Of course that’s the thing about being an asylum-seeker –– you don’t get into a queue. When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. Hell, my folks didn’t even know Montreal (where they landed) was a predominantly French-speaking city.

So they just showed up. The difference, however, was that in those days, they got landed immigrant status in 20 minutes at the airport. Imagine that!  Over the course of the Vietnam War, about 100,000 American war resisters came to Canada (many with less formal education than my folks and thus unlikely to score particularly well under today’s immigration point-system, and I suspect many had less education than many of these recent Tamil arrivals). Yet here we are setting our hair on fire about 492 people.

But those aren’t the only numeric comparisons I find curious.

Among the common reactions to the arrival of the MV Sun Sea is the proposition that Canada’s alleged lax immigration laws make us a global sucker –– a target for many of the world’s migrants. This is an absurd notion.

World conflicts, environmental disasters, and a global economic system that keeps billions impoverished has resulted in millions upon millions of refugees and displaced people. In Pakistan alone, the current flooding is producing, we are told, 14 million internally displaced people. Globally, there are, according to the UN, about 43 million “forcibly displaced people”, of which about 15 million are refugees.  (You can find good UN statistics on displaced people here.)

But the vast majority of these globally displaced people are being absorbed, not by wealthy countries, but either internally or by neighbouring poor countries –– the places least able to afford the costs and with the bleakest economic prospects.

Canada accepted fewer than 20 thousand refugees last year –– a drop in the global bucket (about 0.1% of world refugees) –– and our acceptance rate has been declining in recent years (and in contrast, Canada deported about 13 thousand people). As Stephen Hume notes in an excellent piece in the Vancouver Sun, Canada does not rank as on of the top recipient countries for refugees: “Other developed countries are the destinations for most refugees and many more are granted asylum in those countries… Measured as a ratio of refugee claims to population, Canada doesn’t even make the top 10 nations for asylum seekers.”

Surely, when a few hundred people arrive on our shores, we can afford to treat these people with respect and grant them due process.

And here’s another curious comparison: The real and much more significant Canadian immigration story of recent years (at least measured numerically) isn’t about refugees or people arriving by boats. It’s about the explosion in temporary foreign workers. Over the past few years, the number of temporary foreign workers coming into Canada each year exceeds 200,000, and now surpasses the number of immigrants.

But the Harper government hasn’t been sounding the alarm about this. On the contrary, the federal government has been promoting and facilitating the massive growth in this category of migrants. Why? Because unlike regular immigrants and refugees, these workers are being specifically requested by employers, their indentured status makes them unable to exercise key employment rights and leaves them highly vulnerable to exploitation and unsafe conditions, and they are unable to make the same claims to the social and economic rights that Canadians take for granted.

Immigration is central to the story of Canada –– waves of people who came, mostly to meet a domestic need for labour, and sometimes fleeing harm and conflict. But historically, once people arrived, either as immigrants or refugees, they were upon landing met with a social contract: they could avail themselves of the social and economic rights Canadians enjoyed (such as health care and education for their families, and workplace rights and protections), and in a few years could be granted the full rights of citizenship.

With the explosion of temporary workers (set against a tightening of regular immigration and refugees admissions, and reactions such as those we see directed towards the Tamils), the government is effectively saying, “that deal is off –– we’re happy to have temporary indentured labour, but don’t think you can be a Canadian.”

When my parents arrived in the ’60s, a small minority in Canada were keen to label the Vietnam war resisters will all manner of unwelcome labels (much as the Canadian government is currently doing with respect to the Tamil asylum-seekers today, quickly labelling them as terrorists, criminals and queue-jumpers). But for the most part, the Vietnam war resisters were welcomed, and went on to make a valuable contribution to Canadian society. Much the same can be said of the Vietnamese boat people who arrived in the late 1970s. Why can’t these better receptions be the norm, rather than the xenophobia that characterizes more recent arrivals?

And here’s what troubles me most. In a world still coming to terms with the reality of climate change, the truth is that the number of global climate migrants and displaced people will soon dwarf the UN numbers sited above  –– a lot more people are coming, and our recent record does not bode well. Will this recent ugliness mark each new unexpected arrival, or can we chill out and have a rational conversation about what our moral obligations and humanitarian response should be to the global realities ahead?

(The group No One is Illegal has produced an excellent fact sheet debunking six common myths about the Tamil refugee claimants. It can be found here.)

Six provinces now have poverty reduction plans, although most are still fairly new, and therefore we don’t yet have data to tell us what kind of success they are meeting with, the exceptions being Quebec and Newfoundland. What their plans and results tell us is that poverty isn’t inevitable – that policy matters.

The example of Newfoundland is particularly instructive. There, the Conservative government of Danny Williams has made poverty reduction one of its overarching goals. Back in 2004, Newfoundland’s poverty rate was the second highest in Canada after BC’s. It is now 6.5 per cent, the third lowest in Canada. Their plan has led to concrete policy changes: welfare benefit rates have gone up (and were already higher than BC’s relative to the LICO) and they have been indexed (they go up every year according to the CPI); the minimum wage has been increased to $10; and the province followed Quebec and made dental care universal for children.

Ontario now also has a plan. Indeed, their plan is legislated, with a 25% reduction in 5 years. And notably, that legislation, the Ontario Poverty Reduction Act, was passed with unanimous all-party support, one week before BC’s provincial election last May, at the height of the recession. Like Newfoundland, they have a cross-ministerial secretariat, with a lead minister. And their lead minister must present annual progress reports. They have struck a welfare review panel, undertaking a comprehensive review of all the social assistance rates and rules. And they have gone the route of introducing an Ontario Child Tax Credit (like the federal one) worth $1,300 a year (another policy vehicle for increasing the incomes of low-income families, whether their income comes from welfare or paid employment).

More recently, New Brunswick has tabled their plan. The government there has fundamentally altered the tone of the debate, particularly about welfare. They too have legislated their plan in what they call the Economic and Social Inclusion Act. They too have all-party support. They have enacted some very large increases in welfare benefit rates, and indicated that this is only the start. And they have increased and indexed the minimum wage. And they too have a secretariat to coordinate plans.

The key common features of these plans are these:

• They have been advanced with all-party support
• They have specific targets and timelines, which in most cases are embedded in legislation.
• They are comprehensive (meaning they deal with income – both social assistance and other government income supports, as well as measures to boost labour market income; but they also address the social infrastructure on which low and modest income families depend, such as housing, education, child care, and community health care; and they have specific measures to address poverty among those populations where poverty is most acute, such as Aboriginal people, recent immigrants, people with disabilities and metal illness, and single parents).
• They have accountability mechanisms, such as public consultations, funding for independent monitoring groups, and obligations to report annually on progress. A key need is for timeline benchmarks that are frequent enough that a government can be held accountable within the life of each mandate.
• There is a cross-ministry secretariat to coordinate and integrate plans, and to ensure that policies do not act at cross-purposes.

(The preceding was part of my recent presentation to the BC Legislature’s Standing Committee on Children and Youth. For the full presentation, click here

And to join the call for a BC poverty reduction plan, click here

Among the points I raised with the committee: too often this issue gets lost in a fruitless debate about how to measure poverty. The simple truth is that no measure is perfect. But by whatever measure one uses ­­–– the LICO (low-income cut-off) before-tax, the LICO after-tax, or the Market Basket Measure –– BC has the highest overall poverty rate and the highest child poverty rate in Canada. So we need a plan to change this reality.

The point is to pick a consistent measure (or a set of measures), which allows us to monitor progress over time and relative to other jurisdictions.

And when one compares BC’s performance (using either the LICO or the MBM) in this way – relative to the historic norm and relative to others – what emerges is not good.

The poverty and child poverty rates have come down in recent years (at least up to 2007, the last year for which we have data). That is to be expected. Generally, the poverty rate tracks the economic business cycle. For this reason, people are rightly worried that the poverty rate in 2008 and surely in 2009 will go back up (already we know from the annual Hunger Count report that food bank use was back up 15% in 2009 – an early warning).

But even within the data leading up to 2007, there are worrying elements:

• For example, after a near unprecedented period of economic growth, spanning from the end of the recession in the early 1990s to 2007, one would have expected to see much more of a decline in the poverty rate. But that didn’t happen. Instead, by 2007, the overall BC poverty rate (at 11%, using the after-tax LICO) had still not managed to attain the 1989 trough of about 10% reached before the 1990 recession.

• With respect to child poverty, the performance is even less impressive. 1989 was also the year in which the House of Commons resolved to end child poverty by 2000. As we all know, that didn’t happen, and indeed, the national child poverty rate by 2007 saw no progress – we were right back to where we started in 1989. But this masks provincial differences. In fact, most provinces have seen a modest improvement. The national picture is weakened by the fact that only two province saw negative progress in that time – Ontario and BC.  Indeed BC realized the least progress since the House of Commons’ ill-fated resolution, with child poverty increasing by 30 per cent between 1989 and 2007.

• Also, while the national child poverty rate has consistently gone down since the mid 1990s, BC alone saw a disturbing upward spike in the years 2002, 2003 and 2004 (again, you see this using either the LICO or MBM). This is likely a result on welfare policy changes instituted in 2002.

It is instructive to look at how BC does relative to some other provinces, and in particular, relative to Quebec and Newfoundland, as they are the provinces with the longest standing poverty reduction plans.

In many respects, the MBM is a better measure, as it is more reflective of the actual costs of basic goods in each place (such as differences in the cost of housing). However, data only goes back to 2000, and for the first few years, HRSDC was not reliably producing annual updates. But that appears to now be changing.

Importantly, the success in Quebec and Newfoundland isn’t just about an improved economy and job creation. Notably, if one were to look at market income alone, the child poverty rate in both of these places in 2007 was higher than in BC. It is after incorporating government transfers that their poverty rates fall below us. The lesson: government policy makes a difference.

Conversely, when we rely only on the market, economic growth and job creation, the results with respect to poverty reduction are weak. That is what we see in the BC case, where we have recorded very low unemployment in recent years (up to the onset of the recession), but poor progress on child poverty. In BC, the story of child poverty is primarily as low-wage story; 56% of poor children in BC live in households with at least one parent working full-year full-time in the paid labour force.  That’s why a plan needs to address issues such as the minimum wage, employment standards, and a living wage. And that’s why, when we call for a poverty plan, and the response from the Premier is that the government’s goal is to have the lowest unemployment rate that we can – that goal, while laudable, is insufficient.

Here’s an excerpt:

B.C. had the third-highest increase in unemployment in the country during the recession. Some 51,800 jobs were lost between October 2008 and October 2009, representing 2.2 per cent of B.C.’s total jobs. Unemployment increased over this period to 8.3 per cent from 5.2 per cent.

While the number of EI recipients rose sharply as unemployment grew, with nine B.C. urban communities experiencing an increase of 115 per cent or more in the number of EI recipients, coverage remained low, rising to 48.2 per cent in October 2009. In other words, more than half of B.C.’s unemployed were not receiving benefits, despite the fact that the province’s economy was one of the most devastated by the recession.

Citizens for Public Justice, along with Canada Without Poverty, has been leading a campaign called Dignity for All – a national call to end poverty in Canada.

The living wage calculation includes basic expenses for a two-earner family with two young children, as well as government taxes, credits, deductions and subsidies. It finds that each parent would need to work full-time at an hourly wage of $18.17 in Metro Vancouver in order to pay for necessities, support the healthy development of their children and participate in the social and civil life of their communities.

The announcement follows last week’s news that New Westminster’s city council voted unanimously to adopt a living family wage for city and contract employees, making it the first municipality in Canada to do so.

I’ll be on BC Almanac at 12:30 PM today, and CTV, Global and CBC TV will be covering the story on the evening news. Exciting times!

Last night (April 26), New Westminster City Council voted unanimously to adopt the first municipal Living Wage policy in Canada. They have used the broad definition of the family living wage, developed two years ago by CCPA, First Call and the Victoria Community Council (meaning, modelled on a family of four with two young children), and applied the policy to both direct staff and contractors, which is fantastic, as it means this now sets a national standard/precedent for similar policies/bylaws. Hopefully, other cities will follow soon.

The motion was as follows:

That the City establish a Living Wage Policy that is tied to an hourly rate established each year by the Living Wage for Families Campaign; and,

That the Living Wage policy will apply to both full time and part time employees; and,

That there be no threshold in terms of dollar value of a contract or number of employees; and,

That the policy apply to persons that perform physical work on City premises and properties; and,

That staff bring back information to Council regarding implications of the Living Wage on contracted services.”

It’s a great win for the Metro Vancouver Living Wage for Families campaign (which includes First Call, CCPA, ACORN, HEU, and many others). Special recognition should go to the lead city councillor on this, Jaimie McEvoy, and to BC ACORN which initiated this effort in New West.

Personally, I’ve never found completing my taxes particularly onerous. It takes me a few hours — no big deal. I’m paid well (and well above the average). I’ve never had to hire an accountant, as I’m not doing anything fancy. I’m only availing myself of a few basic deductions — RRSPs, the child care deduction, and charitable deductions.

But when I’m done, I like to do the following exercise: first, I go back and look at my total income (not my “net” or “taxable” income, but rather my gross income). Then I look at what I actually have to pay in total federal and provincial income taxes (not what was deducted from my paycheque, but rather what I will actually have to pay after all my deductions and my tax refund). Then, using these two figures, I calculate the total effective income tax rate I pay.

And what do you think that is? Go ahead, take a guess… 20%? 25%? 30%? More? Alright, I’ll tell you — 13.38%! And all I can think is “What a #?!@#*?&@#!!  steal!” Here I am making roughly two and a half times the median income, and I’m getting all these public services, and I’m only paying 13.38%! In fact, if I isolate only my provincial income taxes, the total effective income tax rate comes to a paltry 3.46%. Ridiculous. What are these tax cutting maniacs complaining about?

Now granted, we pay other taxes too: payroll, sales, property, MSP, etc. When these get included, the tax regime ends up a whole lot less progressive, and the total bill increases. But, as the CCPA’s Marc Lee found in a major 2007 study entitled Eroding Tax Fairness, even when these all these taxes are included, most people are paying closer to 35% of their income in total taxes, and no income group is paying more than 40% (indeed, the very wealthy pay a lower overall rate than the poor and middle class). So why are so many people under the mistaken impression that they are paying over 50% of their income in taxes? Well, because they are told this so relentlessly in the mainstream media. But they aren’t.

I encourage people to do the same exercise I did when they complete their taxes. The results will surprise you. And when you stand back and look at what we pay in taxes, set against the public goods and services we provide to one another in exchange, one is hard-pressed not to conclude that it’s a pretty great deal. In fact, maybe it’s time to increase our taxes.

Of the 24 cities, Vancouver has the highest percent of population with low income; the highest percent of working poor families; and the largest and fastest growing income gap between rich and poor. Welfare income was also very low in Vancouver, and Vancouver had the second highest number of households which paid more than 30% of their income for rent and/or lived in inadequate housing. Vancouver was also worst for “community affordability.” That means that the combination of low income plus high cost of living makes the poorest fifth of Vancouver residents worse off than those in other cities.

Over the last two years, we’ve seen the province and city make some important moves on the homelessness front. Frances Bula has a good summary of them on her blog (and the comments after her piece are very insightful too).

Most of the activity, however, as been aimed at reducing visible street homelessness (through opening new shelters), and defensive moves aimed at protecting the existing stock of low-income housing (through the provincial government’s purchases of SRO hotels). In contrast, we’ve seen very little and very slow action with respect to actually increasing the supply of new social housing.

Today saw the formal launch of Pivot’s Red Tent campaign, and the establishment of a tent city, both drawing attention to the need for more action on new social housing, and for a federal housing strategy.  We’ll see what the international media makes of all this.

Which still leaves the larger question of whether the Games will produce long-term economic benefits. Much of this hinges on whether the 2010 Olympics will produce a sustained increase in tourism.

Back in 2003, a government-commissioned economic impact report by InterVistas predicted a big boost to tourism leading up to the Games. But as a more recent economic impact study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found, that did not transpire.

There will likely be a small economic boost during the Games themselves. Of course thousands of tourists, athletes and journalists have arrived, and their spending is an economic benefit. But mitigating this, thousands of local residents have chosen to flee the province, figuring now would be a good time to get out of town, and the departure of their local spending will be an economic loss. Hard to say what the net impact will be, but there will be clear winners and losers (some hotels and restaurants will be winners, while the local grocery store may see a loss).

But will there by a long-term increase in tourism? Hard to say. Depends somewhat on the weather (showing the world what this place looks like in February is always a crapshoot). If someone is a globe-trotting ski tourist, they were already well aware of Whistler long before the bid was won, so it’s unlikely that we’ll see real gains on that front.

The Games may produce a marginal increase in tourism for a few years. But in the longer term, I can’t stop wondering this – in a world wrestling with climate change and peak oil, are people really going to be traveling like this, or will rising oil prices make the cost of air travel prohibitive? I suspect the days of destination ski travel and global tourism as we’ve seen it in recent decades are numbered. Consequently, as a province and country, we need to start putting our economic development eggs in something other than the trade and tourism basket.

You can find more resources related to the Olympics from CCPA and other allies here.

The first of these short reports was posted to their website this week.

The report includes a startling finding — not only does BC have the highest child poverty rate, our province has also realized the least progress since the House of Commons’ ill-fated 1989 resolution to end child poverty. Make that negative progress. While most provinces saw a drop in their child poverty rate between 1989 and 2007, only Ontario and BC saw the situation worsen, with BC experiencing the largest increase (of 30%).

Here are the details:

Let’s take a longer-term view of the child poverty statistics and compare poverty rates twenty years ago in 1989 and in 2007.  The year 1989 was the best year of the 1980s for the economy, and the national child poverty rate was 15.3 percent.  It was also the year that the House of Commons voted unanimously to work to end child poverty by the year 2000.

Canada never got anywhere near that goal.  In fact, the national child poverty rate in 2007 was 15 percent.  The year 2007, like 1989, came at the end of a long cycle of economic growth prior to the current recession.

The table shows the poverty rates for Canada and each of the provinces in 1989 and 2007.

CHILD POVERTY RATES IN 1989 AND 2007, CANADA AND ALL PROVINCES
	1989	2007	% CHANGE
Alberta	19.3	11.2	-42%
Prince Edward Island	13.5	8.3	-39%
Newfoundland and Labrador	20.0	13.0	-35%
Saskatchewan	21.9	16.7	-24%
Manitoba	22.7	18.8	-17%
Nova Scotia	16.1	14.9	-7%
New Brunswick	17.9	16.7	-7%
Quebec	16.0	14.9	-7%
CANADA	15.3	15.0	-2%
Ontario	11.9	14.5	+22%
British Columbia	14.5	18.8	+30%
Source: Statistics Canada, Income Trends in Canada  1976 to 2007 (Low Income Cut-Offs Before Taxes)

Eight provinces reported declines in the child poverty rate in this 20 year period, some of which were dramatic.  British Columbia and Ontario were the only provinces that did worse over this time period, with BC the worst by far.  Together, child poverty in these two provinces kept the national child poverty rate from falling significantly.

The provincial government of Ontario recently passed anti-poverty legislation with the unanimous support of the legislature that seeks to reduce the child poverty rate by 25 percent over five years.

That’s why British Columbians should be concerned about a report released earlier this week by the Dieticians of Canada — The Cost of Eating in BC 2009.

Unfortunately, the Dietitian’s report received virtually no media coverage. But it makes a vital point — British Columbians on social assistance and those working for minimum wage cannot afford a healthy diet. For them, meeting the Premier’s great goal is simply out of reach.

Here’s the report in its own words:

Dietitians publish the report to bring attention to the fact that not all British Columbians have enough money to buy healthy food.  While shelter and food costs have risen significantly over the past decade, income assistance rates have remained virtually unchanged and minimum wage, once the highest in the country, has remained at $8.00/hour. For those receiving income assistance or earning minimum wage there simply is not enough money to pay for housing and food, let alone other necessities. Unemployment is up and more people are relying on assistance.  There are too many living in poverty in BC and too many lined up at food banks. Dietitians are calling for the provincial government to take some additional action to address poverty in this province. Other provinces are taking action.  Quebec and Ontario have anti-poverty legislation, while Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and New Brunswick all have poverty reduction plans.  Common to them are significant changes to income assistance and increases to minimum wage.

The report contains important calculations, comparing the cost of basic necessities (including a healthy diet), set against the income provided by welfare or a minimum wage job. For example, a family of four on income assistance would need more than 100% of their income for shelter and food alone, leaving nothing for anything else.

The core finding of this report isn’t just of concern to those families caught in this untenable situation. In truth, we all pay for this policy failure. A poor diet means poor health, and we all pick up the tab for that. That’s why the Dietitians have joined the call for a comprehensive poverty reduction plan for BC

The report, which surveys food banks across the country every March, found that in March 2009, food bank use was up nearly 18% nationally, and 15% in BC –– the largest single-year jump and the highest number of people assisted on record.  81% of BC food banks reported an increase in demand in 2009. Of the nearly 90,000 British Columbians who relied on food banks that month, 31% were children, 12% reported employment income, 6% were on EI, 19% were receiving disability-related income support, and 44% were receiving social assistance (yet more proof that our welfare system is structurally dependent on food banks and other charities for people to meet their basic food needs).

Food bank usage had been in decline since 2004, until this year. And so, this report provides important evidence of the impact of the recession. We won’t have up-to-date poverty statistics for another year or so, so reports like this provide an early glimpse of how vulnerable people are impacted by the downturn.

If we are going to end hunger in our society, charity alone is not going to get the job done. We need an income support system and wages that ensure people can meet basic needs. And the report provides yet more evidence that both BC and Canada need comprehensive poverty reduction plans, something Food Banks Canada itself calls for in this report.

All of which has people looking with fresh eyes at the public pension system — Old Age Security, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, and the Canada Pension Plan. Turns out the least sexy plans are the ones you can count on. The problem, of course, is that the benefits these plans pay out are far too low to provide a reasonable retirement income. Even the CPP (the most “generous” of these plans) provides a maximum annual income of only about $11,000.

So, rather than beating a path back to the private plans, pension reform should emphasize strengthening the OAS, GIS and CPP. The CCPA’s annual Alternative Federal Budget has long called for increasing the OAS/GIS to ensure all seniors are above the poverty line (last year’s AFB called for a 15% increase to the GIS), and for significant enhancements to the CPP. Similarly, the Canadian Labour Congress is proposing substantial improvements to the public pension system, including a doubling of CPP benefits (see here for more).

Consider this: the CPP currently collects premiums from workers (payroll taxes) at a rate of about 5% of their pay (with the first $3,000 of earnings exempt), but only up to a yearly income of about $45,000, after which point a worker ceases to pay the CPP payroll tax. What this means, in practice, is that someone earning twice this amount ($90,000/year) is actually being charged an effective payroll tax of about 2.4% of their income, and a very wealthy person making $180,000 is paying an effective CPP payroll tax of 1.18% (while someone earning $45,000 or less is paying the tax at the full rate of about 4.7%). It is thus a very regressive tax.

In contrast, in the US, their equivalent Social Security payroll tax is similar to ours (4.75% of earnings), but this is charged on income up to a much, much higher ceiling — an annual income of $106,800. Thus, their premium rate, like ours, is regressive, but much less so.

Imagine how much more revenues we could collect for the stand-along CPP fund if our maximum ceiling was equivalent to the one in the US. And think about how much more generous CPP benefits paid to retirees could be if we went this route.