Hi. My name is Janet Currie and I am representing the Canadian Women's Health Network, CWHN. It's a national network that has articulated women's health needs and has worked in partnership with Health Canada for many years around policy and program recommendations and implementation.
Our organization believes that health is a human right and that the greatest contributor to poor health is poverty. It is not simply a linear relationship but poverty affects many social determinants such as housing that also affect women's health. In addressing women's poverty through income tax related or other measures, we are concerned that the effects of poverty on health be considered as a very important related issue and that a very broad policy and program approach be used rather than simply economic measures.
I want to talk a little about the effects of poverty on health. As I said, they are both direct and indirect. Some of the direct effects of poverty on health are shortened life expectancy. Women who are poor live fewer years than women in middle- and upper-income brackets. Poverty exacerbates deaths and chronic disease from diseases such as HIV/AIDS.
Poverty affects housing security. Women who are poor are frequently homeless or live in precarious, substandard housing that exposes them to poor ventilation, overcrowding, exposure to mould and vermin, and other factors that lead to a higher rate of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis.
Poverty affects food security. In Canada, 22% of food bank users are single-parent families, most of which are women. With food insecurity comes malnutrition, lack of appropriate food nutrients, which ironically leads to obesity and predisposes women to higher rates of diabetes, which in turn predisposes them to higher rates of cardiac risk.
You can see that it's not a very simple issue to address, because it's cumulative; it's multi-level, one thing leading to another.
Poverty is associated with high rates of depression. As you know, we have a depression epidemic in Canada. This concerns CWHN because women make up the highest proportion of those who are diagnosed as depressed. They are prescribed two-thirds of psychiatric drugs, which are very potent, have very potent side effects. Women who are depressed often cannot resource other services that might support them, such as therapy or community support services. So we are very concerned about the rates and the interrelationship of poverty on depression and anxiety.
Poverty exacerbates chronic diseases. An example is a woman who smokes. Poverty is associated with smoking among women; women smoke because they're very stressed and anxious. So poverty predisposes women to heart disease and lung cancer. If you add in food insecurity, you have a predisposition to diabetes and malnutrition. Suddenly you have a woman with one or two chronic diseases and these also have cumulative effects.
Poverty also restricts women's choices. Women who are poor often live in neighbourhoods that tend to be violent and may increase their risk of being involved in criminality and addictions. Poverty also limits women's choices in terms of getting the services they need in the community to improve their health, such as dentistry. In terms of other preventative services, women who are poor often do not access prenatal care or yearly Pap smears.
In terms of our recommendations, when we are addressing issues such as income security, while it is very important to take economic measures such as tax measures, and we certainly support those, we also think that we need to address the effects of poverty on health and take a social determinants approach to looking at poverty. This involves looking at government policies that are much broader than income-related policies, and I just want to say that this is a very good segue from Isabella's talk.
For example, as austerity measures began to be promulgated by governments, women bore the brunt. Women work in education and in health, and they were the first to be laid off. They are extremely vulnerable populations, so addressing this requires a labour policy. It requires policies that support contract workers. It requires some efforts to involve corporations in providing benefits to women who lack these benefits.
In closing, I would urge you to take a broader approach to income security.
If I could just say one more thing, we started with a description of the Canadian Women's Health Network. All the centres of excellence for women's health, including CWHN, were defunded in 2013 as a result of the federal government's austerity policies. I understand from Health Canada that they will not be replacing the women's division within Health Canada and they will not be opening up a women's contribution fund again, as the ministry of women's equality has done. I would suggest that to address income issues, this has to be a partnership with Health Canada, and I would really urge you to stress this to Health Canada, as we have done.
Thank you very much.