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HALIFAX, TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2005
COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE HOUSE ON SUPPLY
2:26 P.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. Daniel Graham
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable Deputy Government House Leader.
MR. WILLIAM DOOKS: Mr. Chairman, at this time I call for the estimates of Community Services.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Are there any additional comments from the minister before I recognize the Leader of the Official Opposition?
The honourable Leader of the Official Opposition.
MR. DARRELL DEXTER: Mr. Chairman, I rise today to join the debate on the estimates for the Minister of Community Services. I have to say, I just listened to all the good news that the member for Cape Breton West was talking about, and I barely recognized what he had to say, because certainly in the Department of Community Services, there has been very little for people to be happy with. In fact, unfortunately, over the past number of years - and I'm not trying to be overly unkind - the reality is that this minister has made a shambles out of the Department of Community Services. His seeming unwillingness to understand that the people with whose charge he is placed demand from him and his department their respect. That's what has been absolutely clear from the Department of Community Services over the past number of years that this minister has been in the position that he's in.
Mr. Chairman, what is particularly kind of galling about the performance of the minister and what is particularly disheartening and saddening to the people who watch his performance is the way in which he treats them, in a disrespectful and cavalier attitude. He will do things, and we've all seen him do it in the House, he pulls out press clippings from times gone by and refers to little bits of information which he thinks somehow, bizarrely, justifies the position he takes.
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While what is happening around the province and throughout this Chamber, people simply sit across the way and shake their heads at the inability of the minister to understand that the people in the department for which he is given the responsibility to administer are out there every day simply trying to survive, trying to get by, trying to provide for their families.
[2:30 p.m.]
In many cases, they are the people who are dealing with some of the most severe difficulties that we have in society. They're dealing with addictions, they are dealing with personal tragedy, they are dealing with disabilities, they are dealing with mental health issues, and yet the best that this minister can do is to reach into his folder and pull out some yellowed old piece of newspaper from two or three years ago and quote, out of context, the words of one of the other members in the House. It is a spectacle, Mr. Chairman, that just ought not to be tolerated by the government.
We need to look at what they've actually done. I just want to go through some of the things that they have done. The provincial home repair program, this was to assist people with little or no means to repair their homes. They cut it by $1.5 million. These are low-income individuals. The maintenance of children in the care of the minister, this year they will cut that program by $4.5 million, with no explanation of where they're going to get the money, without seemingly a thought about what effect that's going to have on the staff who have to look after these children, the staff who are charged with the responsibility to see that they are appropriately placed and cared for.
Mr. Chairman, they cut the Non-Profit Housing Program by $100,000. They cut the Employment Support and Income Assistance staff by 18 full-time equivalents. Those are the staff people go to, at the entry point to Community Services. These are the people who come in to try to get assistance from the department. So what do they do? They cut the point-of-entry staff, so that the waiting lists and the times are longer and longer. Every single person in this Chamber knows this is true, and do you know why we know it's true? We know it's true because they are in our offices. That's where they come for help, that's where they come for assistance, because they can't get through the doors at the Department of Community Services to get the help that they need.
Some of the other things that they've done. They have frozen the return-to-work initiative at the 2003-04 levels. These are people who are presently on social assistance who are trying to get back to work. This fund was supposed to assist people by buying work boots and by assisting them in their struggle to get back to work. They froze that program.
They froze transition house operational funding at 2004-05 levels. Now, the transition houses in this province provide an incredible service in this province, from one end of the province to the other. They are there to assist women and children in need at the point where
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they find themselves in crisis. They have been saying for a long time now that they are dramatically underfunded. Do they move to increase the funding to transition houses, the operational funding? No. I will say this, there is an additional amount of money in the budget, but that's only going to be allocated after their redesign is complete. Have they ever told anybody what their redesign is going to look like? No, it is a closely guarded secret.
We know that the predisposition of this government, in fact, is to cut the number of transition houses. That's what they said in one of their original budgets and you may remember, as I do, Mr. Chairman, the way that the Minister of Finance wilted under the pressure, the day-to-day pressure of the members of the Opposition in both Parties, who identified this as a travesty.
They froze the rent supplements at 2004-05 levels. They froze residential placements under Community Supports for Adults, Mr. Chairman, people with disabilities who are trying to get residential placements. Oftentimes these are people who have elderly parents, people who need support, and what do they do? They froze those, and those people are remaining, many times, in situations where although the people who are there love them very much, they just don't have the capacity to provide them with the kind of supports they need.
Income assistance, child care funding, frozen, Mr. Chairman. I just want to think about the way that this minister has dealt with that whole question of children and their kind of cavalier attitude, because you should know that this department gave out more in bonuses to the deputy minister and to managers than any other department or agency in 2003-04. This is at the same time that they managed to increase the personal use allowance for disabled and mentally ill persons in care by $10 in January 2006.
Mr. Chairman, Nova Scotia, right now, has had the highest increase in food bank use in Atlantic Canada, a 46 per cent increase since 1997, essentially over the time period that this minister has been in charge of his department. And 40 per cent of those people using food banks are children. It is the food banks that have become the growth industry in this province.
Mr. Chairman, they increased the food allowance for those on community services by $4 in October 2006, after pretty much a 10-year freeze. What did the Minister of Community Services have to say about that? What he had to say was, well, people could eat a lot of pasta or some cheap vegetables if they were going to live on an allowance of $6.05 a day. What kind of a response from a Minister of the Crown is that, to people who are struggling every day to get by? It's a shameful display.
They continue to watch while daycares around the province close or face financial uncertainty, and yet the minister will not commit to a province-wide early child care plan with the new federal child care money, something the minister could do but has refused to do. He moved 11 men out of the Nova Scotia Rehabilitation Centre to a temporary shelter
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at Sunrise Manor in 2001, a temporary shelter. Do you know where those people are today, Mr. Chairman? They are still in Sunrise Manor, they are still in that temporary facility.
He spent the province's share of the federal affordable housing money on rent supplements instead of actually creating more permanent housing for families and for people who need it. That's what they did. They could have actually built affordable housing, but instead they allowed the federal government to spend their money building the units and they're taking their share of that money and providing rent supplements that are going to go into the pockets of the developers of the projects. Then after 10 years, when the program comes to an end, there's no guarantee that the developers even have to provide continued affordable housing for the very people that program was set up to benefit.
Mr. Chairman, it's just a terrible situation. After commenting publicly that there were enough shelter beds to meet demands, he was forced to fund Pendleton Place after being challenged by the Salvation Army and other groups. There was the spectacle of the minister not understanding what the extent of the homelessness problem was. These are the people, after all, who he is charged with the responsibility of caring for. One of the things that we have raised over and over again is just to point out how out of touch the minister is.
I want to give one more quick example. People on social assistance who would like to take advantage of their academic abilities to try to build a stronger province by becoming a nurse or an engineer or by trying to advance their way from poverty into prosperity are told by this government, by this minister, if you decide that that's what you want to do, we will take away the benefits to your families. This minister says the Student Loan Program is an income-tested program, it's interest free and goes on for two years beyond graduation. He shows he has no understanding at all of what the Student Loan Program is actually all about.
Mr. Chairman, it is with those words, with respect to the minister's role in the Department of Community Services, that I make the following motion:
I so move that the resolution be amended by reducing the amount provided for net program expenses of the Department of Community Services by $42,463.42, an amount equal to the minister's salary less $1. (Applause)
MR. CHAIRMAN: The debate will continue on Supply.
The honourable member for Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley.
MR. BROOKE TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, I'm wondering if I could be provided with a copy of that motion. (Interruptions)
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MR. KEVIN DEVEAUX: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. I guess there's a motion on the floor. I'm trying to get some clarification as to the Chair's position. My understanding and the precedent of this House that was set, I recall, back in 2000 on the Education estimates, a motion was moved by the member for Halifax Needham, and at that point in time we had the vote. The vote was called, the bells were rung and the vote was held at that point. That's my understanding of the precedent this House has set. That's the custom of this House. (Interruptions)
MR. BROOKE TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. I'm looking for some clarification, because my experience around the Legislature in committee is that we have an opportunity as Members of the Legislative Assembly to speak to the motion that's put before us. (Interruptions)
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Cole Harbour-Eastern Passage.
MR. KEVIN DEVEAUX: Mr. Chairman, I think it's important to note, for the member for Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley, that some motions are debatable, some are not debatable. You, as chairman, have to decide whether (a) it's debatable, and (b) is the vote to be called immediately.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable Government House Leader.
HON. RONALD RUSSELL: Mr. Chairman, the honourable member, to some extent, is correct, that you have to decide whether or not the motion is in order. I would suggest to you that even if the motion is in order, other members who wish to debate the estimates of the honourable member should be permitted to do so.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Cape Breton South.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, I will defer to my colleague on a point of order.
MR. KEVIN DEVEAUX: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. The difference is we have a motion on the floor. I understand the rights of the members to speak on Supply debate if they wish, but that's on the actual debate. This is an amendment to the actual Supply motion that was presented on Community Services. You as the chairman have to decide if the motion is to be voted on immediately.
[2:45 p.m.]
That would be my recommendation, because that's what was done in 2000. We have a precedent in this House of a vote being handled immediately. It was not a debatable motion, that was the decision of the chairman at the time. The member for Colchester-
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Musquodoboit Valley was that person in the Chair at the time, and it was his decision at that point in time to say the precedent of this House is that we do not have a debate, we go immediately to a vote on that motion which is an amendment. Mr. Chairman, I say it is your job to make that decision right now.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable Government House Leader.
HON. RONALD RUSSELL: Mr. Chairman, if, indeed, the motion is in order, and the motion is to amend the estimates of the Department of Community Services, then that should be debated at the end - I beg your pardon, the vote should be called on that motion at the end of the debate on the estimates. (Interruptions)
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. As I understand it, what the Opposition House Leader is asking for is that we proceed immediately to a vote on this particular issue. Am I to understand from this House that as House Leader for our Party and as a member of this Legislature, that I would not be allowed to debate a motion of such seriousness, that if it's deemed to be a motion of confidence that it would bring this House down? I think the least I should be able to do is give the opinion of our Party on that particular motion before the question is put to this House.
Failing that, if this House decides, by your ruling, Mr. Chairman, that this is not something that will come to a vote now, then I ask that our Party be given the opportunity to proceed and question the estimates of the Minister of Community Services, and also during that time give some indication as to how our Party feels about this particular motion. I'm awaiting a decision of the House as to whether or not this question is going to be called now. If it's determined it's called now, then, certainly, we should have an opportunity to have our say on this issue, before it comes to a vote.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, it's my learned opinion that the debate will continue on the estimates.
The honourable member for . . .
MR. KEVIN DEVEAUX: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. First of all, far be it from me to suggest how you should be doing the job, but I believe the Government House Leader specifically suggested that you have to decide whether this motion is in order. I'm assuming that is what you are saying (a); and (b) if it is in order, I ask you to look at the precedent that was set only five years ago, in this House, with regard to the fact that the motion - there was no debate, it went to a vote immediately.
I would suggest to you, as chairman, that you better have some precedent to explain, on the other side, as to why that decision does not follow the precedent of this House in 2000.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: The motion is in order, and it is debatable. It will be debated at the end of the estimates. A vote will be carried at the end of the estimates.
The honourable member for (Interruptions) At the end of the estimates, honourable member. (Interruptions)
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: At the end of Community Services or the entire . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: The entire estimates.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: The entire estimates? (Interruptions)
MR. DEVEAUX: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. At the end of the estimates on Community Services, there's usually a motion of some sort put, as to whether or not we agree to report back this estimate. I need clarification as to whether the motion, in your mind, is to be done at the end of Community Services, when we move that, or is it done at the end of the estimates in total?
MR. CHAIRMAN: The estimates, honourable member, are always left open. When we stand the estimates, we hold them in abeyance until the end. That will be the case on this one as well.
The honourable member for Cape Breton South.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, I'm not sure whether I understand exactly what's happening here in terms of the time frame for voting. I do know this, that I would have expected better from the NDP, in regard to what the NDP is attempting to do here today. I've listened to what the Leader of the NDP had to say, and I paid particular attention to his condemnation of the Minister of Community Services.
Mr. Chairman, I have to tell you that I agree with most everything he said, in regard to that department and to its minister; however, what I don't agree on is the NDP trying to bring this House down today without having to vote Yea or Nay on the budget next week. I think the NDP, today (Interruptions)
Well, why else, Mr. Chairman, would the NDP move a motion of confidence here today? (Interruptions) The Finance Minister says it's a motion of confidence.
MR. KEVIN DEVEAUX: Point of order. Point of order.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: I believe I'm speaking in estimates here . . .
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MR. DEVEAUX: And I have a point of order.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: And we're talking about the estimates of the Department of Community Services.
MR. DEVEAUX: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. I want to clarify that the Liberal House Leader should understand that this was never a motion of confidence on our part, and I've heard no one say in this House that this is a motion of confidence. As far as I'm concerned, we never moved a motion of confidence. (Interruptions)
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. That is not true. The Government House Leader came to me within hearing distance of that member and said that this is a confidence motion, and if it passes, pack your bags. That's what the House Leader said today, and he said the Finance Minister also considers it a motion of confidence here today. (Interruptions)
HON. RONALD RUSSELL: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. This is a vote in estimates, in committee. It may or may not be a vote of confidence. However, when the estimates are referred to the House, there will have to be a vote if, indeed, this amendment passes. There will have to be a vote on the Appropriations Act as amended. There is no possible way that that is not a vote on a motion of confidence.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Cape Breton South. The floor is yours.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, again, I guess we're debating the future of this minister while we're debating the estimates. I certainly agree with the NDP that I hope the future of that minister in this portfolio is not very long down the road. I will say, again, the NDP should have the courage of their convictions that if they don't like what this government is doing and want to bring down a minister, they can do it by voting against the budget. They can send a signal to Nova Scotians that they're not satisfied with this government, and instead of trying to backdoor the demise of this government, they should tell Nova Scotians when the budget comes to a vote how they feel about that minister, that minister's budget, and if they feel that strongly about that minister resigning and his salary being reduced, then they would have no recourse but to vote against the budget. I'm not debating the incompetence of this minister, except to say that the (Interruptions) You have the unique quality of taking words right out of my mouth.
Anyway, I want to read something for the record on estimates, here. I entitle it A Minister Out of Touch. On April 22nd, in this House, when we were debating education for people on assistance, this minister said to this House that it would be unfair to give single parents student loans as well as social assistance. Continuing with statements of the minister, talking about university access for single mothers on assistance: Why don't we address the
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waiting list for affordable housing, is that not a better way to address the problem? At some point in the estimates, I'm going to ask him to explain that statement. And here's one that people should be interested in hearing, this was on November 9, 2004, and it talks about his concept of the issues: Homeless means you don't have a place to stay. That's what the minister said.
Homeless means you don't have a place to stay - I'd like him to explain that during the debate. On why people are homeless in this province, his answer was because they don't have a place to stay. That is a piercing glance at the obvious, Mr. Minister.
The other one, of course, that's now a famous statement is, in response to the amount of money that the Leader of the Official Opposition talked about giving out to people on social assistance, when asked about the rates, the minister said they should eat more pasta. That's the contempt that this minister shows for those in this province who are less fortunate than those in this House, and in some cases those in the gallery and those out on the street. That's the answer this minister gave, they should eat more pasta.
A minister out of touch, Mr. Chairman. I hope the Premier is listening to this, because if ever a government should be indicted for putting absolutely the wrong person in a portfolio in a Cabinet, it's this government and this person in that job, unless the government had an ulterior motive. If they didn't want to do anything for the people in this province who are in need, then they have the right person for the job. I have to ask the Premier and other members of the Executive Council and other MLAs, is that what this government set out to do? Is that what they wanted to do?
Today, in this particular department, Mr. Chairman, there are more bean-counters than social workers, there are more bill collectors than people charged with the responsibility of helping people in this province. I can remember the days when the Department of Community Services was filled with caring people, social workers who wanted to do the right thing for people, and had some leeway in how they dealt with people in trouble, financially, or people in trouble with Children's Aid problems or with homelessness or with other things that we take for granted every day of the week.
But none of this is happening in the Department of Community Services today. I'll tell you, Mr. Chairman, what is happening is that some constituents of mine are getting calls regularly, looking for money from the Department of Community Services, a collection agency. They've turned over accounts from people who had overpayments, some as long as 10 to 15 years, they're now turned over to collection agencies and to Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, and by extension to collection agencies, to try to bleed these poor people for money, and hounding them by phoning them each and every day of the week, looking for $50 a month or $100 a month on overpayments.
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What are these overpayments? Well, these overpayments are caused by - I'll give you an example, a person who was on Community Services benefits and eventually, through a long process, gets Canada Pension Plan benefits, and they make them retroactive to give the person a head start. They may make them retroactive six months to a year. But guess what happens? The Community Services Department serves notice that they're going to claw back those retroactive awards, and immediately tells the recipient they now have an overpayment and they need to pay it back to the government.
So the recipient, who was getting $700-something a month - I believe $780 is the maximum, around there - is getting harassed by this government for repayment of an overpayment because of Canada Pension benefits awards. Now, I'm sure that members of the government don't realize that's happening, some of them, because if they did, how could they live with themselves? How could they live with themselves when a person who gets $700 a month and who's paying $500 a month for rent, and at the same time has an overpayment because of a Canada Pension Plan award that may have added up to a few thousand dollars, which they could pay some of the bills off that they owed, and the government is now hounding them for money?
[3:00 p.m.]
Mr. Chairman, the other interesting issue here is that the Department of Community Services no longer gives discretion to front-line workers. We talked about the issue last week of the telephone. A telephone, I think, is a necessity today, but not according to this government. There are certain things today that we take for granted that are not available to people on community services, and the reason they're not available is that this minister thinks that people are on Community Services benefits because of their own fault. They're the ones who are guilty in his eyes, and should be treated as such. I've never seen such a right-wing performance in all my life in a Minister of Community Services, and I've seen a lot of ministers come and go.
I agree 100 per cent with the Leader of the Official Opposition when he says this minister has to go. I don't exactly agree with the method by which they tried to do that today, because I still think there's a bigger picture brewing here. I think the NDP are looking for a way to get rid of this crowd without having to actually come clean and vote against the budget. We're prepared to stand up next Monday night and vote our conscience, how our Party thinks on this budget, and it won't be because that minister is incompetent or that the Finance Minister is incompetent or anybody else over there is incompetent, it will be because we feel it's not a budget that's in the best interests of Nova Scotians. We won't try to disguise our feelings on that by trying to ram a motion through here today to defeat the government on reducing the appropriation of the Department of Community Services.
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I'd like to see the Premier do the right thing, Mr. Chairman, and the right thing to do here is obviously to agree that the direction Community Services is heading in is the wrong direction. As a matter of fact, it has gone too far now. I'd like to see the Premier take this minister out of that portfolio and put somebody in there who really cares about people. The evidence is clear, day in and day out in the House and day in and day out in his office, that he's not the kind of person Nova Scotians should have in that portfolio. I don't have anything against the gentleman personally, but I think he has a feeling in this province that people are in trouble because of their own fault, it's nobody else's fault, it's their own fault. If they can't afford to eat properly, let them eat pasta.
Mr. Chairman, the situation has gotten so critical that we have the ridiculous spectacle of a federal-provincial agreement on housing being signed two and a half years ago, which called for 1,500 homes in the province to be constructed. I think we may be up to a few hundred by now, most of them in the planning stage, some built. And the agreement runs out in a couple of years. Those are 50-cent dollars. The problem is that affordable housing for people in Nova Scotia is not a priority of this government. If it were a priority, the government would commit the 50-cent dollars of that $32 million project immediately so that we could get on with building affordable housing, instead of looking after their friends who are operating slums throughout this province, some of them down in my area, forcing people into slum housing, paying $500, $600, $700 a month for rat traps.
That's what's happening all over the province, because of that minister's inability to get on with that program, and also that minister's uncaring attitude towards those who need affordable housing. The housing authorities in this province need more money. They need more money to fix up their units. They should be given a mandate to develop more units, instead of driving people to slum landlords. This program is not going to use up all the federal-provincial money that's available because the clock is ticking on this, and we're going to have a situation where time is going to run out.
The minister sat in this House and never said a word when questioned as to why a Halifax Regional Councillor making $50,000 a year could access one of these homes that I believe was either a two-bedroom or a three-bedroom home under that program. She had no dependant, except I believe a cat, two cats. But she got a unit. There are people, Mr. Minister, in my riding with five kids, single moms who can't get a housing unit, and you sat there in this House and allowed that to happen. You sat there and did not even try to justify why your department allowed that HRM Councillor - I don't blame the HRM Councillor, if she's lucky enough to get a unit like that, fine, but surely to heavens there are people more deserving in this province than a Halifax Regional Councillor who's single, to get a housing unit that's designed for affordable housing for families in this province.
I hope that I'm not the only one who thinks that's a problem. I hope that I'm not the only one who thinks this government has lost its way when it comes to spending the federal-provincial monies that are made available for affordable housing in this province. We should
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have 1,500 units up and running right now, Mr. Minister, if you were doing your job. The federal government put the challenge on the table to you, and you dropped the ball on this issue.
Mr. Chairman, I want to go back to the situation, again, with how this government is treating people in Nova Scotia. Not only do we have the spectacle of the Minister of Community Services allowing his department to harass people for repayments, I've written the minister on a number of occasions regarding situations where people were living on $700, $750 a month and they've been harassed, and they've actually been harassed to the point where they can't sleep because of operatives from Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations - and I know of a couple in particular, and I'll be generous today, I won't mention their names - but they must be on a quota system, because they're calling up and harassing people for money and telling them that if they don't get the money - now, remember, Mr. Minister, these are people living on $700 a month, and they're asking them for $100 a month - they're going to turn it over to a collection agency.
We've had the spectacle where Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations couldn't get anywhere with them on it, so now we get a collection agency out of Toronto calling these people and harassing them for money. These are people are social assistance. I wonder how many people in Toronto are calling big business in this province that are in default of their loans with the government, and harassing them every day to pay those monies back? Maybe the government can tell me that the big companies that we're giving millions to, they're getting harassed as well. Are they? I don't think so.
But I do know this, the people who are on minimal income in this province are getting harassed on a daily basis. Shame on that department, and shame on anybody who is working in that department who allows this to happen. It should not be. Mr. Minister, as I said to you before, those accounts should be written off. I believe in one letter I said to you it's like trying to get blood from a stone. This poor lady has $750 a month coming in, she owes about $6,000 in back Canada Pension Plan payments, has no hope of ever paying it, and you guys are spending more on phone calls and letters to her than eventually the account is going to be worth, because you're not going to get any money out of it. You know you're not going to get any money out of it, yet you're making this woman's life miserable. Not only one person, but hundreds of people throughout this province are in that predicament.
I've never, up until the last five or six years, heard of a case in Community Services - Mr. Minister, you can laugh all you want over there. You can laugh all you want and when you're finished laughing, I'll continue. That's why, Mr. Chairman, this minister should not be in that job. I'm talking about a poor person in this province making $700 a month being harassed, and that minister is laughing at me. That's what you have going on in this province, the uncaring attitude of this government when it comes to people less fortunate than we are.
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Mr. Chairman, I want to move on a bit, and then maybe, before my hour is up, I might allow the minister to speak. I hesitate to do that, because I'm tired of listening to this minister waxing eloquent about all the wonderful things he's doing at Community Services, because I can't identify any yet. It would only be a repeat. (Interruptions) Yes, sure.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable Minister of Justice.
HON. MICHAEL BAKER: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to rise on an introduction. I thank the honourable member for yielding the floor to me just for a moment. We have with us in the gallery today a number of distinguished visitors from Lunenburg County to watch the proceedings here at the Legislature. These are members of the board and staff of the LaHave Manor, an adult residential centre, located in Dayspring, Lunenburg County. Here with us today - and I hope I have everyone's name - is the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Maria Devries; we have Councillors Arthur Young and Diane Tanner; we also have with us Helen Corkum, Ellen Burt, Stephen Black, Joanne Wentzell-Vardy and Rick Hebb. I'd like to ask members of the House to give them a warm welcome today as they watch the proceedings here. It seems quite appropriate they're watching the proceedings of the Minister of Community Services. I thank the honourable member for yielding the time. (Applause)
MR. CHAIRMAN: Indeed, welcome to all our visitors in the gallery today.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, to the Justice Minister, I do want to apologize, I just read your note now. I didn't want to make you wait that long.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I'll remind all members to please direct any requests for introductions through the Chair.
The honourable member for Cape Breton South, you have the floor.
MR. MANNING MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, I'll just continue. There are some Small Options Program questions that I'd like to ask the minister as well. If his staff over there could jot them down, maybe the minister could respond to them after. I'm sure he'll want some time to respond to what I've said up to date. However, before I do that, I wish that the minister would actually, before the estimates are finished, agree with me that people on social assistance shouldn't be harassed for repayment of monies legitimately given to them through Canada Pension or the Workers' Compensation Board, because in that way what's happening here is the government is telling these people that the amount of benefits they received was only a loan.
It wasn't assistance, and you have to pay it back when you do get a retroactive payment, instead of allowing the person to climb out of the desperation they're in financially, instead of allowing that to happen, they want to claw back all the money they got from Community Services. Community Services should not be a money-making institution for the
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government. It should not be a bill collection institution for the government. I say again, people on community services should at least be treated as fairly as people running big business in this province who owe the government money. That would be fine with me, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
The most vulnerable among us are being preyed on by the current Department of Community Services, whether it's housing, whether it's affordable education. I introduced a bill here - Mr. Minister, you know that - asking for some consideration for people to attend a four-year program at university and not have their benefits cut off. Do you know what's happening here? If a person even applies for a student loan to go to a post-secondary institution, they're cut off community services the day they apply, not the day they get it, the day they apply. So people are being discouraged from improving their education status, because there's no incentive. As a matter of fact, it is a disincentive to get them off community services.
I don't know who dreams up these programs or who the architects are of these draconian measures that are presently very much in evidence in that department. I'm sure there are some social workers in that department who are very upset about the direction this department is going in. It's not a department that services people anymore. I've said before, the discretion of social workers is very limited now. There used to be a time in this department, Mr. Minister, when, if a situation warranted it, the people involved in that case could react and react positively, or set aside a bill or an obligation that person owed the department, for an overpayment, because they simply couldn't pay it.
[3:15 p.m.]
Instead of that, they turn it over to a collection agency and harass the people until they're crying themselves to sleep every night. That's happening. One woman told me if she doesn't pay it, she might have to go to jail. That's how afraid she is. In this day and age, in the year 2005, somebody making $8,500 is told they have to pay a bill back to Community Services, that's terrible. That is absolutely the most draconian measure I've seen yet coming out of that department. There has to be a change.
I think we have to go back to the days when social workers ran that department, Mr. Minister. I think we have to go back to those days. It would be interesting to find out what the ratio between bean-counters and social workers are in the Department of Community Services today. Social workers, I believe, have a role to play here that I believe is being diminished by this department.
I know that at one time a person on community services was a person they knew by name, and they knew the financial circumstances of that person and they could react to the individual person and their circumstances. Today it's all on the computer, they're all numbers, they roll it out, and if you can't fit the glove, then that's too bad. If you get an
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overpayment because of Canada Pension benefits paid to you, then you have to pay that loan back. When did providing community services so people could live, eat, pay rent, send their children to school become a loan?
I thought, in our just society, that we looked after people who were less fortunate than ourselves, that we actually tried to improve the lives of people who were less fortunate than ourselves, that we actually would think that it might be a good idea to send a single mom to university, who has children, and look after those children in daycare and give her sufficient funds while she pursues her degree, and the eventuality would be that she gets off the public assistance system and becomes a taxpayer and becomes a citizen who is contributing to our society, raising her children in a better standard of living. That's not happening.
Do you know what it's all about? It's all about money. The government doesn't feel they should enter into a four-year program because it costs twice as much as a two-year program, but they've never adequately explained to me why they would allow somebody to go to a two-year program and access some assistance when they can't go to a post-secondary four-year program. Also, when a single mother with four or five children has to access a student loan for a four-year program, she's cut off social assistance, she has to use part of that student loan to live while she's going to school. Then, when she gets out of university, she owes $20,000, $30,000, $40,000. Is that fair? The government hasn't addressed that.
I'm saying to you, Mr. Chairman, that this government has not paid any attention to the housing needs of people in need in this province, they haven't paid any attention to the educational needs of people in this province, they haven't addressed the horrendous problem of student loan debt in this province, which keeps going up and up, and people who are fortunate enough to get a student loan will never have the opportunity to see themselves out of debt. Something has to be done about that. I believe the Minister of Community Services has dropped the ball on all those issues.
Mr. Chairman, the Minister of Community Services doesn't see the problem. He says it would be unfair to give single parents student loans, as well as social assistance. Hello! What would be unfair about that? He says, talking about university access, why don't we address the waiting lists for affordable housing, well, you're not doing that either. That was a cop-out, because not only are you not giving assistance to single mothers on assistance, you're not doing anything about the affordable housing issue.
And, of course, homelessness means that people don't have a place to stay, that's what you said, Mr. Minister. What a piercing glance at the obvious. The reason they're homeless is they don't have a place to stay. I would have suspected that you might have tried to address it this way, we have homeless people in this province and we're going to try to solve that problem by giving them a place to stay. And, of course, the rates that the Leader of the Official Opposition talked about, a $4 increase or an $8 increase or something, and his
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answer to that was, well, if they can't get by on that, let them eat more pasta. Quite an answer from the Minister of Community Services.
Last Winter it came down to a decision, people on community services who I know, they either didn't eat or they froze, one or the other, in apartments. We have to have more affordable housing, Mr. Minister, in a hurry, in this province. We have to address the needs of those people who are less fortunate than us. And there's one particular group that I think I've written you about more than anybody, and that's the single mothers with dependent children who are struggling. Another group is the disabled who are struggling in this province.
Let me refer back, again, to the collusion between Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations and Community Services in trying to extract monies from people who can't afford to pay monies to Community Services. Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, I thought, was a department that would service the needs of Nova Scotians, not a bill collection agency. There are a couple of people from that minister's department who are harassing people on a regular basis. I think that, if nothing else, has to stop. At least I can say that the Minister of Community Services, his part in this charade is just to turn the names over to Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, the ones who are doing the harassing here, for the most part.
The Premier had talked earlier about this government falling, perhaps by accident. It won't be by an accident that this government is going to fall, the reason is it's going to be because of people in Nova Scotia getting fed up with what has been happening here, when this government can boast of a budget surplus this year but yet not look after people on community services adequately, that's one. Two, the Government of Nova Scotia has not paid any attention to the federal-provincial agreements on housing, because if they had there would be announcements of up to 1,500 housing units under construction or completed by now, two and a half years after the agreement was made. We are nowhere near that, we're light years away from those numbers, because this government doesn't consider their 50-cent dollars in this program to be a priority.
There are units in Cape Breton that are falling down, and yet there are a number of people well-known to this government who are operating slums in our area and other areas, and they're filled with people on community services, because those people can't get into a public housing unit and have nowhere else to go.
So, Mr. Chairman, it's not going to be by accident or the motion that was put today by the NDP to avoid the budget issue, it's going to be because Nova Scotians are being picked off by this government and are eventually going to be adversaries of this government, because we see it happening more and more each day. The government tries to disguise the fact they're responsible, yet the debt of this province keeps going up and up, even though the Premier said it wouldn't go up, but it is going up. And while the debt is going up, they're
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bragging about a surplus. Well, if they're bragging about a surplus, Mr. Minister, how much money are you getting out of that surplus to help those in need in this province?
Part of the surplus or the majority of it came forward as a result of $50 million in exploration permits being turned back to the province, because the oil and gas industry has abandoned ship. It has taken off out of here. So that was put on the surplus, monies that were returned in exploration permits. Nobody highlighted that when they talked about the surplus. The Finance Minister didn't get up and say, because all these people left the province and returned their permits, we've got all this money. Nobody said anything about the $20 million the government put into Sysco this year, even though the place is closed. We heard a member earlier today talking about the waste of Sysco. Well, at least we kept 800 people working. The government put $20 million in this year and the place is closed, to make their bottom line look good. The place is closed.
Would the member for Cape Breton West rather the 800 people who were working there before, would he suggest that today is a better situation, where the government is spending millions on their friends, the contractors, and putting $20 million in there this year to make the bottom line of Sysco look good? That's his problem, if he can justify that to the steelworkers in his area, that's fine.
Mr. Minister, I had a call from a local organization with respect to the budgeting process for small options homes, and I want to get into that for a few moments. I indicated to them that I would be asking a few questions on their behalf, and questions that we're concerned about and interested in ourselves. I believe that as I ask these questions, you can answer them or you could wait until I finish asking all of them, that's up to you. I'll allow you the opportunity to answer them one by one or all of them.
The first question they want to know and I want to know is, how many clients are presently receiving care in small options facilities under the services for Persons with Disabilities Program? Maybe you might want to answer that question, Mr. Minister.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable Minister of Community Services.
HON. DAVID MORSE: Mr. Chairman, with regard to the last question, approximately 3,000 in total in the Persons with Disabilities Program. I thank you for the chance to get to my feet, and I'll address some of your other concerns and the concerns of the Leader of the Official Opposition.
First of all, there was an interesting performance put on here by the Leader of the Official Opposition to start off the estimates today. I would suggest to that honourable member that when you get up here and you spend about 15 minutes attacking the character of a person in this House without backing it up with substance, it probably says something about either the operation of the department or your understanding of the operation of the
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department. I really appreciate good debate in this House, and there has been some good debate in this House. As I made reference to earlier in Question Period, with regard to the member for Dartmouth North, some of the debate that he brought forward in last year's estimates in fact made a difference in the way that we evaluated affordable housing projects, as to whether we would approve them.
I really appreciate the chance to get up and talk on things of substance. I think that Nova Scotians, generally, would prefer us to speak on things of substance here, as opposed to personal attacks on character. However, it's not my time when the Opposition member gets up. If the Leader of the Official Opposition feels that's an appropriate way to use his time, then he is certainly able to do so. The Leader of the Official Opposition also made reference to my habit of tabling information, newspaper articles, quoting people in the past, and I have one here that I would like to table, and actually it deals with that member, when he was running to be the Leader of the NDP. It's interesting, it has six points that he spoke about, and none of them had anything to do with the clients served by the Department of Community Services. Yet, today he gets up here and has made quite a number of suggestions about this government and my own performance as minister.
I would suggest that back on March 7, 2002, none of the things that we had done in the Department of Community Services, such as increasing the basic personal allowance, the Affordable Housing Programs, the Community Supports for Adults Renewal Project, and the new programs that have come out of that, none of that was even on his radar screen until it was done by this government. I would like to table this, and I also want to put on the record that there has probably been no Leader of the NDP who has done less for the people served by the Department of Community Services by virtue of making it a priority in that Party's platform. In the election platform last time, it was non-existent. It's not lost on the advocacy groups. They do not appreciate it, and they have shared that with me.
[3:30 p.m.]
So while he may have a lot of interesting things to say about the Department of Community Services, our government and, indeed, me personally, I think he should look at his own track record. He speaks about cuts. The Official Opposition critic, yesterday, got up and spoke of that, and I pointed out to her that in fact last year the Department of Community Services came out with a $28 million increase in its net budget, which was the second-largest increase for any of the departments after Health, and this year, with a $22 million net increase, it is the third-largest. Those are substantial increases.
So when he speaks of cuts, perhaps he should go back to the Estimates Book, and these are the estimates. I think it would help guide his criticism and perhaps direct him in a more constructive direction. Again, he makes a few allegations that were, quite frankly, bewildering to my staff here, who spend their time tracking the performance within the department. To be perfectly blunt, they didn't know what he was talking about. So I just want
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to get on the record that there was not a great deal of credibility in some of the allegations that the Leader of the Official Opposition was making about the department.
Specifically, there are two that I'd like to touch on, and it's with regard to affordable housing. He was talking about a freeze in the rent supplement, which is in fact a very effective and efficient way of providing affordable housing to low-income Nova Scotians, those in greatest need. It is shown in the estimates as $2.6 million, and that has been steady. What he's missing is that the increases under the Affordable Housing Program, which is where the province is making some of its contribution, as our 50 per cent share, a lot of those rent supplements are in there. Year over year, the increase is $7.55 million to $10.3 million, which most people would agree is a fairly significant increase, somewhere in the vicinity of 30 per cent. You can see that on Page 4.4 of the Supplementary Detail.
Again, it's good to always bring a little bit of substance to these debates. He also made mention of bricks and mortar, as indeed did the member for Cape Breton South, as not being the way we have chosen to invest provincial monies in the Affordable Housing Program. In actual fact, the member for Halifax Clayton Park was also making reference to her disapproval. In essence, they were both advocating for bricks and mortar as the way to go, that means building new public housing units. Actually, Mr. Chairman, it's interesting. I've got an article here from the C.D. Howe Institute that talks about this. It says that, ". . . a dollar of spending on social housing produces 37 cents of housing . . .", that means if you invest in bricks and mortar, you get about a 37 per cent return over the long run, ". . . while the same dollar would have produced 85-to-90 cents of housing with allowances." - in other words, rent supplements.
So this is two and a half times more efficient, and in fact the provincial-territorial Housing Ministers were lobbying our federal counterpart to consider this. I'm pleased to say that after some persistence on our part, the federal government is also now recognizing that that is possibly a better way of delivering affordable housing than the traditional bricks and mortar. I would be happy to also table this.
One of the quotes that the Opposition Parties have used with reference to my empathy for people who are on social assistance or low income is with reference to a comment that I made about a year ago when we finally increased the basic personal allowance, the amount people are expected to live on for food and clothing, their basic personal effects. It had been frozen for a very long time, and through no initiative or encouragement from the Opposition, we increased it from $180 a month - which is not enough - to $184, and this year it has gone to $190. I would expect that as long as I'm minister, it will continue to go up every year, and as long as John Hamm is Premier. (Applause)
The suggestion is that this comment about eating pasta was somehow or other perhaps not respectful of our clients. In actual fact, Mr. Chairman, the comments were attributed to my own family. About 15 years ago I had a business that was growing rapidly.
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It depended on the coast, the fishery basically, because I distributed, with my, eventually, four staff, music to smaller communities throughout Atlantic Canada. We did mail order, I went around, and I solicited accounts. When the collapse of the fishery came, I was loathe to react promptly and lay off staff, which in retrospect was probably a mistake. I tried to hold onto the staff, and things were pretty tight. We had just had our fifth child. My wife was either on maternity leave or back to school. We learned about things, like having powdered milk and mixing it with whole milk, and we ate pasta.
In fact, when a friend of ours had some tomatoes that were not suitable for harvest in the field because they weren't quite as aesthetically pleasing, we were quite pleased to go out and mix that in with the pasta. We probably had pasta every second night. You know, we did just fine, Mr. Chairman. We were a close-knit family. In the evenings we found things to do, like go down and play ball with my children in the summertime, and in wintertime perhaps we'd go to the local skating rink outdoors. It made us stronger.
But the reference to pasta, when you mocked me about my comments to pasta, you are mocking a difficult time that my family went through financially. I would allow Nova Scotians to judge whether that's the sort of behaviour they want from their elected representatives, making fun of people who have made difficult choices in order to support their families. I was in that position. One of the ways that we addressed it was to eat pasta, another way was that my children couldn't drink all the liquid milk that they'd like to drink, we had to mix it with powdered milk. Obviously there were other steps that had to be taken.
So while these Opposition members may think that it's funny that I made that statement, I'm quite proud of the way that we came through this, and we would do it again. That may possibly temper their remarks in the future, but I leave that up to them.
I want to say that the member for Cape Breton South does care about his constituents. I know that because he's a former social worker, and he writes me. He sticks up for his constituents and sometimes we are able to help them, and sometimes we're not able to help them. There are other members in the room from all sides of the House who care about their constituents, it's pointed out to me, but I'm just acknowledging the member for Cape Breton South, who made some comments about our practices about trying to address overpayments. Overpayments are often caused because people have a disability, they have no other means of support. Unfortunately they may not have any form of disability insurance, and after their employment insurance runs out - or in the case of a proprietor, they may not even have employment insurance - they are without.
Unless they get some support from somebody, there's no way they're going to be able to care for their families or themselves, even if they're a single person. So this is where the Department of Community Services steps in and will make advances against the possibility that they may be approved for Canada Pension Plan Disability Benefits. We do that in good faith. If they're turned down Canada Pension Plan Disability Benefits, they owe us nothing
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for the advance. However, if they do pay them, and it would be retroactive to when they first applied for CPP, of course we expect them to pay back their advance. We do this based on a schedule of their ability to pay.
If they are no longer a client of the Department of Community Services, they go to Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, but as the member for Cape Breton South, I think, would acknowledge, if they still do not have the means to make regular payments, that is certainly taken into consideration with their payment schedule.
I would also like to point out that caseworkers are the front line and they are the backbone of the Employment Support and Income Assistance system, whether it's an employment support worker who's trying to help clients overcome barriers to employment so they can start a career, possibly obtain that degree they need to get a job or a diploma, maybe it's high school, they have discretion, as do the income assistance caseworkers. When it comes to our special needs, I think if anybody was to look at them, those are the ones which are really a measure of their discretion. There's no question, those caseworkers are in a position within policy to help those most vulnerable Nova Scotians who may be clients of the Department of Community Services.
Another interesting thing that I'm going to speak to before I sit down is I sort of get a charge out of the member for Cape Breton South. He is a pretty good performer here in the House, and I say that out of the greatest respect. We have a job to do here, and his job is to get up and to make his points. Sometimes I think he may embellish them a little bit, but that happens in the House. He made reference to the Affordable Housing Program, which is interesting to me, because as the Department of Community Services Critic, which includes Housing, last year he wrote a letter to the editor that was extremely critical of the fact that we were not getting the job done. He made quite a number of suggestions in his letter, he used some numbers about how far we had gotten in implementing the program, and this was after the Fall sitting of the Legislature.
Normally I don't respond to letters from Opposition members, but in this case I did respond to the two newspapers in the province that published his letter, including his own, and they both published mine. I pointed out that in the Fall sitting of the Legislature that member, in fact all members of this House were given an update on where we were with the Affordable Housing Program, how we were using the rent subsidy approach, and how many units were built, how much of a commitment had been made from the federal-provincial dollars and other dollars that we were able to leverage as a result of this program.
It was interesting that the numbers he was claiming, after having been given this information, were so far off the actual numbers. He was given the actual numbers, and what I would say is that while he writes a pretty good letter, if he did a little research, reading what was actually given to him, he would write an even better letter. He also made reference here today about the Affordable Housing Program, making reference to the fact it's a $32 million
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program. Again, it's good to see that the member for Cape Breton South is interested in affordable housing. I think every member in this Chamber shares that concern, and certainly my staff at the Department of Community Services.
I have good news for the member, Phase I of the program was actually $37.26 million. So it's more than the $32 million he spoke of here, and we've since signed a Phase II, which adds another $18-odd million to it. So we're somewhere up in the area of $56 million. If the member would like to know the exact amount, I'd be happy to provide that to him. So that should be good news for the member for Cape Breton South. I appreciate his interest in affordable housing, and what he has learned here today, that in fact we've almost gotten double the commitment to affordable housing as what he suggested in the House, so I'm sure that he'll be very pleased with that information. I hope the debate goes forward in a constructive fashion, and that we can now focus on matters of substance in the department.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Richmond. There's five minutes remaining.
MR. MICHEL SAMSON: Five minutes, well, isn't that lots of time. Hopefully my questions will require much briefer answers from the minister. That was a bit of a long one. Apparently the minister wishes to remain in estimates for an extended period of time, with those kinds of answers. Let me be briefer, Mr. Chairman.
I've had the opportunity to write to the minister on behalf of constituents, and I specifically want to thank the deputy minister, who has certainly been extremely helpful on a number of very sensitive matters. I was extremely impressed with how they were dealt with. I've always spoken well of Wayne Bona, the supervisor at the St. Peter's Community Services office, and his staff who do their best to work with a limited budget.
[3:45 p.m.]
One of the issues I want to raise in my short amount of time is on the issue of what's commonly known as grants for home improvements. This is certainly an issue with seniors who are trying to remain in their homes, for low-income families, and it's to the point where funding has been cut so much in this that what has happened is that they're only making money available for emergency situations. Even worse, what has happened with the reduction of funding is the cap for income has continually lowered; not lowered in a good way, lowered in the sense that if you make any more than, I think it's between $19,000 and $20,000 as a couple, you're considered over-income for a housing grant.
Mr. Chairman, if we are going to allow Nova Scotia communities to remain viable for seniors to remain in their homes, we have to address that cap. I believe there have been some announcements between the federal government and the provincial government regarding this program. My question to the minister is, could you indicate, is your department
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moving on that income cap, the idea being that cap is going to go up, meaning that more families are able to qualify rather than the current cap which means anything over $19,000, $20,000 you're over-income? I don't think anyone in this province or anyone in this House believes that someone making more than $20,000 is well off or should be considered over-income for any government program. So my question to the minister is, could he briefly tell us, is there going to be a move on that cap that is currently in place?
MR. MORSE: I want to thank the member opposite, first of all for your comments about my staff. That's very important to me. They do hear the comments here in the Chamber, and it does make a difference. I appreciate the positive approach that you have brought to this debate, honourable member. I would also like to add that you are diligent in pursuing the interests of your constituents, and I find you to be most reasonable in your approach. It's a little non-partisan comment about the way that you conduct yourself, and it probably has something to do with the reason why you've won three elections.
To answer your question (Interruptions) Mr. Chairman, I think some of the other members in the room take some amusement from my comments about the dedication of the member for Richmond, but I stand by my comments and enjoy the jostling that he's getting as a result of them.
To answer your question, we are concerned about increasing the income thresholds for people who are applying for SCAP, the Senior Citizens Assistance Program, and the Provincial Housing Emergency Repair Program. The former being for seniors, the latter being for families. We do want to increase the threshold so that more people can access them. But there have been no cuts. We've not further restricted the access. Your point, I think, honourable member, is that we should be increasing them, and it is our intention to do so.
MR. MICHEL SAMSON: Mr. Chairman, I'm not saying there are cuts, but there's a lack of funding in that particular program, and when there's a lack of funding in anything, we know what immediately happens, the qualification for that changes because of the fact that there is a lack of funding. That's not just in this program, we've seen it in other government programs. That's a reality, when the funding goes down, the criteria change as to who can qualify, as a result.
My question, again to the minister, in light of the funding that's in place and some of the new federal dollars coming in, can we expect that the current limit - I believe it's around $20,000 - to qualify for one of these grants will be changed?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The time has expired. I'll allow a quick answer.
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MR. MORSE: Honourable member, what you're asking about is funding for SCAP,
PHERP, and one of the ways we tried to address this was making that a priority last year with the strategic infrastructure monies in November. We put an extra $2.7 million in there. We are trying to lower the waiting list to address those outstanding legitimate applicants. You're quite right, when you increase the caps to let more people in, it's going to put more pressure on the program.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid. Before you begin, I wonder if you would allow for an introduction?
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Yes.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Dartmouth South-Portland Valley on an introduction.
MS. MARILYN MORE: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make two introductions. In the west gallery we have Yvonne Atwell, who's a former member of this Legislative Assembly for Preston, and we also have Mary Rothman, who's the Executive Director for the Nova Scotia Association for Community Living. I ask my colleagues in Committee of the Whole House on Supply to give them a warm welcome. (Applause)
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid. The floor is yours.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Mr. Chairman, it's an honour to stand today and make some comments, especially around the housing issues in our province. As the Housing Services Critic for our Party, it has been an interesting 18, 19 months since my election and being given the portfolio of Housing in this province. Housing in Nova Scotia and the need for affordable housing has been on the increase for many years now. It's my understanding that the federal government got out of affordable housing initiatives many years ago, downloaded it on to the province, and then realized, I think, the error in their ways and the need to address the affordable housing needs across the country.
This isn't something that's just a problem in Nova Scotia. I've spoken to many colleagues of mine, many people from different provinces that have the same problems we see here in Nova Scotia when it comes to affordable housing. What people really need in this province is a strong commitment from this government to address the needs of what I would say our most vulnerable residents in the province require: safe, adequate, clean housing to bring up their families or to spend their golden years in.
I must say since being elected and having the portfolio of Housing Services, I'm amazed at how many of the needs of Nova Scotians who are in the situation of trying to depend on government to provide this necessity for them have gone really unanswered for
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many years. There are a lot of problems in this province, especially around our public stock. I think in the Nova Scotia Housing Development Corporation Business Plan 2005-06 it even states, I think it's around 64 per cent of our public housing is 25 years or older. I've gone to many of these dwellings throughout Nova Scotia, as the Housing Services Critic, but I've been in them over the last 10 years in my former profession. I must say it's a scary sight at times.
There's public stock that the province owns that is in dire need of repair, not only physical structure repair but there are issues about mould, mildew, about air quality - a big one that I've heard a lot about, especially in some of our senior complexes throughout this province. A lot of them were built back in the early 1970s or mid-1970s. It's funny, when these seniors come to me with their stories of how they feel and their health conditions when they're living in the residence that they live in, these individuals say they go for a trip, they go away for a month, they go visit another relative in another part of the country or go down South, if they're fortunate enough to have the revenue for that, and they tell me how they feel so much better when they get out of their seniors' complexes, when they get out of the dwellings they're living in. They realize what an impact their environment has on their health.
I remember a story from one senior who told me he just went to visit his kids for the weekend, over the Christmas holidays. He lived down in the Windsor area and went to Cape Breton for the weekend. He couldn't believe - and it had been a few years since this senior had left that residence - the difference in this breathing. He did have some health issues pertaining to his respiratory system, but he said it was like he walked onto a different planet, it was amazing. He said it was amazing to feel that he could breathe better. It wasn't two days later, when he returned home after his vacation, that he realized that it would have to be his environment that was causing some of the problems he has.
Mr. Chairman, that's just one of the stories. I've witnessed and been told many times over the last 18 months about the air quality and the mould and the mildew that's seen in some of these residences. A lot of these buildings were built before the specs we see today in the Building Codes, where there's a need to provide air systems to ventilate each room. I don't know if government is going to address those needs. I will get to those questions later on, hopefully, about maintenance and repair to some of the public stock in our province.
It just shows that with the agreements we've seen signed in this Affordable Housing Agreement with the federal government that an emphasis is needed on repair to our public stock. It's amazing to see the announcements that have gone out. I've been to many of the announcements with the minister, and read a lot of the figures and the money and the number of units that the government of this province wants to address with this Affordable Housing Agreement, but the sad thing is if we left today and the minister and I walked out of this Chamber and I asked him to take me to a new construction site for a new unit that was provided under this agreement, there aren't that many, Mr. Chairman.
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I know the minister will stand up and quote about all the subsidies that are coming for rent subsidies and the units they're going to address but, seriously, if we walked out of here, there would be a dozen or two dozen units that we could go to. That's not just an issue for us, Mr. Chairman, it's an issue throughout the country. When it comes to rent subsidies and the choice of government, especially our provincial government, the choice for them to really commit the majority of our commitment with the Affordable Housing Agreement to rent subsidies, the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association and the University of Toronto researchers agreed that rent subsidies alone are not effective, and they must be paired with construction of more affordable housing units and an increase in public stock.
The concern we have is with the announcements of several of the agreements and contracts that the government has announced over the last year or so, when it comes to rent subsidies, is with the private developers. We feel that this isn't going to benefit the people who are in need right now of affordable housing, it's not going to benefit the people tomorrow who need affordable housing, and it definitely isn't going to affect the people in 10 years when the majority of these contracts mature, when they're in need of affordable housing.
That's where we, and I as Housing Services Critic, have many questions. It's about, what are we going to do in 10 years? Is the commitment from this government on addressing affordable housing just a short-term solution? From all indications, from the agreements that we've seen, the contracts that the government has gone into, you might say or the minister might say that 10 years is a long-term commitment, but I don't think it is. When you look at if there's an individual who's today receiving benefits under social assistance, who maybe will qualify for rent subsidies, is trying to get back to university, trying to educate themselves, trying to go back to school and hopefully better themselves, it's going to take several years for them just to get over that hump, and maybe several years just for them to try to figure out avenues for them to attempt to better themselves and try to get back to hopefully entering a university.
[4:00 p.m.]
I know there are several pieces of legislation that our Party has brought forward concerning funding, especially towards individuals in this province who are on social assistance and trying to return to post-secondary education, especially those courses that are three-, four-, five-year programs. So, as I was saying, the concern we have is that in 10 years, where are we going to be? Are we going to be left with an even worse situation than we see today? I would hope the minister would agree that it's definitely time that the government needs to address these issues, because I've witnessed over my career just deplorable conditions throughout HRM. I know it's not just solely in this area of the province that we see conditions people should never be living in.
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I'm always concerned when I see on the news or hear that a rooming house, say in downtown Halifax, was closed because of the fire marshal going in and charging them with violations to the Fire Code and closing them down. It's ironic that I don't see the Minister of Community Services or a member of the government stepping in and being in front of the media. It seems to always be thrown back onto the municipality. It's always the municipality trying to figure out where they're going to put these people, because it is through their department and through the fire department, they're the ones that actually initiated going into these rooming houses and assessing the safety and fire concerns of these rooming houses.
Mr. Chairman, I find that the government is lacking in their commitment, and the minister is lacking in his commitment to be a leader in this province. He needs to be up front, he needs to be in the forefront when situations like this happen, not only in HRM but throughout the province. I'll tell you, if the fire department were to execute their job appropriately, we'd be in a mess, not only in HRM but throughout this province. There are so many units, there are so many apartment buildings, rooming houses, single dwellings that probably nobody should be allowed to occupy. I've had discussions with the fire marshal of this province about this. He used to be a member of the Sackville Fire Department. I know that he has a job to do, but he understands that if he does his job to the fullest potential of the law, we wouldn't have enough beds in this whole province, in hotel rooms, to provide beds for the people who live in inadequate housing in this province.
That's why I think we really need to look at what we can do with these agreements with the federal government, especially when they're willing to get back into the programs and hopefully addressing the needs of people, of individuals in our province who require suitable housing. We have to look at what we have, and we have to increase public stock. If we don't increase the public stock - in our view, that's an asset we can have. That's something we're going to own in 10 years or 20 years, and then in that time we're not going to be in the situation where we're going to be wondering, what are we going to do in 10 years if the federal government, lo and behold - the Liberal Government may not even be in power in 10 days, let alone 10 years - all of a sudden decides to get out of the picture of affordable housing again? Where is that going to leave us in this province?
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think this government's commitment to the affordable housing issue in the province solely depends on the federal government and the money they bring to the table. One of the interesting things I see, when I heard about these agreements, that our portion was 50/50 cost shared between the province and the federal government, really, it's not the province and not the taxpayers that are going to come forward with 50 per cent of our funding. Of course we've witnessed that our 50 per cent of the portion can come from private developers, municipalities throughout the province.
So when the minister stands up and says that the government has spent $37 million or $18 million or $9 million, it's not really the government spending all that money. You have to take into account that there are other avenues for the government to utilize municipal
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money and other grants in lieu of when it comes to our portion of the Affordable Housing Program.
Some of the things we're concerned with in this budget, and maybe the minister can clarify these a little later - I know our Leader mentioned these earlier and we have a lot of concern with them - are the Rural and Native Housing cut, I think it was $993,000; the rent subsidies supplement frozen at the 2004-05 levels; Non-Profit Housing Program cut by $100,000; home repair cut by $1.5 million. There are a lot of concerns we have with the budget and the lack of vision, we believe, on the government's behalf to address the needs of the people in this province for affordable housing.
Mr. Chairman, I hope that the message we've sent today is a strong message, and an area that there's a lot of concern with. I think every member of this Legislature gets calls on a daily basis, if not a weekly basis, and I know our caucus does - I guess I can't speak for the other two caucuses - about the concerns people have in their communities, just trying to make a living, just trying to keep a roof over their heads. These people who are on assistance, for the most part, I know for a fact a lot of them tell you up front I don't vote, I don't support a certain Party, but we need help. We get assistance through the government that doesn't even pay for the going rate of an apartment, especially in my area.
I've said it before, the different amount of money that is provided for a family under Community Services for assistance, especially around housing, wouldn't even get a one- or two-bedroom apartment in most areas here in HRM. That concerns me, it concerns a lot of the members of our caucus. It seems that every time we try to go forward with this and try to get the government to realize they need to increase spending in this area, it just seems to land on deaf ears. These people are really in dire need for this government to step up and look at addressing what is really the core issue for many of these people, and it's the funding they receive and the programs they can gain access to.
I'd be the first one to say it's amazing, the staff at Community Services, especially out in my area, in the Cobequid Community Health Centre, the work and commitment they have, but many times they tell us, we can't do anything. We have guidelines we have to follow, we can't bend the rules. We're instructed that we have to follow these guidelines to a T, and there seems to be no avenue for them to make what I would think is the best call or the best judgment in dealing with community members' issues.
I'll bring up one issue that I was dealing with just before we came into session. It was around an individual on long-term disability. She was bringing in about $875 a month, living on her own, was very ill with a respiratory problem, and was very upfront with me, Mr. Chairman, about her condition and what had to happen. She was calling my office to try to get some assistance, trying to get some help. This lady was potentially a lung transplant recipient in Toronto, and was living on her own and had to give up her apartment to move to Toronto in hopes of receiving her new lung.
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The process she went through and the doors that were shut in her face, about help that she needed, I just couldn't believe it, Mr. Chairman. This young lady who was upfront with me, and I know with members of the staff at the Community Services level about money she had in RSPs, this lady was upfront, saying I have money put away but I live on just under $900 a month. Community Services initially said they would help this lady, that they'd help pay her travel to Toronto, establish her in an apartment - she needed to be within a certain distance from the hospital - and everything seemed like it was going okay.
I guess at one point, somewhere along the line, her case was reviewed, and it was realized that, no, we have to put the brakes on this. We can't help this lady. I called, wondering what was the problem. It was because she had this money put away in RSPs. She told them exactly what the money was for, it was her hope that after her lung transplant that she was going to return to Nova Scotia, return to Sackville. She knew she would be required to pay for some of her medication, because not all of it is covered under MSI, just as her transportation there and her wait before the transplant weren't covered by MSI. She was told that unless she spent every last dollar she had in the bank or in RSPs, Community Services wouldn't help her.
She wanted the money just to get a new life, just to go back to school after she became more healthy after her lung transplant, just to hopefully get a better job, to get off assistance, so that she could be a productive member of the community, which she had been for many years until her illness. Mr. Chairman, at Christmas she did make the move up to Toronto, on her own behalf, with her family's help and with the help of the Nova Scotia Lung Association that was setting up a grant for her and hopefully to get donations provided to this cause to pay for her stay in Toronto while she waited for a donor.
She didn't make it, Mr. Chairman. She passed away about two and a half weeks ago, still up there, trying to struggle on $900 a month to pay a $1,500 rent in Toronto, and that was the cheapest she could find when she went up there. It's sad to say that we couldn't do more for her. It was disheartening to know that when you have someone like this go to Community Services and say, listen, I need some help. She wasn't trying to hide anything from the department, she wasn't trying to hide anything from the people who assessed her. She was very upfront with what she had, what her income was, and the reason for her having that income. It was in the hopes that she wouldn't need to depend on Community Services for that long.
That's just one personal case of mine, and I know the family doesn't mind me bringing her case up. I spoke to her family on the weekend. They just couldn't believe that in this province we don't provide a service such as that, where she's forced to go out of province to get the services, she wasn't able to get any help through the Department of Health, through MSI, because they would only cover the cost of an in-hospital stay, and then when her last resort was through Community Services, she was unable to get help through that department.
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It just shows there are a lot of issues, not only pertaining to affordable housing in the province, that this government and this minister need to address. I would hope that over the next little while the government realizes that. Mr. Chairman, I would like to give the remainder of my time to my colleague, the member for Dartmouth North.
MR. MORSE: I think, in fairness to the member who has just spoken, it's important that some of his concerns he brought up be addressed at this time, and then I look forward to hearing the comments from the member for Dartmouth North. I'm not going to go on as long as I did last time. It's certainly a much more constructive approach by the member for Sackville-Cobequid.
Anyway, he spoke about his critic responsibilities, that being the Housing Services Critic. He made reference to the shortage of affordable housing in Nova Scotia. I think there was an acknowledgement that there was a shortage of affordable housing in Canada. He's right on both counts. I would suggest that around about 1993, as the member pointed out, things started to get worse because there was a change in government, the government of the day's Minister of Finance had to make some tough decisions, and one of the first areas that he cut was the Affordable Housing Program.
That minister has since become our Prime Minister, and it's interesting that since he has become Prime Minister, he is taking some steps to restore some of the damage that was done during the time he was Minister of Finance, which is constructive, because that's where we are today. We can't turn the clock back. All the units that were not created in that 10 years are never going to be brought back, but we can move forward and we are moving forward. We appreciate that the federal government has acknowledged a responsibility for social housing, as evidenced by their Affordable Housing Program and Nova Scotia accepting that offer and signing on as the first of the Atlantic Provinces, in both cases, for Phase I and Phase II.
[4:15 p.m.]
What the member might be interested in is that the federal government actually has a name for the savings they got from cutting their commitment to social housing. They call it the legacy savings. The honourable member might be interested to know that depending on how you calculate those savings, which stretch out through 2035, when they'll have no further obligations under the commitments they passed over to the province, it's estimated, conservatively, that it will save them about $1 billion. That's $1 billion taken out of public housing.
So if we're wondering why it got a lot worse after 1993, you don't have to look too much further than what the federal government has called legacy savings. They cut their support for affordable housing at that time, and we are paying the price today. In fact, Canadians right across the country are paying the price today for that decision. But again,
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they have come back to the table, and we are working constructively with them. We're very pleased that they now want to make amends for what was done. We appreciate that they had their situation to deal with at that time, but it's important to put that emphasis back on public housing.
The member made reference to the condition of houses in Nova Scotia, and he's quite right, we have an enviable statistic in Nova Scotia, 71 per cent of families own their own homes in Nova Scotia. That's an extraordinary number, 71 per cent. In fact, that enviable record of home ownership goes back a long time. Nova Scotia was one of the first places to be settled by the Europeans, our ancestors, and 22 per cent of our housing stock was built before the end of World War II. If you think about that, that's a lot of units that have had the chance to possibly deteriorate over that time.
If the homeowners are not in a position to effect the necessary repairs, it just makes it all the more apparent why it's important to have programs like SCAP, the Senior Citizens Assistance Program; the Public Housing Emergency Repair Program, also known as PHERP; RRAP, the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program, which is cost shared between the federal government and the province - the first two are entirely provincial - to help people who might otherwise not have the means of fixing up their homes, staying in them. When they need a roof or maybe their well goes dry, the septic system malfunctions, this helps keep those people in their homes.
Those programs are near and dear to my heart personally, and I think any MLA in this Chamber would have an appreciation of how good it is to be able to provide that assistance to a constituent, when they don't know how they're going to obtain those necessary housing repairs. Those programs long predate my coming into this House, but I'm very pleased that last year we were able to substantially enhance the monies that we put into those programs to shorten the waiting lists.
The member spoke about the housing authorities. His concern was about the condition of the authorities, and basically it was a maintenance question. I would point out to the member that due to good operating efficiencies within the department, last year we were able to free up a couple of million dollars, which was split between augmenting the Provincial Housing Emergency Repair Program I just spoke of, and an extra $1 million went into the housing authorities for maintenance.
Then when we got the $11 million through the return of the equalization monies that the federal government had clawed back a couple of years ago, $4 million went into the housing authorities, $2 million of which was for interior maintenance, and $1 million was for exterior maintenance. Of course there was $1 million for something my colleague, the member for Dartmouth North, has spoken of before, and that was the need for elevators, and something that we're becoming aware of right across the province because of the changing weather patterns, the need for emergency generators.
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So that was $4 million that went into housing authorities, because of the strategic infrastructure monies, another $1 million because of internal economies in the department, and $3.4 million which went into emergency housing repair programs. Now the member was calling for more bricks and mortar, and without wanting to be repetitious, I did file some information that spoke of the importance of the rent subsidy approach. It was determined by people who looked at this analytically that this is a much more effective and efficient way of delivering affordable housing. Specifically, it was deemed that it's about 37 per cent efficient to put in bricks and mortar, that is basically public housing, where they estimated it was 85 per cent to 90 per cent efficient if you put it into rent supplements.
Now the other reason why the province has been focusing on rent supplements is that the initial Affordable Housing Program really was targeted more towards middle-income and bricks and mortar, it was absolutely tailored to build housing, but more for middle-income people. In Nova Scotia, it was a decision of this government - and I would like to say that I had something to do with making that decision, perhaps quite a bit to do with making that decision - that we strategically were going to target these affordable housing monies to low-income Nova Scotians in greatest need of affordable housing.
That was my commitment that I made to Nova Scotians, I made it in this House time and time again, I stand by that commitment, and if you're helping those in greatest need, it costs more to help them, because the gap, to make up the difference between what they can afford and what it costs for average market rent, is greater. That's why the number that the member for Cape Breton South was bandying about, 1,500 units in the first program, is not the number we're shooting for. We're shooting for more like 950 there, because we feel it's more important to help 950 families that otherwise would have no means of getting adequate affordable housing, than to help 1,500 who can get some form of affordable housing. It may not be as nice as we'd like it to be for them, but we are going to be targeting the lowest-income Nova Scotians in greatest need of affordable housing.
He also spoke a little bit, I believe, by reference, to some of the challenges of working through the Nova Scotia Housing Development Corporation, which is the corporation that's owned by the Province of Nova Scotia and that actually delivers these new public housing units, if we own them, as opposed to working with organizations and other private sector landlords. As the representative for Lower Sackville, the member would be aware that it seems to still be a challenge out there for the Nova Scotia Housing Development Corporation to put up a unit that's targeted for families. There was another one that we're still trying to negotiate for another area in HRM, and we're trying to be sensitive to the communities.
It's interesting that when we do it through third parties, whether it's non-profit organizations or commercial landlords, there's hardly a ripple. People all agree that we need more affordable housing, but it seems that it's more difficult, sometimes, to deliver it when it comes to the Nova Scotia Housing Development Corporation. That is an observation that
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I've seen from my perspective as minister, and I'm trying to be respectful of everybody in this challenge.
The member spoke about frozen rent subsidies and, again, I want assure the member that the comments that were made just perhaps an hour ago by another one of his colleagues about the alleged freezing of rent subsidies, if he looks at Page 4.4 in the Supplementary Detail, he will find that, yes, there's $2.6 million in rent subsidies shown on the line, but what's not shown is the increase in affordable housing, which includes the new rent subsidies, and that has gone up from about $7.55 million to $10.3 million. In a one-year increase, that's about 30 per cent, and most people would say 30 per cent is a pretty big increase in the budget. So we are moving ahead in that area. It is an important area. I appreciate the comments of the member and his questions.
The last thing I want to deal with is, he was talking about the condition of the rooming houses in the city. The member might be aware that last November Mayor Peter Kelly and I convened a meeting of a lot of organizations that are devoted to helping the homeless and other people who are perhaps not as fortunate. One of the things that came out of this, or we had been working on and were able to share with those organizations, is that we have a memorandum of understanding with the city. If they know of a situation that they think is going to require attention, they give us a heads-up so that we don't discover that the fire marshal or the building inspector has gone in there, evicted everybody and they're out in the street.
We do try to work with them. We're not going to compromise health and safety, that's not negotiable. But where it's not so definitive, we do try to work with the city. We have a good working relationship with the city, and I enjoy my personal rapport with Mayor Kelly. Mayor Kelly is a very caring person, and he cares deeply, as do I, about those in need of affordable housing and the homeless. So, honourable member, I think that touches on most of your shopping list, and I look forward to questions, hopefully, from the member for Dartmouth North.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Dartmouth North.
MR. JERRY PYE: Mr. Chairman, I think it might be a bit presumptuous for the honourable minister to hopefully wait for questions from the honourable member for Dartmouth North. I want to say, first of all, that I want to acknowledge that in 2003, we were fortunate enough to expand the number of Members of the Legislative Assembly on the New Democratic Party side. As a result of that, I've been lifted of some of the burden and responsibility, and we share it, across the government departments. One of those departments is the Department of Community Services.
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I want to thank the honourable member for Sackville-Cobequid for taking up the Housing Services portfolio. I think the honourable member now understands the frustration that I have exercised over the years that I had been the Housing Services Critic. I also want to thank the honourable member for Dartmouth South-Portland Valley, who now must also be frustrated by the experiences she's having as the Community Services Critic in the Province of Nova Scotia.
It is a very unwieldy department. It is extremely frustrating to get work done. The department works so bloody slowly that, Mr. Minister, it is impossible to be able to address the issues that are in my constituency and the remaining 51 constituencies across this province. There seems to have been an aim by this government when it came into power in 1999 to balance budgets, which in all sense is not a bad thing. Balancing budgets is not a bad thing in this province. But when you balance the budgets on the backs of the most vulnerable in this province, then there is something radically wrong, Mr. Chairman.
[4:30 p.m.]
I see this government boasting about bringing in three balanced budgets, not balanced budgets but surpluses, and in this year having the tune of some $63.7 million in surplus in this province, while we see people marching to the food banks, while we see people in Nova Scotia living in poverty. We have a province, Mr. Chairman, of less than 1 million people. We have a province where 50 per cent of those who are employed earn an income of less than $22,000 a year. That's what we have in this province.
And we have a debt that needs to be curtailed and the government on that side of the floor is trying to curtail a $12 billion debt on the backs of the most vulnerable Nova Scotians. How else is it, Mr. Chairman, that we stand here in frustration year after year for six years? I, as a critic, during that period of time brought before the Minister of Community Services the kind of social concerns that I see out there, the kind of poverty. Not only do I bring it to the minister and his government across this legislative floor, but I talk to the minister confidentially on a number of the issues as well.
The minister fully understands that in fact we are reaping the benefits of CHST transfers from the federal government, and we are reaping the benefits from the offshore economic development with respect to the offshore payments. That money is going to go towards paying the debt, but it still leaves an additional $50 million that could be better spent helping the most vulnerable people in this province. And that's exactly what we should do. There is absolutely no question, Mr. Minister, we can have it both ways.
The problem is it's a matter of priorities. It's a matter of where you want to put your priority dollars. I can never, for the life of me, as I stand here in this Legislature - and I know that the people who are watching Leg. TV today are sitting there watching and listening to
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this debate on Community Services, and asking themselves, and wondering how it is that someone in the Department of Community Services can receive a bonus.
I can understand that coming from the Department of Finance, because Finance is talking about balancing budgets and bringing forward; I can understand that coming from the Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage, because it's a matter of generating, and you set quotas and revenues for doing that; I can understand that coming from a number of the departments over there, the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Economic Development. As all those Nova Scotians who have Leg. TV on today can see, you can understand and rationalize where and how those individuals might receive a bonus, even though it should be somewhat transparent, and it's totally wrong.
What I cannot see, Mr. Minister, is how - and I can't even possibly calculate - the process is set out where someone in the Department of Community Services receives a bonus. I can tell you that there are many Nova Scotians who ask the same thing. If, in fact, this department is set up to protect the most vulnerable people in our province - persons on disability, seniors, persons in poverty, persons who have to go to a food bank - then how is it that someone can receive a bonus, more than what the individual will ever receive in three years?
It really troubles me to have to stand here in this Legislative Assembly and look across the legislative floor and debate a department's budget that in fact tears my heart out. It tears my heart out because no matter how many times I have stood here and talked about this very important issue, it seems as though there has been a wall built up and no matter how much I blow, that wall can never be torn down and it can never be broken down. And to stand here and know the frustration that my colleagues are going through with respect to their second turn in debating the budget of Community Services is something that we should all stop, sit back, reflect and ask what's going on.
Just think about it. Bonuses in the Department of Community Services. How do you arrive at a bonus in the most vulnerable department in this province? People should be rewarded for the good work they do. There's no question. The way I was rewarded for the good work I did was if I didn't perform, I was out the door. I didn't get a bonus for setting the quota on the number of sheets of paper I might be able to produce or anything like that. I got a bonus saying you perform and this is what's expected of you, and if you don't do it, you're out the door.
If you set the bar high enough so no one can reach it, then in fact, Mr. Chairman, no one reaches the bonus point. But even at that level, I sit here and I watch people in the Department of Community Services having to craft their budget in such a way whereas they're expected to pay money, as the honourable member for Cape Breton South had indicated. Mr. Minister, you will be very much aware of this. The honourable member for Cape Breton South talked about overpayments.
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Now, let me talk a bit about overpayments. The honourable member for Cape Breton South worked at the municipal level, I believe, with respect to community services. There is no one in this office more knowledgeable about the issues around Community Services than the member for Cape Breton South and the member for Halifax Needham, who has in fact studied social work. But I do want to tell you that as a layperson I have learned a tremendous amount about people and people's responsibilities during my seven years in this Legislative Assembly. I have watched the kind of action that takes place.
Now I want to go back to the issue of overpayments. We know, the minister and his department know, that there is no possible way for those individuals to pay back those overpayments. We have already heard where those overpayments come from. They sometimes come from workers' compensation, and more often than not they come from Canada Pension disability pensions, and that department requires people to sign a paper and make application if they're disabled. That's the crux of the whole thing. And it might also come from an insurance policy, Mr. Chairman.
Now the point is this, there's no question about some of that being recoverable, if you talk about the fairness and the equity of the taxpayers in this province. There's absolutely no question, but where do you draw the line, when you haul every single penny out of those individuals who have been bleeding for four or five years before they even get their Canada Pension? Now I asked you, and I asked the Deputy Minister of Community Services, who was a witness before the Standing Committee on Community Services, and I said, deputy minister, look at this, if we can in fact write off small businesses that owe the government, and there's a limitation and they cut them off, they may owe the government tax revenue, but because they don't pay it, they cut them off, and they can turn around and set up a business under another number or another name and receive funding from the government, because they're an entity unto themselves.
There's no such thing as a business being a personal thing. But because somebody is personal, it's tangible, and you can touch it and you can stick your finger on it and stick your finger in it, it means that you have to pull it out. That's the sad part of it. So you reach in their pockets, and you pull it out. I asked the Deputy Minister of Community Services to look at this. I said, at least recognize that there needs to be a statute of limitations around this very issue. The deputy minister did say to me that she and her department would look at that, that in fact there would be a review. I have heard absolutely nothing.
Do you know that the federal government, through the employment insurance, if someone draws their employment insurance, and there is an overpayment and that overpayment hasn't been collected for seven years, then the statute of limitations clicks in, and that's a write-off. The Department of Community Services, rather than badgering and trying to take out of people on social assistance money out of their allocated budget, to pay that through Service Nova Scotia's collection agency, needs to have a second reflect and a second look.
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Let me tell you, Mr. Minister, and for those of you who are listening here today, when you craft a budget for an individual who's on social assistance, there is a craft of a basic need. The government meets the very basic needs. They set aside the number of dollars that are going to be for the shelter component, they set the number of dollars that are going to be for personal use, and that includes sundries and the whole bit. Now at one time they also paid for the children of those families. What happens now is the government ingratiates itself by saying that the Canada Child Tax Benefit is something we will not claw back, and that government, true to its word, introduced a piece of the minister's and the Premier's book during the election campaign, the platform, they did not claw back the Canada Child Tax Benefit.
What they didn't do is they didn't continue with the additional dollars that the Department of Community Services provided to those young people in order to help the families out. What does it take for government to think in terms like outside the box, outside the envelope, and think about a new way of delivering programs to the most vulnerable Nova Scotians? All the years that we were sitting here, crafting and balancing budgets, and bragging and boasting about surpluses, we were watching more and more people go to the food banks. We were watching our most vulnerable Nova Scotians go to food banks in this province, a province of less than 1 million people. That was something new, that was a phenomenon. Now it is one of the major industries in this province.
Mr. Chairman, I am the one who has to bring those clients in, along with the other members of the remaining 51 constituencies, who have to sit them down and talk to them about why that is. We have to say to them that whether you like it or not, it's what the government of the day considers to be its priorities, so that you don't have enough money for the right nutritional foods, that you must go to food banks in this province. So when they come to my office, I have no choice but to coach them on how best to use their dollars.
What we have to do sometimes is we have to tell them to go to the food bank to do their shopping for non-perishable goods and then use the money that Community Services gives them for perishable items. What do you think about something like that? What do you think, if each one of us were to do that? We all know that because of our age, and we sit here in this Legislative Assembly, that the majority of us have seen hard times. We have come from large families, we know how difficult it is to manage, but yet, Mr. Chairman, that does not translate into legislative policy throughout this province.
There are so many things that I could talk about, and I do know, unfortunately, that my time is running out. That's the most unfortunate part of this, Mr. Chairman, because I certainly have a number of other items, which I'm going to talk about. I want to tell you that in this province individuals who want a pair of glasses, who want dental work in this province, and it's ironic that the government provides them with a Quickcard but every single dental organization in this province, it ends up being a maximum of 20 per cent less
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than what they get, so they have to take that 20 per cent out of their budget and pay for that dental cost.
They also have to pay that for their eyeglasses, or have an agency or an organization out in the community pay. Those agencies and organizations out in the community can no longer provide the dollars, because the government has gotten in the gambling business and taken away revenues that they would normally have generated to offset and assist those individuals in the community.
Mr. Chairman, I never even touched on housing. I want to talk about the minister's most recent announcement in Cape Breton and Inverness, and I believe it was called MacDonald Hall. I believe, in fact, there was an agreement, and actually there was a budget that came in, that said this was $600,000 to build. I believe the developer has already put a proposal in, I don't know if it has been approved yet or not, but I think it has been. I asked the minister, three years ago I stood before this Legislature and I listened to a group of individuals, and many groups of individuals, some 47 individuals, who comprised themselves together to bring in a Kendrick report. A report which this government endorsed and announced that it would be brought forward.
[4:45 p.m.]
This government paid the shot for the Kendrick report. This government didn't even bother to have the courtesy to honour one of the very first, basic, fundamental commitments, and that was to set up a blue ribbon committee to study the issue of disabled persons in this province, and how they would be funded and where those dollars should go. As a matter of fact, what we're seeing now is the closure of small options homes. Do you ever look in your community to see how many small options homes have actually closed, or where there are no beds available?
Why do you think there's a freeze on small options homes? I ask you to reflect and think about that. Why do you think there's a freeze on small options homes? I'll tell you why there is a freeze on small options homes, it's because the government has gotten back into institutionalizing disabled people in this province. We get 13-unit buildings rather than thinking about what we did in 1966, when we de-institutionalized individuals with disabilities, both intellectual and physical. In 1966, we decided to move them out of institutions like the Nova Scotia Hospital, bring them in the communities and develop small options homes, to allow those individuals to be part of the community.
Now we have moved back into the institutionalization of persons with disabilities. Think about it, Mr. Chairman. Why else would the government be so proud to announce units of approximately - and I don't know how big the one in Inverness is, it might be a 13-unit building, actually it's a 12-unit building, I do know, but I was just checking with the honourable minister who represents the area. One of them is a respite unit, so there are
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actually 12-bed units and the other one is a respite unit. There's also one going on Main Street in Dartmouth. As a matter of fact it's going in, I believe, on Lakecrest Drive/Main Street, Dartmouth.
I need to ask you, and I need to know, has the minister actually given consideration to why this is happening? Is this convenient for the government to do this? Does it run counter to community groups? Does it run counter to the Kendrick report recommendation? Does it run counter to the de-institutionalization of 1966? Then the minister needs to let us know, he needs to let us know about this.
Another bone of contention of mine is seniors' housing and seniors' units. Fortunately I had the opportunity to tour the province most recently. I've heard from seniors who spoke about the lack of seniors' facilities in rural Nova Scotia. As a matter of fact some seniors have told me that they're on a two-year waiting list, up to a four-year waiting list, some of them, and that they would have to move out of their community in order to get seniors' housing. Now these are people who have lived there all their lives, who will be passing their home on to their children.
Mr. Chairman, I'll tell you, I don't know what policy that is or where that government needs to go, but I can tell you it's not a policy that I've seen in the new directions of 1998, which in fact told this government how to address the housing issue, which had stakeholders and everyone else come before this government to talk about it. I also talked to the minister about rent supplements and about the utilization of rent supplements to allow the rent supplements to be portable, so that people who live in the community, who volunteer in the community and who can do a good job in the community and who have been long-standing citizens of the community could in fact be there and continue to live there.
Mr. Chairman, I want to tell you that that is the kind of thing that I'm still waiting to hear. I'm still waiting to hear the minister say that, yes, rent supplements can be portable. They're not going to one individual contractor, they're not going to one individual landholder, they're not going to one icon, investment property owners of this property. They're not going to one individual group, but they're going out there into the community.
Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased and delighted that at least the burden of responsibility has been moved off my shoulders and shared with my colleagues in this Legislative Assembly.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The time has expired for the NDP.
The honourable member for Glace Bay.
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MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Mr. Minister, you can actually look at this as probably a seventh-inning stretch. I'm actually going to give you a chance to get up and answer some questions during this round. I wanted to say, to begin with, that probably coming from a riding such as mine in Glace Bay that about - and I'm just ballparking it - 65 per cent of my caseload would involve Community Services cases in Glace Bay, and that's probably the same as most in this Legislature, not most MLAs but most that you would find in an area that would be similar to mine, let's put it that way.
I have to say from the outset that the staff at the Community Services office in Glace Bay, you have a tremendous staff there. You have some fine people in Rosemary Lewis, in Graham Crosby, in Sue Deruelle, who are supervisory personnel. I worked on appeals with Mark Ryan, for instance, and the commissioner who does appeals hearings, Darren McFadgen. They've been fair individuals who have done some good work, and worked under some difficult circumstances. You know the situation there, because you've heard about it from the NSGEU, in terms of caseloads that individual caseworkers are handling there. They are large and, unfortunately, probably growing, Mr. Minister.
There are a couple of items in Glace Bay that I know have been brought to your attention, and I hope to get you to go on the record today as to what's being done to try to solve the problems there regarding these two items. One of them involves Brass Tack Industries, which is an employment training and opportunity centre in Glace Bay. It's an agency that provides day programs for adults with mental disabilities. It's a tremendous agency, I should say. You talk about a great staff that does some wonderful things with people, the staff at Brass Tack Industries is second to none. They're a very small organization that services Glace Bay and surrounding area.
For about the past 10 years they've been implementing an off-site community-based program that enables their clients to have access and to participate in their community. They've been doing that over the past 10 years with federal grants. They're faced with the decision now whether to cancel their off-site programs due to some insufficient funding. It's my understanding they've applied to the Department of Community Services for some permanent funding. The Department of Community Services has responded, my understanding, again, with a grant which will employ two people for the period of one year.
Now the problem is that over the past 10 years there have been approximately 99 people - I'm not talking about clients at Brass Tack - who have been employed on grants that have gone through the organization. Now this poses a problem in itself, because the individuals, the clients who are attending Brass Tack become accustomed to having someone there, familiar, all of the time. So all of a sudden, after a while, their grant is up and new people come in, and you can see the problem that would create.
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I'm sure the minister understands that this is important, that this is invaluable work that is being done there, the people who are doing the work, the people who are served by the work. Mr. Minister, we take for granted sometimes our ability to do what we do, our ability, for instance, to do something as simple as going for a walk. It seems a rather simple thing to us, but for those individuals at Brass Tack Industries, they cannot do that unless they are supervised. So it becomes an obstacle if they don't have the supervision enabling the clients there to give them the support to do something that we would consider to be an everyday procedure.
I would like to know, Mr. Minister, according to Page 4.7 of the Supplementary Detail, the Rehabilitation Workshops budget has increased by some $200,000, so could you please outline the details of that line item