Well, I think what's going on is that there's not much left of any of the social safety nets. Everybody talks about intersectionality, in terms of the approach we take in analyzing race, class and gender intersecting to cause even more barriers for women, but when you look at the solutions, it cannot be only one. The solutions are to women's poverty; the fact that police do not respond to violence against women and do not protect women; the fact that there's a housing crisis across the country. The increase in pressure for women to be able to leave and actually have somewhere to go....
It's one thing to be in a transition house, but we're keeping women for three, four or five months now, because there's nowhere to put them after that. If you tell a woman that a single woman on welfare in British Columbia gets $710 total and the rent in Vancouver is $1,500 for a one-bedroom, what are you saying to that woman about trying to leave and being bold enough to leave? She has nowhere to go.
As there's an erosion of all of our social programs and no federal national standards that can be enforced—or at least some cost-sharing measures—women are in dire situations.