I thank you for the opportunity to address you today. I hope to share with you some of the sights, sounds, sensations, and tastes of the Yukon.
It's a beautiful place, but as a women's advocate at Victoria Faulkner Women's Centre, I do not experience the beauty you see on a travel brochure. I see beautiful young women believing, in their youthful way, that they're invulnerable, the excitement of the possibility of their lives overflowing into laughter. In a few years, when other young women are fulfilling the promise of their youth and coming fully into the blossoming of that possibility, I see these young women who are now old in body and spirit.
They are many years younger than I am, but their skin has now aged, their teeth are falling out, their bodies are bent and spent, and their spirits are suffering. These aged young women tell the tale of abuse, substance use, and poverty. They are a stark reminder that we need gender-informed solutions to poverty.
There are gender differences in alcohol and drug use, from pathway to use to effects of use.
In terms of pathway to use, violence against women is a major factor. Girls who are physically or sexually abused by dating partners are more likely to be at risk for substance use. They have a 2.5 times greater likelihood of heavy smoking. They have a 1.7 times greater likelihood of binge drinking. They have a 3.4 times greater likelihood of cocaine use, a 5.7 times greater likelihood of considering suicide, and they attempt suicide within a year of the abuse at 8.6 times the rate of the rest of the population. Alcohol and other substance use problems have been found to be up to 15 times higher among women who are survivors of partner violence than in the general population, and as many as 80% of women entering treatment for substance use problems have histories of abuse or assault.
Just as there are gender differences in pathways to use, there are gender differences in the effects of drugs and alcohol. Basically, women get sicker quicker.
It is not enough to treat the addiction; the causes for the addiction need to be addressed. Poverty action needs to take into account that addiction can be a way of adapting to desperately difficult circumstances. People cannot be cured of adaptive strategies unless better alternatives are available to them.
I live on the route the ambulance takes to the hospital, and each time I hear its siren, I wonder if it is one of my clients. Is it the young woman who had no place to sleep and ended up back with an abusive man? Has she been beaten so badly that the ambulance was called? Is it someone I saw this afternoon looking for some food from the outreach van, too unsteady to hold the hot drink, its contents spilled down the front of an already soiled pair of pants? The woman who wasn't heard when she asked for help today, maybe the relatively inexpensive help of a clean bed, will now receive the expensive response of an ambulance and then the intensive care unit at the hospital. Not treating poverty is expensive, both financially and in human terms.
I smell the stink of some of the places where Whitehorse residents pay high rents to have a room, living with the smell of vomit, pee, and mould. It contrasts with the smells I think are natural to the Yukon: sage underfoot, wild roses blooming in summer.
We need national policies that make affordable, safe housing available to all. We need social policies and supports in place to enable the people who live in this housing to move forward in their lives, to be healthy, and to live lifespans that are the Canadian average.
Some days I feel cold seeping through no matter how many layers I'm wearing. I'm grateful to have a warm place to work and live. I think of the young person shivering on the street, telling me she still had hours to go before she could get into the room she rented. Staying with a personal acquaintance has been her only recourse; it is financially lucrative for the acquaintance, but exploitive of this young woman, who is not allowed to have a key and has to wait for the owner to return, maybe after work, maybe much later. She would keep checking back, hoping to be able to get inside. She has no phone, no warmth, and no shelter. She is a homeless person despite having a place to sleep at night.
As is the case with one per cent of people born in Canada, some of these people have fetal alcohol syndrome disorder. They are vulnerable to sexual abuse, physical abuse, and manipulation and exploitation by people who have greater mental ability than they have. Girls and women are particularly vulnerable.
Some of the women feeling the bite of the Yukon cold are HIV positive. Harm reduction is an important tool to address the poverty and health implications of substance use, especially for women. HIV rates are higher for female injection drug users because they're often second on the needle.
I taste the delicious hot meal the community kitchen serves to women for whom that may be the safest and sweetest meal of the week. They ask for a loaf of bread or some extra fruit to stuff in their pockets. They could get a meal at the Salvation Army, but that may not be safe. This is true for many of the women who come to Victoria Faulkner.
It is true for the woman too tired to be embarrassed about the bruises on her face. She knows many of the women at the centre have seen this, and worse, before. The food tastes good. She declines more solid food. It would hurt to chew it. Her teeth are not so good for chewing.
What I see, hear, smell, feel, and taste tells me viscerally that the Yukon needs gender-specific responses to poverty. Addressing poverty means addressing the issue of violence against women. Addressing poverty means addressing the different pathways to use and the different consequences of drug and alcohol use. Addressing poverty means providing safe, affordable housing for single women, mothers, and old women.
Addressing poverty means providing gender-responsive programs that would consider the needs of women in all aspects of design and delivery, including location, staffing, program development, program content, and program materials.
Addressing poverty in a gender-sensitive way means providing gender-informed services. These services would take into account our knowledge of the impact of trauma, understanding that many problem behaviours originate to cope with abusive experiences and recognizing the impact of violence and victimization on development and coping strategies. They would employ an empowerment model and strive to maximize a woman's choices and control. They would be based in relational collaboration and would create an atmosphere that is respectful of women's need for safety, respect, and acceptance. They would minimize the possibility of re-traumatization. And they would be culturally competent and would view each woman in the context of her life experiences and cultural background.
Thank you. May we see, hear, smell, feel, and taste the changes that reducing poverty in Canada would mean in women's lives.