Thank you.
Welcome to Yellowknife. I'm really pleased to be here today.
The YWCA has been in Yellowknife for over 40 years, providing various services to families that are experiencing homelessness. Basically, we take care of and provide services for the poor in the community.
I've been involved with the Y for the past 12 years, and I just want to share some of the experiences of the families that we see here in the north. I don't have any recommendations to give you, but I want to put a face to the poor people in this community, and especially in the north.
In my 15 years of being here—I came to Canada as an immigrant, and I'm trying to share my story so you can know the perception I'm coming from. I came to Canada as an immigrant, found my way up here in Yellowknife, and ended up working with the aboriginal women at the Native Women's Association. I've been working with women for 15 years, since I've been here in the north.
My perception of Canada, coming from Ghana, in West Africa, was of a land of plenty, a land of opportunity, a land where you can do and become whoever you want to become if you put work to it. Very inspiring. We bundled up and we came. And it has been good to me. Canada is a good country. But coming up here and seeing the aboriginal people who live here and the opportunities that I, as an immigrant, was able to get here but that were not provided to them, that broke my heart. The way they live in the community in Yellowknife breaks my heart.
There is no rhyme or reason why any person in the north should be living in sub-third world country standards. We live in a place that is minus 40 degrees, where the wind chill can go to minus 60, and people are sleeping outside because there's no housing. Freezing to death in Canada, which is a first world country, is not acceptable. We see the faces of women and children weeping, crying, because there is no food on the table to eat. That is not our Canada. That is not the Canada we dreamed of. We see fathers and mothers and children all in despair because there's nowhere to go, no dreams that they can aspire to that will be meaningful to their families. The sense of hopelessness, the sense of urgency, you know, in their everyday living, of hoping to grasp onto something that they can do just to have a living is incredible.
The YWCA provides several programs. We provide shelter for a woman fleeing from abuse, we provide emergency and transitional housing for families experiencing homelessness, we provide housing for people with disabilities. We also provide the after-school program in all the schools in Yellowknife to help families and children.
Every family that has come through the Y has really great needs. Housing, food, the basic needs that should be provided to these families are not met.
Yellowknife attracts most of the people from the communities. When you go to the communities, when you look at the housing situation there, it's really deplorable. You can find 15 people, 12 people, both adults and children, all living in their one or two bedrooms. And I'm not talking really, really nice houses, but houses with no insulation, housing that is dilapidated. People are sleeping in shifts in the north. This is not Canada.
If they have a medical situation and they're coming to Yellowknife, they get here and most of them see some of the programs they can get here. They can be close to schools; that will provide their kids with good schools. They have recreational centres that they can access for their kids. They can get to counselling. So they decide to move here with their children.
For example, a family or a mom comes in from a community to do something medical here for the first time. She sees the amenities here and thinks she can bring her children; they could get good schools, they have all sorts of things they can do. So they move here to Yellowknife. When they move to Yellowknife they bring their children. The first thing they face is money for food, because once you get here and you decide to stay here, you are basically on your own. So you have to find housing, and there is none. The landlords will not rent to people who are on income support because the system does not provide rent early enough to make it worthwhile for them, so they don't.
Then they don't have any place to go. Sometimes they sleep with friends, and you can find them sleeping on friends' couches with children in other places. Then they have to take the child to school. How do they get there? It's minus 40, and they have to work. Sometimes in the houses they are in they can't even sleep because there is a lot of addictions going on there. So if they can't sleep, how can they work?
The needs of the north are many. Unfortunately, a majority of the people who we see are aboriginal people.
When they come into transitional housing, which is the program I run, we try to stabilize the family so we provide a roof over their head. We have 39 apartment units in which we house families experiencing homelessness. Those units we furnish through the community. So the community of Yellowknife gives us donations all year round so that we can furnish those units for family use. So basically a family can come to this program, get a place to stay; they can just come with whatever clothes they have on, have a place to stay, shelter, furniture. We provide some food before their assistance on income support kicks in, because there is a process that takes about a week or a week and a half to get into it. So we provide them with something to tide them over until their money gets in. We help them so they can get their children to school.
We provide support services. If they have any addictions, we help them and refer them. We have programs like that in Yellowknife, mine being one of them, and the Centre for Northern Families is another. There's also the Salvation Army. And there's the SideDoor, which takes care of youth, but they don't have any shelter for them.
These are the four programs that we provide here in Yellowknife for families experiencing homelessness. All of these programs are running in the negative. We are not being funded appropriately to help families. The human misery that we see up here is not warranted, not in a first world country. We see houses being built, roads being paved, all sorts of economic development stuff, and human beings sleeping on the street because they don't have anywhere to go. We need to do something, and it's urgent, especially in Yellowknife. It's not getting any better. I've been here for 15 years and it's actually getting worse.
The services that are being provided to the poor people are not adequate. We want to help poor people so that they can integrate into society and become somebody and contribute within the society, and yet the support services and the programs that are provided for them don't help their situation. It doesn't. Somebody on income support with three children, a mother with three children on income support, is basically as good as dead, because the money that is provided to help her to feed her children doesn't even last for two weeks here in the north. She has to find other means to get food on the table.
Housing that she can get into, which is public housing, works on points. If, for example, she's staying with somebody, it's not good enough. She basically has to be out on the land, at the park, camping in minus 40 degrees, for her to qualify to be on top of the list so she can have a place to stay. This is not good.
I don't know what else I can say, but I think my time is already done. There is more that I can say, but I'm glad you are here today listening to this. I am hoping you put a sense of urgency on this and do something for the poor in Canada, and especially in Canada's north.
Thank you very much.