Status of Women Committee on Oct. 25th, 2011

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I know. I have another question. It's an important question, and it has to do with connecting financial abuse and poverty.

The reality is that right now in this country there are 154,000 senior women who live below the poverty line. There are all kinds of reasons. They were caregivers. They had part-time jobs or intermittent work. They couldn't contribute to their pensions.

OAS and GIS are fine, but what the government provided was less than half of what's needed to lift all of these women out of poverty, so it seems that we need some kind of pension reform. We need to make sure that women are not made vulnerable and subject to abuse because they have inadequate resources in terms of their incomes.

Does that make sense to you that we need to attack—or address, more accurately—the fact that women live below the poverty line? Private pensions are failing, and we just don't provide enough through the public pension plan yet.

Whoever would like to answer is fine.

[Valerie White]

Yes, I would certainly agree that pension reform is needed, for a lot of different reasons. Certainly it would help senior women, but also, as our population is aging, we need to encourage people to work if they want to work.

Right now, there's very little incentive for people to work, because they lose a lot of their earnings. Just looking at the economics of our country, especially in rural areas, there's a huge need to address pensions right across the board for all these kinds of issues.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay.

I have one last question. It was referenced that a lot of senior women stay in situations because they have no alternative: there isn't an appropriate shelter, they can't afford housing, or they can't escape.

We have no national housing policy. There's nothing in this country in terms of supportive affordable housing. Do we need a national strategy that addresses the needs of senior women and seniors in general?

[Valerie White]

Yes. Actually, housing, for the first time, is on the agenda for the FPT ministers responsible for seniors. So for housing, living arrangements, and transportation, the ministers will be speaking about those issues when they meet next June in Nova Scotia.

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

Thank you very much.

Thanks to all of you for your patience. I think you would agree that we delayed a bit in getting everything set up, so I appreciate everyone's patience.

I very much appreciate the witnesses who came forward.

Ms. White, Ms. Siegel, Ms. Thompson, and Ms. Kay, thank you very much for your presentations.

We'll see everybody else on Thursday.

The meeting is adjourned.