I had an emergency incident at that time, so I couldn't come.
Thank you very much for giving me a chance to talk in this standing committee.
My name is Sultana Jahangir. I'm an immigrant working woman. I work with immigrant women as a community organizer in my position as executive director of the South Asian Women's Rights Organization. Today I'm speaking to you as the leader of a delegation of poor immigrant women from Crescent Town, a neighbourhood in East York.
I am here to call Parliament to account for the lack of progress on child care and child care subsidies, a matter of fundamental human rights. Our community is one of the poorest in the city. The lack of day care is the key cause of this poverty. Thousands of women in our neighbourhood are entitled to day care subsidies, but there is no funding for this entitlement. There are long waiting lists. This is the same right across the city, and it is especially bad in all recent immigrant neighbourhoods. No subsidies equals no child care, and it causes poverty.
We are here to demand that the federal government and governments at all levels do their duty to affirm the rights and dignity of the women of our community and all women living in Canada. Women have the right to participate fully in society--in education, in the workplace, and in social and political life. Without affordable, accessible, and culturally sensitive child care, the rights of mothers of young children are denied. This is unacceptable.
Together with its NATO partners, Canada is spending billions of dollars on a war on terror against people of the former colonial countries--in Afghanistan and elsewhere--under the banner of democracy and women's rights. What about democracy and women's rights in Canada? Canada wants to be judged by the status of the world's women: how many CEOs are women, and how many MPs are women? Canada should be judged by whether it affirms the right of the most vulnerable women: immigrants, other poor working people, first nations women, young women—especially single mothers--and the handicapped. The rights of vulnerable women are denied. Canada does not affirm the rights of all. Canada's democracy is only for the rich and powerful.
Women in these vulnerable groups are excluded from full participation in society. We are marginalized in civic life, and we are economically impoverished. We are given the choice to work at Tim Hortons or to stay home. This is unacceptable. We immigrant women will not accept being pushed to the margins of society. We will not accept being left behind. We demand that the government stop marginalizing immigrant women and do its duty to affirm our rights. We demand full participation in society according to our abilities. We demand full funding of day care subsidy entitlements. We demand a national child care policy program now.
I'm touching a little bit on politics and child care. Child care has become a political football game that all the parties in this House of Commons have been playing. For 13 years, under Chrétien and Martin, the Liberals talked about the national child care policy at election time, followed by excuses about deficit fighting, and did nothing. In 2005, the NDP helped Stephen Harper defeat a national child care policy for its own partisan election and political ends. Harper reintroduced the baby bonus, which has benefited affluent Canadians the most, and calls it a national child care policy. Shame. Shame on the Parliament of Canada. Shame on Canadian democracy.
We immigrant women and families are kept in poverty while these political games are played year after year, election after election. Once again, with an election coming, the politicians are coming into our immigrant communities peddling their influence, peddling promises about day care and other issues, and attempting to divide our community along political party lines. This politicking is not acceptable. In Crescent Town, we are rejecting party politics and taking matters in our own hands.
Working women, especially trade union women, have made important gains by taking matters into their own hands, but immigrants and many other vulnerable women have been left behind. For us, this is a matter of survival, and that must be carried to the end. We are organizing our community around the fight for our rights. We will unite with other immigrant communities and other vulnerable women. We'll join all women who are demanding their rights and will help lead this fight to the end.
We did an investigation in our community through the last six months. We did 400 surveys about the assessment of women's feedback on child care. From our investigation, we found out that our neighbourhood is a portal for new immigrants, a port of entry, especially for Bengalis. Twenty-five per cent of the immigrants in Toronto who are from Bangladesh live in our neighbourhood. With their 50% poverty rate, Bengali immigrant women are one of the poorest demographic groups in the city.
Based on family income, almost all the families are entitled to either full or partial subsidy according to the city guidelines. Almost all women consider lack of child care to be a key barrier for their successful settlement in Canada. Only about a quarter of families receive subsidies. Half of the women are involuntarily unemployed. Almost all employed women are overqualified for their jobs. Seventy-five per cent of women are university and college graduates, with half of this group having post-graduate degrees. Many immigrant women have their three-year entitlement to settlement services run out because of lack of child care.
As well, severe social isolation is an outcome of lack of child care for immigrant women. Many women blame Canada's move to the economic class from the resident family class in immigration policy as the root cause of this isolation for immigrant women. Many women are isolated and homebound, without knowledge about their child care and other entitlements.
Many women feel that the government is responsible for using immigrants to solve a Canadian demographic crisis, that of an aging workforce, without putting child care infrastructure in place for hundreds of thousands of newcomer families. Many women feel that Harper's baby bonus and other policies show that it is acceptable to the government for immigrant women to be baby machines to solve Canada's demographic problem.
I just want to say that when the NDP and the Tory coalition killed debate on implementing NCP, a national child care policy, a long time before, the Tories started to implement a baby bonus policy to push immigrant women to be baby machines. The reality is that this government will not step forward for any kinds of things to do for child care, but just in case, in the future when another government is coming in, we want the other one to plead for this child care issue very carefully and not to have the goal fail. We're not going to tolerate any kind of failure for child care in the future.
Thank you for giving me a chance to talk.