Okay.
I've been at the Women's Transition Home for over 18 years. Most of my crew have been there for between 15 and 20 years. We have a really dedicated crew. What we're finding, though, is that the millenials don't want to go into this work. We've been chronically understaffed for quite some time, which is quite a strain on everybody.
Our priority mandate is to support women and their children who are fleeing violence. It's an honour to do the work. We have been doing this work since 1981, after the amazing work of Kaushee Harris, a Taku River Tlingit woman. She passed away, tragically, before our new building was built in 1991.
We moved into our new building in 1991. It's called Kaushee's Place, for obvious reasons, and has about 18 beds and five apartments. We built a new building, with 10 apartments and offices, and moved into it in 2013. It has been named Betty's Haven, after the incredibly honourable work of Betty Sjodin.
Yukon has some of the highest rates of violence in all of Canada, especially for our indigenous women. Poverty, with the lack of affordable housing, is a huge issue for women's safety. INAC contributes to the homelessness of indigenous women because their cheques are always.... I know that a lot of efforts have been made, but we're still getting cheques that are really late. We can float women with that, but not every landlord can. We know landlords who will not rent to indigenous women because they can't afford to. I would urge the government to do more work to ensure that women's rent cheques are not late, because it does contribute to homelessness.
There are many times when our shelter is running over its capacity, and many times when our second-stage apartments have wait-lists. We have a total of three women's shelters that serve all of the Yukon and northern British Columbia. We also get women from the other territories who are coming in to get services, and we get the odd woman who is being abused and is coming up the Alaska Highway from the U.S. There is a huge range that we are serving.
Upon intake, indigenous women are asked to give their band number. This is a huge problem because it completely identifies a woman. All other people get total confidentiality at the transition home, but indigenous women do not. I've been fighting this issue since 2000 because I think it's wrong. We have to find another way to bill without it being on the backs of our indigenous women.
This fiscal year, we submitted a budget to the Yukon government that had a $400,000 deficit, so our Christmas present this year is probably going to be closing or threatening to. Our funding has been flatlined since 2011. The Yukon government will only sign a one-year agreement. Being in a unionized environment in our shop—one of the other shelters is also—it is impossible to go into bargaining with our staff in good faith not knowing what our funding is from one year to another.
The Yukon government has also imposed a heavy new financial reporting. I am all for fiscal responsibility, but to add more pressure and more required administration and capacity around finances in the way that they have is going to cripple a lot of organizations. As it is right now, we're really behind because of the new changes. My finance manager will have to go full time, and she's part time now. I don't know how I will do that, because we have a huge deficit. The financial reporting takes much longer and is causing a lot of strain for all of us.
For our building that houses the emergency shelter, we do all the maintenance. We mow the lawns; we do it all. The funding for the emergency building is through an old CMHC agreement and it's housed now through Yukon Housing Corporation. Again, I'm all for accountability, but the audits up here are costing us between $12,000 and $17,000 a year. Because of the lack of accountants here, we actually have to work with one down near Vancouver at this point. In three years, I could have redone my roof. We've been solid since 1991. We have always been in good standing. I think the money that goes to those accountants could be better used in maintaining our shelters.
We would like to call on the federal government to ensure that when territorial governments come and go, they do not continue to undermine the services that keep women and children alive and safe. Not one of our indigenous women's groups in Yukon has base funding. This is a huge issue for us because so many of us have been in this field for so long that the committee on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls asked us for recommendations. When I looked around the room, I was appalled because all the white people were paid to be there to give their recommendations, and all the indigenous women were volunteering. That's wrong.
Safe rides save lives, and with no bus now coming up the highway it is a huge issue. The women's shelters need some funding so that we can get transportation for our most vulnerable people.
In closing I want to thank you all for the opportunity, and I'm sorry for being so nervous. Thank you.