Evidence of meeting #55 for Status of Women in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was aboriginal.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Procedurally, I think you're out. You all agreed on 10 minutes. We're now finished with the discussion. We move. Which way does the committee wish to go?
Liberal
Bloc
Johanne Deschamps Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
I would like to make a comment, Madam Chair.
I don't really care if we refer to the previous government or to the current one. Last week, all parties were approached by women's groups, who reminded us of the report that was tabled in 2004.
I think this act should be effective as quickly as possible, if I can use the Quebec act as an example, since it works quite well. And Quebec is still part of Canada.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Thank you, Ms. Deschamps.
Discussion time is over, Madame.
A recorded vote--is that what you asked for, Ms. Minna?
Who asked for a recorded vote? Nobody did. Okay, fair enough.
You're calling for the question.
Mr. Van Kesteren, you're being asked whether you want to vote yes or no on the motion.
Conservative
Joy Smith Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Mr. Van Kesteren was wondering whether or not we can limit to 10 minutes a discussion like this. Is it legal to do that?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
The vote has been called. The committee agreed. Now you can't backtrack on anything. So we're moving forward.
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
The motion is carried, and we will now move on to our witnesses, regarding the economic security of women. We have with us Diane Martz, appearing as an individual. We have Colleen Purdon, Rural Women Take Action on Poverty Committee, and Ellen Gabriel, who is the president of the Quebec Native Women's Association.
Welcome to you all. You each will have 10 minutes of presentation, after which the committee members will start asking questions, and then you will have a minute to wrap up.
The clock will go “beep”. Please pay attention, because we have time constraints.
Ms. Martz, could I ask you to start, please? Thank you.
Diane Martz As an Individual
I'd like to thank you for the invitation to speak to you today about rural women and economic security. I'm currently the research director with Prairie Women's Health Centre of Excellence and was formerly the director of the Centre for Rural Studies and Enrichment, associated with the University of Saskatchewan.
Although many aspects of economic insecurity may be similar in urban and rural places, there are a number of factors that make it different. These would be such things as cultural and spatial invisibility—that is, poverty in rural areas is not concentrated and is not necessarily admitted—isolation, economic structure and restructuring, rural attitudes and culture, and the withdrawal of health and social services from rural areas.
That economic security is a growing problem in rural Canada is brought home by a report by the Canadian Association of Food Banks in 2003, which pointed out the irony of increasing numbers of people living in Canada's food-producing regions, and even food producers themselves, needing to use food banks.
I'm basing my remarks today on recurring themes from a number of studies I participated in, on rural child care, intimate partner violence in rural regions, the work of farm women in farm families, the new rural economy, the role of the public sector in rural Saskatchewan, and the work of women in the agricultural and forestry processing sectors. I'll focus on four areas, including women's opportunity for work in rural areas, income, family care, and agriculture.
In the context of women's work opportunities, employment for women in rural Canada is a necessity in order to maintain the family, care for children, and in many cases supplement farm income. Women able to earn a substantive wage give themselves and their families the option and security to live in rural communities and achieve a good quality of life.
Job opportunities available for women in rural communities are limited, particularly jobs that pay a decent wage. Rural women perceive that they have few options. Most of the jobs open to them are service sector jobs that have been traditionally held by women, jobs such as being waitresses, child care providers, nurses' aides, teachers' aides, or in secretarial and clerical positions. Traditional women's jobs that offer better pay—professional jobs such as teachers, nurses, and government jobs—are being lost from rural areas as schools and hospitals close and government offices are relocated into urban areas.
Traditional ideas about suitable work for women persist in some rural areas. Although this is slowly changing, occupational segregation remains, with women overrepresented in low-paying clerical and service sector jobs.
In terms of income, average wages in rural and small town Canada have been consistently lower than average wages in urban areas for decades, and the proportion of persistently poor tends to be highest in rural and small town Canada. Average wages are lowest for rural women, of all the groups we look at, and higher proportions of low-income women remain low income over time. This is often, actually, linked to low pay, so there are an awful lot of working poor in rural Canada. In rural Canada, even with one or two household members working, the chances of being low-income are higher than in urban areas.
Women told us that the jobs open to them are low-paying and part-time. Minimum wage jobs do not provide an adequate income for women to survive and pay for the day-to-day needs without being reliant on someone else to help pay the bills. This has implications for both the economic and the overall security of women, as the lack of financial resources limits women's options in abusive relationships, and single women can't support a family.
Women with small children find that the income from a minimum wage job would all go to day care, so it's not worth it. As a result, women may postpone going back to work because they can't afford the child care bills when working at minimum wage employment. Those years not working have an economic impact in lost wages, lost opportunities for advancement, and lost pension contributions, hindering economic security later in life.
On the topic of child care, for decades rural women have been telling researchers and government representatives that good quality, flexible child care is a critical need in rural Canada. Strategies to meet the child care needs of families in rural Canada are essential and must be specifically targeted to the rural areas in order for the programs and the money to actually get to rural, out of urban, areas. Child care is a critical economic development issue for present and future generations, and it's a necessity for women who want to increase their education or earn a wage.
In one of the most economically vibrant rural regions in Saskatchewan, there was only one licensed day care centre and one licensed day care home, which provided child care spaces for fewer than 1 in 50 of the children aged zero to twelve. So there's obviously a critical need for child care options in this rural region.
What parents do now is meet their child care needs by multiple means. They go to family, friends, older siblings; they work tandem hours, so that one parent is at home while the other is at work.
Parents want licensed child care. There's an assurance of safety and quality there, and it offers the opportunity for subsidy, which is critical in low- wage areas such as you find in so many of our rural areas.
Innovation around child care. You have an awful lot of families who are dealing with shiftwork, farm families and so on, who need non-traditional types of day care. The lack of access to quality early childhood development and care has a number of additional implications for women and families. It reduces the availability of people for the labour force, exacerbating a well-recognized rural regional labour shortage. Women turn down education and advancement due to their child care needs, and women end up travelling to multiple communities every day to drop off their children in one place and then go to work in another.
The affordability of child care is a significant issue for parents. Some note that with a minimum wage job they cannot afford to pay for child care. Funding for child care based on small subsidies and vouchers will not result in the provision of licensed child care options in rural Canada, so program funding needs to receive priority as new licensed facilities that offer quality child care are needed desperately.
Elder care is another element of family care that rural women are increasingly engaging in. With the aging population in rural Canada and the out-migration of family members, the rural women who remain are increasingly called on to provide elder care. In our study of the work of farm families over the period 1982-2002, 43% of farm women were providing care to elderly or chronically ill family and friends. This is an increase from under 10% in 1982. As others have noted, this impacts women's economic security, as they may be forced to reduced their work hours. It influences their job choices, their job mobility, as well as their health. These changes have shifted health care costs from the health care system to the household, and they're most often borne by women.
In the context of farm women, although many continue to discount the significance of agriculture in rural Canada, it's still an important sector. In Canada, the family farm remains the dominant form of agricultural production, and 98% of Canadian farms are still family farms. On many of these farms there are multiple people working full-time and part-time jobs in agriculture, and many of them are never counted in official statistics. Nevertheless, the family farm is undergoing dramatic change. Farms are becoming larger and fewer, and the number of Canadians engaged in agriculture has declined. Farm family members are increasingly working off the farm, work relations are changing on the farm, and transfers to the next generation of farmers are being called into question. This structural transformation of agriculture has meant that in Canada, most remaining farms are marginal units incapable of fully employing and sustaining farm families.
Farm families who choose to remain on farms are responding in a variety of ways. However, while this adaptation provides continuity to the farm family, it's not without significant cost to family, farm, and community.
Agriculture is also more than an economic sector. Farms and farm families contribute economically and socially to many local rural communities and are responsible for controlling land use on vast areas of land. The family farm is an important part of the rural landscape and a critical part of the survival of many small towns in rural Canada. The changes in agriculture have had significant social and economic impacts on farm families in rural communities that extend well beyond the agricultural sector.
Statistics Canada, in 2001, reported that only 17.7% of the average Canadian farm family's net income came from the farm. Even with the largest farming category with net receipts over $250,000, they derived 39.5% of their net income from the farm operation.
Women play a significant role in the economic security of the family farm, just as the viability of the farm affects the economic security of women. That the role of women in agriculture is still unrecognized and unacknowledged speaks to the persistence of the predominant view that agricultural work is done by men.
Between 1982 and 2002, farm women expanded their work roles over a broad range of farm work, moving into non-traditional female roles as they responded to the increased opportunities offered by social change and the increased pressure on the family farm created by economic and political change. Even as they expand these roles, they continue to do most of the domestic work. Responding to both opportunities and pressures, farm women are increasingly working off the farm.
Economic pressures in agriculture and opportunities in the oil and gas sector have also created an interesting situation in the prairies of men leaving the farms after harvest to work in the oil patch, returning in the spring before seeding, leaving women, children, and elderly relatives to manage the ongoing activities of the farm operation in their absence. And farming is a year-round activity; it doesn't stop after harvest.
Finally, women are intimately involved in the economic aspects of farming; 81% of them maintain the books and paperwork for the farms. They're increasingly working on the farm, replacing hired labour, and working off the farm, bringing in money to support the family and at times the farm operation.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
You will have an opportunity during the Q and A.
Ms. Purdon, for 10 minutes.
Colleen Purdon Coordinator, Rural Women Take Action on Poverty Committee
Thank you for this opportunity to speak to the standing committee on behalf of the Rural Women Take Action on Poverty Committee.
We're a group of women from Grey, Bruce, Huron, and Perth in southwestern Ontario who came together in 2001 out of concern about the increasingly serious impact of poverty on rural women and their families.
From 2001 until the present, we have engaged diverse rural women and community service providers in a large-scale participatory action research project that focused specifically on the experience of women and poverty in rural communities and developed strategies to address rural poverty.
We began in 2001-02 with a series of community workshops with poor women. We asked them about the impact of poverty, why rural women are poor, what helps them, and what needs to change. The findings and recommendations from these workshops are outlined in the report Rural Women Speak About the Face of Poverty.
From 2004 until 2005, we organized a series of workshops with women to follow up on the key recommendation from the initial research: the need for a comprehensive source of information on poverty, advocacy, supports, and self-care for women who are poor and community agencies that deal with poor women.
Women who understand poverty from their own experiences created a handbook called How We Count. They said, when you're poor you don't count. This book was put together in 2005.
On June 6, we'll be launching the third phase of our work by having a women's gathering to address negative community attitudes towards poor rural women. We'll bring 80 women and advocates from the four counties together to look at strategies to change community attitudes. We plan to carry out community report cards on women's poverty, an art project to celebrate the value and the contributions women make, and to develop a kit to help women advocate and lobby for change in their own communities.
Our work is funded through grants from Status of Women Canada. We are very indebted to the staff at the Status of Women's London regional office for their ongoing support of our work. We regret that the office and staff expertise is no longer available to us and our communities.
I would now like to provide a short overview of the key issues that have been identified through the research and work with rural women.
First of all, there are the key issues from women involved in our study. The first one is that rural women said they're plunged into poverty when things happen that they have little control over: a sudden illness, an accident, a disability, an abusive partner, the loss of employment or their partner's loss of employment, a death of their partner, a separation, or a fire or accident.
Second, rural women are poor because there are no jobs, or no opportunities for women to use the good skills they have. Most of the women we worked with had excellent skills and education, but they could not find jobs. Higher-paying jobs are reserved for men in rural communities, and women are forced into low-paying work that leaves them in poverty.
Third, social assistance, government pensions, and minimum wage jobs do not cover basic needs for food, housing, heat, transportation, and health care in rural communities. Women and children can be left destitute or dependent on family or charitable supports to cover their basic needs.
Four, rural women cannot access services, supports, or employment. There's no public transportation, or women don't have a car, their vehicle is unsafe, or they don't even have the money for gas, insurance, or repairs.
Five, rural areas are underserved and services are fragmented. Women reported having difficulty accessing necessary employment, health, and education services. They're either not available or women don't have the information they need to access the services. They don't have a telephone or a computer or the Internet to access services because they can't afford them.
Six, rural women and their children are geographically and socially isolated. This contributes to depression and safety issues, particularly for abused women.
Seven, rural women and their children experience open discrimination in their communities. They are often publicly humiliated by service providers. They lose their privacy because of their poverty.
Eight, it's very difficult to access training and education in rural communities. Women reported that they can't access post-secondary education because it doesn't exist in the community or they can't afford it.
Nine, women said once they're poor, it's very difficult to get out of poverty and remain in their community.
Ten, women spend a great deal of time and effort trying to survive a complex and uncoordinated agency and community response to poverty. There is no agency that deals with poverty or helps women navigate services. Providers may not even be aware of other community supports or decide just to respond to their piece of the poverty problem.
Eleven, there's a lack of good, accessible, and affordable child care in rural communities.
Twelve, rural women's inequality and their dependency on men contribute to their poverty. Women are economically dependent on men and are left in poverty when their marriages end. Women are usually the caretakers for their children, and men who don't pay child support leave women and children in poverty. Women in our study said men leave women with children, debt, and poverty, and men abuse women and force them to leave their homes, their jobs, and their economic security in order to be safe.
Thirteen, rural women are much more likely to be at home with their children, and their strong traditional values support women staying at home, but there is no monetary value or supports later for women who make this choice.
Fourteen, rural women on farms are poor because farms suck up all of the money. Even with two jobs in the family, women reported that they are poor because the farm takes everything. Farmers are asset-rich but income-poor and often can't access supports because of their assets.
Fifteen, government policies and programs reflect the fact that--and this is a quote--“Men are the gender in power”. Funding for child care, housing, social assistance for women, and disabilities is not adequate and traps women in poverty.
Sixteen, there's an urban bias in government policy and an assumption that infrastructure exists where there isn't any in a rural community. We are underserviced and lack infrastructure, both social and physical.
Seventeen, there are many, many myths about living in a rural community--for example, it's cheaper to live there, you can grow your own food, and there's a lot of housing--all of which are not true.
Eighteen, federal government and provincial and municipal governments don't use a gender or a place analysis, so the needs and realities of rural women in the communities are not factored into government decision-making at any level, and many government programs simply don't benefit women at all.
Nineteen, women and children often need to leave their rural community for employment or training or opportunities, and the only way they can leave poverty is to leave their community. So we're exporting women and children from our rural communities.
So here are the key recommendations that I was asked to bring forward.
First, rural women need economic supports and programs that support them as parents and that recognize the legitimacy and value of parenting. Women should not suffer economic hardships because they're the primary caretakers of children in rural communities.
Second, rural women with children and disabled and senior women need a guaranteed income that covers their basic needs and makes up for the lack of infrastructure and services in rural communities.
Third, all levels of government must use a gender and geographic or place analysis in the development of their policies and services, and we feel there's a critical role for the federal government in this.
Fourth, concrete action is needed to improve the economic security of women in rural communities now, so they're not dependent on men and male wage earners. Some examples are pay equity, a living wage, programs to support the work/family balance, support for women entrepreneurs, training programs that build on a woman's skills instead of forcing her to retrain, economic supports for abused women when they leave an abuser, and better access to education and training.
Fifth, we ask governments not to use a population-based approach to funding and services but really to look at the real costs of providing equal levels of service for communities in rural areas.
Sixth, rural communities need a horizontal and collaborative approach to funding among the federal, provincial, municipal, and community funding sources to break down the artificial funding and program silos and barriers and to really prevent and avoid the current waste of public funding that's happening everywhere.
Seventh, rural women need more investment in alternative and distance education and an investment in broadband Internet.
Eighth, rural women need long-range planning and policy development, by all levels of government, to support rural communities as viable places to live and work for women and their families and to address rural depopulation immediately.
Ninth, we need policies, programs, and funding to address transportation and access issues for poor women and poor people in rural communities and a national child care program that builds new child care spaces and provides quality, affordable, and accessible child care suitable for women.
Finally, we need some national program or something to address stigma and discrimination against poor women in their communities and to encourage more corporate and community responsibility for poverty reduction.
Thank you.
Ellen Gabriel President, Quebec Native Women's Association
I will tell you just a little about the association I represent. It's a non-profit organization that began as a grassroots movement in 1974 by aboriginal women, and it is the only organization working today on behalf of aboriginal women in Quebec. Our mission is to support and encourage local initiatives for improving the living conditions of aboriginal women and their families.
The socio-economic situation of aboriginal people, especially aboriginal women, is one of the consequences of colonization. Before the arrival of Europeans, the aboriginal nations were independent, as reflected in their own customs, languages, legal and government systems, and cultures. Following contact with the Europeans and the colonization that ensued, the traditional systems of aboriginal society were compromised. Legislative measures, especially the Indian Act, and other government laws and policies were imposed upon aboriginal people that led to the loss of their independence.
The value of aboriginal women in our society today has diminished to where, as Amnesty International has stated, we have become a commodity in society in general. Aboriginal women were decision-makers; we were equal to men in our societies, and now we are forced under a system that promotes male leadership and not female leadership. There is no gender equity in the kinds of self-government negotiations that presently exist. The role of aboriginal women has been extremely marginalized, which is ironic, considering that feminism got their idea from aboriginal women in the Americas.
I'd like to state two references from literature:
It was through the attack on the power of Aboriginal woman that the disempowerment of our peoples has been achieved, in a dehumanizing process that is one of the cruelest on the face of this earth
This is from Armstrong in 1996.
When women were deprived of their traditional role and responsibilities, whole Aboriginal nations were weakened as traditional structures and systems were eradicated
That is Fiske et al, 2001.
I can read to you statistics that you already have within your possession. I'll read a couple of them just to emphasize the point I'm trying to make and the seriousness of economic security for aboriginal women.
Today we have the fastest growing population. A large portion of our population is under the age of 35, and in some communities, 61% of the population is under the age of 25.
In Quebec, aboriginal women account for 8% of the total female population, and the majority of aboriginal women live off reserve, and that's at 72%, while 28% live on reserve.
Rodolpho Stavenhagen, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, wrote about this situation in his report that he submitted upon his visit to Canada. It reads as follows:
Economic, social and human indicators of well-being, quality of life and development are consistently lower among Aboriginal people than other Canadians. Poverty, infant mortality, unemployment, morbidity, suicide, criminal detention, children on welfare, women victims of abuse, child prostitution are all much higher among Aboriginal people than in any other sector of Canadian society, whereas educational attainment, health standards, housing conditions, family income, access to economic opportunity and to social services are generally lower.
The life expectancy of aboriginal people is lower, according to the royal commission. We experience more health problems, and social problems ranging from violence to alcoholism are more widespread in aboriginal communities. Water supply systems, waste water systems in aboriginal communities are more often of poorer quality. And a smaller portion of aboriginal people have jobs.
Aboriginal people want the Canadian government to know and acknowledge that all of these social problems are primarily due to the loss of lands, resources, legal systems, governments, economies, and social institutions, as well as to the negation of their identities, languages, and cultures. What aboriginal people are seeking above all is to gain control of their lives and assume responsibility for their own future.
In terms of education, statistics show us that four of every ten aboriginal women have not completed high school. In 2001, only 7% of aboriginal women had earned a university degree, compared to 17% of non-aboriginal women. On the other hand, the percentage of aboriginal women with a college diploma or certificate is practically the same as that of non-aboriginal women.
I'm no expert on statistics. They make me dizzy, so sometimes I wonder what the actual situation is. I do know that the majority of people in post-secondary education are aboriginal women when we're talking about the aboriginal population.
On reserve, we see that the majority of employees in education and social services who are teachers and secretaries and sometimes band managers, if they are allowed, are women, but they are not involved in the majority of the decision-making positions in our communities.
Aboriginal women earn on average $12,300 per year. The average income of aboriginal men is $15,500. The average income of aboriginal women living on reserve is much lower. It's under $11,000.
The jobs for aboriginal women are poorly paid, and aboriginal women are less likely to be in the labour force than non-aboriginal women. In 2001, 47% of aboriginal women had jobs, compared to 56% of non-aboriginal women. Unfortunately, it is not always easy for anybody to find jobs, but that is particularly so for aboriginal women, who often face discrimination and racism in their search for work. Other factors obviously come into play, such as education, experience, linguistic and cultural differences, age, and absence from work due to domestic violence. In some cases, domestic violence can lead to dismissal.
Unemployment for women living on reserves and in rural regions is standing at 22%, compared to 14% among aboriginal women living in urban areas. One of the predominant factors that affects aboriginal women is violence. Surveys show that aboriginal women are more likely than non-aboriginal women to be subjected to severe violence that puts their lives in danger, such as being beaten, strangled, threatened with a firearm or knife, or sexually assaulted. They are also more likely to be victims of psychological violence than their non-aboriginal counterparts.
Violence brings with it numerous psychological impacts, such as disturbance and frustration, and we can go on and on. However, there is a lack of resources available for these victims, who are often forced to leave their communities for an urban centre, only to experience racism at the hands of the general public. Aboriginal women who are victims of violence are also confronted by isolation and linguistic, cultural, and geographical barriers.
Aboriginal women who are in the urban areas are also there because they are not welcomed by their communities, due to the fact that Bill C-31 did absolutely nothing to resolve the issue of women who face sexual discrimination because of the Indian Act.
As long as the aboriginal peoples of Canada remain bound by the Indian Act, and as long as the federal government has full power to make legislation on aboriginal issues, we will not be able to truly speak of aboriginal peoples’ active participation in the social, economic, and political life of this country. Aboriginal women would like to participate in the implementation of education and training programs, including school programs that are adapted to aboriginal culture. They would like to participate in discussions leading to solutions that will give aboriginal people skills that meet labour market needs. They would like to participate in the creation of institutions that will support job and business creation. They would like to obtain recognition of their education to allow them to receive a decent income.
I want to tell you of my experience with women who have PhDs. They have been told by their non-aboriginal counterparts that they have only received those PhDs because they are aboriginal persons, that they did not earn their PhDs as others did. So women who have an education face racism even from the other so-called educated people.
We would like to recommend the following in order to promote economic development of aboriginal peoples and to increase the standard of living.
We'd like to intensify discussions and negotiations leading to self-government or to self-determination agreements that will allow aboriginal people to take charge of their own destiny, improve their social conditions, and participate in the social and economic life of this country. We'd like to include aboriginal people in all discussions and negotiations to ensure their participation within the decision-making structures on the basis of gender equality; conclude agreements allowing aboriginal people to obtain ownership and control of their lands and resources--right now we only have a certificate of possession--develop and implement educational occupational training programs; and implement cultural sensitivity programs at all levels to address the stereotypes and misconceptions about aboriginal people.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Thank you very much.
We will now go to the first round of questions.
We'll have Ms. Minna for seven minutes.
Liberal
Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I thank all of you. It was an excellent presentation. It was actually terrific. We've heard a great many fantastic presentations here in the last few weeks.
I have to tell you that when we embarked on this, I had worked with women's issues for many years, so I had a sense of what I thought we would find. And I guess my...not disappointment, but distress comes from the fact that not only did we find a lot more than I thought we would, but also the fact that a lot less has changed than I thought had, especially in some parts. Maybe that's more the situation. I suppose I should know that from looking around our own Parliament, in terms of the number of women who are here and elsewhere. That should tell us a great deal.
Both Ms. Martz and Ms. Purdon have spoken eloquently with respect to rural women's issues--isolation and major problems. One of the things that was said was that a national child care program should be targeted and designed and situated, obviously, to meet the needs of rural women, specifically with the rural and space lens being put on it, which is a given to me. Of course, the delivery of that national program would be provincial. But there should be that kind of consultation because of shift work and all kinds of other situations. That's one issue.
The other issues are--well, there are many--transportation and access to education for women so they can upgrade themselves and as a result get better jobs, hopefully, or even get to the jobs, if there is good child care.
So it seems to me, from what you've said, that all of it is obviously fundamentally important. And there's no question about economic security and guaranteed income for women on the farm and possibly a pension of some kind, especially for those women who continue to work and contribute to the farm but have no other way of paying into an actual pension.
Then of course there's the issue.... When I say education, I also mean access to long-distance education. So it seems to me that the issue of accessing government social infrastructure.... And the women's regional program offices were closed, I think. I'll ask you if you could comment on what impact that has had on the ability of women in rural counties to even access that bit of programming.
It seems to me, from what you've said, that the social infrastructure of rural Canada--that is, being able to access social programs or government offices to access the programs--and education, transportation, and child care, while not the only supports, are probably the most basic supports we could think of in the short term, almost immediately.
Am I wrong here? I'm not trying to say that the other issues are not important. I'm just trying to look at a basket that one could say would get us started. Would that be a reasonable basket?
Coordinator, Rural Women Take Action on Poverty Committee
I think what's missing from the basket is that if you are plunged into poverty as a woman, the welfare rates or disability pensions aren't enough to feed your family. That's a kind of—
Liberal
Coordinator, Rural Women Take Action on Poverty Committee
It has to be, because that's one of the biggest problems for women. If a woman is on welfare and has children, she can't run a car. You can't put gas in a car on welfare, unless you have help, unless you have a parent or somebody who is going to help out with those things.
The women we were talking to are barely covering those very basic things, like food and housing, if they're relying on assistance or minimum wage jobs. You can't run a car if you have a minimum wage job either. In fact, if you have two minimum wages, you're lucky to be able to run a car.
In a rural area, where you're dependent on a car to get anywhere, you're stuck. You're just stuck. As soon as you're in poverty, how do you get out of poverty if you don't have a car and you have no way of getting transportation? And what if you don't have a computer and you can't pay for Internet access? You may have Internet access in your little town, but you can't pay for it because you don't have enough money.
There are multiple barriers. I think what women were saying to us is that the only way they can get out of poverty is to get out of their communities.
Liberal
Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
So economic security, whether it's welfare or other financial assistance, says that in addition to the extra financial what have you, when we look at the financial package, we need to add the rural and the condition and the space, as you were mentioning; that is, add on to the amount or the income, the access to long-distance education, Internet, what have you, those things that we consider to be extra and take for granted but are not necessarily extra or taken for granted. They're essential parts of surviving. Otherwise, you're just subsisting.
Coordinator, Rural Women Take Action on Poverty Committee
And we're talking about women who have worked and who were part of the economy, but for various reasons they've been plunged into poverty. Most of the women we talk to are in those situations. They're not the chronically poor. There are chronically poor women as well, but most of the people involved with our work to date have been people who have been pushed into poverty because of something they couldn't control, and now they're having enormous difficulty getting out.
Liberal
Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
So what that says to me is that for those women who are on assistance of some kind in rural Canada, the assistance must include transportation--an additional what have you that deals with the issue of transportation--and access to the Internet, access to a computer to be able to access education so that they can actually be able to....
And then for all women, regardless of whether they are on assistance or not, we need national child care, designed to meet their needs.
As an Individual
I would say child care seems to weave itself through most of these things we're talking about.
Liberal
Maria Minna Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Yes. That's why I said that's in the basket as a must. That's a given.
As an Individual
Exactly. On the larger scale, we have some examples in Canada of child care programs that deliver child care at affordable rates to a large proportion of the population. And then when you look to rural, there are a number of different rural models around, in Manitoba and so on, where they've done some really—
