Thank you.
You mentioned that there was a very high poverty rate among persons with disabilities, and that this has been increasing in every province across Canada. Access to the workforce is still limited for these people, particularly women. It's acknowledged that women have the highest unemployment rate, or rather that they have the least access to the labour market. Moreover, disabled women have the lowest income in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada. It's an alarming situation.
That's the way it was when Maria Barile was with us and it's still the case today, unfortunately. Things haven't changed. What we saw and experienced during the pandemic showed this clearly. The people who were more or less abandoned were those with disabilities, particularly women, who had to become caregivers. Maria was also a caregiver. She took care of her mother her entire life and this was never acknowledged. The vast majority of disabled women are single mothers. They are heads of families and don't even have equitable access to the labour market. There is a great deal of poverty, and some lost their jobs during the pandemic. We can see the inequalities and inequities even more clearly in a crisis like the one we have been experiencing since 2020.
The labour market is closed. There's a great deal of discrimination based on disabilities, and also gender and ethnocultural origin. There's no point in trying to hide it. All these forms of discrimination intersect, making it more difficult for someone with a disability to live in dignity, and even more so for a woman. The rate is therefore still very high, even today. Women are the lowest paid and poorest workers in Canadian society, particularly in Quebec. We face all kinds of problems.
Disabled women are the best educated among those with disabilities. Their graduation rate is very high, but it would be difficult to find anyone who could tell you that she is working in the field she studied for. Each will end up trying to find any job that will pay the bills. They often turn to self-employment and entrepreneurship, even though they are afraid of doing that.
Maria had also firmly encouraged women's entrepreneurship, because these women do not have much access to the regular labour market. It's therefore important to create employment opportunities, and there is often no help available for them. Many women, as I did, end up becoming self-employed to meet their needs, as mothers and support workers.
Poverty has not changed for women. The rates are always more alarming for them than for the rest of the population. There is work to be done. I don't think the legislation acts directly enough. At one point, we were in agreement on quotas and said that it was important to comply with them, but perhaps stricter policies are required for businesses to hire them, because they have a lot to offer. People are afraid of a disabled person. They will always say that perhaps…