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Canada's poor face `emergency': UN
UN group says social programs lacking
Sharply critical on rights of aboriginals

May 23, 2006.

JOHN GODDARD
STAFF REPORTER- TORONTO STAR

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Welfare benefits in most provinces have dropped in value in the past 10 years and often amount to less than half of basic living costs, a UN watchdog group charged yesterday.

The employment insurance program needs to be more accessible, minimum wages don't meet basic needs, and homelessness and inadequate housing amount to a "national emergency," says the UN body's report from Geneva.

The watchdog committee is formally called the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It last examined Canada's performance in 1998, and sat for three weeks this month taking submissions on five countries including Monaco, Liechtenstein, Morocco and Mexico.

Its sharp criticism of Canada on poverty issues echoes that voiced last week by a special Toronto task force of experts ranging from bankers to community advocates, particularly on questions of employment insurance and help for the working poor.

On employment insurance, the UN body reported: "In 2001, only 39 per cent of unemployed Canadians were eligible for benefits ... (and in) Ontario eligibility rates were even lower."

In Toronto, the local task force said the eligibility figure stands at 22 per cent.

"Minimum wages in all provinces," the UN report said, "are insufficient to enable workers and their families to enjoy a decent standard of living." About 51 per cent of people using food banks, it also said, are receiving inadequate social insurance benefits.

In the same vein, the Toronto task force said hundreds of thousands of working-age Ontarians are living in poverty and it would take $4.6 billion a year in overhauled government programs to lift them out of it.

"Having been present at the review, I can tell you that the committee was dismayed to find that social assistance rates in Canada bear no resemblance to the actual cost of living," said Emily Paradis of the Feminist Organization for Women's Advancement of Rights, or Forward, a group concerned with homelessness.

The UN body had much to say about aboriginal rights, singling out the Lubicon Lake Cree of northern Alberta for special mention.

Using the uncommonly forceful diplomatic term "strongly recommends," the committee called on Canada to reopen land-rights talks and consult the Lubicon "prior to the grant of licences for economic purposes on disputed land."

The Alberta government plans to auction oil sands licences to 50,000 hectares of traditional Lubicon lands on June 14, Lubicon band negotiator Kevin Thomas said in a phone interview explaining the reference.

No land negotiations have taken place since 2003, he said.

Canada has done nothing to end discrimination against women with Indian status in matters of matrimonial property, the committee also said.

"When a status woman marries a non-status man she loses her status and all the rights that go with it (under federal law)," said Doreen Silversmith of the Six Nations Confederacy of southwestern Ontario, who attended the Geneva meetings.

By comparison, a status man marrying a non-status woman keeps his status.

"It's discrimination," Silversmith said. "It still hasn't been resolved."

Relative to the general population, poverty rates remain disproportionately high among "aboriginal peoples, African-Canadians, immigrants, persons with disabilities, youth, low-income women and single mothers," the report said.

The same gap exists when it comes to access to water, health, housing and education, it said. And aboriginal and African-Canadian families "are over-represented in families whose children are relinquished to foster care."

The UN committee congratulated Canada on progress in some areas.

Fewer people are living below what the federal government calls the "low-income cut-off" line and others call the poverty line. The rate improved to 11.2 per cent in 2004 compared to 13.7 per cent in 1998.

Maternity and parental benefits have been extended to one year from six months, the committee said approvingly.

Disparities between aboriginal people and the rest of the population narrowed regarding infant mortality and high school enrolment. Measures were taken toward equal pay for equal work. And foreign aid currently stands at 0.33 per cent of gross domestic product, up from 0.27 per cent in 2004, the UN committee said.

In London yesterday, Amnesty International reported that the focus on counter-terrorism and public security in developed countries is draining attention from crises afflicting the poor and underprivileged.

In its 2006 annual report, the human rights watchdog also urged the UN to address abuses in the Darfur region of western Sudan, where violence has killed more than 180,000 people and displaced 2.5 million since 2003.

Amnesty also urged Washington to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and asked for full disclosure on prisoners implicated elsewhere in the "war on terror."

with files from the associated press
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