What I'd like to do is start with the conclusion to make sure I get it in. That's what we would like to see.
I'm here on behalf of the Antigonish Women's Resource Centre, which is a small community-based organization in rural Nova Scotia. I'm speaking as well for other women's centres in Nova Scotia that work with rural women.
We would like to see the government reinstate advancing women's equality as a primary goal of Status of Women Canada. We would like to see you reinstate social advocacy research and capacity-building into the terms and conditions of the women's program; maintain the 16 regional program officers and program offices; implement the recommendations made by the parliamentary committee on the Status of Women Canada in its third report to the 39th Parliament, which includes an increase of 25% to the budget of Status of Women Canada; and mandate Status of Women Canada to permit funding of equality-seeking, unregistered, non-profit women's organizations.
My particular interest in being here today is to deepen the analysis of the impact of the cuts on women living in rural communities and on the equality-seeking women's organizations that work with them.
On a daily basis we work with women who live in deep and persistent poverty, poverty that is often generational and racialized. We work with women and adolescent girls who experience violence and abuse, and we work with women and adolescent girls who live in very rural communities and who are trying as hard as they can to put their lives together, to establish economic independence in a region where there are few opportunities for employment, to provide and care for children and family members with limited access to child care and support services, and to further their education and seek training opportunities where there is no public transportation system.
On top of this, as best they can, they are holding their communities together by performing many hours of unpaid community labour along with their household labour.
In our part of Canada, we are living with the devastating and ongoing impact of the closure of our fisheries and the demise of our primary industries. While out-migration has been a way of life in many parts of Nova Scotia for decades, the increased numbers of people leaving for other parts of the country has increased the dismantling of our rural infrastructure. Our small communities have lost public services, schools, hospitals, post offices, grocery stores, and banks. Our roads are deteriorating. Out-migration has taken the heart out of our communities and has left us with an aging population that is less educated and has poorer physical and mental health outcomes, shorter life expectancies, and a higher risk of living in poverty.
As I noted earlier, it is women who are trying to hold their communities together. Their task is daunting, and it is exacerbated by the creation, by necessity, of new family structures that see men in the family leaving for months at a time to earn income elsewhere. Many times the men set up lives elsewhere and do not return to their wives or to their families or to their communities.
What does this have to do with Status of Women Canada? It's not news to you that poverty is gendered. However, for rural women the challenge of moving themselves and their families out of poverty is more difficult and is complicated by both federal as well as provincial policies and programs that not only create and maintain poverty, but also privilege urban centres and urban approaches.
In Nova Scotia, funding for the women's program has enabled women in rural communities to come together to talk about and to document their experiences, to organize, and to advocate for change at the community, provincial, and federal levels.
Rural women's organizations work with a broad diversity of women; have developed a valuable expertise on and unique insight into women's social, economic, and justice issues; provide community and region-specific information about women's situations and needs; and amplify the voices of vulnerable and marginalized women to the public and the policy decision-makers. Without social advocacy, the voices of the most vulnerable women go unheard.
We need to maintain our regional offices because program officers working out of the smaller regions are better able to reflect the uniqueness of the different areas of their region.
This is particularly important for rural women as there are significant differences in the issues that women face in rural, coastal, agricultural, northern regions, in primary- or single-resource-based communities, and certainly urban centres.