UN report slams Canada for abandoning its poor
The Daily News (Nanaimo) / CanWest News Service
May 23, 2006
By: Steven Edwards
EXCERPT

UNITED NATIONS -- Canada is accused of failing the country's poor in a United Nations report released Monday on Ottawa's record for meeting internationally agreed economic, social and cultural rights.

The independent experts behind the report say minimum wage and social assistance levels are too low to give people receiving them an "adequate standard of living" -- and recommends they should be increased.

They also want Canada to make unemployment benefits more widely available -- including to foreign workers who lose their jobs after arriving to do seasonal work, such as picking apples.

The recommendations of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights come after Canada sent a delegation to appear before panelists in Geneva to explain how the country is respecting the UN's social rights covenant.

They are not binding, but the panel holds considerable moral sway as overseer of the covenant, which Canada has signed and ratified.

"It's clear that people are better protected in Canada than in many other countries, but the yardstick is different for each country, and the committee looks at the national best each can provide," said one committee official.

The committee identifies the most disadvantaged as Aboriginals, African-Canadians, immigrants, disabled people, young people, single mothers and women earning low wages.

"The committee is concerned that, despite Canada's economic prosperity and the reduction of the number of people living below the Low Income Cut Off (poverty indicator), 11.2% of its population still lived in poverty in 2004," says the 11-page report.

The panelists urge Ottawa to provide "adequate child care services" as a way of allowing women to exercise their right to work.

The recommendations are sure to clash with priorities set by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government. The federal budget, tabled earlier this month, was met with sharp criticism by poverty-reduction advocates, who said its tax-relief measures helped only the middle class. Aboriginal groups also accused the Tories of failing to commit to the $5.1-billion agreement to fight Aboriginal poverty.

Some groups said the committee's recommendations smack too much of traditional left-of-centre remedies that, they argue, do not work....

"The United Nations should recognize that Canada is a democracy, and that we just elected a government that has a right to set its own policies."