Evidence of meeting #74 for Status of Women in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was education.
A video is available from Parliament.
NDP
Bonita Zarrillo NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you.
I'm going to ask three of our witnesses today to give us 30 seconds on what they'd like us to have on the record for this report. Perhaps I could ask Monthly Dignity, Moon Time Sisters and then Ayla to tell us in 30 seconds what they want us to know as we wrap up today.
Co-Director, Monthly Dignity
All right. I have 30 seconds and a community full of a lot of needs.
I can say that what keeps Clara and I up at night is that we are constantly getting, especially over the past year, new requests for new partners. It feels as though we've been getting requests on an almost biweekly basis. We just can't fill them. We are women doing unpaid care work, like all the other women sitting on this panel, to fulfill the needs of women who are also doing a lot of unpaid care work. This cycle is how everything continues, and this cycle is why we see this need growing. We have to say no. We have to rank needs, and that's messed up. That's messed up.
We need support from the government. We have no government funding. We have it from grandparents and high school people's parents. High school students have given us more than the government has. High school students have given us more than private foundations have.
I think we're all tired of hearing people's stories about using socks when we live in a country where we have a lot of pads. We have a lot of pads, and we can figure it out.
NDP
Bonita Zarrillo NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you so much for those comments.
I'm going to move to Moon Time Sisters, please.
Lead, Ontario Chapter, Moon Time Sisters
Thank you for this.
First of all, Inuit and first nation and Métis communities need to be brought to this conversation 100%. We need to remember that northern communities exist in this country and that people are living in pretty severe poverty due to colonialism in this country. We need to address the menstrual inequity that is going on. It is creating another barrier for menstruators that is absolutely not required.
We need to be doing better to support indigenous nations in this country. We need to have them at the table.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Perfect. Unfortunately, I do need to cut everybody off. We are down to zero on the clock, meaning that's it's time to vote.
On behalf of the status of women committee, I would like to thank all the incredible witnesses who brought forward their testimony today.
As a reminder, we'll be meeting on Monday at 11 a.m. to do the committee business that we didn't get to today.
Have a safe and great weekend.
This meeting is adjourned.