5th Annual Board Voice Society of BC Conference

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5th Annual Board Voice Society of BC
Conference

• The Interaction of Social and Economic Policy
• Presented by
• Janet Austin
• CEO, YWCA Metro Vancouver
• November 28, 2014

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Context

• Economic social policy enabling and remedial
• Canadas constitutional division of
  responsibilities
• The current reality
• Universal early learning care our best option
• Navigating political culture in the modern world

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Government Action

• Remedial policies
• address directly unfair, unjust or other harmful
  social situations, e.g. poverty, inequality
• Often seen as social in nature
• Enabling policies
• look to create opportunities, e.g. infrastructure
• often economic in orientation
• Good policies have both positive social
  economic outcomes

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Some history
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Early Canadian Enabling Policies

• Transcontinental railway
• the physical infrastructure for nationhood
• new settlers were necessary, economically
  politically
• Immigration policy
• Reached beyond the Anglo-Saxon sources of new
  settlers to Eastern Europe

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Federal Remedial Policies

• Old Age Pension, 1927 50 contribution to
  provincial plans
• Annual appropriations, 1930 39, to aid
  provinces struggling to pay relief
• 1940s constitutional amendment to allow
  Unemployment Insurance
• Provincial Remedial/Enabling Policies
• Saskatchewan hospital medical insurance
• Many provinces consolidated school districts
  built universities in the 50s 60s

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Federal/Provincial Collaboration

• Cost-sharing agreements
• Hospital Insurance Act, 1957
• Canada Assistance Plan (CAP), 1966
• The Medical Care Act (1968) replaced by Canada
  Health Act (1984) federal support for
  provincial plans
• Federal/Provincial Social Housing Agreements
• On-going federal/provincial interface problems

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Enabling Change Through Economic Policy

• Since mid-80s, federal focus has been economic
  policy
• Globalization free trade
• FTA, NAFTA successor agreements
• Mid-90s fiscal crisis brought major cutbacks in
  transfer payments (health education)
• Fiscal management dominant focus

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Social, Political Economic Challenges of the
21st Century It is indisputable - the modern
world is technologically, culturally, politically
economically intertwined
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Challenges for BC today

• Child poverty - 20.6
• Child vulnerability - 33
• First Nations population fastest growing but lags
• Family formation
• smaller families, low birth rate,
• immigration, migration
• Rising inequality
• increased health social problems
• educational attainment skills development
• Best educated generation of women, but
  underemployed
• Social policy reflects post-war paradigm

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Challenges for leadership governance

• Entrenched/polarized political culture
• Complexity/centralization
• Economics dictates politics
• Technology an enabler a disruptor

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Family policy doesnt reflect the modern family

• "The generation raising young kids today is
  squeezed for time at home for income because of
  the high cost of housing for services like
  child care that would help them balance earning a
  living with raising a family."
• Paul Kershaw UBC HELP, Generation Squeeze
• The cost of work/life conflict among employees
  with pre-school-age children costs the Canadian
  business community in excess of 4.0 billion.
• Warren Beach Former CFO Sierra Systems

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Cost of Child Vulnerability

• 0-6 most sensitive for brain development
• 30 of BC children are vulnerable vs. 10
  biological rate
• Middle-class problem
• Cost of child vulnerability 20 GDP growth/60
  years
• 10X provincial debt
• BCBC Outlook 2010, Clyde Hertzman Paul Kershaw
• UBC, H.E.L.P.

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Technology

• Accelerating technological change
• 47 of US jobs are at high risk of automation
  within a decade or two
• computers challenge human labour (bank layoffs,
  Watson Jeopardy)
• Lousy lovely jobs
• growth in cognitive occupations
• hollowing out middle income routine jobs
• more competition for less skilled jobs
• Preparing for jobs that dont yet exist yet, not
  those that are disappearing

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Skills matter. America has a skills problem.
So do many other countries. Rising inequality is
a sign of this problem. James Heckman, Schools,
Skills Synapses
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A major refocus of policy is required to
understand the life cycle of skill health
formation the importance of the early years in
creating inequality in producing skills for
the workforce. James Heckman Schools, Skills
Synapses
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What we know

• Investment in early childhood reforms to family
  policy are key to our social, economic
  political future
• Reflecting the modern family
• Skills development educational attainment
• Enabling women to participate fully in the labour
  force
• Aging population
• The decline of the West, the rise of the Rest

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versus what we do

• Canada is last among 14 OECD countries in
  spending on early learning care (OECD, 2006)
• Spends 45K/senior gt65 vs. 12K/person lt 45

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Canadas Distinct Society

• In 1997, Quebec introduced the first universal
  childcare program in Canada
• Social economic
• Remedial enabling
• All provincial program spending per capita,
  2013-2014
• Quebec - 7911
• Saskatchewan - 11,977
• Alberta - 10, 919

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Quebecs Universal Low Cost Childcare Program

• Direct subsidies to
• Early childhood centres
• Home childcare
• Tax benefits
• Opened to all children (0 to 4) by September 2000
• Nearly half of all pre-schoolers (2011)

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Authoritative Analysis

• Dr. Pierre Fortin, Professor Emeritus, University
  of Quebec (Montreal)
• Past President of the Canadian Economics
  Association
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
• Member of the Economic Council of Canada
• Recipient of the Governor-Generals Gold Medal
• Research Fellow, C.D. Howe Institute

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Cost/Benefit of Quebec Program

• 70,000 more mothers held jobs (2008)
• GDP up by 1.7 (5 billion)
• Revenue to government (Quebec federal) exceeded
  the cost
• Cost 2,215 million (0.7 of Quebecs GDP) in
  2011-2012

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Other Benefits

• Labour force participation of single mothers
  increased 22 (1996 to 2008)
• Single-parent families on welfare declined from
  99,000 to 45,000
• Poverty rate of single-mother families declined
  from 36 to 22
• Their median real after-tax income shot up by
  81.3

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Rest of Canada Limited Results?

• New initiatives in most provinces
• Full school-day kindergarten (Ontario BC)
• Declared inability to fund
• Recession emphasis on tax competition
• Competition from major social programs
• Health 16.9B, Education 7.3B (2014/15 BC)

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Limited Results Why?

• Too big? Too costly? Benefits too long-term?
• Cultural expectations for women
• Vested interests usual suspects
• Purists versus incrementalists
• Comprehensive vision not embraced by all players
• Advocacy efforts inconsistent not sustained
• Political suicide

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Where to from here?
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Best Policy Response

• Enabling strategy broad agreement on human
  capital investment, emphasizing early learning
  care
• Short-term jobs training, higher education,
  family friendly early development child supports
  (may be targeted)
• Longer-term universal early learning/care new
  family policy framework
• Beneficial to child, parents, and society into
  the future
• Correlate with fiscal state work incrementally
  to implement
• .

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We Need . . . Political/Cultural Shift

• From short-term tactical to longer-term
  strategic
• More sophisticated, less adversarial,
  evidence-based
• Discussion of demographic transformation
  inter-generational equity fiscal choices
• Willingness to review reform entitlement
  programs
• .

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Complementary Challenges in Context

• Make health funding governance more accountable
  transparent spending in context of fiscal
  policy choices
• Devolve greater fiscal powers to cities
• Emphasize rapid affordable transit as part of
  intergenerational equity, environmental
  economic growth strategy.
• Government/Non-Profit Initiative to find
  incentives to achieve client independence
  greater efficiency in social programs

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The Pay-Off

• Realize maximum human potential amid global
  competition.
• Benefits to families society
• reduced school failure, illness, crime, teen
  pregnancy
• reduces obesity diabetes, hypertension heart
  disease, some mental illnesses, premature aging
• Spectacular economic returns

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The pay-off Returns to a Unit Dollar Invested
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Understanding Power

• Objectively division of powers among levels of
  government
• Municipalities have no constitutional status
  (except as creations of the provinces) meager
  financial resources
• Federal government has greater taxing power
• Provinces have constitutional power often greater
  than their financial resources
• Subjectively assessing the political landscape
  or zeitgeist

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Understanding Government

• Built for stability
• Resists change to provide continuity stable
  programs
• New options must be as good as the ones we want
  to replace
• Decisions not always logical, politics not policy
• Policy change has enormous implications
• Bring solutions

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Influencing Decisions

• What kind of change?
• Incremental, discrete, program level
• Systemic, broad new initiatives
• Where does power reside?
• At the Centre - PMO, PCO, Premiers Office
• Powerful ministers not all created equal
• Deputy Ministers short-order cooks limited
  research capacity/institutional memory

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Program Change

• Establish clear goals
• Provide specific solutions documented benefits
• Understand government objectives limitations
• Organize support among involved parties
• Choose your arena carefully
• Dont define yourself/your interlocutors
  ideologically
• Consider incremental, self-reinforcing steps
• Look for partners avoid making adversaries

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Systemic Change

• Major new programs/initiatives are inherently
  retail politics
• Conducted within existing political parties or
  issues-based advocacy groups
• Campaign 2000
• Generation Squeeze, Dr. Paul Kershaw
• New parent benefits 18 months
• High quality child care
• Flexible working hours

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Some Advice

• Decide when to be an advocate when to be an
  adversary
• Frame your arguments in a popular manner not
  political rhetoric
• Identify prominent advocates unlikely allies
• Justice Emmett Hall, Royal Commission on Health
  Services
• David Dodge James Heckman
• Listen to criticism adjust
• Plan for complications compromises

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Questions to consider

• What does government need?
• How can we provide it?
• When should we adapt out goals?
• How to sustain advocacy effort over the long term?

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Changing lives since 1897.