Thank you so much. I appreciate being able to join you by phone, although I certainly would rather be in the room.
Women’s Centres Connect is the provincial association of women's centres. There are nine centres in Nova Scotia. They provide a multitude of services on a range of issues. We work on anything from poverty to employability to sexualized violence.
The centres have been around for in excess of 30 years, and we have developed very close ties to our communities. Through our experience, we have a pretty good understanding of what women and girls in our communities need to achieve financial security. Our recommendations follow.
Certainly, in all cases of research, we need to apply a rural lens where appropriate, and in Nova Scotia that is most of the province. In addition to the rural lens, of course, there need to be a gender lens and an intersectional lens that considers all the diversities, whether it's immigrants, refugees, racialized people, or people living with disabilities, etc.
As far as housing goes, we would say that there needs to be a mix of affordable housing models: community-based social housing, public housing, housing co-ops, rent supplements, affordable home ownership, and, to a lesser extent, subsidized rental housing in the private market.
We would suggest that funding needs to be available to enable community-based organizations to develop non-profit affordable housing. The reason we say this is that many of these organizations work not from an official housing-first framework, but certainly from the perspective that supports need to be available to people to enable them to maintain their housing stability.
We would also suggest that funding for green housing would benefit both the tenants and the planet. We also need research into housing markets and needs, especially in rural areas and small towns, as well as in our urban centres.
We would like to suggest that you restore resource group funding, as it was known 30 years ago, so that non-profit affordable housing developers can maintain consistent leadership and expertise in their communities and steer the development of affordable housing projects.
We also need sufficient capital grants for affordable housing to be truly affordable.
Let's move on to education, training, and employment.
Women, whether they are rural women, racialized women, indigenous women, or immigrants, are more likely to live in poverty than men. Two main factors here are motherhood and caregiving duties and a lack of education or training. In addition, women face a wide range of other barriers to economic security. Certainly practical supports, such as transportation and child care, are essential and are sadly lacking in those rural communities.
The other thing is that many women, particularly in rural Nova Scotia, have histories of violence, sexual abuse, and trauma. This compounds the barriers to financial security and requires a range of supports, whether they are for mental health, practical assistance, health care, counselling, or financial literacy. Programs really have to be comprehensive and address the full range of needs of people.
Also, in rural areas, access to higher education is very difficult. It must be strengthened, and the cost of tuition must be reduced. Nova Scotia's tuition fees are among the highest in Canada. Our students graduate with a high debt load and, due to a poorer job market, they have to leave Nova Scotia. We are training students to go away and help the economies of the other provinces. We would like to keep some of them here.
The other thing we've noticed in some of our communities is that ESL needs to be available for women immigrants, particularly because they're given secondary consideration with respect to their earning power, and it's not as easy to access the ESL courses.
In terms of government-administered savings and entitlement programs, certainly we agree that the CPP needs to be strengthened, the Canada child tax benefit needs to be indexed, and we would suggest that the social transfers need to be raised to a significant and effective amount. As well, as an earlier presenter said, there need to be some accountability and standards along with those social transfers.
We would urge the committee to add a number of topics to this category.
The first is federal leadership for a $15 minimum wage, and I would also echo the comments of Mr. Hughes: we think a livable income is really the ideal for employment, and we'd like to see some leadership in that area. We would like to see a universal child care program, a universal pharmacare program, and a fully indexed guaranteed liveable income tied to the market basket measure.
In terms of neighbourhoods, somebody has also suggested that addressing poverty should involve all three levels of government. The centre's staff really works very closely with the municipalities, and we would urge some leadership in that area.