represent more than one constituency. I represent Nisga’a, your background. I represent Kitsumkalum, Kitselas, and they’re going through the same thing.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Minister, from your seat, please.

E. Ross: In fact, all First Nations across Canada are going through the same thing, used as political agendas. Well, come to my village, and see the success of our people based on economic development, especially LNG. Come to us in one year, when construction is well underway, and talk about a poverty reduction plan there. Talk to Kitselas, who are going to get contracts for the pipeline. Talk to the Burns Lake Band, who signed on early in the stage to address poverty. Talk to Nee Tahi Buhn. Ask them what they think about the poverty reduction plan. How well is that going? If you don’t, then don’t use First Nations in your speeches about poverty.

It’s not just single moms. Aboriginal men. In our culture, like it or not, the men did the hunting and the fishing. That culture, to a certain extent, is still there today. The women did the preparation of the food, the preserving. They smoked. All the aboriginal people that have backgrounds here should know this. They were in the smokehouses. They controlled how the fish was processed. They did all that. They were in charge of boiling the grease. That culture is still there today. But the men in the 20th century couldn’t find their place.

Now, I went to a meeting of the First Nations Limited Partnership. Now, the Haisla had instigated this group, put together for the pipeline communities from Prince George to Kitimat. One of the rules there was you leave your politics at the door. You leave your rights and title at the door. We’re here to do a business deal for LNG and the pipeline. All those First Nations agreed, and we did great things.

[5:30 p.m.]

Then we fell apart. Outside influences started coming in and started disrupting it, not only for this group but for my community, and it tore us apart. I mean, for a small community to be torn apart like that, it takes years to mend.

I went in, and we were trying to convince this one community, in particular, to sign on, and that would have made 100 percent consensus. Every chief got up, and they started telling stories about what was going on in their community. I was ashamed, because when I talked about poverty, I talked about suicide. I said: “I had one suicide in my community in the last five years. We’ve got to reduce that. We’ve got to get rid of it. And the elders in my community — there are a couple that don’t have food to make it through the winter. We’ve got to do something about that.”

The stories I heard from these other chiefs along the pipeline route were horrible. They were ten times worse than mine was. For one chief in particular, his job was to stop suicides. He’d had ten suicides in one quarter. Sometimes he was successful; sometimes he wasn’t. The other side of his job was to respond to motor vehicle accidents where the driver was drunk. He kept a supply of blankets in his truck because he knew that the only thing he could do was to put a blanket over them. These are horrible stories.

Most of the time all these men wanted was a job. They felt ashamed that they couldn’t provide for their family. Their kids needed something, and they couldn’t find the money for it. So it was no wonder. This has got nothing to do with First Nations. This has got to do with pride for anybody, whether you’re First Nations or not. Everybody wants to provide for their family. I do; I’m a man. You know what? When I wasn’t providing for my family and I was on welfare, I was ashamed. I was embarrassed, and that made me very angry.

That’s probably what turned me into an alcoholic. But 17 years later I haven’t touched a drop. I focused on a job — any chance I’d get. I dug ditches for six months. I drove a crew boat for 11 years. Anything I could do just to put food on the table. It works. Yeah, I wasn’t making a lot of money, but I was putting food on the table. It brought back my pride.

I’m listening to everything that we’re talking about here in terms of the bill. We’re talking about welfare rates possibly getting higher. We’re talking about the minimum wage possibly getting higher. I’m just here to tell you: we tried that. If you can make it work at the provincial level, good on you. Congratulations. You have my support. But at the very least, please, come to us and research what we did and what we went through in the last 14 years, because I think, as of FID day just a couple of days ago, we’re a success story.

Hon. J. Sims: It’s my pleasure here today to stand up and speak in support of the child poverty reduction plan.

Before we get going, I really want to thank the Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction for the work he and his staff have done, for the amazing consultation that took place — 28 consultations around this province. What was amazing about those consultations is that there was accommodation made so that people could have daycare, so that people could have transportation, so that those who wanted to participate could actually come and share their perspective and share their stories.

To me that’s very, very touching because, once again, it’s not a minister sitting in an office thinking: “I’ve got to write up a plan.” It’s actually going and talking to British Columbians and then coming up with a plan that is so needed and that we have waited for, for such a long, long time.

As a teacher, I experienced firsthand young students walking into my classroom feeling hunger, telling me they couldn’t sleep at night because their heating had to be switched off and there weren’t enough blankets at home.

[5:35 p.m.]

We all know — Madame Speaker, you understand this as well — that for students, for young kids, it’s very difficult to focus in on their learning when their stomachs are growling and they’re feeling weak from hunger. The sad part of it is that in B.C., we have students going to school hungry. They’re hungry when they go there in the morning — and fortunately, some schools do have morning breakfast programs. But that’s not enough. Our kids in this province deserve to be lifted out of poverty. For that, I thank the minister for bringing forward B.C.’s first poverty reduction plan.

I can say that this has been in incubation for a very, very long time. I can remember a call for this way, way back, a long, long time ago when I was teaching. At this time, it would be remiss of me if I did not acknowledge some of the amazing activists and community groups that have advocated for many, many years, asking for a poverty reduction plan where we had set targets and we could measure our achievements against those targets.

I’m reminded of a woman I call a warrior, in many ways, in her advocacy for children and for youth. That is Adrienne Montani. She currently works for First Call, which we all know is the B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition.

If I were to stand here and start naming the many, many men and women who have been advocating for so long, that would take up my whole speech. But I really want to get on and talk about the impact that poverty has on children and families and why it is so important for that poverty cycle to be broken.

It has an impact on our society. We know that the impact of poverty and the cost of poverty is higher than actually dealing with poverty itself. Children who live in poverty and are malnourished have greater chances of getting ill, of developing mental illness, of not having their basic physical needs met and, therefore, having greater difficulty later on in their life, their health life. Also, those children will require additional resources at school. All of that cost we pay for. It is absolutely critical that children — before school, in preschool and during school — are fed, are housed and are looked after.

There is an old saying that it takes a village to raise a child. I believe it takes all of us, each and every one of us, to help to raise healthy children. It is our responsibility as legislators to put systems in place to lift children out of poverty.

Over the last decade, while I was still with the B.C. Teachers Federation, I heard story after story. They were from every corner of this province — stories that were heart-wrenching, stories that absolutely brought you to the edge of tears, as teachers told me about the struggles they were having addressing and teaching children who came from poverty, meeting their challenges. Whether it was in Prince Rupert, Kitimat, Terrace, Williams Lake, Quesnel, Vancouver or Surrey — I could go on — the stories were the same throughout.

[5:40 p.m.]

I heard of teachers taking food in from home. I heard of other parents bringing in food for the kids who were hungry when they got to school. I’ll always remember the story of a young man who was always falling asleep in his class. A young teacher told me this story in 2005. She said: “You know what? I have this bright young man in my class. He’s very capable. He’s got so much potential, but I can’t keep him awake during the class. He always falls asleep when the class is in the morning.”

She referred the kid to a counsellor, and at first, the kid wasn’t forthcoming. Eventually, he shared with the teacher. He said: “We cannot afford to have our heating system on at nighttime. What we do is we turn off our heat, and we don’t have that many warm quilts or blankets. My brother, who is older and bigger than me, takes most of the blanket, and I can’t sleep at night.” That alone is a very good reason for us to make sure that we have a child poverty reduction plan.

As we know, governments can have laudable goals. We can stand here and make really great speeches, but I would argue very few of us in this room, in this Legislature…. There are some, but very few of us have experienced what real poverty is like.

I would urge each and every one of you to go and visit your local mission, go and visit your local food kitchen. I’m sure most of you have. What we see there are adults and children visiting the food banks, lining up for food in the evening, waiting for shelter, not because it gives them pleasure to stand out there in the cold and the rain. It’s because that is a necessity. They need that food.

We as legislators have an opportunity here to do some­thing. That is, not just make speeches, not pay lip service to the fact that we believe in reducing poverty. We actually have an opportunity to unanimously support this legislation and say yes. We can rise to this occasion. We can set goals, and we can achieve those targets when we work together collabora­tively. That’s what this legislation is about, because without set targets and without having a concrete plan, other priorities will always get in the way. And then time passes.

What I like about the legislation before us: it actually sets out real targets that are measurable and builds into it that at the end of this period — setting further targets.

B.C. has had the…. I wouldn’t say exactly the pleasure, but it has been an embarrassment for British Columbians that we have ranked either bottom or second from the bottom in our provinces when it comes to child poverty. In 2016-2017, we were second from the bottom.

Madame Speaker, you know…. We all know we’re a resource-rich province. We’re what is considered a have province. It is so outrageous that a province like British Columbia, when you look at all our provinces, at our beautiful country, that we are second from the bottom. So these targets will help to reduce child poverty and reduce poverty amongst adults as well.

[5:45 p.m.]

It’s not perfect. It’s not going to fix this overnight. It took 16 long years, and I would say even longer, to get us to where we are today. But for the last decade, we have seen so little action on addressing child poverty. But here we are now. We have an opportunity, and after 16 years, we have a child poverty reduction plan that is doable, that has set targets, that can be measured.

I’ve done a lot of work…. As many of you know, I was a Member of Parliament in my previous life. While I was a Member of Parliament, the secondary school students who take social justice wrote letters to me as a Member of Parliament asking for a poverty reduction plan. They wrote very, very compelling arguments, and as I used to read their letters and pen a response to them, I used to think: “Our kids get it. They get it that they don’t want their classmates to be hungry. They don’t want their classmates to be living below the poverty line and suffering all the ignominy that come with that.”

Those students get that when we live as a society, we have a responsibility to look after each other. You know, somebody once wrote that you judge a society — I’m going to add a little bit to it — not by how big a house someone has or how many super sports cars are sitting in the driveway of people. You judge a society by how well that society looks after its sick, its poor, its elderly, its children and those who cannot support themselves.

For too long, we have received failing marks on those indicators. When we receive failing marks on those indicators, it should be a cause of concern for each and every one of us.

I would ask, momentarily, that we see the clock at 6 p.m. I reserve my right to continue debate at the next session.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Hon. J. Sims moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. M. Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. Monday, October 15.

The House adjourned at 5:48 p.m.