Thank you very much.
First of all, I'd like to draw your attention to a letter I would like to have written into the record, from the Sisters of St. Martha in Antigonish, who also support our brief. As you'll see, the brief has been presented by a number of women's organizations in Nova Scotia.
We thank the committee for the opportunity to bring forward concerns and recommendations that speak to the importance of ensuring that strong social programs are recognized and essential for the social and economic development and well-being of Canada and of everyone who lives here.
The organizations that comprise our coalition have been working together to bring attention to the need to proactively address the widening gap in income between the rich and the poor, the weakening and dismantling of Canada's social programs, and the ongoing exclusion of many sectors of society from full participation in it.
We believe the federal government has a strong role to play in creating both social and economic policies that acknowledge the right of all to a decent standard of living and advance inclusion and full participation, regardless of where they live, the economic situation of their province or territory, or their personal social and economic situation.
As organizations that work with women, we understand that poverty and exclusion are linked and that they are the result of an economic agenda that is narrowly focused and does not take into account that the economic health of a country and its people is interdependent with social well-being. We also understand that there are high economic and social costs to poverty and exclusion, and that poverty and exclusion are gendered.
This means that poverty affects women more profoundly than men. In Canada, one in every seven women lives in poverty, and regardless how poverty is measured, women are disproportionately likely to live in poverty. This is most clear in the case of single mothers, where the likelihood of poverty is particularly high.
Because women live in the deepest and most persistent poverty, the measure of the effectiveness of any step the federal government takes to address it must be the impact the programs and policies have on the poorest of women.
If there is the political will to do so, we believe that poverty and the risk of poverty can be reduced, if not eliminated. Historically, the federal government has played an important role in developing programs that alleviate or prevent poverty. Without the federal government we wouldn't have housing programs and we wouldn't have had the Canada Assistance Plan. Many provinces would not have been able to provide welfare and other services.
But it appears that the federal government is now stepping back from the crucial role it has played historically in ensuring adequate and equitable social programs and services across Canada. This has been particularly evident with the elimination of the Canada Assistance Plan and the implementation of block funding through CHST in 1995, the cancellation of the federal-provincial child care agreements earlier this year, and the more recent cuts to programs in the last month or so that directly affect the health and well-being of women and communities.
Key problems that have emerged in the wake of these cuts and that have been identified by our coalition and other women's groups are: the deterioration of social programs; the absence of any coherent or consistent provision of basic social programs across jurisdictions; the failure of governments to establish mechanisms to ensure that programs comply with human rights, including women's rights to equality; the development of workfare; intensification of the discourse on provincial sovereignty; and an increasing lack of transparency in government decision-making.
Since my time is nearly up and I can't say what else I wanted to say, I draw your attention to our recommendations...which relate to the CST and equalization to the have-not provinces; strategies to ensure basic rights and standards for income assistance; increase the national child benefit to $4,900, the amount recommended by the Campaign 2000; more funding for affordable housing; labour force development agreements in each of the provinces; rethink the current child care initiative and go back to the old plan, or even something better; income tax reform that really benefits low-income Canadians; full funding for the status of women program; a reinstatement of the funding for the court challenges program; restore the funding to the groups and organizations that were cut recently, such as literacy programs, CAP sites, aboriginal smoking prevention programs, and so on, which disproportionately affect low-income Canadians.