Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

CHILDREN'S SERVICES

ONTARIO ASSOCIATION OF CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH CENTRES

FEDERATION OF WOMEN TEACHERS' ASSOCIATIONS OF ONTARIO

SOCIAL PLANNING COUNCIL OF METROPOLITAN TORONTO
METRO CAMPAIGN 2000

CONTENTS

Tuesday 12 December 1995

Children's services

Ontario Association of Children's Mental Health Centres

Jeanette Lewis, executive director, Kinark Child and Family Services

Larry Elmer, president of the board

Sheila Weinstock, executive director

Marian Archibald, member of the board

Federation of Women Teachers' Associations of Ontario

Sheryl Hoshizaki, president

Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto; Metro Campaign 2000

Andrew Mitchell, program director, Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto

Colin Hughes, chair, Metro Campaign 2000

STANDING COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Chair / Président: Patten, Richard (Ottawa Centre / -Centre L)

Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Gerretsen, John

(Kingston and The Islands / Kingston et Les Îles L)

*Agostino, Dominic (Hamilton East / -Est L)

*Ecker, Janet (Durham West / -Ouest PC)

*Gerretsen, John (Kingston and The Islands / Kingston et Les Îles L)

*Gravelle, Michael (Port Arthur L)

*Johns, Helen (Huron PC)

Jordan, Leo (Lanark-Renfrew PC)

Laughren, Floyd (Nickel Belt ND)

*Munro, Julia (Durham-York PC)

*Newman, Dan (Scarborough Centre / -Centre PC)

Patten, Richard (Ottawa Centre / -Centre L)

*Pettit, Trevor (Hamilton Mountain PC)

Preston, Peter L. (Brant-Haldimand PC)

*Smith, Bruce (Middlesex PC)

Wildman, Bud (Algoma ND)

*In attendance / présents

Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:

Colle, Mike (Oakwood L) for Mr Gerretsen

Pupatello, Sandra (Windsor-Sandwich L) for Mr Patten

Silipo, Tony (Dovercourt ND) for Mr Laughren

Clerk / Greffière: Mellor, Lynn

Staff / Personnel:

Gardner, Mr Bob, assistant director, Legislative Research Service

Glenn, Ted, research officer, Legislative Research Service

The committee met at 1533 in room 151.

CHILDREN'S SERVICES

The Acting Chair (Mr Mike Colle): If we could bring the meeting to order. This is the standing committee on social development, Tuesday, December 12.

ONTARIO ASSOCIATION OF CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH CENTRES

The Acting Chair: We have deputants with us from the Ontario Association of Children's Mental Health Centres. We have Larry Elmer, president of the board of directors. Larry, welcome. Sheila Weinstock -- Sheila is over there -- who is the executive director, and Marian Archibald, the parent board member. We have a fourth deputant --

Ms Jeanette Lewis: Jeanette Lewis. I'm the executive director of Kinark Child and Family Services. We're one of the service providers in the mental health centres.

The Acting Chair: Welcome, Jeanette. We can start with the presentation. I think you're aware of the time limits, and you can just get right into it.

Mr Larry Elmer: Thank you. We're pleased to have an opportunity to speak to this committee this afternoon about children's mental health and the impact of government decisions on children and families.

Ontario has a complex web of services and programs, both voluntary and public, and it is no surprise that changes in any of these have profound impacts on the others and on the network as a whole. It is an important but difficult task to understand the interrelationships well enough to predict these impacts so that reasonable planning can occur.

Services for children with mental health problems have never been on the public agenda. While the health and education of children have always been topics of public debate, children's mental health has traditionally been treated as if it were a private matter. We know, however, that the mental health of children and youth directly impacts on the quality of life, the safety of our schools and streets and the future costs of health and correctional services. Now is the time to acknowledge the importance of the mental health of our children to the overall health of our population.

Government decisions are being driven by the future economic viability of the province and we are here to emphasize the fact that it makes economic sense to invest in children's mental health. The children of today will become the workforce and leadership of tomorrow, and if they are to succeed in those roles they will need to be confident, flexible and adaptable. It is incumbent upon us to provide them with the resources they need to develop those skills: good education; effective, affordable health care; and access to supportive programs to help them deal with mental and emotional problems which would otherwise impair their capacity to learn and develop. It is critical, therefore, despite restraint and cutbacks in public funding, that we continue to invest in the mental health of our children.

We must do all we can to enable our young people to overcome mental health problems so they are free to focus their energies on growth and development. Family breakdown, school failure and criminal behaviour are all costly social problems and are linked to mental health problems and traumatic events in childhood.

Province-wide about 85,000 children are served by children's mental health centres annually, most of them as outpatients in community clinics or in their homes. Many are involved in day treatment programs which combine treatment and classroom learning, and some require treatment in a residential setting.

The impact of these programs is being monitored by an outcome measurement system designed by professionals in our field. We know that the children involved with children's mental health centres have extremely high levels of emotional disorder and that treatment of children in children's mental health centres is associated with a substantial reduction in these disorders. For example, the severity of disturbance in children entering residential treatment only occurs in one child in 10,000.

Children come to children's mental health centres with conditions that are serious and which are unlikely to improve without treatment and would likely have long-term personal, family and social consequences. These are the children who overburden teachers and cause chaos in the classroom. They stress their parents to the breaking point and contribute disproportionately to the violence in our communities. All too often, their problems explode into our headlines.

By providing help to these young people as soon as their problems are identified, we give them a chance to turn their lives around and become contributing members of their communities.

In view of the importance of this function to our society, children's mental health services are exceptionally good value for funds invested. In 1994, the cost of providing service to 85,000 children in 95 children's mental health centres across Ontario was less than the budget of one large urban teaching hospital. Children's mental health services are community-based and the majority of the children are served as outpatients in community clinics or in their homes. Day treatment, residential services and prevention programs are also offered and the average annual cost of service in the children's mental health centre is $3,000 per child.

The cost of this treatment needs to be compared with the cost of not helping troubled children and their families. Children who do not get the help they need are likely to require more costly services as adults. It costs $45,000 annually to keep an offender in prison.

Faced by diminishing resources over the past years, children's mental health centres have been forced to release staff and shut down programs, all of this occurring when the demand for service has never been greater. Universal accessibility is no longer possible for these seriously challenged children.

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It must be recognized then that fewer services and fewer options are now available to children. The cumulative impact of reductions across ministries is creating a truly alarming shortage of supports to children and families. The Ministry of Education and Training and school boards have been cutting back on support services to children with mental health problems in the schools, and recent reductions will likely increase this trend. This will place enormous pressure on teachers, who have an obligation to provide the best education they can for the majority of students. The Ministry of Health funds children's mental health services through some 30 hospitals, but there is no consistent approach across the province. Recent announcements to reduce funding to hospitals may very well affect these programs, since they have not been a priority for that ministry.

Public health and other programs which support children are funded through municipalities, but this varies across the province. Many voluntary agencies providing important counselling and community support programs for children have been dependent on municipal grants. All these will suffer as a result of announcements of downloading.

The cumulative result of all these changes is that families, schools and physicians who are searching for help for children with problems will find fewer and fewer resources. Children's mental health centres under the Child and Family Services Act offer such a resource, but they too are at risk.

The Ministry of Community and Social Services is struggling with how to continue to fund children's mental health services, which incidentally are not mandated, in a ministry facing major financial pressures and already carrying the legislative mandate for social assistance, child welfare and young offenders. They are in the process of defining their core services and restructuring plans and we hope that you will join us in urging them to retain children's mental health services as a distinct function.

Treatment services to children with emotional and behavioural problems must not be allowed to inadvertently disappear, only to be re-created again at a greater cost in response to a public crisis.

Funding decisions are being made by all these ministries in isolation from one another and this means that the cumulative impact of these decisions on the overall children's mental health service capacity cannot be planned or predicted. Efficient and effective coordination is currently impossible. With their narrower focus, each ministry is leaving children's mental health services to the others, but there is no one there with the mandate to take responsibility.

There are two fundamental problems which make effective planning for children impossible, and both need action from the provincial government. Firstly, there is no mandate for children's mental health. Secondly, there is no one minister responsible for planning the services or accountable for their overall impact.

There is no legislation which mandates children's mental health services in Ontario and not one department in the entire government which claims children's mental health as a priority. Our children's education is assured through the Education Act, and their physical health through our health care system; however, there is no parallel mandate for the mental health of children. Government must leave behind the silo mentality and create a comprehensive system capable of planning and coordinating all children's mental health systems and services. In the case of children's mental health, restructuring is not the issue, but rather structuring for the first time all children's mental health services under a single authority.

I conclude with three recommendations to government:

First, invest in children's mental health; our future depends on it. This means thinking very carefully when defining core services for any ministry. Children's mental health must be retained as a distinct function and not be allowed to inadvertently disappear as each ministry narrows its focus to meet its stated priorities.

Secondly, give children's mental health centres a mandate to continue their work.

Thirdly, make a single cabinet minister responsible for planning children's mental health services across the government ministries and accountable for their overall impact.

Ms Sheila Weinstock: Mr Chairman, now Marian Archibald would like to say a few words as well. Marian is a member of our board.

Ms Marian Archibald: I'm sorry that you don't have a printed text in front of you. The fact is that investing in children's mental health and ensuring that children's mental health services do not disappear makes good economic sense for Ontario's future, and what I want to do is deal with the three recommendations that you've just heard and relate those to personal experience and put a human face to these families and children who use these services.

It's an overused phrase that children are our most precious possession, not in a material sense but with regard to the care and nurturing with which parents and society have been entrusted. Those who have had the privilege and responsibility of raising children know that in order to see them progress and develop into mature responsible young adults, there is nothing that we would wilfully choose to deny our children. For some parents, this awesome and challenging task takes on a more critical dimension when they have a child with emotional and behavioural difficulties when, among other siblings, there is one square peg for a round hole.

To the uninformed or untrained eye, this child is seen as demanding, disobedient, manipulative or strong willed or, in some cases, all of the above. To the uninformed or biased eye, the child's parents have poor management skills or have become overwhelmed by their financial or marital status. While these external circumstances often exacerbate a condition, they are rarely the sole sources of what may, in reality, be a pre-existing condition. When parents and children encounter such a challenge, they eventually turn, and in ever-increasing numbers, to children's mental health centres which provide an essential and invaluable component in helping families achieve their goals.

With regard to the recommendation of the need to mandate children's mental health services, it's recognized that the need to reduce the deficit through extensive cost-cutting measures has placed many programs and services in a vulnerable position. Those who need children's mental health services encourage the government to consider mandating such services.

You may ask: Why mandate children's mental health? Shouldn't it be kept something private? There was an era when government did not see itself as the guardian for the education, physical health and protection of its children, but over a period of time measures have evolved to ensure the delivery of these necessities of life.

Children's mental health care has not been widely publicized for many reasons that I would like to highlight.

First, the source of emotional and behavioural difficulties is invisible. The skull hides more than the cranium. However, the symptoms of these difficulties are manifested in anger, aggression, anxiety, depression, frustration, impulsivity, inconsistency, violence and wilfulness. When such symptoms are acted out they rarely engender compassion and deeper understanding, hence the tendency to keep these things private and within the family.

Second, it is easier to allow a service to slip through the cracks when it deals with something which is hidden or invisible. How can children suffer from conditions usually relegated to the adult domain? Few mental health problems appear in full bloom when a child reaches the age of majority. Just as the once widely held concept that infants could not feel physical pain has been disproven, so medical and social research is continually confirming the fact that children as young as two years of age can suffer from emotional and behavioural difficulties. And "suffer" is an accurate verb, because as these children grow and develop, everything, both inside and outside the family structure, is affected.

Children's mental health services provide support to children and families facing these challenges, and assist and enable them to manage in circumstances that could overwhelm most people. Families who use these services are fearful that if children's mental health services are not mandated it will be more difficult and in some extreme cases impossible to raise mature and responsible young adults.

With regard to the third recommendation, you may well ask that if children's mental health services are mandated then why is there a need to recommend that one minister be responsible in cabinet for children's mental health services across government ministries, and why should he or she be accountable for the overall impact of these services.

The answer is quite simple, although no one would dare to suggest that the solution will be equally simple. The reason is that emotional and behavioural difficulties affect more than one area. If a child has a learning disability which creates a loss of self-esteem and encourages harassment among peers, that child will feel frustrated and hostile and/or depressed, or a combination of all three, and the child, the school, the peers and the family will all suffer.

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More than one ministry would likely be involved with education and perhaps a social worker. If it is a condition that would benefit from medication, then the health care system comes into play. This is one of the simpler scenarios and yet it crosses the responsibilities of three ministries. It has been a long-time concern of families that there be an increased accessibility and greater cooperation among the ministries that deal with children's mental health.

For a child with emotional difficulties to experience their greatest potential, which requires successful management of their condition, at least four areas need to be involved: a caring and nurturing home environment; a supportive school system; medical attention is required through pharmaceutical management and/or psychiatric care, and counselling or therapy is needed through a children's mental health clinic or centre.

In order to ensure that these children receive the support and care they deserve, the government needs to take steps to effect greater efficiency, cooperation and above all accountability. One minister with responsibility for children's mental health services would be a start in the right direction.

The Acting Chair: We want to turn to questions now.

Mr Tony Silipo (Dovercourt): First of all, let me just say that, as we heard yesterday from some of the presentations, this presentation has been quite useful for us as a committee. I want to get right to the question. We heard yesterday from your colleagues in the children's aid society sector about the real danger the level of cuts the government is implementing would cause. I think the words "being at the brink" for some societies and "being beyond the brink" for others even at this point, and others expected to be at the brink, were there. Now we understand that one could argue there's a difference in terms of the legally mandated services and that obviously one of the arguments you're making is that there is a problem in the area of children's mental health services in that it is not a mandated service. But in terms of the kinds of services you are providing and the needs that are out there, could you just perhaps tell us a little bit more about what these cuts are going to do in terms of your ability and the ability of the agencies that you represent to take care of this group of young people?

Mr Elmer: I wonder if I could ask Jeanette Lewis to comment on that. She is the executive director of our largest children's mental health agency and has undergone a series of impacts.

Ms Jeanette Lewis: The expression that a strong children's mental health centre also makes for a strong children's aid society comes to my mind immediately, because the services are really quite interdependent and that if the children's mental health services are not present in a community and functioning well in concert with the services of the children's aid society, then increasingly the children who would come to the voluntary agency, brought by their family and supported by their family, fall through the cracks. The family gets increasingly frustrated, falls away from the child, and the child then has to come into the care of the children's aid society, which is much more intrusive for the child, for the family, and much more costly in terms of the resources available in the system. So that's perhaps the simplistic answer to your question, Mr Silipo, but the two services really go hand in hand and likewise probation could also be added to that because probation services are often interdependent with children's mental health services. So sometimes to take one part out and look at it in isolation is not possible.

In terms of the specifics about the cutbacks and how they've affected the children's mental health services, it's been pretty much community-specific. Some agencies have managed the cutbacks on a fiscal basis and are now making longer-term plans. Other agencies have had to cut service, because most children's mental health centres function with very low overheads. So when there's something like a 5% cut it does have to be taken away from staff and from service.

Mrs Helen Johns (Huron): Thank you very much for coming. I appreciate it. I know you people do a great deal to market the issues to us and we appreciate the time you spend with us, both individually and in a group like this.

I have a number of documents from your organization, from the time that I met you and also from the time that -- I guess I'm on a mailing list now -- and I just wanted to ask you to comment. I have the one that's called Children's Mental Health: An Urgent Priority for Ontario, and basically I wanted to ask you to comment on one line that you have in this issue, and it says, "Healthy child development is directly linked to the economic health of society." Can you comment on that and tell us what you were thinking you were meaning by that when you wrote that article?

Ms Weinstock: I guess it also connects with some things that Larry mentioned earlier in that the expenditure on children, when they're young and when their problems are more easily dealt with, are minor compared to the kinds of problems that result if they don't get the kind of help they need. When, for example, there are problems in the school, there's violence in the school or later on problems in the correctional system, the costs are much higher.

Mrs Johns: So when you were talking about economic health of society, you weren't talking about a sound government economy. You weren't saying that if society is strong and, in our words, balanced or healthy -- that's not what you were implying.

Ms Weinstock: Another component, of course, is that in order to make contributions to society as adults, we need to have children who are strong and who can think clearly, succeed in school and be the kind of creative individuals we're going to need. That's the kind of issue we're referring to.

Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): To recap the presentation from an economic point of view then, you would say the maximum cost in social spending, if you're not assisting children with these mental health services, would be upwards of $45,000 for jail, for example, when you don't help the children. Another economic position may be that if you spend $1 in these child services, you would save $7 in later social spending. Another economic argument would be that the total 95 centres in Ontario spend less than the Toronto Sick Kids' Hospital of some $500 million. That would be probably be a good economic argument for supporting the 95 centres.

Let me ask you, if you had to have your current levels of funding held because of all of the various agencies that I've seen with this silo effect you speak of, perhaps, Jeannette, you could give me an example of the kind of prohibitions in place now in regards to funding, that if you could ask for various changes in regulations, you could use your resources even better.

My fear of course, and those from our party, is that the $1.1 billion in cuts announced in the last economic statement -- they don't identify where those cuts will come and, because they're across ministries, we understand that they likely will be cuts in areas that are not mandated by government to provide, and naturally children's mental health agencies fall within that. We are not getting any response by government that that won't happen. So if we expect that to happen, can you put forward an argument that you can do even better with current levels, that it would be devastating to have even a reduction as you've had over the last few years?

I guess the last point I'd like you to make is your argument that government members have put forward, that you, like many other groups, don't want to be cut. How do you rationalize that you shouldn't be? When we're cutting everywhere, why should you be any different?

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Ms Lewis: In terms of doing better with current levels, one thing comes to my mind immediately and that is rather than a budget year window of one year, if we had some indication of what the funding levels would be for a three-year period, I think there could be a much more stable kind of planning. I realize this is difficult because it's very hard to predict what government revenues will be for three years, but a longer planning cycle would be very helpful. Now this is in terms of current resources.

The other thing that I think should be put into place would be some incentives for efficiency in terms of the provision of these services. It has seemed, from a service provider's point of view, that regardless of whether the organization is performing well or performing at a mediocre level, the same funding flows. So it would seem that some incentives for targeted service provision for achieving good levels of effectiveness and cost-efficiency should be built in. I mean, usually that's there in any provision of service.

I think the other thing in terms of the argument about why this shouldn't be cut is that perhaps this is the argument that was starting to be put on the table before, that from a pure economic point of view these resources are being invested in creating taxpayers. If you think about it that way, the long-term effect is that we're creating taxpayers through the work of the 95 children's mental health centres, rather than creating a population that will be increasingly dependent on resources. That would be the economic argument, if you want to put it in terms of kids. It sounds crass, but that's basically what we do. We're taking government resources now and investing them in kids, hopefully in a targeted way, so that the end result is that we will have people who are able to contribute to the system and make a contribution to society.

Mrs Pupatello: In fact, over the last several years you've moved the kind of treatment for children --

The Acting Chair: Wait a minute; I haven't recognized you. We just have another brief question; our time is almost up.

Mrs Pupatello: Thanks. With the move into the kind of treatment you offer, in fact you're serving more children by better means and moving the therapies to the family, as opposed to pulling the children out, so you are actually serving more with the same amount, or less, of funding. So you would perceive that even if you were held at current levels, given the change in the way treatments are coming around, you would actually be able to service even more children with the same levels; do you think that's so?

Ms Weinstock: Perhaps I'll start and, Jeanette, you can pick it up. I think that is true. Some of the agencies are reducing the number of beds they have, but certainly, in an attempt to live within budgets, many new and more effective approaches and methodologies have been developed. Agencies are working with groups of children. They're doing briefer kinds of interventions. They had historically long waiting lists, and many still do have waiting lists, but the children on the waiting list are being worked with more quickly and those who don't need as intensive work are being worked with in a more brief, less intensive manner, and alternatives to residential programs are being developed as well. Jeanette, do you want to speak to that one?

The Acting Chair: Sorry to interrupt. Thank you for coming, but we're on a really tight time frame here.

FEDERATION OF WOMEN TEACHERS' ASSOCIATIONS OF ONTARIO

The Acting Chair: Next is the Federation of Women Teachers' Associations of Ontario, Sheryl Hoshizaki and Joan Westcott. You can begin at any time, get right into it.

Ms Sheryl Hoshizaki: I am Sheryl Hoshizaki and I'm the president of the Federation of Women Teachers' Associations of Ontario. We represent about 41,000 women teachers who teach in the elementary public system in Ontario. With me I have Joan Westcott, who is the executive director for our organization.

What we would like to present to you is our brief on the impact of the government's funding cuts on children and children's services. It's a fairly extensive brief. This is it; this is what it looks like. This is my teaching tool today. I won't read it, because I can assume everyone can read, since most of you were probably educated in the public system.

What I would like to draw to your attention though, before I present, is a document of the standing committee on social development which was presented before the Legislature in 1994, at that time, by Charles Beer. This is what that document looks like, and I bring it to your attention because I want to also bring to your attention a recommendation. There were several recommendations, but most importantly, one of the recommendations that the committee brought forward was number 8, and that is, "The province must ensure that vital children's services are adequately and stably funded."

We can go through these committee processes and you can have people from communities and organizations present to you day after day, and month after month, and year after year, and we can go through different political parties; in essence, we're going to find that the same result is going to emerge from these hearings.

As an organization, we take time to do a lot of work on how we function within communities as teachers and as people who work with children. We are basically a classroom teachers' organization and therefore we recognize and witness children who come to us who live in poverty and the impact that has on their lives. In fact, we have a teacher who has stated: "Children are coming to school hungry at a time when everyone wants us to return to the basics. It appears food is a basic need for learning." This is an elementary school principal from Bruce county, actually.

We see children coming to school without enough sleep, without physical or emotional security in their lives. We can see this in their eyes. These children cannot concentrate enough to hear what we are trying to teach them. How could they concentrate when they are suffering more stress than any adult should ever have to face? Because, you see, poverty strips human beings of dignity, poverty robs these children of their childhood and of their future. In fact, it has been stated that "poverty is deprivation."

This province has the means to eradicate child poverty and to give all children an opportunity to develop to their full potential, for their own sake, for the sake of the whole of society and for the sake of the economy. But what is really needed is the political will to accomplish this. We feel it is incumbent upon us to help to create this political will.

We're not here to have a debate over whether or not the deficit should be dealt with. That certainly is not our area of expertise, but we will not argue that in fact it should be dealt with. However, we believe there are two parts to the deficit, that of expenditures and that of revenue, and that both have to be considered in dealing with the government cuts.

What we would like to say as educators is that we're not any different than students in that what we want is fairness, and we believe what is happening, and has happened in the past, is dramatically unfair. For example, just the opportunity to present today: We were not given a lot of lead-in time. We were given a week to present a brief to this committee. I think a week is just somewhat inadequate in dealing with the future of children for the province.

What we would like to talk about, and I don't think it's new news today, is junior kindergarten. Junior kindergarten is an early childhood education program. What it is in a program is opportunity, equal opportunity for young children. We've done a lot of work in this area to find out the impact on an early investment in young children's lives and how that then gives us our response in future years of their lives.

It has already been stated, as I was listening earlier, that the $1 investment in early education gives a $7 return. It has not only been evidenced in Alberta, which had cut its kindergarten programs from 400 hours to 200 hours, with most recent research, but also the research that has been done quite extensively in the United States and certainly, in particular, in Michigan where the Perry Preschool program, which was published in 1985, demonstrated that the early investment in young children certainly was returned in the cost of adult education, because it was reduced dramatically. There was less juvenile delinquency and crime, and the cost of welfare payments and, in this case, medicaid expenses was reduced by a substantial amount. This is obvious evidence that an early childhood education program is one of the best investments a society can make.

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The thing that we have learned as teachers about early childhood education is that we've learned a lot more about learning in the last few years -- maybe not as much about teaching, but certainly about learning how children acquire knowledge, how they learn, how they prepare to learn to read, how they learn about numeracy. Because we know that, because we now have that information, we're able to identify early in a child's school years whether or not they're going to have some difficulties. When we can identify it when they're very young, we can help and assist children and support them into getting back on track and in preparation of the readiness skills that are needed for children in learning to read.

These are the great advances that we've made in education in the last five years. We call it early identification. It's not necessarily that we stream children into labels, but we have the opportunity to give them, as this government has stated, that hand up in education, to give them that opportunity to get on track to learn to read. So early identification in early childhood education is a very key component of opportunities for children in early childhood education.

Within the brief there's other documentation of European studies and the importance of investment in early childhood education. What is really interesting, of course, is that Europeans do not look upon early childhood education as an add-on; they see it as a very important and integral part of their education program. I think that they are not at the stage in which they're debating whether or not it should exist but how in fact they can invest more into it.

We also, as an organization and certainly as teachers who work within communities, know that we don't exist in isolation. All cuts in education have a dramatic affect on us, but certainly so do the cuts to municipalities or to health care. I would like to refer to the dramatic cuts that will occur under the omnibus legislation in municipalities.

Many people who have visited schools certainly will recognize that there are programs that exist within the schools that are dependent on what we refer to as reciprocal agreements within communities; that is, before- and after-school programs for care of children, recreational programs, information-based programs are all within and funded through reciprocal agreements with municipalities, with recreational departments. Drastic cuts in this area really will change significantly the quality of life for children in schools and in communities. What we're here to define for you is that these relationships are very key to the community life within schools for children and that anything that happens within municipalities has a direct impact in schools.

In addition to that are the cuts in welfare. I'm sure that some of you would be aware that we as an organization were granted intervenor status in the welfare cuts. We participated as intervenors in the welfare cuts because we are committed to the necessity of what we refer to as the basics for children in opportunities and education or in a future for children in Ontario, those being adequate shelter, adequate food, adequate housing and a stable family life. For that reason, we believe that a substantial decrease, which would be approximately 21%, would have a drastic impact on a child's opportunities in Ontario.

Further in the brief there's an outline on the cuts to health care, and although $2 may not seem like much to most people, and certainly not much to people in this room, $2 within a family structure that is dependent on $2 for food or for any additional basics within the family is quite obviously dramatic in terms of quality of life. We would oppose serious cuts in health care and serious cuts to municipalities, because we see it as a combination of the quality of community life for children.

In the area of child care and child care subsidies, when we talk about junior kindergarten we don't talk about it only as early childhood education, we also talk about it as a place for young children to be. I have visited places within the province where if junior kindergarten does not exist -- and I will go further into junior kindergarten because I think there has been this idea that somehow junior kindergarten funding has not been cut. However, we know that if you're living within a community, and I take Sudbury is an example, and junior kindergarten cannot be provided in September because (1) it is already being presented as an optional program, (2) it is being reduced to rate of grant and (3) there is not the adequate and appropriate transportation subsidies that are necessary to transport young children to their places, then in fact you have approximately 446 young children three to four years of age with no place to go in September.

That obviously has an impact on the care of young children within communities. What alternatives do families have? One of the most dramatic statistics that I have certainly learned about in the last five years is that it wasn't long ago that we recognized that one parent within a family or one adult within the family was at home. In fact it was in 1964 that 74% of the families had one adult living at home.

In 1991 that was reduced to 12% of the families having one adult at home. That is an incredible change in the culture within any society. That is not for judgement, I don't think, for anybody to state, but it really is an adjustment that a society has to make to accommodating young children.

In addition to that, we see that the cuts in the areas of the Ontario Science Centre, for example, and Science North, the Royal Ontario Museum, the art gallery, libraries and all those things that make Ontario and give Ontario the identity for young children will severely impact on the programs that are provided for and available for young children.

I guess what we're saying, in essence, today is that none of us lives and exists in isolation. Certainly we don't in education; we recognize that. Because of that, we care about the communities in which children certainly live and learn and the communities in which adults work and exist. For that reason, we're here. I guess we're appealing to you as a committee to say to this government that the cuts have been too deep and too fast. We can talk about restructuring, reconstituting and rebuilding, but we can't do it if you dismantle at a speed at which we have no opportunity to manage the support systems that are needed for children and for families.

We believe the cuts that the Conservative government is making will affect everyone in this province, but none so deeply as the children. These cuts are tearing the fabric which holds this province together. This fabric ensures that communities can support its families and thereby its children in a compassionate and a wise manner.

It is terribly shortsighted to cut off such vital services in the name of fiscal restraint. It is even more foolish to do so in order to provide tax breaks to the wealthy. We either pay now or we will have to pay a lot more later. We must start saying to our children that they are important too. We must start believing that our actions speak louder than our words. Thank you.

The Acting Chair: Question, Ms Munro?

Mrs Julia Munro (Durham-York): Sure. Because you represent, obviously, the women teachers of Ontario, I was just wondering how you see your role as teachers in responding. A number of the things that you've mentioned obviously are outside your particular area of responsibility as classroom teachers, and I just wondered what comments you had to make in terms of how you see your role in this kind of climate.

Ms Hoshizaki: I had hoped that I had actually explained that and I apologize if it wasn't really clear, and that is that our responsibility, when you say "as teachers," is not in isolation. It's not to just teach children in preparation for the big political debate of whether it's for work or for life or whatever but in fact that we don't exist in isolation. So the impact that any government makes on children or on families relates directly to classrooms. I thought I had outlined that quite specifically.

For example, in the area of municipalities, if transportation is cut quite dramatically in a city or a small town, or I guess a larger town, in the case of public transportation -- some children use municipal transportation to get to school, other children depend on subsidized school board busing. If transportation is cut back in both areas, then children and families have different ways in which they're going to have to get to school. So it doesn't function in isolation. There are all kinds of reciprocal agreements within municipalities, within school boards, within other ministries that exist within the life of school.

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When you say, what is our responsibility?, we could live quite separately as teachers and say that our only responsibility is to teach children in classrooms and it doesn't really matter what happens out there. However, we know it's not like that, because what children bring to us within schools -- I mean, the cuts to second-stage housing and crisis centres for women have a dramatic impact because these children who would find the security and the shelter within these houses still come to school, they still bring the baggage that they carry within the stress of their families within the schools and within classrooms. So that's why we're here today, because we care about that and we don't live in isolation.

Mrs Pupatello: Your presentation was most impressive because it itemizes almost all of the effects on children, through junior kindergarten cuts, children's aids, children's mental health, cuts to so-called administration to school boards, which actually includes things like psychology services, aides for children with disabilities. You also mention the welfare rate's decrease impacting on 500,000 children, child care cuts, women's shelter cuts, the learning-through-culture cuts, non-profit housing cuts etc.

Our position as a party has always been the necessity to balance the budget. It was critical though that there be a very inequitable attack on that in terms of cutting because there are areas you simply cannot cut across the board because the impact is far greater on certain sectors, children being one of them. Our position was always that.

How do you respond to comments made like, "We are doing better for our children because we're taking care of the deficit and therefore we are securing the future of our children because we will balance the budget"? How do you stand it, I suppose, is more the question, but how do you argue that?

Ms Hoshizaki: Obviously, by presentation of our brief and the fact that we've had a short time line to present our brief. We have done a lot of work in this area, both in the area of actually even financially calculating what the benefits are in an early investment. We do that. We know in our hearts that there is a benefit, but we have to somehow calculate financially the benefits to try to demonstrate the argument for people who believe that dealing with the deficit is the only issue for today.

However, in the promise of a future for young children, we can tell you very clearly, if you don't take care of today's present, if you don't take care of those who are vulnerable in society, and as probably has been presented by other groups, if you don't make the investment today in young children, then it will cost many, many times over. All you have to do is look at the different costs of ministries and the costs of ministries working with children. You make your $1 sign when you invest in education. You make $2 signs when you take a look at the Ministry of Community and Social Services. Then if you look at the Solicitor General, you're looking at much, much more money invested. What we're saying is, turn that staircase upside down. Put the money in at the time when children are most vulnerable but the most opportunistic to assist. You know, put it in education.

So the answer to your question is that we can only articulate the rationale in so many ways, and what we're trying to do for each different political party is give it to them in the language that they have presented to the people.

Mr Silipo: That's, interestingly enough, exactly what I wanted to get to as well. I appreciated very much your presentation and I would have been surprised had it been anything other than the kind of amazing overview of the different areas that affect kids and the different cuts, the different attitudes. Because, as I say, had it been anything less than that I would have been surprised, coming from your federation. I appreciate very much what you've managed to pull together for us even in the short time that you've had.

But in order to perhaps be -- and I say this with all due respect, Mr Chair -- of help to the government members of the committee, I want to just focus on one area in particular because I hope that we can, by having a bit of an exchange on it, try to make the point, and that is the cuts to junior kindergarten. As you note in your brief, the government hasn't cut it per se, but it clearly has cut $400 million of funding next year, and at the same time it said that it would make junior kindergarten an optional program. We know that there have been boards that have already begun the process of cutting junior kindergarten and I think your brief describes that the consequences that will have.

But do you have any sense at this point as to what the consequences of that government action will be in terms of boards? Do you know, for example, how many boards are looking at seriously cutting junior kindergarten? From your sense of what's going on out there, how many places are we likely to see where in fact boards will look at that as a way out of the funding cuts that they will have to deal with? Because I agree very much with you when you say that you can't take $400 million out of a school system and not affect the classroom.

Ms Hoshizaki: You know, we have already heard from certain school boards that basically have stated that if it's not fully funded, which it has been in the past and is not now, they will not be providing junior kindergarten in the fall. That's been from a couple of school boards.

However, at the same time, school boards are sitting back and waiting. The fact that it's been transferred from a mandatory status to now an optional status as a program, we know that the local school boards are going to have to meet their targets on somehow extracting $400 million, whether it's in transportation -- but certainly junior kindergarten now having received the status of being an optional program, when local trustees sit down to take a look at their budgets, and they look at them in, whether it is March or April, and they know that junior kindergarten is optional but other programs are mandatory or core programs, then in fact junior kindergarten is up for grabs. It becomes, as has been stated by many trustees across the province right now, as there's nothing sacred.

We know now that because of the message of this government, junior kindergarten is not a sacred program and therefore will be probably one of the programs to go because -- we say this over and over again -- you can't extract as much as $400 million out of a system and not affect classrooms. Junior kindergarten's a perfect example: The cancellation of junior kindergarten affects junior kindergarten classrooms.

The Acting Chair: Two minutes per caucus now.

Mrs Janet Ecker (Durham West): Thank you very much for coming. I certainly appreciate the short notice. You've certainly prepared a lot of information in that time frame.

You'd made a comment that you believe, if I understood you correctly, that we should be looking after today's problems today, which is one of the reasons why the spending problem that we have today we are trying to look after today, because there won't be a future for tomorrow if we don't.

I have heard from a number of teachers in my area that they see a lot of fat, if you will, within the administration in their particular boards and I wonder if you could perhaps comment on that. Are you saying that there are no savings within administrative structures between school boards? In individual school boards there are no savings that boards should be looking at in terms of trying to focus the resources in the classroom?

Ms Hoshizaki: First of all, I think that for some reason there has been this idea that school boards have not looked at savings within the last several years. Having been a principal in a small school system -- and I worked on what I referred to as an operational budget, meaning whatever we got was what we spent -- however, within the seven or eight years that I was a principal, that was decreased quite dramatically each year. So there have been savings within systems.

But what I would like to identify is the area that there's somehow this great fat of administration within education, within the publicly funded educational systems in Ontario, and it just isn't there. It depends on how you define administration.

I apologize for not knowing the specifics as to the teachers who speak to you about this great level of fat that exists within administration, but classrooms don't exist in isolation. There are support systems within classrooms that have to do with programming, that have to do with curriculum, that have to do with support systems for children with learning disabilities, but they are not administrative fat.

I can draw a picture of a school board for you quite handily and really what you have is you have a director of education, you have superintendents. Other than looking at some very large school boards, you have some very basic administrative levels. Even if you were to remove those administrative levels, they wouldn't even come close to this great $400 million that has to be taken out of education.

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So that is one very, very small part, and I'm not suggesting that there may not be or couldn't be a restructuring of the administration within education, but that wouldn't even begin to address the dramatic cuts that this government is asking education to come up with; it wouldn't even begin to.

The Vice-Chair (Mr John Gerretsen): Thank you very much. Just one very short question.

Mrs Pupatello: In every example that you used, what was interesting is that you focused on the children at risk and pointed to areas where the cuts lie, the exposing of those children at risk in that they're cutting the very areas that will point those children out so that we can have some intervention at an early age. It's almost a move for survival of the fittest in comparing these children to the cubs, and those that are the strongest will survive and the rest, well, I guess they'll be left in the jungle.

You pointed out in every area, though, that those cuts are attacking the areas that will provide the intervention or even the focus of where that intervention should be. You're finding that in schools. You've also mentioned that it's those very children who will be those with disruptive behaviour, those where the teacher has to spend much more time, with the classroom size getting larger etc. Have you found that sort of growing or lessening over the years?

Ms Hoshizaki: There certainly has been an increase in children in crisis. I think the area that we've identified in welfare cuts, when you have 500,000 children living in poverty in Ontario, that increases quite dramatically the stress within families and within a child's life. Certainly add to this that the child is coming to school with just the idea that he or she has to think about basic food, shelter, clothing, and I think what we're really talking about is the emergence of the complexities of these cuts on a certain sector of society, that being the most vulnerable, and those people who happen to be the most vulnerable.

I think what we're also seeing is a pattern emerging from this, and the pattern is that organizations such as ourselves are going to speak out on behalf of these vulnerable children because we see it as a crisis and we can't afford to be silent about it.

Mr Silipo: I was also particularly struck by your observations in your brief about the experience in Montreal where teachers schedule tests only at the beginning of the month after the welfare cheques have arrived, and comparing that to your other observations in your presentation about the experience in many European countries.

This is something that I've continued to ask myself over a number of years; I think, in fairness, even before the Conservatives took power. But what is it about the Ontario and perhaps the Canadian society that makes it so difficult for us to understand the economic sense, let alone the social sense, of investing in young people, in education and other children's services, and in being prepared to acknowledge that if we nurture kids in a very healthy way and if we provide for them properly when they're young, it will pay back in spades for all of us in society? What is it about this North American society that makes it so hard for us to understand that? We've got example after example across the world of how that is working and can work.

Ms Hoshizaki: Hypothetically, I could respond to it by saying maybe it's our neighbours to the south. Not that I would like to blame the neighbours to the south, but there is a movement in which we believe for some reason that individual rights are more important than what we see as collective rights, and of course we believe that we have to have collective rights to have individual rights. We have to have some very basic standards for families and for children who live in Ontario and certainly in Canada.

What we wanted to do today was provide you not just with the hard data, the statistics, but also the same kind of data that the previous, or the politician over here -- that is, the gathered data of talking to your neighbours. That's really important information for us, and that's why we have quoted specifics from teachers, because what's really important for us are the observations that classroom teachers make daily. Those are the kind of statistics that politicians should listen to, because these are the children who come to school and can give you their stories, and teachers can give you the stories of how that affects them in classrooms. That's what has the real impact in how we have the ability to teach children and for children to learn, to be given the opportunities that really publicly funded education is all about.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much. Unfortunately, we're under a time constraint and we want to be fair to all the groups, so we can't allow for any more questions. Thank you very much, Sheryl and Joan.

SOCIAL PLANNING COUNCIL OF METROPOLITAN TORONTO
METRO CAMPAIGN 2000

The Vice-Chair: The next delegation we have is from the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto. Andrew Mitchell and Colin Hughes are here. Now, gentlemen, we have a total of half an hour for your presentation and questions, so however long you take for your presentation will leave less time for questioning. Go ahead, please.

Mr Andrew Mitchell: My name is Andrew Mitchell, so you can identify the players, and to my left is Colin Hughes, whom I work with frequently. Colin's going to begin our presentation today.

Mr Colin Hughes: I'm here on behalf of Metro Campaign 2000. Just very quickly, this is our report card that you've just received on child poverty in Metropolitan Toronto. Campaign 2000 is a cross-Canada coalition dedicated to securing implementation of the House of Commons resolution to end child poverty by the year 2000.

Public concern about child poverty and the growing social deficit has found expression but little action in public policy deliberations in Ontario and in Canada. In Ontario, welfare reform proposals such as the 1988 Transitions report and the 1993 Turning Point document were motivated in part by concern about child poverty. In 1989, the Canadian House of Commons unanimously passed an all-party resolution to seek to end child poverty by the year 2000. The resolution itself occurred within the context of the passing of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The international convention sets out a wide range of social and economic rights for children, including the right to a standard of living adequate for their physical, mental, spiritual and social development. I happen to think that's not a bad test. Federal and provincial governments are obliged to apply the maximum of available resources to implement these rights.

We believe that Canada could have made progress on these policy commitments. We're not a high-tax country. Our levels of taxation and social spending are lower than the average of industrialized nations. Look at the OECD. But despite our resource capacity, our commitments to children are essentially being ignored. Instead, funding and standards in national social programs are being cut, withdrawing the federal government from the social policy field and undermining our ability to pursue national goals and international obligations towards our children.

This really also compounds the problem of child poverty. Canada has stated its priority as deficit reduction, which is fine, but we're not really fighting the deficit fairly and responsibly. We've ignored about $90 billion in tax expenditure and other revenue measures and have instead made significant cuts to programs that directly and indirectly support children. So rather than working to end child poverty, a significant burden of deficit reduction has been transferred on to those who are least able to cope, the largest portion of whom are poor children. This lack of attention to children's needs and rights is indicative of a deeply disturbing trend towards the devaluation of children by public policy decision makers.

In Ontario, the current policy directions are in fact making poverty worse. The provinces have moved very quickly to fill a void in social policy created by the federal government, and done so in the worst interests of children, fuelling that trend towards the devaluation and neglect of children. The province is giving, in our opinion, insufficient consideration or weight to the hardship or damage of provincial funding cuts for children, so we urge this committee to help in terms of reconsidering and reversing current policy directions.

The pace and the depth of Ontario's cuts are quite staggering. Almost half a million children, as has been noted a number of times, are affected by the cuts to social assistance, which are in the amount of 22%. Parents are going to be forced into workfare as a condition of their social assistance, which had been banned under federal cost-sharing. In-kind community supports -- recreation, libraries and so on -- are being cut or eliminated almost on a daily basis. Cuts to municipalities will also affect many of these programs because they cost-share them or fund their own programs. The licensed child care system is literally in danger of collapsing, and even kindergarten children are being characterized as examples of "overspending" and "non-classroom costs."

These cuts and more of them are really going to fall hardest, I think, on children and low- and moderate-income families. The province, like the federal government, has claimed that it's doing this to fight the deficit, but, as has been noted, this is neither fair nor socially responsible. What's worse is that the provincial cuts are motivated by a promise to provide tax breaks which will largely benefit upper-income people.

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Ontario is effectively pursuing policies of redistribution in reverse: sacrificing public programs and transferring the cost of deficit fighting on to those who are least able to cope, while those who already have more than their fair share of resources are left off the hook and stand to reap tax advantages. It's held that the results will be economic growth and that the benefits will trickle down to lower- and moderate-income groups. But in country after country where progressive redistributive policies have been rejected and trickle-down policies have been embraced, the children have been failed.

Child psychologist Penelope Leach notes that, "Wealth is sticky stuff; it does not trickle easily or far." Instead, poverty and inequality in income distribution, the biggest and most serious risks to children's wellbeing and development, have increased. Children in Ontario can expect the same.

Mr Mitchell: I want to speak briefly to the issues of the impacts of inequality and poverty on children's health and wellbeing. I have been a part of such research over the past several years.

The fact that poverty puts children's development at risk is confirmed by an established and growing body of national and international research. Poverty is correlated with higher infant and child mortality rates, ill health, low birthweights, poor school performance, behavioural and emotional problems, child abuse and neglect, delinquency and future adult social problems. Any of these perils of course can and do occur in families who are not economically disadvantaged, but poverty increases the incidence, the cumulative impact and the persistence of these risks. Children pay a terrible price for the failure of the state to make adequate provision for their security.

To fight child poverty, lower- and moderate-income families must be enabled to increase their incomes, both their shares of market incomes and the security of their incomes through government transfers, which is the opposite, unfortunately, of what we see happening.

Since 1981 the distribution of income in Canada and in Ontario has become more unequal. Upper-income groups, particularly the richest quintile, have gained their share of the income pie at the expense of lower- and moderate-income families. It's interesting also that this trend is more pronounced in Ontario compared with the rest of Canada, perhaps because of the impact of the recession here in Ontario. Provincial cuts to transfers of income to lower-income families and cuts to the community supports which most families need to raise their children and to participate in the labour market effectively will only increase this trend towards greater inequality and higher levels of child poverty.

As I said, this is an enormous literature. It's incontrovertible. It all says the same thing, it all points the same way, and that's that poverty for children is devastating and its impacts are lifelong.

But the impacts of deprivation are not confined to the poorest. The economies of countries with more equal distributions of wealth in fact grow more rapidly and have higher income levels than those which pursue policies which exacerbate inequality. It turns out, interestingly, that inequality harms growth and leads to growth-retarding policies. We cannot afford child poverty if we want a decent society with good prospects for human and economic development. This is probably one of the most interesting developments going on in current thinking about the relationship between social and economic policy, and if you want to follow it up I would refer you to the literature called the endogenous growth literature.

To move on to social assistance again briefly, the decision that was taken in the late 1980s to boost Ontario's social assistance benefits was based on the realization that inadequate benefits actually posed barriers to independence and self-sufficiency. As Conrad Black himself noted in 1989, "I think it," meaning improved benefit levels, "makes good economic sense. As a businessman I understand you have to invest in something to make it work." Benefits were raised, thank goodness, but remained far below any recognized poverty lines. But also, interestingly, at the time benefits were raised, food bank use went down -- not so surprisingly, perhaps.

A savage recession and cuts to federal cost-sharing arrangements with the provinces, cuts to unemployment insurance and so forth, have all pushed Ontario's welfare cases and costs up. But instead of facing these problems directly and fairly, punitive policies emphasizing the so-called spur of poverty and workfare have been resurrected. These are policies which have been tried before throughout Ontario's history and the history of many countries. They always fail, they always fail for the same reasons, and they always hurt children.

Welfare cuts will drive hundreds of thousands of children and families on social assistance deeper into poverty. A lone parent with two children under age 12, for example, will lose about $3,000 per year, the equivalent of a modest but nutritious basket of groceries for that family, putting them over $7,000 below the budget guidelines we use at the social planning council to estimate modest but adequate living, about $9,000 below the low-income cutoff and about $46,000 or $47,000 below the average family income in Metropolitan Toronto.

Children, especially in their formative years, I think we'd like to point out, tend to live in younger families. Colin's got a few remarks about what's happened to younger families in this area over the past few years.

Mr Hughes: Employment among younger families, among younger people, has dropped dramatically between 1989 and 1993. About 80% of job losses in Metropolitan Toronto were among people under the age of 34 years, and since the 1970s earnings among workers under age 35 have declined dramatically. Government transfers between 1973 and 1991 were increasingly important to younger families to offset declining employment income. So cuts to provincial transfers, such as social assistance, child care and other in-kind supports, will be particularly hard on this group.

In terms of child care, affordable, high-quality child care provides children with a good start in life and enables parents to participate in work, education and training. In just about any document that is discussed addressing child poverty, child care has been flagged as an important strategy.

There are over 20,000 children currently waiting for subsidized child care in Metropolitan Toronto, but Metro's taken a 16% cut in licensed child care subsidies, losing about 3,500 subsidized spaces after January 1, 1996. And with the provincial cuts to municipal transfers approaching 50%, the licensed child care system, certainly in Metro, could collapse. We're looking at numbers around 8,500, the possibility of losing 8,500 subsidies in Metropolitan Toronto.

The province is clearly leaning in the direction of informal care, and there have been a number of suggestions in the media around using neighbours or family members or around the whole business of workfare, whereby mothers on social assistance will be required to babysit other people's children as a condition of welfare entitlement.

Informal care and workfare child care really do increase the risk of poor care to children. In terms of informal care, the quality of care in many of these arrangements is unknown and unknowable. Indeed, when the province's draft document on subsidies for informal care was leaked, one of the issues that had been flagged was the issue of liability and absolving the province of responsibility for children in informal care. So it seems that the province is cognizant of these risks, but it doesn't seem to convey the same standard to children or to parents.

Workfare child care is a bad idea for children for a number of reasons. Most obvious is that forcing anyone to care for another person's child is unwise and risks children being cared for in environments where they are unwanted and resented.

Mr Mitchell: I want to turn to housing for a moment. Housing is quite central, of course, because it turns out that if you look at the literature on child health and wellbeing and the safety of children, the quality, security and safety of their housing actually is quite fundamental. It has a lot to do with why poor children have higher rates of accident than non-poor children, because they tend to live in less safe neighbourhoods and less safe housing.

So it's important, I think, to recognize that we see the risk of children becoming dislocated and homeless growing. The largest group of children in Metro shelters for the homeless are very young children, those under the age of five. Metro shelters are experiencing a shift away from serving single persons to serving families; that is, families with children are the fastest-growing group of people in Metro's shelters. They're full, and they're getting fuller all the time.

About 40%, we should also recognize, of Ontario's private rental stock is occupied by people on social assistance, so we wonder and are concerned whether or not cutting the welfare benefits by 22% is going to increase homelessness.

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Just parenthetically, I think we should pause for a minute and recognize that a cut of 22% in welfare benefits is like an implicit tax of 22% on their incomes, and I wonder if anyone else in Ontario is being asked to take a 22% tax increase right now.

As I already mentioned, the shelters are reporting dramatic increases in demand, but it's quite questionable in my mind whether or not rents in Ontario are going to drop to the same magnitude as welfare benefits are being cut. It's a very questionable thing, given that vacancy rates are under 1% right now. Nor will it be that easy to move to cheaper accommodation. The few apartments that are available tend to rent for much higher rents than the average. In Metro, we have done some quick calculations which showed us that less than 3% of apartments that are suitable for a lone parent with one child rent at or below the new amounts for shelter costs from welfare and less than 1% of apartments suitable for a lone parent with two children rent at or below the new shelter maximums.

So money for rent in these situations may have to come from money for other basic needs -- food, clothing, school needs, reading or recreation needs of the child -- but those basic needs of course have also been cut by 22%. Families may have to choose between homelessness or hunger, and those choices are being made as we speak.

Mr Hughes: In terms of hunger, children are already overrepresented in terms of their use of food banks. About 70% of food bank food goes to families with children in Metropolitan Toronto, and though children who are 19 years of age and under make up only 22% of Metro's total population, they make up 43% of Metro's food bank users. Metro's Daily Bread Food Bank estimates that because of the welfare cuts, there will be a 95% increase in the numbers of people needing their help.

In terms of child welfare, one need only look south of the border for an immediate glimpse of what is in store for Ontario's children. The Ontario Incidence Study on reported child abuse and neglect notes that there's a strong relationship between neglect, which comprises about a third of child maltreatment investigations, and child poverty. But rates of reported child neglect in Ontario are less than one half the rate of those in the US.

This can be explained by the fact that the US has double Canada's child poverty rates. Indeed, in the US between 1986 and 1991, the years of comparable policies of major cutbacks by the Reagan administration, admissions of children into foster care increased by 60%. A comparable increase in Ontario would mean about 6,000 more children being admitted into foster care.

In conclusion, Ontario's cuts to programs will increase child poverty and inequality. This will have immediate and long-lasting detrimental effects on children. We urge the standing committee to do what it can to help the province reconsider and reverse its current policy directions. Fiscal deficits should be fought fairly and responsibly. Social programs should be protected and improved. We are in desperate need of public education on the importance of redistributive policies to reducing child poverty and inequality and to our own economic growth. Ontario could, in its own interests, promote these as national objective in social policy. But at a minimum, and on an ongoing basis, the province's policies should be objectively evaluated in terms of their impact on Ontario's children and whether these policies erode or advance the internationally recognized rights of children.

I'd like to thank you for allowing us to appear.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much. We have three minutes for each caucus for questioning.

Mr Dominic Agostino (Hamilton East): I thank the presenters for I think highlighting to us again that the biggest group that is going to pay the biggest price for the cuts, the same group that supposedly these cuts are being made to benefit -- I find that quite ironic that kids, and particularly children under five, as we've seen in various parts of the briefs, are going to be the biggest victims, whether it's in the shelters and the fact that it's their largest group of children, or the largest group is under five, kids who use shelters, or whether it's the increase in food banks, an astonishing number of kids who have to rely on food banks.

I ask the government members to think about that a little bit. What are we doing to the people that supposedly we're trying to build a future for, and is there going to be a future for them if they have to go through this devastation and to grow up in this kind of setting?

To just follow up on the impact it's going to have, I think we know that kids who go to school hungry don't do well, that kids who don't have proper shelter fall asleep in class and don't do well and that kids who have a hell environment at home as a result of tension and a result of a lack of basic necessities do poorly in school. I would dare anyone to challenge that and to find information contrary to that evidence, and we're going to see more of that.

I guess the question would be, what do you envision to be sort of the most obvious signs or the most immediate short-term impact that we're going to see on children as a result of these cuts?

Mr Mitchell: Off the top of my head, I know that in the first couple of months since October, I think the food banks are reporting in the first instance about a 70% increase in the first month and it's expected to go higher in the number of people coming to food banks for help. They're coming earlier in the month. They're coming more times per month than historically they've had to before. Food banks are having to consider things they heretofore have not had to consider, such as rationing food and trying to develop some kind of needs test to ration food among the people coming to them.

Mr Agostino: Is there a correlation between what you would see is the number of cases that children's aid societies will have to deal with, a case of abuse and neglect in the home, as a result of the cuts and the impact it would have on the family life and would ultimately lead to more of that sort of abuse and the need for the CAS to be involved?

Mr Hughes: I think the concerns in the child welfare system do relate to the overall impact on the family and the ability of parents to care for their children. There are concerns there around neglect and increased levels of stress, in addition to increased levels of isolation. All of these risk factors tend to come together around poverty and tend to be intensified by poverty. So I would say that that's a very real concern.

As to whether there'll be an immediate impact, I really can't say. I understand that in Alberta caseloads are starting to jump up. There may be a lag. It's a fairly rough indicator.

But what we do know is that poverty increases the degree of isolation. There are fewer resources for the child's needs to be met. It increases the stress that is on parents. Indeed, for example, there was a study on women's mental health finding much higher rates of depression among women at the lower end of the income ladder. We know there are fewer choices that they have.

It's really kind of common sense. There are all these things when you go through a family budget, and I would really encourage members here to sit down with a line-by-line budget and imagine yourself in that position with that much money and living on it and raising a child, and please use the standard that's in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a standard that says it's adequate for the child's social, physical, emotional and spiritual development, not just what they'll survive on on the streets.

Those concerns all do come together, and, yes, I think we will see either an increase in terms of the frequency or number or we're going to see an increase in terms of the severity, or both.

Mr Silipo: I want to thank the presenters as well. I guess even Conrad Black couldn't convince the government, this government, about our rights, because in fact, as you know and as you noted, not only were the cuts raised, but in the letter that the Minister of Community and Social Services sent out to the world on July 21, he said very clearly, "We believe the current rates are too high and are one of the reasons our welfare caseloads have increased so dramatically."

I'm sure that the government is probably now taking a lot of comfort out of the fact that the number of people on welfare have dropped, but they haven't, it seems to me, factored in a couple of things, and I'd like you to comment on this.

One is that as they finally fix the problem, one of the problems they've caused is when, as they fix the problem, that has let a number of people off the rolls temporarily because of the changes to the STEP program, which they're now fixing, we will see -- my guess is anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000, 40,000 people back on the rolls, unless the government decides to classify them in some other category, which we'll be interested to see what happens.

But the other is this lag period that you talked about. I don't know what's going to happen, but I would like to ask you if you have any information that you can share with us about what has happened, in effect, let alone those people who are just off because of the reduction in the rules, because the rules have caused them to drop off the rolls and they would've otherwise still been legitimately on the rolls.

What's happened to the other people who have been dropped, left off the rolls? Have thousands of people really managed to get a job in the last little while? Because they don't seem to show up anywhere else in the statistics. Where are they?

Mr Mitchell: This is baffling a lot of us. We're unable to provide a very satisfactory explanation. We're eagerly waiting for some kind of report from the government ourselves. There's probably a package of things going on. Some people are simply disentitled by virtue of the rule changes. The climate of course has changed and some people might have decided to leave the province altogether simply because of the change in the climate.

The welfare system is one thing on paper and, as a lot of people around here know, it's quite another thing out there in the offices, in the real world of people living on social assistance. It's not a fun system. It's a very punitive and harsh system for a lot of people, and when the climate changes for the worse for these people, that affects their daily lives. So maybe some people have packed up, but we're waiting to find out. We simply don't know enough ourselves. The employment statistics certainly don't reflect this.

But you said something else. I want to take the opportunity to answer a question that you didn't ask me. You alluded to a widely held view that benefit levels drive caseloads. I know that literature. It's flawed on methodological grounds, it's flawed on conceptual grounds. You cannot conclude from anything that's been done that I have ever seen that there's any substance to that view whatsoever.

Mr Dan Newman (Scarborough Centre): Thank you for coming. I'll be quick, since we have three minutes. On page 1 of your document here you say that we're not a high-tax country.

Mr Hughes: Yes, that's correct.

Mr Newman: How much room do you see in increasing income taxes?

Mr Hughes: At the national level?

Mr Newman: Both nationally and here; just specifically in Ontario.

Mr Hughes: Personal income taxes? I actually don't personally see a lot of room in the personal income tax system.

Mr Mitchell: I don't think there's a magic number and I don't think anyone should pretend like there's a magic number that's the right tax level and anything beyond that is too high and anything lower is inappropriate. But there are things that can be done in a personal income tax system. We're all aware that there's an enormous problem with tax expenditures in this country. It's not a popular topic always, but I think it's important to recognize. It might not be for this level of government to deal with. The federal government controls the definition of income for tax purposes, and we've addressed these questions to them, but that's where I would see the scope for dealing with that problem, maybe more than the rate of tax necessarily.

Mr Hughes: In terms of the question around are we or are we not a high-tax country, if we look at comparisons to other industrialized countries, we're not; we're, I believe, about 3% below the average, something like that, 3% of GDP, which is a lot. So there's some room. We're not saying that deficits and restructuring don't pose some real, serious problems. I think that would be silly. What we are saying is that there is some room to move there and that we have to really have our priorities straight as to who pays whom benefits, who can carry the burden and who can't in our society.

The Vice-Chair: Okay.

Mr Newman: I don't think I've had three minutes, have I?

The Vice-Chair: Well, okay. You've had two and a half; half a minute more.

Mr Newman: Be impartial, Chair. I'd like that. The Vice-Chair: As impartial as I can.

Mr Newman: The new rates set by the government are 10% above the average of the other nine provinces in Canada, yet you claim they're unfair. Can you explain this?

Mr Hughes: The new social assistance rates?

Mr Newman: Here in Ontario. They're 10% above the average of the other nine provinces, yet you claim that's unfair.

Mr Hughes: Sure. Yes, we do. We think it's unfair. In the first place, there's no standard across Canada of adequacy in benefits. The benefits that are given by each province are not a good measure of what's adequate. The other part of that is the difference in terms of the cost of living in Ontario, which is different than in other provinces. We could compare ourselves to the Yukon, for example, I suppose, in welfare rates and then we'd raise them. I don't know. So yes, we don't think it's fair in that sense. Andrew, do you want to elaborate on that?

Mr Mitchell: I'll just add quickly to what Colin said. There's nothing I'm aware of that suggests that the other provinces, as Colin said, are an appropriate benchmark or that 10% is the appropriate increment. Also, is this now a moving target? Because one of the things that's happening in response, frankly, to what Ontario is doing, is other provinces are cutting their benefits as well. Is our goal always going to be that 10%? Are we going to cut benefits again to stay in that 10% gap, even if I could be convinced that this was the appropriate differential between Ontario and the other provinces? It's a problematic measure.

The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, Andrew and Colin, for your presentation.

The next meeting of this committee will take place at the call of the Chair, since we haven't been allocated any particular times yet during the intersession.

The committee adjourned at 1705.