Thank you.
The Community Coalition to End Poverty in Nova Scotia was officially formed in 2007 with the goal of a collaborative, comprehensive, and effective poverty reduction strategy for Nova Scotia that would loosen the undeniable grasp that poverty has on the livelihood of all Nova Scotians by providing immediate, intermediate, and long-term sustainable change. The coalition includes non-government organizations and individual advocates working to end poverty and create equality. On October 17, 2007, on the international day for the eradication of poverty, CCEP Nova Scotia—as we are now known—launched the framework for a poverty reduction strategy for Nova Scotia.
We anticipate that throughout your travels and work studying poverty, this will be thematic. You will hear about the widening gap between the rich and the poor, the choice between heat and eat, and the challenges in our rural areas versus the challenges in our urban cores. You will hear about malnourishment, slumlords, addictions, child apprehensions, lost jobs, the lack of affordable housing, and the mother who cannot go to work because she has no child care. You will hear about poverty.
The federal government should not rest contently in looking for ways to contribute to the elimination of poverty. Rather, we must all accept that the federal government is a critical cornerstore in the collaborative elimination of poverty. It is time for the provincial and federal governments to stop sloshing the duty of responsibility onto the other when both have an equally crucial role to play.
Current income assistance rates in Nova Scotia hold individuals and their families well below the poverty line. Income assistance rates in Canada are abhorrent. Nova Scotians are struggling with utility bills. They are struggling to provide the nutrition they know their children require. They are struggling to keep their homes warm enough to be livable. They are struggling with their health as poverty creates emotional, psychological, and physical stressors. Tens of thousands of Nova Scotians are struggling for basic survival today, in Canada, in 2009. We all know there are many in this province who are more vulnerable to poverty due to factors such as gender, age, race, skin colour, ability, sexual orientation, criminalization, socio-economic class, and geographic location within the province, as well as status as a migrant indigenous person or refugee. The factors that pull more women than men into poverty are rooted in gender bias and discrimination against women. This is illustrated through the reliance on income assistance, child and family responsibilities, and the earning gap amongst women, to name but a few.
For single mothers, their primary responsibility of raising a family presents significant challenges to furthering their education and to securing meaningful employment. We must continue to remind ourselves that poverty is policy-created, created by an era of poor-bashing, disempowerment, and discrimination. People who live in poverty feel as if they themselves are being blamed by society for their poverty. They are being judged as lazy, immoral, and incompetent and are consistent targets of suspicion of fraudulent and criminal activity. People believe that going out and getting a job is the solution to their problems, that this is easy to do, and that those who do not do this are simply lacking the energy and motivation.
Policies such as strict welfare-to-work mandates and invasive monitoring both reinforce and are reinforced by such perceptions. It is a sad state of affairs in our province when our job as advocates of relaying the causes and consequences of poverty becomes easier because those who never dreamed they would be faced with these insurmountable challenges soon will be.
Honourable members, it would be impossible for a group such as CCEP to ignore the elephant in our room today. For a group that was founded with the intent of creating a poverty reduction strategy for the province, it may appear our work here is done. After years of lobbying, holding marches, going to ministerial meetings, hosting community workshops, and then waiting for nine months of no follow-up from the government to community about the status of the poverty reduction strategy, mere weeks before an anticipated election call the provincial government has told us that now we have a poverty reduction strategy.
Now we, as advocates, are trying to determine where the federal funds are coming from, which money is old and which money is new. There are a few targets in this strategy but no benchmarks. We are trying to determine what the role of the Canadian government will be in all of this. Will it be on board? To be honest with you, criticizing something that we have lobbied for, for so long is not easy. It's as if you asked someone for a piece of cake and they passed you a bowl of flour. It's a start, but you do not have the other ingredients, you don't know when and if they are coming, and you don't want to give the flour back because who knows if you will get it next time and if and when that next time will be.
Honourable members, here are the recommendations from CCEP, who work with and represent people living in poverty. This is what we need from you. We would also like you to review our recommendations in more detail from the framework that was provided to the clerk.
We want the provision of universal access and better funding and coordination of policies, programs, and services.
We would like you to create, foster, and sustain social policies and programs to enable families and individuals to meet their basic needs and empower them to participate fully in society.
We would like to entitle all residents to a livable income, decent working conditions, and employment benefits.
End the broken promise that is child poverty. Establish a comprehensive, accessible, coordinated early childhood development strategy.
Help us to become a better educated population. Help us, the advocates, the front-line organizations who are working on the front lines of poverty and the community, to communicate the true causes and consequences of poverty.
And just to follow up, it was very challenging to do this presentation, a five-minute brief for you today, simply for the reason that we know you've heard it all before. We know you've heard all the stories. We know that in your jobs as members you understand what is really going on. Unfortunately, these stories and these realities don't seem enough for action from provincial or federal governments, and we would like you to act.
Thank you very much for your time.