Human Resources committee  The food bank solution is one example, and there was the Belleville man who was trying to do the social housing. Certainly there are steps that can be taken to improve or support charitable responses to poverty, but I think the bigger question is to really think through the impor

Human Resources committee  It has only been in existence or in operation for a little over a year now, so I think we're just looking at potentially, probably soon, hearing reports from the social development ministry here about its working. We haven't heard anything yet. It's interesting that it comes wit

Human Resources committee  I would really agree with that. I think the only other piece I would add to it is that it has to address the feminization of poverty throughout women's lives. It has to come hand in hand with affordable and accessible child care, because we just know that is such a massive obstac

Human Resources committee  In anti-poverty work in B.C., most organizations have switched to using the Market Basket Measure purely because it addresses regional differences in cost of living. That said, I think what I often see happening, having worked in this area for a while, is that we tend to get real

Human Resources committee  Absolutely. Those are great questions, but big questions for four minutes. With respect to the child care issue, I can speak from my focus in B.C. I think it's a good case study for how things are working. In large part here, child care has been left to the private market, and i

Human Resources committee  I think the first step, when we're looking at new policies and coming up with a road map for a strategy, is that it has to take into account the different causes of poverty. The causes are complex. It may be education. It's caregiving for many women. It may be disability-related.

Human Resources committee  I would just echo those comments. In B.C., which is a province that of course is lagging with respect to adopting a poverty reduction strategy, we see that it's really more a matter of downloading the issues to municipalities. There are great, creative solutions coming out of, fo

Human Resources committee  I would simply add that I think the kinds of support that are necessary for women are a bit different. As I said, we tend not to see women in homeless shelters in a representative way that is proportional to the way we know they're experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness

Human Resources committee  Thank you so much, and thank you for inviting me to appear today. As you said, I'm here in Vancouver on the unceded land of the Coast Salish peoples, and particularly the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. As the introduction noted, I work at West Coast LEAF, which i

Status of Women committee  I would simply add the support of victim services, and particularly services that are targeted to women, or perhaps specialized indigenous services for indigenous women because they have different needs from those of non-indigenous women. We need to ensure that those responses ar

Status of Women committee  I think it absolutely would. I guess I'm not sure that I think it should be shifting away from the criminal law towards human rights. I think both of those avenues should be available to women. I think there's lots of research that suggests that sometimes women have very valid re

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. I think it's crucial to all sorts of violence against women, including harassment in the workplace and all sorts of things.

Status of Women committee  No. I think the balance of probabilities for the prima facie case of discrimination has worked well in the human rights system.

Status of Women committee  I think the best case scenario for all responses to violence against women would involve the full spectrum of solutions. With respect to online violence, it includes the criminal system and the human rights system. Ideally, it would also include some regulation of service provide

Status of Women committee  I don't know of any models, primarily because they tend to not always be the best models when we're talking about violence, because of the power dynamics at play. It might be possible, though, with online harassment, which is less about the continuation of spousal abuse and relat