As the government concludes its consultation for the development of the next government action plan to combat poverty and social exclusion, current events forcefully remind us that poverty and its various manifestations unfortunately do not take holidays: shortage of housing, increase in the use of food banks, marked increase in the number of homeless people and lack of assistance resources to meet their needs, increase in the cost of living, etc. Much more than a simple economic issue, poverty constitutes an attack on all the rights and freedoms protected by the Quebec Charter, including the right to equality.
Mobilizing all of the responsibilities entrusted to it by the Charter, the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (the Commission) has made important recommendations in this area. The Commission today expresses serious concerns about the lack of appropriate responses to these.
Already, in 2003, the Commission underlined in particular that the implementation of economic and social rights had become one of the major challenges of our time in the face of poverty. Failure to make the necessary efforts to ensure the exercise of these rights would contribute to accentuating a certain number of already existing social fractures. This statement is unfortunately still valid.
The solutions to poverty go beyond questions of individual will or responsibility. A holistic and systemic perspective is necessary to understand the extent of the cycle of poverty and discrimination experienced by people in precarious situations.
This involves implementing all the rights protected by our Charter, including economic and social rights. How, for example, to ensure the exercise of the right to housing in the current context, marked by a persistent shortage of housing? A growing number of households are faced with making impossible choices between paying rent or meeting other essential basic needs. Added to this are various issues related, among other things, to unsanitary conditions, harassment, discrimination and situations of violence – spousal abuse, for example – which persist because of the lack of being able to move to escape them, and so on.
Guarantee the right to housing
It is therefore urgent that structuring and lasting government measures be put in place to guarantee the right to housing, in particular for low-income tenants. Social assistance benefits also remain insufficient to ensure a decent standard of living, as provided for in the Charter. The Commission has repeatedly deplored the insufficiency of social assistance scales to meet basic needs, needs which cannot be limited to what is necessary for survival. She made important recommendations to ensure that social assistance policies take into account the real needs of recipients. It is high time that these are implemented.
On the other hand, the effective exercise of the right to free public education in full equality is still not guaranteed, and this situation particularly affects children from low-income families. They do not get the necessary support to promote their educational success.
Currently, 20% of students from disadvantaged backgrounds end their studies without a diploma or qualification.
The fees charged for the purchase of school materials, for obtaining supervision services at lunchtime or for taking part in educational outings are examples among many of the obstacles to their full participation in school life. Another obstacle to this participation lies in the recent proliferation of special educational projects in public education establishments, which creates a school market from which children from low-income families are too often excluded. This dynamic contributes to reproducing the vicious circle of poverty and social exclusion of which these children and their families are victims.
This is why the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse reiterates, once again, the need to develop a concerted and structuring government strategy to fight poverty that allows the effective implementation of all human rights and freedoms, including the economic and social rights protected by the Charter. Only a human rights-based approach will effectively combat poverty and social exclusion.