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Hamilton lawyer is taking the plight of city's poor to UN committee

By Bill Dunphy
The Hamilton Spectator
(Apr 10, 2006)
A Hamilton lawyer will fly to Switzerland next month to describe the plight
of this city's poor in an effort to convince the United Nations that Canada
is failing to live up to a key international treaty on human rights.

Poverty lawyer Craig Foye will carry a 20-page research report that accuses
Canada of failing to ensure an adequate standard of living for all. This
country made a commitment to that some 30 years ago when it signed the
United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

This won't be the first time Canada has been accused of falling short of
the mark on treaty requirements.

It came under harsh criticism from the UN in 1998 for failing to meet
treaty obligations and will undergo another review before the UN Committee
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Geneva in three weeks.

"The document in 1998 was fairly scathing with regards to some issues in
Canada and since that time, there hasn't been a lot of government action,"
Foye said.

"There hasn't been a lot of effective policy movement. Things haven't
gotten better.

"We pay subsistence standards of income to people and then we're surprised
our streets are full of homeless people."

Foye will appear before the UN committee alongside other Canadian
non-government agencies and activists who will review Canada's human rights
record. Foye, however, will be telling Hamilton's story.

A lawyer with McQuesten Legal Services, Foye says taking action on poverty
arises from his front line work and the connections he can see between
government policies and the poverty on our streets.

"We're well placed to see that. People can't afford a place to live. We
help them with a landlord/tenant matter ... and in the meantime, these
people can't afford to eat."

Foye's report, prepared by the Income Security Working Group in Hamilton,
is not just the opinion of poverty activists.

The report was unanimously adopted by city council last month during a
special meeting on poverty.

Council promised to send copies of the report to the prime minister's and
Ontario premier's offices, as well as to local MPs and MPPs.

Foye will go one step further and take it to the UN.

The $2,500 to $3,000 cost of the trip was approved by the legal clinic's
board of directors and is being partially underwritten by windfall rent
revenue from a film production company that is filming in their offices.

Spending the money in an attempt to focus international attention on the
failure of Canada's domestic policies may not be everyone's idea of a good
use of money, but Foye sees it as important.

"There isn't an effective enforcement method or a complaint mechanism," he
explained.

Therefore, the only recourse open to activists is to appear before the
committee when it conducts reviews of each country's performance under the
treaty.

Canadian officials will also address the committee.

They will doubtless bring with them a copy of a recent Statistics Canada
report showing this country's strong economy and some key government
support programs that have lifted more than a million Canadians out of
poverty since 1996.

Foye said he hasn't read the report but is not surprised that some of
Canada's poor have been helped. That doesn't detract from the central point
his report makes, he said.

"When you're talking about rights and that's what we're talking about here,
rights, you can't view them in the aggregate and just say, 'We've helped
some people.' We don't say, 'We no longer need a law against theft because
the crime rate is dropping.'"

Asked if he doesn't worry that what he's doing is futile, passion enters
the young lawyer's voice.

"I don't think I could ever see it as futile. This is the kind of community
I want to live in.

"My wife and I are expecting our first child in June and our daughter is
going to have to grow up in Hamilton and I want her to grow up in a
community that is inclusive, that looks after people, that has good public
health."

Poverty in Hamilton

As of September 2005, 43,000 Hamiltonians depended on Ontario Works or
disability support payments to survive. Almost 13,000 of them are children.

The most recent figures suggest 16 per cent of Hamilton families live below
the poverty line.

Social assistance provides only 38 to 62 per cent of the income needed to
meet poverty line costs in Hamilton.

Shelter payments on social assistance trail average rents in the city by
close to $200 a month.

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