Thank you, Madam Chair.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak here today. My name is Harriett McLachlan. I'm the president of the board of directors of Canada Without Poverty, a non-partisan, charitable organization that was founded in 1971 and has representation from coast to coast to coast from people with the lived experience of poverty.
I'm here today to speak to you about my professional and personal experiences as they relate to women's leadership and economic prosperity.
I have a Master of Social Work degree from Carleton University. I've worked in the non-profit sector in community development for over 20 years. I've worked as a director of a community organization and was employed in other leadership roles across the community sector.
I was involved in many exciting projects, such as being instrumental in the transformation of Benny Farm, a project that saw old, abandoned, dilapidated housing units—created originally for WW II veterans—transformed to renovated and newly built mixed private and social housing units, and a vibrant community.
When I think of women's leadership in economic prosperity, especially in the not-for-profit sector, I think of wage discrepancies, health benefits, and working conditions. I distinctly recall, when I was a director, examining the salary differences between a social worker in the not-for-profit sector and that of my counterparts in hospitals and CLSCs, which are the Quebec form of health and social service organizations under the ministry of health. There was a $20,000 a year difference with respect to those who worked in CLSCs and a $30,000 difference with respect to those social workers who worked in hospitals and those who had just a bachelor's degree with social work and not in an employment position of director, like myself.
There were many times where I worked 70 or 80 hours a week—I'm sure you can attest to that—in order to get the basic job done, since there was inadequate funding to allow for more employees. This compared to my colleagues within hospitals and CLSCs who worked 40 hours a week. They also had work insurance, health plans, dental plans, and retirement agreements, which I had none of. These discrepancies would suggest that my work as a director in the non-profit sector was of less value.
I might add, as many of us already know, it is women who are mainly employed in the not-for-profit sector. With these realities, we are creating a pool of poor women who have no retirement benefits as a result of their working environments. I report to you these realities in the not-for-profit sector.
I have worked with other women who were paid less than me, who struggled with not having enough to eat, and who lived in their cars for five months. I would take the initiative to use the very services I was providing for the community. These are not exceptional cases. It's exceptional in that we live in a wealthy country, but they were common place situations where women who were working in the non-profit sector could not make ends meet.
It's been 15 years that I've been a regular speaker at Dawson College's social service technology program in Montreal. Part of my presentation to students is a description of the organigram with the Ministry of Health and the Social Services network. What I find interesting and deplorable is that while CLSCs and community organizations are featured on par, salaries and working conditions are not.
I also have to say that there's scant funding from the federal level to support community initiatives, projects, and development. There needs to be a greater role for the federal government within communities.
I remember Industry Canada taking the initiative of providing computer equipment for public access and enabling people across Canada to have access to the internet, especially those who couldn't afford computers themselves. This is just a small example.
That is something I wanted to highlight from my professional experience. Let's shift to my personal experience.
I want you to know that I have lived in poverty for 34 years, even as a director holding a Master's degree. There were many desperate times in those years that I did not eat. I was not able to buy food, or I would let my children eat instead. I had hard choices of buying food, paying rent, or paying my electricity or heating bill.
For over 10 years I lived in deplorable housing conditions with sewer rats living in my living space and even in the beds of my children.
I never had a bedroom; I slept on the sofa in the living room. I could not afford anything more.
I want you to know that poverty has cost me a great deal and it's taken a heavy toll on my physical and mental health. The toll of poverty, poor salary, and working conditions has cut my career short. At the age of 50 I was no longer able to sustain the demands of poverty while working as an underpaid professional. I envisioned working in my field until the age of retirement, a good 15 years or more, but without a retirement package. This is a loss of human capital. I am the example of leadership without economic prosperity.
It's always amazing to me that here I was working as a professional, helping others with better housing, food security, and other projects and programs to help meet their basic needs, yet I was struggling so desperately. What would have made the difference for me and many like me? Maybe better labour standards for one. I would also say better housing, affordable and accessible housing. Had both or even one been the case, I could have continued in my professional career and not borne the loss that I do now.
What Canada seriously lacks is a national anti-poverty plan. That includes a national housing strategy and food security measures. There needs to be a strategy that has national standards and sees the collaboration between various levels of government and sectors of civil society. A housing strategy, for example, would be one that's comprehensive and has measurable goals and timelines. It would not be one that would be a patchwork, where there would be one project here or there where we can sit on our laurels and say, “Well look, we've done this”. It has to be much more than that. It needs collaboration and it needs to be comprehensive so that people like myself and many like me don't have to live with rats.
Benny Farm is an excellent example of this. It's a housing project for seniors so that people may stay in their homes as long as possible. There's a project for young single mothers who are out on their own for the first time. There's subsidized housing for single mothers seeking post-secondary education. It's called Project Chance, and they have a 99% success rate helping women get out of poverty and launching them into professional careers where there can be economic prosperity for them and their families.
What I also like about Benny Farm is that they have created a mixed community with mixed housing projects. They have cooperatives, they have rent-to-buy, and they have mainstream condos for purchase. It has created a mixed and vibrant community. It took collaboration, and this is why I'm bringing up this point. A national housing strategy takes collaboration from all levels of government and all sectors of society. Benny Farm took the collaboration of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the City of Montreal, la Société d'Habitation du Québec, and community organizations to make it happen. It is successful and very doable.
The Canada Lands Company, the CLC, organized a round table, a discussion on how we can get this done—simple—that brought these and various players together so that we can move forward on common measurable goals and timelines. This is one example. There can be many when there's collaboration across the country.
As you well know, Canada is the only G-8 country without a national housing strategy. We desperately need one for people like myself and 4.4 million other poor Canadians. It is a responsibility of this federal government to develop frameworks and legislation, and it is imperative that they do so, since we may well remember that it was in 1976 that Canada ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Here is what also amazes me. We live in a wealthy country, yet my personal and professional reality would likely describe a much poorer and dysfunctional one. Our priorities show that we spend 5% to 6% of our GDP maintaining poverty in this country. A wealthy country would see that women have what is necessary to move forward in successful careers, one where women would not have to struggle with deplorable housing conditions and other desperate realities. Surely when we are looking at women's leadership and economic prosperity, we need to look to better priorities.
Thank you.