What is the state of welfare in Canada?
Each year Maytree paints a portrait of the economic dimension of poverty. Welfare in Canada uses data from provincial and territorial government sources to show the total amount of income available to households relying on social assistance.
To mark the latest release, Maytree hosted a webinar to highlight the report’s findings.
The report’s authors, Jennefer Laidley, an independent consultant, and Mohy Tabbara, policy advisor at Maytree, presented the key takeaways.
Tyler Meredith, Maytree fellow and former senior economic advisor to the prime minister, spoke to the federal government’s role in Canadian income security policy.
Maytree president Elizabeth McIsaac moderated the discussion following the presentations.
Related:
Webinar transcript
Elizabeth McIsaac:
It is now my pleasure to introduce my colleagues and today’s speakers. Jennefer Laidley and Mohy Tabbara are the co-authors of the Welfare in Canada report. Jennefer is an independent consultant and you may know her from her previous work with the Income Security Advocacy Centre. Mohy is a policy advisor here at Maytree and we are also joined by Tyler Meredith, a Maytree fellow and former senior economic advisor to the Prime Minister, who will comment on the findings in terms of the federal government’s role in Canadian income security policy.
I would like to begin today’s webinar by acknowledging the land where we live and work.
As we are meeting and connecting virtually today, I encourage you to acknowledge the place you occupy. I acknowledge that I am, and Maytree is, located in Toronto covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit. Jennefer joins us from the unceded traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, on Gabriola Island, BC. Mohy joins us from Montreal, which is situated on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka. And Tyler is joining us today from Calgary, which is located in the traditional territories of the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta.
And so without any further ado, Jennefer and Mohy, it’s over to you to take us through the highlights of this year’s report.
Jennefer Laidley:
Great, thank you very much Elizabeth. I want to welcome everybody to our Welfare in Canada, 2022 webinar. Thank you very much for joining us today. First, I really want to note that we couldn’t produce this report without the assistance of the many ministerial officials in the provinces and territories who provided information and confirmed the data in the report and experts at Statistics Canada who gave us helpful information and advice. We want to thank you very much for all of your assistance. Welfare in Canada, 2022 is the latest in a series of reports that help us to understand the amount and adequacy of the total income of households who receive social assistance from various government sources in Canada.
We hope it’s also a helpful resource for efforts to reduce the rate and depth of poverty that people receiving social assistance experience. The report uses methodology that was established by the National Council of Welfare in reports that started in 1989. The Caledon Institute picked up these reports in 2012 and Maytree took over in 2018. And now Mohy will let you know what we’re going to be covering in our presentation today, which we’re basing primarily on a policy brief that we produced alongside the Welfare in Canada report and that was released on Wednesday.
Mohy Tabbara:
Thanks Jennefer and hi everyone. Thank you for attending. Our presentation today will take about 20 to 25 minutes and we’ll start by contextualizing the data in the report, and we’ll do that first by highlighting some key economic and social factors that happened in Canada in 2022. And then we’ll give a brief overview of the Welfare in Canada methodology. After that, we’ll discuss how adequate welfare incomes were in 2022 as well as how adequacy has changed over time. Afterwards, we’ll look at how basic social assistance benefits changed.
Then we’ll also look at how total welfare incomes changed relative to inflation, which will lead to a discussion on the response to high inflation by governments in 2022.
After that, we’ll look at how much the federal government contributes to welfare incomes versus provincial or territorial governments. And finally, we’ll leave you with some key takeaways from the report and some recommendations.
Jennefer Laidley:
So what happened in 2022? Well, 2022 was a pretty eventful year in many ways, but for us related to total welfare incomes, we wanted to highlight four important events which provide some context for our analysis. First 2022 saw the end of COVID-19 benefits. Several jurisdictions had provided benefits to cover costs associated with the pandemic in 2020. None of those was extended into 2021 and the one COVID-related benefit that was available in 2021 was not available in 2022. So 2022 saw the end, there were no COVID benefits provided by any jurisdiction.
Also, inflation, as you well know, was at a 40-year high in 2022 at a rate of 6.8%. And this was a huge hit to purchasing power for everyone. But for people receiving social assistance, it was especially problematic. And we’ll have a look at how problematic and what jurisdictions did or didn’t do in response. Also, Bill C-22, the Canada Disability Benefit legislation was introduced in the House of Commons in June 2022. The legislation was a long time in coming and there was a lot of advocacy done to get to that stage.
And now that the legislation has passed and work on the regulations is progressing, advocates will need to continue to work to ensure the best outcome for the most people and as soon as possible. And we saw at least two provinces starting to think about how to do social assistance a bit differently in 2022. The two examples are Quebec, where a major policy shift took place, and we’ll talk about that, it was for new entrants into their Aim for Employment Program; and at PEI where investments are being made in base benefits and incomes from base benefits are increasing and actually adequacy is improving. First though, we’re going to talk briefly about how we go about preparing the report and what goes into our calculations.
Mohy Tabbara:
So the details of the methodology are in the introduction of the report and I encourage you to read it, but I’ll highlight some key elements to help better frame the data that we’re discussing today. In each of the 13 provinces and territories, we looked at the total incomes of four example households. And they are the unattached singles considered employable, which are in red, the unattached singles with a disability in orange, single parents with one child aged two in light blue, and couples with two children age 10 and 15, which are navy blue. In total, we look at the incomes of 53 different households across the country.
The one extra household is because we include two programs for people with disabilities in Alberta, which have two different amounts of benefits. And something to keep in mind is that we make a number of assumptions. And just to mention a few, the heads of households are deemed employable except for the unattached singles with the disability. The distinction is not our own making, but it’s very much still used. The households had no employment income and they filed their tax returns. The households are new recipients of social assistance and started to receive benefits on January 1st of the year in question.
And also income is for the calendar year, not the fiscal year. This methodology allows us to make comparisons year after year. But it’s important to note that the report doesn’t reflect every person’s experience of receiving social assistance. So it’s intended to be informative but not universal.
Jennefer Laidley:
So we’ll look at components. When we say total welfare income, what do we actually mean? Well, we’re referring not just to basic social assistance benefit rates. In our analysis, the total welfare income of a household is made up of a number of components, all of which are government transfers. This includes the basic and additional social assistance benefits that are regularly provided to all recipients from the program or in the territory or province where they live, as well as any provincial or territorial tax credits and benefits that they’d be eligible for. And for households with children, provincial or territorial child benefits, that is if their jurisdiction has such a program.
Total welfare income also includes tax credits and benefits from the federal government. So this is the GST credit and the credit supplement and the climate action incentive for households in four of the provinces. And again, for households with children, welfare income includes the Canada child benefit. So the total welfare income for each of the four households that Mohy just talked about is made up of all of these components. And it varies because each jurisdiction, of course, has its own distinct social assistance program as well as its own tax credit and benefit programs.
And we’ll look later at how much of total incomes comes from the provinces and territories and how much comes from federal sources. But we thought we’d start this year by looking at adequacy as that’s probably the most important analysis because it tells us how well or not well households who are receiving social assistance are doing. How do we measure how adequate total welfare incomes are? Well, we compare total incomes to the Market Basket Measure or, for the Northwest Territories in the Yukon, the Northern Market Basket Measure. These measures represent Canada’s official poverty line and are used to track progress on poverty reduction.
There isn’t yet an official poverty line for Nunavut but when it’s finalized, we’ll start to use it.
The MBM or MBM-N are one of four thresholds that we use to assess adequacy. We also use the deep income poverty threshold, which is 75% of the MBM or MBM-N. We also compare total welfare incomes in the provinces with the Low Income Measure and the Low Income Cutoff. And while we won’t discuss those comparisons today, they’re in the report for those who want to see and use them.
Mohy Tabbara:
In the next four graphs, you’ll see the black lines, which are the official poverty line or the MBM-N as Jennefer mentioned, and the gray lines are the deep income poverty threshold. In this first graph, the red bars are the welfare incomes of unattached singles considered employable in each province and territory except for Nunavut. As you can see, not one single income crosses the black line, which means that all unattached single considered employable households were living in poverty. More starkly, only two of the households were living above the deep income poverty threshold in Quebec and in the Northwest Territories.
The 10 other households were living in deep poverty. In the case of New Brunswick, Alberta, Nova Scotia and Ontario, the welfare incomes are less than half the deep income poverty threshold or about a third of the official poverty line. Something to note is that the household in Quebec is the first unattached single considered employable household in any province to rise above the deep income poverty threshold. And this is because of a change in Quebec’s approach to social assistance. A major policy change in 2022 made new recipients of the Aim for Employment Program eligible for manpower training benefits, which are much higher than the former basic benefits.
This had a major impact on the total welfare incomes of both the unattached single considered employable and, as we’ll see later, the couple with two children in our analysis. And I’ll specify that this represents a very specific and small number of recipients in Quebec. If you’re interested to learn more, we discuss all of that in the Welfare in Canada report. So please check it out for more details. On this side, we have the unattached single with a disability households in orange. The official poverty lines and deep income poverty thresholds are the exact same as those of the unattached singles considered employable.
But it’s important to emphasize that the additional cost of living for a person with disability is not factored into these poverty thresholds. So poverty here is likely underrepresented. Even with this in mind, all 12 unattached single with a disability households were living in poverty in 2022 and only four households live above the deep income poverty threshold. And those are the ones in Alberta for those receiving AISH, Newfoundland and Labrador, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. For three provinces, the gap below the deep income poverty threshold is very significant. And the least adequate welfare incomes were in Alberta for the other program, which is BFE, followed by New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
And here’s the same graph for the single parent with one child households. Again, none of the single parent with one child households had incomes above the poverty line in 2022 and only four were living above the deep income poverty threshold in Quebec, Prince Edward Island, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. And the least adequate welfare incomes were in Nova Scotia and Ontario. And lastly, we have the same graph for the couple with two children households. 11 of 12 households were living in poverty in 2022. The only exception is the couple with two children household in Quebec, similar to the unattached single considered employable household.
This is due to a change in the approach to social assistance in Quebec. In two other jurisdictions, the households had welfare incomes above the deep income poverty threshold, which are PEI and the Yukon. All other couple with two children households, which is nine of the 12, were living in deep poverty and the least adequate were in New Brunswick and in Ontario.
Jennefer Laidley:
So in overview of the 49 households that we include in our adequacy analysis and it’s not all 53 because again there’s no official poverty line yet for Nunavut. Of those 49 households, 48 of them were living in poverty in 2022, that’s 98% of households living in poverty. And what’s even more disturbing is that of those 49 households, 36 of them were living in deep poverty. That’s 73% or nearly three quarters. So the situation is pretty dire for people receiving social assistance in Canada. And we’ll see later how much each level of government is contributing to total welfare incomes and where there is room for improving adequacy at each level.
Now another analysis that we do in the report is to look at how adequate incomes have been historically. Because of time constraints today, we’ll just look at the situation for unattached single households, although you’ll see this analysis in the report for households with children as well. And we’re also highlighting unattached singles because they’re the households that are living in the deepest poverty. So when we look at adequacy over time, we actually find similar patterns in most instances.
And on this slide, you’ll see the primary pattern which is illustrated by the situation for unattached singles in Alberta, Ontario and the Yukon. The timeframes are different for the provinces and the territories because we only have Northern Market Basket Measure thresholds back to 2018. But you’ll see from these examples that the prevailing pattern is that most incomes are under the poverty line or the deep income poverty line for most of the period with some fluctuations. And you’ll see an improvement in adequacy in 2020, which of course marks the height of COVID-related benefits and then there’s a decline in the two years thereafter.
For our purposes today, it’s important to note that the decline between 2021 and 2022 and that’s largely the result of total incomes not keeping up with inflation. But in these graphs you’ll see that we also have some notable discrepancies from that pattern. In Prince Edward Island, we see an upward trend starting in 2018 and that continues past 2020 despite the loss of COVID-related benefits and continues into 2022 after a significant investment in basic social assistance benefits by that province.
But of course we can’t lose sight of the fact that incomes are still under the deep income poverty threshold in PEI and that’s throughout the entire time period and even with the recent increases. But progress is being made. In Nova Scotia, we see a similar upper trend since 2020, although not nearly as pronounced as in PEI, but again incomes are still under the deep poverty threshold and in fact are very far below deep poverty. And in Quebec we have this huge increase for the unattached single considered employable in 2022. And again, that stems from the significant and very specific policy change that Mohy talked about earlier.
But again here as we see with PEI and Nova Scotia incomes are still below the poverty line. So much of what we saw in those trend lines can be seen here as we look at the change in the total amount of income that comes from basic social assistance benefits between 2021 and 2022. Just to define our terms here, basic benefits are those benefits that are intended for basic costs like food and clothes and shelter. So this doesn’t include additional benefits like a Christmas allowance that all recipients would receive automatically and it doesn’t include special needs amounts like those that you would typically have to request from a caseworker.
And we can see that the annual change ranges from $0 in Alberta, in Ontario for the unattached single considered employable and in Nunavut to nearly $2,000 in Prince Edward Island. And as we mentioned earlier, the large increase in Quebec is a bit of a special case. Those are two pretty significant increases and we might include BC and the Yukon here as well. While the rest are really relatively modest.
And I want to highlight that while we did see a decline in the Northwest Territories, we believe that this is due to the ways in which basic benefits are calculated for the purposes of our report rather than due to a policy change that was made in that jurisdiction. And you can see the details of that in the report. Now for households with children, we see similar changes between 2021 and 2022. And again we have the outlier situation in Quebec, the next highest increase amount in Prince Edward Island, with BC not too far behind and the others are relatively modest increases.
And we can see that there was no change in Alberta, Ontario or Nunavut and methodology is likely again the reason for the decline in the Northwest Territories. So overall there was an increase in the amount of income provided through basic benefits – 70% of the households that we looked at that’s 37 out of 53. But in the vast majority of cases these increases were mostly modest or non-existent.
And as you’ll read in the policy briefs there’s a variety of reasons for this. Some jurisdictions made a conscious effort to increase basic rates, whether for all households or only some households. In some jurisdictions, some or all of the basic rates were already indexed to inflation. They increased at some point in the year. In a couple situations, increases that were made partway through 2021 were seen in every month in 2022. So total income from basic benefits increased even if monthly rates did not. And Quebec’s new approach is reflected in the change that we see in the graphs. And of course in some jurisdictions there were no increases to basic benefits between 2021 and 2022.
Mohy Tabbara:
So this graph shows how much total welfare incomes of the unattached single households change between 2021 and 2022. And this is relative to inflation. The red bars are unattached singles considered employable and the orange bars are unattached singles with a disability. And you can also see a blue line going across which is the national rate of inflation in 2022, which was 6.8%. If a bar goes above the blue line, it means that the household’s welfare income increased above inflation. If the bar is below the line, it means the welfare income did not keep up with the national rate of inflation.
As you can see, only 10 unattached single households in six jurisdictions saw increases and outpaced the national rate of inflation. And these are both households in Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland Labrador, as well as the households considered employable in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. For the other 17 unattached single households, welfare incomes did not keep up with inflation.
This is a similar graph but for households with children. The light blue bars are single parents with one child. The navy blue bars are couples with two children. And then again you see a red line going across, which is the national rate of inflation, 6.8%. Only five households with children saw their total incomes outpace the national rate of inflation. And they are for of the couple with two children households, which are the ones in Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador. And only one of the 13 single parents with one child households, in Prince Edward Island. For the other 21 households with children, welfare incomes did not keep up with inflation.
And because of inflation, most governments sought to address inflation in 2022 using a variety of policy tools. Eight provinces, one territory and the federal government provided one-time cost of living supports. And these supports range from a high of $2,200 in Quebec for the couple with two children to $150 for unattached single households in the Yukon. The four jurisdictions that did not provide one-time supports were Alberta, Ontario, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. These one-time supports were generally insufficient as most were not enough to allow households to keep up with inflation.
And it’s important to remember that because they are one-time supports, households will lose them next year, which will worsen adequacy and make their total welfare incomes probably lower. Also, four jurisdictions had already indexed social assistance to inflation, so benefits increased automatically as Jennefer mentioned, which are Quebec, New Brunswick, the Yukon and Manitoba for the housing component. An additional two jurisdictions decided to index social assistance in 2022, which are Alberta and Ontario but only for ODSP. And this will take effect in the 2023 calendar year.
As Jennefer discussed earlier, some jurisdictions also decided to increase benefits, but these increases were not all in response to inflation, however they are permanent and will contribute to adequacy in future years. And lastly, two jurisdictions did not implement any measures to combat inflation, which are Nunavut in the Northwest Territories. So overall between 2021 and 2022, only 15 out of 53 households or slightly more than a quarter, saw an increase of their total welfare incomes that was above the national rate of inflation.
All the other households, which is about three quarters were made worse off by inflation, including those who saw nominal increases to their welfare income. Unfortunately, governments at all levels did not respond efficiently to the challenge of high inflation in 2022, even though there were some exceptions.
Jennefer Laidley:
So one of the main findings in our policy brief is that the proportion of income that households receiving social assistance get from the federal government is very small and that’s the case particularly for unattached single households. This graph shows us how much of total welfare income comes from the federal government, that’s the part of each column that’s in orange, and how much comes from the provincial or territorial government and that’s the amount in dark blue. And again, this is for unattached single households. And we can see that the amount that comes from the federal government doesn’t exceed 10% in any instance.
In fact it’s between 2% and 9% with income from provincial or territorial sources making up between 91% and 98% of total income. So given that we’ve seen how inadequate total welfare incomes are for unattached singles, it’s clearly the case that there’s a lot of room for the federal government to improve incomes for these households.
And as you can see in this slide, the proportions are quite different for households with children. And this is because of the Canada Child Benefit, which is a great contributor to poverty reduction and is a much needed source of income for low-income households with children in Canada. You’ll see that households with children received between 54% and 79% of their income from provincial or territorial sources, with 21% to 46% from federal sources. So while the provinces and territories are doing most of the heavy lifting even for households with children, the federal government has really stepped up for these households. And it’s our contention that they need to do the same for unattached single households who don’t have other sources of income to help fill the adequacy gap.
Mohy Tabbara:
So in terms of key takeaways, we hope that you leave today with at least these four. Number one, total welfare incomes in 2022 were deeply inadequate across Canada in the vast majority of cases. Number two, increases in the amount of income from basic social assistance benefits were mostly modest or non-existent. Number three, despite very high inflation in 2022, cost of living supports to households receiving social assistance were limited in both number and amount. And number four, federal income supports for unattached single households in all jurisdictions were very limited.
So what’s the fix? What can governments do to resolve these problems?
Jennefer Laidley:
Well there’s a suite of policy option recommendations that governments have at their disposal to better support people receiving social assistance. Provincial and territorial governments can increase social assistance benefits as well as tax delivered credits and benefits. All governments can ensure that all benefits and credits are indexed to inflation, if they’re not already.
Mohy Tabbara:
The federal government should rapidly develop the Canada Disability Benefit so that people with disabilities receive an additional source of income and they should also consider a temporary CDB to support people with disabilities until the permanent benefit is developed. The federal government also needs to implement a Canada Working-Age Supplement to help working age adults and particularly unattached singles who don’t have a disability.
Jennefer Laidley:
For households with children, child benefits at every level need to be enhanced or introduced in those jurisdictions where they don’t currently exist. The federal government should increase the Canada Social Transfer for provincial and territorial social assistance programs and work out details with the provinces and territories to ensure that that money actually goes to those programs. And all governments need to invest in basic supports and services, like increasing the stock of deeply affordable housing, improving access to affordable healthy food, and ensuring coverage for healthcare expenses.
Mohy Tabbara:
We believe and we hope you’ll all agree that these steps are necessary to reduce poverty, prioritize dignity, and to ensure that everyone can realize their human right to an adequate standard of living.
Jennefer Laidley:
So once again, thank you for attending the webinar today. We really appreciate your interest and attention.
Mohy Tabbara:
Thank you for attending. We look forward to hearing from you and discussing more in the question and answer segment. And now I’ll send it back to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
Thank you Jennefer. Thank you Mohy. That was a terrific overview of what is a very detailed document. I encourage people to take a look at the document online for a couple of questions about particularities of different provinces. So do take a look at the document. And a quick apology, I think BC fell off the chart in two graphs. It’s not off the chart in the report. So we’ll get that there. We’re going to come back to questions, but before we do that, we’re delighted to have Tyler Meredith joining us.
As I mentioned, Tyler has recently departed his role, an active player in the federal government. And he’s going to provide us with his comments on the report and what that means for federal poverty reduction strategy opportunities.
Tyler Meredith:
Great, thank you Elizabeth. Thank you to the authors. I think as I’ve said to Elizabeth and to a lot of people over time, this report is honestly one of the best datasets in the country that exists for being able to track program changes but also frankly understand just basic adequacy parameters. And I think for a federal government that’s interested in making sure that it can deliver solutions for people that address real affordability needs, there’s a lot to learn from this dataset. So I’m so happy to be able to contribute to this conversation.
I think the first reaction and thinking about this from the perspective of both the former practitioner and someone who cares deeply about poverty reduction is to remember that this is a time in which the government still has to show progress towards meeting its 2030 goal of a 50% reduction in poverty and obviously coming out of COVID and the expiry of those short-term supports, we’ve seen combined with the onset of inflation an increase in the national poverty rate. So we don’t have data yet for 2022, but certainly the experience from going from 2020 to 2021 would suggest that we’re off the mark of where we should be for 2030.
And when we look at that in the context of the findings from this report, I think it tells us that we’re going to need to press further in order to try to achieve that goal of a 6% national poverty rate by 2030. And so I guess the question is what is the federal government’s role in that respect? I think knowing that we’re in an environment where there are tighter fiscal and fewer fiscal resources available, the government doesn’t necessarily need to be spending a ton of more money to be able to get I think a bigger bang for its buck here.
And let me unpack what I mean by that. So I would say that having come through the pandemic and seen the extraordinary support that the government was able to provide to Canadians and to support incomes, we have gone through a cycle now in the more or less last three or four years where we’ve increased the GST tax credit multiple times. We’ve increased the Canada Workers Benefit a couple of times. We’re in the process of developing the Canada Disability Benefit. There’s a question to be had there, especially in terms of the GST credit.
As to whether that continuous supplement that has been provided multiple years in a row ought to become permanent and ought to be targeted in a way that could address working-age single adults for example. And obviously Maytree has done a lot of work on that and I would encourage people to read it, but I think going into this next year, knowing that inflation is still with us and knowing that the commitments under the supply and confidence agreement between the NDP and the government indicates that there may be a need for continual reinvestment in this area until such time as inflation is under control.
We ought to ask ourselves the question, well rather than just keep doing this on a one-off basis year after year after year, should we make this permanent? And if so, should we better target it on a segment of people, particularly those who are accessing provincial welfare programs, social assistance programs who are at the risk of deepest poverty? And if we were to do that, could we use that as an opening, kind of like what’s happening with the housing accelerator fund on the housing side, to be able to drive a national conversation around coordination of benefits. And what are the best in class practices that we would want to see in social assistance programs?
Because it’s very clear from the data that if we don’t have indexation, we don’t really have a chance of being able over time to even just maintain the adequacy of the current levels of benefits, let alone reach a level that gets us close to the low income measure or even to the Market Basket Measure. I think there’s an opening there knowing that the federal government has in the past shown in several different domains that if they come to the table, they are able to use new money on the table as a way to coordinate and get provincial changes.
This might be an opening to potentially do that. The other thing I’ll say is we know obviously there is a lot of interest and hunger to want to do something meaningful around housing. And I think this is an area where there could be potentially a role for broadening out a national income supplement in some way that’s targeted on people who need to access market housing who just simply can’t access non-market solutions because we just don’t have enough of them. We obviously need to build more non-market housing. But looking at what provinces like Manitoba have piloted with Rent Assist and how that has found its way into a few other jurisdictions like BC, there’s potentially a model there that we could scale up.
And again knowing that this is basically the primordial affordability challenge, that could be something that could work in concert quite nicely I think with what we know needs to be done to assist populations in need. I guess just maybe the last comment that I will make is really to kind of raise this question about is this a problem that the federal government ought to be asked to do on its own or is this a problem of inadequate provincial programs?
And I think the reality is at the root of a lot of this is inadequate provincial programs. The federal government can play an important coordinating role, but it’s probably about how we want to be able to use some of our existing levers like the Canada Social Transfer and the GST tax credit supplement more effectively. And the last thing I’ll say is, it’s interesting if you look at the 2021 election. There was a clear political consensus that existed from the NDP to the Conservatives to the Liberals on enhancing the Canada Workers Benefit.
And each of those three parties had different proposals at different degrees of ambition about how to enhance the Canada Workers Benefit. Ironically, the Conservatives actually had a proposal to go even farther than what this government who has already enhanced the Canada Workers Benefit would do. And I asked myself, so clearly if we have a political consensus on that and we have a political consensus on the Canada Disability Benefit, can we not merge these discussions in a direction that says, well how do we get to a level of income inadequacy that protects those who are in most need in our society?
And I think this is a time compared to the last several decades where there’s some alignment and it may be because of what’s happening with inflation and affordability for us to be able to have those conversations.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
All right. A lot in there. A lot in there, Tyler, thank you. And the questions are also flowing into the Q&A box, so I remind people to add their questions there. You touched on one of the questions that was already emerging, which is how useful are these one-time add-ons at GST and so forth. You also touched on how do we look at things like the Canada Social Transfer. Is the question of conditionality on the table politically for the Canada Social Transfer?
Tyler Meredith:
I think ordinarily it wouldn’t be because to a certain extent, I don’t mean to sound pejorative, but it’s been treated in some sense as dead money in the sense that it’s existed as part of the base transfer for so long without conditions that it’s very hard to go back and try to renegotiate for those. But I think as we are seeing tactically on the side of housing with the introduction of the housing accelerator, to the extent that the federal government comes to the table with incrementally just a bit more cash, that new cash opens up the ability to then reset conditions and design thinking on all of the other stuff that lies underneath it.
And so I’m just saying that I think given that we’ve gone through this cycle of in effect almost making these one-off payments quasi permanent to these population groups, can we now maybe leverage that in a direction that’s just one step further? And it doesn’t actually ask for a lot more than what’s being done. It’s just better targeting and actually trying to force the provinces in a certain direction.
And I think again for a government that wants to get better results from limited fiscal resources, it’s actually an interesting idea because to a certain extent, if we can bargain that for indexation at a provincial level with provincial social assistance programs, there could be a long-term savings to the Federal Treasury from having provincial social assistance programs better indexed.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
There was a number of questions that have come through the Q&A box asking the political question, which is, if provinces commit to indexation, does that let them off the hook for doing anything further? Is that a check mark of job done, we’re now indexing and other questions of adequacy fall off. I don’t know if any of you have opinions on that. I mean I think It’s a political question.
Mohy Tabbara:
I’m happy to take that one Elizabeth. So I think on the question of indexation, it’s true that every jurisdiction should implement it and we see this year in particular in the jurisdictions that do have indexation that people remained at a similar level. But I think that’s the problem, we’re keeping people at the similar level as opposed to investing in improving the adequacy. And I think that should still remain an objective. We need both. I think indexation is the minimum that every province and territory should have.
And I also want to mention that we talk about indexation of the benefits, but there are other aspects that can be indexed such as the exemption and the clawbacks from employment because the minimum wages increase gradually, but the exemptions stay more or less the same. And so essentially people can work less and less and can benefit less and less from additional income from employment or other programs. So it’s something that I hope governments will consider.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
Jennefer, you’re nodding. Did you want to weigh in or you’re just in agreement?
Tyler Meredith:
No, I’m just in agreement. Thanks.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
Great. There’s been at least one or two questions in the box and some that came earlier about the highlighting of low incomes from these programs. And I think Tyler, you talked about, let’s think about how do we consolidate these interventions better? Sometimes people turn to the idea of a UBI, a universal basic income. Is that the answer to this? And so the question is that something that we should be thinking about as a policy response to that? I mean Maytree has talked more about basic incomes looking at how do we create a strong net with a number of different interventions that hold that together.
But I’m curious about any of your responses. Maybe Jennefer, do you want to kick off? Because I know you’ve given some thought to this.
Jennefer Laidley:
Sure. I mean I know that there’s been a real upswing in advocacy around basic income or guaranteed income over the last I’d say 20 years or so. And I know that there’s been a lot of crafting of what a program would look like in order to support those advocacy efforts. And there is some merit to the notion of simply sending out checks to people instead of having them deal with the realities of life on social assistance. But I think that there are a lot of real pitfalls and questions. The first is around eligibility, so what kind of program are we talking about?
Is it something that goes to everyone and then people who have high incomes would have a tax back? Would it only go to people with low incomes? The real crux is how much are we talking about in terms of a monthly amount and what would that mean in terms of public spending? That all relates to the question of political feasibility. What would it take for governments to have the political room, let alone the political will to make such a significant shift in the ways in which income support programs work in Canada?
And I think that’s kind of the crux of it, the question of political will is an important one. If governments haven’t yet been persuaded to increase the incomes of people on social assistance, what’s to say that they would be willing to not only completely overhaul a number of different existing systems, but also provide an amount of income that’s sufficient for people to live on. Another question is what happens to the supports and services that people rely on now from the variety of programs that they rely on, those supports and services?
And that’s something that we don’t talk about in the report is the amount of investment that’s made by governments in the variety of other kinds of supports and services that they need. And those would just be monetized away under a basic income program that simply provides a check. Prescription, medication coverage, assistive devices, childcare, those kinds of things. And that relates to where the money would come from, which existing programs would be collapsed into a new basic income program? And in the more philosophical realm, I ask myself, what does it mean to monetize social provision in that way?
What does it mean to simply give people a check and say, here you go, go into the open market and try to find all of the things that you need. I don’t know that that’s the kind of social provision that we want to pursue necessarily. And it’s a big question to be asking ourselves. A lot can happen between the ideas that advocates put forward to governments and the ways in which governments operationalize those ideas. So there’s a lot of pitfalls and problems that could arise.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
Great. Thank you, Jennefer. Tyler, are you wanting to weigh in?
Tyler Meredith:
Look, I obviously believe in the values to a certain extent of the universal basic income in the sense of if you look at the success of the CCB and you look at the success of the OAS and GIS, I mean I think those are programs that have worked in the direction of trying to provide a universal kind of standard of living for certain groups in our society that we’ve defined. But the reality is neither of those programs if you look at them were things that were accomplished overnight.
And I think the challenge for progressives and those of us who care about this idea of making sure that there’s an adequate social safety net is pushing in a direction of something as broad based as the idea of UBI could be the best use of our time and resources for what we can do to improve the standard of living for people who are most vulnerable. And I think personally it’s probably not the best use of because I think where it ends up is going to be something that’s not universal and something that’s not basic.
And so I think that the right combination, especially given the political considerations that were just mentioned, which I agree with, I think the right combination is to look at where can we push incrementally on things that will allow us to meaningfully improve the standard of living of folks that over time incrementally add up or work in the direction of some kind of basic income, but that also recognize that for that to be successful you need a certain amount of public goods.
I think we are seeing right now with what’s happening with housing, that if we just simply give people more checks that will not be adequate to solve the standard of living problem that especially low-income people face. We have to build affordable housing that people can actually use and make access to because the market on its own is not going to be able to provide a degree of affordability that low-income people will need.
I certainly would counsel against broader efforts around a UBI necessarily, but look, I think what’s interesting about the period we’ve just been through with inflation is that it seems to me to be the one time in which we could very successfully make a case that the absence of government attention to intervene and do things is going to leave people materially worse off and that’s a conscious choice. As we saw in a number of those graphs, while those interventions that have taken place have not necessarily kept up with inflation, they at least were a policy window for us to achieve a few things. And so we just got to keep pushing.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
So the question of a housing benefit stimulated a lot of chat and some other questions. I think Tyler, you sort of indicated and pointed to examples like the Manitoba Rent Assist and we have the Canada Housing Benefit that has been rolled out and through bilateral agreements with the provinces. As we think of sort of the next stage to thinking about linking housing benefit to income security on a whole, do you have directions that you can suggest that we should be looking to? I mean the question of what it does to the market I think can be managed and dealt with.
I think there’s ideas around that. Rightfully, people are talking about the need for both supply and demand side solutions. We don’t abandon the supply piece, that’s a big part of it. Do we have enough social housing? Do we have enough deeply affordable and so forth? But where do we look to push forward on housing benefit thinking in your mind?
Tyler Meredith:
So I think what’s interesting is if you look at the supply and confidence agreement with the NDP, it references the housing benefit, at least the version of the Canada Housing Benefit. That was the temporary top-up that they asked for, not the CHB version that, as you were alluding to, Elizabeth, was part of the National Housing Strategy. And what’s interesting to me is that it says very clearly in that agreement that unless inflation comes under control, there may be a necessity to do another top-up to that at some point in time.
It strikes me that we continue to be in a moment in time in which the conditions to have to top that up or to think about how that’s topped up are at least still with us. And if we’re going to have that conversation, then I would say rather than just having CRA send out a bunch of checks to people. We ought to be thinking about is there a role for a more broad-based kind of rent supplement program that assists people knowing that even if we got all of the level of ambition that we wanted on supply, as you say.
That’s going to take 10 years, it’s going to take 15 years for the market to catch up and people don’t have that time to be able to wait. The cost of an average rental accommodation across the country being almost $2,000 or above $2,000, that’s way unattainable for a lot of people, especially many of the folks that we’re talking about in this report. So I think there’s an opening there that if we are actually committed to being super ambitious in this space, do we want to think about whether there’s, again, a model there on rent assist that could be brought and this is an area where provinces frankly have to play a role.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
Agreed. And thank you Michael Mendelssohn, who’s in the room for sharing the link to the Manitoba rent assist document, that’s on the Maytree website. I want to turn it back to our two researchers who have spent a good part of this past year looking at these charts, putting them together, teasing out the modeling and doing some real thinking about what they mean. Was there anything that stood out and you went, I’m surprised or didn’t expect that or what struck you? So just the one takeaway. I don’t know who wants to go first, Mohy or Jennefer?
Jennefer Laidley:
Well, I’m always struck. I’ve been doing these reports for four years now. And I’m always struck by just how low total incomes are virtually across the board relative to the poverty line. I mean, that’s why we highlighted the adequacy analysis this year because it’s the real standout. I think I say this every year, but the economic situation of people receiving social assistance in Canada is pretty abysmal. The fact that 98% of the households we looked at were living in poverty and 73% were in deep poverty. That’s what strikes me the most. And really it’s an indictment of the income support systems that we have in our country because it means that people on social assistance are living in extraordinarily stressful conditions.
They survive by going from meal program to meal program, food bank to food bank, free clothing program to free clothing program, relying on charity for their basic necessities. They cut back on meals to ensure that their kids have enough to eat. They deny their kids activities that other families can afford. They have to accept help from friends and family if their friends and family can help. They get by as best as they can and it’s only getting worse in most instances.
We started the policy brief this year that we released yesterday by pointing out that a significant proportion of people who are living in poverty in Canada are people who are receiving social assistance. And we estimated that that proportion was as high as 60% in 2021. So in other words, the very low incomes that people receive when they’re on social assistance is actually contributing to the problem of poverty in Canada. If we’re going to make progress on poverty, if we’re going to make progress on poverty reduction, governments need to do something about the very low incomes that people receive when they’re receiving social assistance.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
Mohy, do you want to add to that? Sorry.
Jennefer Laidley:
Sorry, can I just say one other thing? I was really struck by the progress that some jurisdictions are making and we highlighted the situation in PEI and the kind of rethinking of things in Quebec. And I think that it’s really extraordinary, particularly that some jurisdictions are starting to really think about how they do social assistance and doing it a bit differently. Sorry, Mohy, go ahead.
Mohy Tabbara:
I was going to say something similar, but I think that’s a positive takeaway that some jurisdictions are looking to do things differently and as we saw some of them did have a significant increase. And in the case of Quebec, it’s also a change in even the way that we think of social assistance because they’re providing much higher weekly benefits, which is tied to training and then support for employment. I guess it’s the idea that if you give people more support, then maybe they’ll have better outcomes. And I’ll be very interested to see what happens in Quebec from this change in program.
Another thing that strikes me as something that Tyler mentioned earlier, which is the one-time supports, because throughout the year we look at what governments announced and we see these one-time supports. And when it comes to time to do the modeling, we look at them relative to everything else and we just see that they just don’t do that much to help. But they do help in a way because they do provide money that otherwise people wouldn’t get but then the year after it’s just taken away from them. But the cost of living doesn’t go down necessarily. So I hope that governments will rethink this. This is three years.
I mean last year we talked… It’s cost of living one time supports, before that it was COVID one time supports. And we just see how rocky it is for people. So even for the stability of some of the most vulnerable people in society, I hope that governments will consider just making them permanent and thinking more about permanent improvements to welfare incomes.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
So hoping is one thing and holding feet to the fire is another. And so I want to take some of that. I think it’s agreed across the board, I’m seeing it in the chat and elsewhere. These are egregious levels. We shouldn’t be a society that is satisfied with this level of income. So we are capturing the data. That’s a big part of the first step to measure how are we doing? Are we progressing or are we actually regressing? Which way is that going? And I think you’ve done a great job on that in the report in demonstrating where we’re at in adequacy and changes over time. But Jennefer and I’ll start with you on this, but I think I’d also want to turn it to Tyler after that.
We have a room full of government officials, we have researchers, we have advocates, we have activists, we have people with lived experience listening to this conversation. What do you say to them about how to use this report? How do we use these findings? I mean, Maytree has to… We will do our thinking what we want to do with it, but I think this is for everyone. What are some suggestions? And Jennefer, I don’t want to put a fine point on it, but you’ve been working on this question for a couple of decades. What can you tell advocates and activists about what to do with this?
Jennefer Laidley:
Thanks for that question. And you’re right, I’ve been doing it for a long time and I think that one frustration that I have is… And I think I’ll mention two things. One frustration that I have is that we can point out how inadequate these incomes are. We’ve been doing it, the National Council of Welfare started doing this in 1989 and we’ve been doing it for as many years as that. Maytree has been doing this work since 2018, as I mentioned earlier. But the question of the inadequacy of incomes is only the first step, right? Because we all know that these incomes are deeply inadequate.
We all know that people who are living on social assistance are living in extraordinarily difficult situations. So how do we make change? I mean obviously the first step is knowing what the details are, knowing what the data is, knowing what the numbers say. But then we have to paint a picture of what that actually means for real people. And I think that having done advocacy work with governments for many years, I think that part of the trick is the definition of the problem. What is the actual problem that needs to be resolved?
And I think that too often people in government see social assistance as the problem rather than as a means to alleviate a problem. Social assistance programs are seen as a place where, firstly, you don’t want to get that portfolio because it’s so difficult as a politician. But it’s seen as a draw on government resources rather than as an opportunity for governments to make a positive change in people’s lives. And I think that’s the narrative that we need to be advancing when we’re doing advocacy work.
Social assistance is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to ensure that people have adequate incomes and can live lives of health and dignity and participate in the labor market as much or as little as they’re able. So problem definition is I think a really important thing for advocates to think about when they’re using this data.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
Thank you. I’m conscious of time. We’ve got two minutes, so this is what’s going to happen now. You each get 30 seconds to give your last thought or thought and a half. So I promised to go to Tyler next, then I’ll go to Mohy. And Jennefer, you’ll get to punctuate one last time.
Tyler Meredith:
I think there’s three things that I would centre on in terms of how we support change. One is accountability matters and we have a federal poverty reduction strategy. We actually need poverty reduction strategies in every province and we need provinces who’ve already committed to poverty reduction strategies like BC to actually update them and continue to show what progress that they’re making. Because if we can’t do it in British Columbia, which is a progressive government and has all of the information before it because of the expert report that they’ve done on universal basic income, then if we can’t do it there, we’re not going to be able to do it frankly anywhere. And so we’ve got to push those accountability mechanisms because if you have those indicators, those targets, that matters. Second point I would make is we also have to be very clear about trying to find wins that work in different contexts. So one of the most important things that I would argue, one of the best things that Doug Ford has done since he has been in government is the LIFT credit. It’s a good program. He doesn’t talk about it, but it’s actually a really good program.
They should try to expand on that program, especially given the model that the Canada Workers Benefit has laid out. And I agree with Jennefer that there’s no win necessarily in talking about social assistance, but there’s a way that if we broadened out and enhanced the LIFT credit, we could actually touch the same people in a backdoor kind of way and it would support the government’s agenda in Ontario about wanting to support employment. So I think we’ve got to think about how we tailor some of our recommendations to the moment opportunity. Third final thing I’ll say is I think progressives need to get a lot sharper and focused on their asks.
We are spending a lot of time thinking about a national dental care and pharma care program. That’s great, but I can tell you if you look at lots of polling data out there, when you ask people about what are the real problems that they face in their daily lives? If you look at the latest data from Polara, about 38-39% of people will say healthcare costs of some kind, pharma care, dental care. 70% of people say food, 60% of people say housing. So why are we spending our time talking about pharma care?
Not that it’s not important and I understand why we should do it, but if we’re going to spend billions of dollars to do something to solve a problem in people’s lives, let’s do housing, let’s do cash transfers that help people with things like food insecurity. And the stuff that we can do around social assistance, as we’ve seen in some of these reports, goes directly at those problems.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
Great. Thank you, Tyler. Mohy?
Mohy Tabbara:
I’ll keep it brief. I know we’re out of time. So I think for too long poverty has been treated as a choice that has to be disincentivized through the structure of programs. But I think people don’t choose poverty. Poverty is a policy choice and I think that we can make better choices in this country.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
Thank you, Mohy and Jennefer, in 15 seconds or less.
Jennefer Laidley:
Sure. I guess I would just say, as you were saying, Elizabeth, there’s lots of different folks who are on this webinar with different perspectives and expertise. I always remain hopeful that progress is possible despite how abysmal the conditions seem to be. But we’re all going to need to be pushing in the same direction. We need research like this report and the Social Assistance Summaries report that Maytree does and other research reports.
We need advocacy and community organizing work with and in communities is really critical. And we need a policy environment where government, as I was saying earlier, sees social assistance as a potential contributor to the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities and in their provinces and territories. So if we’re all pushing in the same direction, we can make progress.
Elizabeth McIsaac:
Fabulous comments from all of you. Thank you. And I know that’s being validated in the chat as well. We miscalculated, I guess we needed about an hour and a half or two hours or maybe a full afternoon to discuss this. This is rich and there’s much more to be said. I want to thank all three of you. First, Jennefer and Mohy, tremendous work on the Welfare in Canada 2022. Thank you for your dedication to this work and making this a possible project every year. We’ll continue with it. And for your analysis and thoughtfulness around what we do with it.
Tyler, thank you for your thoughtful commentary for engaging in this work, for being a partner with us as we think through our pathways forward. Your comments today were terrific and thank you everybody in the room. 167 of you are still hanging in there. So thank you for hanging in and thank you for joining us. We didn’t get to most of the questions, so what we will do is look at all of them – that informs our work. It informs what we’re thinking about and we will also be posting this as promised at the beginning. So you will have a link to this sent to you next week. Thank you for joining us. Thank you everyone, and stay well.