First, when you are disabled, if you are in a work site where you book transportation and you don't have a lot of money and you've been sexually harassed, how do you leave the workplace if your transportation isn't due for another two hours?
In terms of getting a job and keeping a job, the choice is ending the employment or continuing to face the harassment for the economic benefit. So that's certainly where violence against women definitely comes into play.
Education and training is so important as well. Again, I mentioned a quadriplegic lady who's taking English at a community college. She wants to try to get social work. She goes down to the disability resource centre, and they do not have the software program that allows her to write her exam. So that is a barrier right there.
Wages are certainly a factor because many things are not provided for economically. So without the economic provision of disability supports for aids, medication, or if you need a speaking program to go on your computer...all those things are barriers. So provision of those things and the absence of wages would also go a long way. But we really need the wages. They're not keeping pace with the cost of living.
The clawbacks that were mentioned are very important as well. Unpaid work certainly is something that needs to be recorded. Even in our own organization--I am involved with a mental health organization in Alberta--we exceeded the value of our grant just on the volunteer labour, but the really sad thing is, the volunteer labour is valued at Stats Canada for that particular industry at about $25 an hour, and we can only pay our executive director $15. Happily, that's not the case with DAWN Canada. We're able to do much better there, and we thank you for that, but that is the reality in other areas of the country.