Status of Women committee  I'd like to speak to the rural issue around funding. Sexual violence trauma therapy is a specialization. It requires particular skills, a particular knowledge set. It's a field in which there is more and more new learning all the time. In rural areas, mental health workers, by virtue of the fact that they need to respond to everybody, are generalists.

Status of Women committee  Can I just add one point to that though? Part of what's happening now with the trafficking and luring of girls is that it's primarily men who are watching this pornography, and if they don't have a partner who's willing to engage in some of these porn acts that they are seeing, they go out and hire girls to do them.

Status of Women committee  I just want to say that it's really tough work when you are working with survivors. When you're working with women, the issue of sexual violence underlies so many other issues that women bring into our centre—and I'm sure with all of us—and you're hearing those stories day after day after day, it's really tough work.

Status of Women committee  That's a really interesting model. The U.K. government approached their primary Internet providers, namely, Virgin, BT, Talk Talk, and SKY. They worked with them to put an automatic pornography filter on all new accounts. This means that on all of the various devices that kids have, they can't automatically go into pornographic sites.

Status of Women committee  Poverty is a whole conversation. I know that another standing committee is looking at poverty issues. Poverty really keeps women trapped. When women are trapped, it makes them vulnerable. When women are trapped and then objectified and seen as valuable primarily for their bodies, that poverty keeps women in extremely vulnerable situations.

Status of Women committee  First, I want to thank you for allowing me to come to speak. I appreciate the previous speakers, but I want to say that I want to live in a world where what women say matters, where women are heard and change attitudes and policy. I want to live in a world where 15,000 women turn out to hear women, and 15,000 men turn out to hear women.

Status of Women committee  Living in a rural area, I'm never opposed to good roads. I just have to say that. However, having said that, what has happened in our rural communities with the loss of social infrastructure, as I said earlier, is that we've really lost the kinds of jobs that support women. So when we're moving out our schools, our small health clinics, our grocery stores, when we're moving out so many of those essential supports—our community services workers, EI offices, etc., many of which are staffed by women and many of which are decent paying jobs—we're really removing some of those opportunities for women.

Status of Women committee  Yes, I agree with you. I think the problem, though, comes back to that question of whether we value our rural communities. If we do, we have to really look at what's happening there, including out-migration and the exodus of young people and, along with that, the resultant restructuring of family.

Status of Women committee  I think it would. Certainly, it's all of the other things that have been said too, whether it's making eligibility easier or recognizing that we need a program that is larger than the EI program that supports women in getting into training in the first place, when they have not been able to accumulate the hours, whether or not they've been working 10 years and paying into the system.

Status of Women committee  I just want to say that there's not one rural woman. I am glad there are women who are doing well in rural communities, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the lives of those who are not. And I think it's all of what you've said. It would be making things as flexible as possible so that the woman herself can look at her community, at what she may have access to, and then access it.

Status of Women committee  Okay. Unless we figure out a way to address this, if they're eligible for EI--and some are, while some aren't—that is going to run out very quickly, and we have no strategy for our east coast communities. We've lost our fisheries, we've lost our primary industries, we've lost our mining, we've closed Hawker Siddeley in Pictou County.

Status of Women committee  Eight minutes, all right. I think what I'll do then is probably start with the recommendations and then try to move to the context. First, what I'd like to say is how pleased I am to be here on behalf of the Antigonish Women's Resource Centre and to have an opportunity to speak to the realities of the life of women in some of our very rural east coast communities, women who are struggling to keep their families together and their communities alive, and for whom the employment insurance system is really not working well.

Status of Women committee  I don't even know if I will take a whole minute. I think when the United Nations committee on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women congratulates us for 100% fulfilling our obligations around women's equality, then we can sit back and have another discussion around where we may want to go next, but we need to take our responsibilities to all women across this country very seriously.

Status of Women committee  None.

Status of Women committee  In Nova Scotia currently, women's centres have been working with women on income assistance to improve social assistance policy. A huge piece of work has been done, and a lot of that work has been bringing women from 11 communities around the province to the table to talk about their experiences on social assistance and to make recommendations to government.