First of all, I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to attend.
As my sister Lucya mentioned, the face of poverty in this country is racialized. It's also ruralized. I'm an elected official with the National Farmers Union, and I'm representing only 2% of the current Canadian population; I work on my farm and I work off my farm full time in the summer to support the farm business. I also work to support our five children, three of whom are in university. They will graduate with huge debt loads nonetheless, because the farm that my husband and I operate....
Ours is a fifth-generation family farm--as I said to Joy, the house was built in 1829--but I'm afraid we'll probably be the last to farm this land, based on the current economic conditions and the current political climate.
I don't always speak only for farm women, I speak for rural women as well. Farming occurs in rural Canada, and we work on such issues as the economic viability of Canadian farm families and also the strengthening and nurturing of rural Canada.
I was very impressed with the Senate standing committee going across the country and soliciting input and advice as to what is happening in rural Canada right now and why rural Canadians are feeling like, and being treated like, second-class citizens in a nation that we helped build. Had it not been for rural and farm women and for the socially progressive policies we came up with, particularly our sisters in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, where would this country be? I'll leave you to answer that question. It would not be a very pretty picture.
Farm women see a strong central role for governments and their various departments. That includes the Farm Women's Bureau, with which I did many years of work. This is my second time around as an elected official with the National Farmers Union. I was the women's president in the early 1990s to the mid-1990s. That was a paid position. Now, as the women's vice-president, I am in a strictly volunteer position. I have been on the road for the last week. My farm business at home is being managed by my husband and by our two children at home. I do this vice-president's position on a volunteer basis because I am so connected to the farm community, and to the rural women, men, and youth who make up our country.
To backtrack a little bit, as I said, farm women see a strong central and progressive role for governments and their various departments, be it the Status of Women, be it the Farm Women's Bureau, or be it HRDC--or be it supporting the collective marketing agencies that farm families have built up in this country.
I will admit to you today that the attacks this government has put on the Canadian Wheat Board are scandalous. The attacks and the undermining of the supply management system in this country--two institutions that were built by farmers, controlled by farmers, for the enrichment and betterment of the farm community--are absolutely disgraceful.
We favour a two-pronged approach to government involvement--first, in reorienting government approaches toward gender inclusion, and second, in supporting farm organizations to become more gender inclusive.
I don't know how many of you good folks here actually come from a farming background. I know that Joy does, and I know that the honourable member there does. We are in a catastrophic state in the farm community right now. We have many issues that we have to deal with, not only farm issues but rural issues. That is our context. That's where we live. That's our culture and our identity.
To even start to address the financial crisis that farm communities are dealing with would take an entire day's workshop. So I'm going to assume you understand the financial crisis we're facing and get into some of the more social and cultural crises we're facing as well.
One of them is certainly that there are older women living and working on these farms. Fortunately I'm not quite as old as my mother-in-law. She has lived and worked on that farm all her life, but because she's never worked off the farm, she has no pensionable earnings. She will die in poverty, as I probably will--except I work off the farm in the summer, solely to make sure I have contributions to the Canada Pension Plan.
Income splitting for farm families will not work, because there's not enough money coming into those families to even have income splitting as a viable option.
I believe my brief will be circulated, Joy.