CCPI
Charter Committee on Poverty Issues

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 Notes for a presentation before the standing Committee on Finance from the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues

Presented by Bruce Porter, May 16, 1995

The Charter Committee on Poverty Issues

Bill C-76 and the Human Rights of Poor People

Why do Poor People Need Human Rights?

Bill C-76 and International Law

Bill C-76 and Discrimination Against the Poor

The Need for Enhanced Social Rights In the New Economy

Recommendation

1. The Charter Committee on Poverty Issues

The Charter Committee on Poverty Issues is a national coalition of poor

people and advocates dedicated to claiming and enforcing the rights of poor

people under human rights legislation, the Canada Assistance Plan Act, the

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international human rights law

such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

We are the litigation voice of the poor in Canada. Our normal venue is

before courts, tribunals or international human rights bodies. We have

intervened on a number of occasions before the Supreme Court of Canada and

the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

We are entering the political arena on this occasion, however, to try to

dissuade Parliament from revoking fundamental human rights of the poor in

Canada. It is our fervent hope that upon reflecting upon the implications

of parts of this Bill for the protection of human rights in Canada, this

Committee will recommend that sections 30 to 56 be removed from the Bill and

referred to an independent Committee to review the protection of social

rights in Canada in light of international and domestic human rights law.

2. Bill C-76 and the Human Rights of Poor People

Bill C-76, in our view, is an unprecedented assault on the rights of the

most vulnerable members of Canadian society. The Bill revokes the Canada

Assistance Plan (CAP) and with it the rights which have been the foundation

of human rights protections of the poor in Canada.

As the Committee is well aware, CAP provides for four fundamental rights:

i) the right to receive financial assistance when in need;

ii) the right to a level of financial assistance taking into account

budgetary requirements;

iii) the right to appeal a denial of financial assistance; and

iv) the right not to be forced to work against one's choice for welfare.

Under CAP, these rights are built into all cost-sharing agreements for

social assistance. As Canada has stated when reporting to the United

Nations, CAP is an essential component of Canada's implementation of

fundamental human rights in accordance with international law.

The right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food,

clothing and housing, has long been recognized as one of the most basic of

human rights. It was clearly enunciated in article 25 the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, and

subsequently in article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social

and Cultural Rights, (the Covenant) ratified by Canada in 1976.

All other human rights depend, to some extent, on the right to an adequate

standard of living. A violation of this right can reduce other human rights

to mere words on paper. It is thus a basic component of many of the rights

of poor people under the Canadian Charter, particularly the right to liberty

and security of the person, protected in section 7 of the Charter and the

right to equality, protected in section 15.

The right to freely choose one's work is also a long standing right in

international human rights law, found both in the Universal Declaration

(article 23) and the Covenant (article 6). It too, is an important

component of liberty and equality for those who rely on social assistance

for the necessities of life.

Some people may think of CAP merely as a fiscal agreement or social policy

legislation. For poor people, however, CAP has meant more than national

standards or social policy. CAP entrenches fundamental human rights, that

is rights of citizens which are binding on our governments. If these rights

are violated, we are able to go to court to seek a remedy. This was

established in the case of Jim Finlay, when the Supreme Court of Canada

ruled that a person relying on social assistance has standing to go to court

and challenge a violation of the CAP agreement.

If provincial governments fail to provide an adequate appeal procedure, fail

to establish welfare rates at an adequate level, or force people to work

against their choice in order to receive welfare, poor people can go to

court and hold governments accountable to these basic rights of citizens in

need.

In this sense, the rights that have been revoked in Bill C-76 are akin to

constitutional rights for poor people. They are the main pillars of the

constitutional protection from being denied the basic requirements of a

dignified life. They have been fundamental rights for a generation of

Canadians.

Bill C-76, with a stroke of the pen, removes the quasi-constitutional rights

of poor people that have been in place for almost thirty years.

3. Why do Poor People Need Human Rights?

During these hearings, the Committee will have heard the view that it is

unnecessary to impose national standards on provincial governments. In our

view, it is important to distinguish jurisdictional questions from questions

about fundamental human rights.

It is worth reminding ourselves of the reason we have, over the last

generation in Canada and in most other democratic countries, put in place

human rights which are binding on all levels of government.

Human rights are fundamental to making democracy work for all citizens.

Without human rights protections, the needs and interests of the most

vulnerable and disadvantaged members of society are likely to be ignored or

misunderstood, in large part because members of those groups are unlikely to

be in positions of power in society.

Human rights act as a corrective to the marginalization of disadvantaged

groups. They give disadvantaged groups a way of having their voice heard

and their interests protected, even when the majority of voters may be

hostile to them or hold prejudicial or discriminatory attitudes.

A number of courts in Canada have recognized that poor people and those

relying on social assistance programs are very much in need of protection

from discrimination, both from discriminatory public attitudes and from

government policy which may ignore their interests or violate their rights.

They have, in several court decisions, been recognized by the courts as

being analogous to other historically disadvantaged groups and therefore

protected from discrimination under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of

Rights.

With difficult economic times, society looks for scapegoats. Sadly, poor

people have become one of the primary scapegoats in Canada for current

economic woes. They are the subject of increasingly widespread prejudice

and discrimination analogous to invidious discrimination on other grounds

such as race, sex or disability. Poor people hear all too frequently that

they have too many children, that they should be sterilized, that they are

undesirable neighbours who will bring crime and reduce property values, that

they are lazy, drink too much beer, even that they are genetically inferior.

Polls have shown that during the recessionary years when it became ever more

difficult to find employment, when we would expect public sympathy for poor

people to increase, there was in fact an increased hostility toward the poor.

With the spread of discriminatory attitudes toward poor people, governments,

unfortunately, may feel that they can increase their popularity by "cracking

down" on poor people. In this political environment, poor people are

increasingly vulnerable to discriminatory government policies and very much

in need of their human rights.

At the very moment when poor people are most desperately in need of human

rights, Bill C-76 will revoke their fundamental human right to an adequate

standard of living and to freely choose work.

4. Bill C-76 and International Law

Canada has long been respected on the international stage for its strong

commitment to international human rights. That image became somewhat

tarnished in 1993 when the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural

Rights sharply criticized Canada for its failure to make progress in

alleviating poverty in the preceding decade, and for failing to provide

appropriate remedies to violations of social and economic rights in Canada.

Canada's image will become further tarnished if Bill C-76 is passed without

significant changes to protect and improve the rights of poor people. The

U.N. Committee hinted at this when it sent to Canada a letter dated May 4,

1995, in response to submissions by several non-governmental organizations,

including ours, alerting them to the fate of CAP rights within Bill C-76.

We have distributed to members of the Committee copies of the U.N.

Committee's Concluding Observations from 1993 and the letter to the Canadian

Ambassador from the Chairperson of the Committee regarding Bill C-76.

As these documents make clear, Canada's obligation under the Covenant is not

simply to adopt policies which will ameliorate poverty, which it has failed

to do in recent years. Equally important, Canada has the obligation to

ensure that the right to an adequate standard of living is made an

enforceable right within domestic law. It was in recognition of this latter

obligation that Canada has referred the Committee to CAP in all of its

reports on compliance with the Covenant, and more recently, to the Supreme

Court's decision in Finlay, confirming that these rights may be enforced in

court by those alleging that their rights have been violated.

In international law, a dramatic retrogressive step such as is proposed in

Bill C-76, removing the foundation of the legal protection of the right to

an adequate standard of living from Canadian law, can only be justified

under the most extreme emergency situation, if ever. While the present

fiscal concerns in Canada, as in other countries, may be serious, they

certainly do not warrant the wholesale reversal of the fundamental legal

protections of the poor. In fact, the current economic climate makes these

rights more important.

Many in Canada do not seem to understand how a U.N. Committee can find fault

with Canada. Surely these problems are much worse in many poorer countries.

Interestingly, we found in 1993 that it was the members of the U.N.

Committee from poorer countries who were most disturbed and alarmed to learn

that hunger and homelessness, even though less extreme than in developing

countries, exist in a country with the highest per capita Gross Domestic

Product of any of the major industrial countries that have ratified the

Covenant. (The United States has not ratified the covenant, though all of

the other G-7 countries have.)

We are convinced that if Bill C-76 is passed without changes, the U.N.

Committee will find it to be in violation of the Covenant. It is clearly

what is referred to as a "retrogressive measure" in relation to a number of

articles in the Covenant, such as the right to an adequate standard of

living, the right to freely choose one's work and the right to social security.

The Committee has attempted to create the basis for a constructive dialogue

with Canada on this issue by sending a very diplomatically worded letter to

the Canadian Ambassador. We sincerely urge the Government to take up this

constructive dialogue by severing sections 30 to 56 from the Bill to allow

for a more thorough review and discussion about how to preserve and enhance

the legal protections of social and economic rights in Canada.

5. Bill C-76 and Discrimination Against the Poor

Bill C-76 not only revokes fundamental human rights protections on which

poor people depend, it itself discriminates against the poor by targeting

this particularly vulnerable group in its redesign of provincial obligations

under cost-sharing.

National standards of health care, which are of more universal concern to

Canadians, are thankfully maintained in the new Canada Health and Social

Transfer. However, the rights of poor people, a minority that is

particularly vulnerable to discriminatory attitudes, are revoked. This

differential treatment of minority interests from those of the majority is a

form of blatant discrimination against the poor. It pre-determines that the

most vulnerable groups in Canadian society will bear an unfair burden of new

austerity measures.

With the new block funding mechanisms of the CHST and the reduction of

federal contributions by 7 billion dollars over three years, poor people,

robbed of their basic rights and entitlements, will have to compete for

funds for health and education, in which most Canadians have a direct

interest. Depriving a vulnerable minority of all of its rights and then

declaring a free-for-all competition for reduced funding has, in our view, a

pre-determined outcome. Poor people have been set up to lose.

6. The Need for Enhanced Social Rights In the New Economy

In the 1990's economy, provinces increasingly compete with each other for

investment capital. Investment capital, we are told, is attracted to

provinces with lower taxes and weaker social protections. In this

environment, social and economic rights such as those contained in CAP are

increasingly important to avoid the downward levelling of human rights

standards which can occur through provincial competition for capital and the

shedding of public expenditure.

If provinces are under no obligation to set social assistance rates at an

adequate level, one province may seek to gain a perceived advantage in

attracting capital by violating rights which it previously had to respect

under CAP. That violation, in turn, puts pressure on neighbouring provinces

to adopt similar measures to compete for investment capital.

At the same time, persons who are denied adequate social assistance in one

province may be forced to move to a province which provides more adequate

benefits. All of this creates pressure for all provinces to conform to the

lowest common denominator and creates an environment ripe for the continuous

erosion of the rights of vulnerable groups.

Such an outcome, of course, would have severe economic consequences in the

long term. It is both a moral imperative and an economic one for Canada to

maintain and improve its legal protections of social rights such as the

right to an adequate standard of living. To abandon our historic commitment

to social rights at this time would mean handing down to the next generation

a social deficit of enormous proportions. The only way to ensure that this

does not happen is to enhance, rather than revoke, the legal protection of

rights which for a generation, defined our commitment in Canada to social

justice and equality.

7. Recommendation

We urge in the strongest possible terms the removal of sections 30 to 56 of

Bill C-76. We urge this Committee to recommend that a special Committee be

formed to review the protections of social rights in Canada such as the

right to an adequate standard of living and to freely choose one's work, in

light of our obligations under international law, the Canadian Charter of

Rights, section 36 of the Constitution and Canada's historic commitment to a

more inclusive and just society.

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