Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to all three witnesses.
West Coast LEAF representatives, thank you very much for your “High Stakes” report from July last year. I really appreciate the way you've interwoven a lot of the issues that this committee has been studying for some time now.
We have heard from witnesses who say that because of the lack of pay equity legislation they earned less than their husbands, so when they couldn't find affordable child care it was the woman who dropped out of the workplace. Then there is the unpaid care associated with that, and lost earnings. When she moves back into the workplace, the work tends to be part-time and precarious, without the social safety net and unemployment insurance and pension associated with it. Then, if there is domestic violence, divorce, or separation, she is that much more vulnerable.
We heard heartbreaking testimony about women who made the very difficult decision to put themselves and their children into poverty in order to leave an unsafe relationship. Then, at retirement, to the extent that they do retire, without those financial savings, an appalling number of women in Canada disproportionately live in poverty. In my own riding, 50% of the women at a homeless shelter for women are now over the age of 50. They're professional women who worked their whole lives.
I really appreciate your report weaving these pieces together. If you haven't shared it already with the committee, would you be able to file it through the clerk because it has a lot of the issues we've been touching on?
Is that all right, Chair?