Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting us.
We sent you our brief, but it is being translated. It will not be available to committee members until tomorrow.
Our federation has been in existence for more than 30 years. Over the years, we have worked in particular to ensure the greater welfare of single parent and blended families. The federation's major issues are obviously the fight against poverty, the automatic collection of child support, family allowances and all issues concerning studies for the heads of single-parent families.
Today, we do not claim to be providing a representative picture of all Canadian single-parent families, since the federation is more concerned with the Quebec context. We work much more with Quebec's policies. However, we will try to make connections with federal social policies.
The major points we particularly want to discuss with committee members are the following five aspects: welfare, family support measures and the minimum wage, access to studies, social housing and work-education-family balance measures. All these issues are of more particular concern for women who are the heads of single-parent families.
According to the figures of the National Council of Welfare, the NCW, the poverty rate of single-parent families headed by the mother—since the majority of heads of single-parent families are women still today—is still, on average, between five and six times higher than the poverty rate among couples with or without children.
According to Statistics Canada, in 2001, the poverty rate among single mothers under 65 years of age was 42.4%, compared to 19.3% for single fathers, 9.5% for couples with children and 8.1% for couples without children.
In 2001, there were 1,260,000 families in Quebec. Of that number, 27% were single-parent families, the vast majority of which, 80%, were headed by a woman. In 2003, the rate of low before-tax income for two-parent families was 9.5%, whereas it was 40.9% for single-parent families and nearly 50% for single-parent families headed by a woman.
Inadequate social assistance benefits are one significant component affecting single-parent families. In August 2006, nearly 50,000 single-parent families in Quebec relied on welfare benefits in order to live.
Again according to an NCW report published in the summer of 2006, the estimated annual social assistance income for 2005 for a single-parent family with one child, including supplementary benefits and federal and provincial credits, varied between $13,000 in Alberta, which is theoretically the richest Canadian province, and $23,000 in the Northwest Territories. In this area, Quebec ranked slightly below the national average, with income of nearly $16,000.
These distinctly insufficient amounts are far from enabling these families to meet their essential needs. In addition, in Quebec, child support continues to be deducted from welfare benefits, except for the first $100 per month, even though those amounts have been tax-free since 1997. Some of you are perhaps familiar with the Suzanne Thibaudeau affair, which occurred in 1997. As a result of that decision, child support, across Canada, is no longer recognized as income, whereas it is for the purposes of welfare and social programs.
Various rate increases have also affected individual incomes in recent years: hydro costs, which have risen 11%, child care costs, 40%; public transit costs, 18%; and gasoline, 35%. During that time, welfare benefits were only indexed by half in January 2007, after a number of years of non-indexation.