Good afternoon, Madam Chair, committee members, and all others present.
I would like to thank you for the opportunity to share my experiences and to address this committee, and to thank you for continuing to work on the very important topic of women's leadership and prosperity in Canada.
I come to you with my credentials as the VP of Canada Without Poverty, as a non-profit worker in a women's resource centre, as a former low-income single mother, and as author of the “Single Mothers' Survival Guide” for Nova Scotia.
I grew up in a rural family that was very poor. My parents married young, and worked hard to move us into the middle class in Nova Scotia. At the age of 20, I had a high school education and was a waitress when I became pregnant with my first daughter. Her father left me in my third month of pregnancy and never participated in our lives again. He also did not pay child support, and was not made to pay child support.
When my first daughter was nine months old, I attended community college and got a two-year diploma in hospitality management. My student loan for these two years went to pay my child care. After graduating second in a class of 55, the only job I could find was as a waitress—again.
After two years of working as a waitress, with my family providing child care, two things happened. I was offered a subsidized child care spot in a local day care and I was offered a home in a CMHA-funded housing co-op. I decided to take the leap and get a better education to try to get a better job. I took a B.A. in women's studies at Mount Saint Vincent University and an M.A. in sociology at Acadia University, graduating with a 4.3 GPA with my M.A. in sociology.
These two programs, subsidized day care and affordable social housing, helped me immensely to achieve my goals of a better education. Without the child care of $35 a month, I could not have afforded to attend university. It also gave my working family members a much-needed break after years of filling the gap of child care.
The subsidized social housing co-op gave me an affordable, warm, safe home for my daughter and me. In addition, it gave me a sense of community with our co-op meetings and social events such as picnics. The people in the co-op were just like me, working hard to make a better place for our families and for our communities.
I graduated and went on to get decent paying employment in my field. Many years later, I found myself unemployed and a low-income single mother living in rural Nova Scotia, but this time I had an education and child support. In rural Nova Scotia, however, it is very difficult to find a decently paid job in any field. I had to stay in the area for parental access and custody issues with the other parent, which left me in a difficult position. I took whatever jobs I could find that I could do from my home while taking care of my child. For more than a year, my second daughter and I lived on $800 a month, as the only jobs that were available outside the home would not even pay the cost of child care, which was $500, and rent, which was another $500 a month, plus all the other expenses related to housing and child rearing.
It was only when my daughter was four years old that subsidized child care became available in our local town day care. I snapped up the opportunity, and then could take a job that did not pay very well but enabled me to participate in the economy and go back to work full time. These two very valuable programs enabled me to move my daughters and I into full participation in the economy, our culture, and our democratic process. Without these two programs, I believe we would still be mired in poverty and struggling to make ends meet.
Based on my experiences, I would like to make the following two recommendations: one, a national child care strategy that would make child care affordable and accessible to traditional and non-traditional family units, regardless of where they live; and two, a national housing strategy that enables women to have safe, adequate, and affordable housing.
I thank the committee for taking the time to listen to me. I would like to answer any questions you may have.