Thank you. I'd be happy to talk about that.
I do sit on an advisory committee to the YWCA Halifax. It's a program working with very marginalized, low-income women, trying to help them develop some very basic skills—confidence, resumé writing, even dressing for interviews—to move them into work experience and help them achieve economic security for themselves and, in many cases, their children.
The women who are part of that program have faced and struggled with extreme challenges. The program that is currently being run, which is federally funded, puts them into 12-week placements so they get work experience in places like libraries, in senior care, and with the homeless. Many of them want to work with children in children's centres. Our advisory group sees through this program the enormous hill that these women have to climb; and I'll share this.
Most recently, with the intake of 12 women, the staff member who runs the program is saying that this is the most gung-ho, excited, committed group she's worked with in the program. They always show up for the training. But she's had real difficulty finding job placements for them because, in this instance, and perhaps uncharacteristically in the program, seven out of 12 of them have criminal records. They've been tagged for assault or for theft. Who knows what is behind that and what kind of desperation drove them or led them to run into trouble with the law? So, they're now triply disadvantaged in even being able to get a work placement. We're all putting our shoulders to the wheel trying to find places that will take them and give them that job experience. Down the road they may be eligible to pay for a pardon and so on. These are women with children—