HANSARD

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

COMMUNITY SERVICES COMMITTEE

Ms. Marilyn More (Chairman)

Mr. Mark Parent

Mr. Gary Hines

Ms. Judy Streatch

Mr. Jerry Pye

Mr. Gordon Gosse

Mr. Stephen McNeil

Mr. Leo Glavine

Ms. Diana Whalen

In Attendance:

Ms. Mora Stevens

Legislative Committee Clerk

Ms. Michele Raymond, MLA

Halifax Atlantic

WITNESSES

United Way

Ms. Catherine Woodman - CEO, Halifax Region

Mr. Peter Doig - Voluntary Board Chairman

Ms. Kristen Crowell - Staff

Mr. Peter Greechan - Staff

Antigonish Women's Resource Centre

Ms. Katherine Reed

Nova Scotia League for Equal Opportunities (NSLEO)

Ms. Jennifer Powley - Provincial Coordinator

Ms. Bernadette McKeough - Assistant Coordinator

Caring and Sharing Food Bank - Elmsdale/Enfield

Ms. Margaret Johnson

Halifax Peninsula Community Health Board

Mr. Malcolm Shookner - Volunteer Member

Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women

Ms. Brigitte Neumann - Executive Director

Ms. Linda Carvery - Member, Central Region

Halifax Coalition Against Poverty

Mr. Ari Rosen - Member

Ms. Keli Bellaire - Member

Ms. Amy Moonshadow - Member

Social Assistance Reform: Moving Forward

Ms. Rene Ross - Project Coordinator

Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union (NSGEU)

Mr. Ian Johnson - Policy Analyst/Researcher

Mr. Wayne Sitland - Alternate Board Member

Black Community Advocates Association of Nova Scotia

Ms. Dolly Williams - President

Nova Scotia Association of Social Workers

Ms. Susan Nasser - Executive Director

Mr. Graeme Fraser - Coordinator

Marguerite Centre

Ms. Bev Hickman

Private Citizens

Ms. Shirley Marratt - Former Member, Halifax Welfare Rights

Ms. Jackie Barkley

Mr. Gene Frampton - Connections Clubhouse

Ms. Jane Warren - Observing for the Disabled Persons Commission

Ms. Gayle McIntyre (Also on behalf of Mr. Ralph "Bobby" Corbin)

Mr. Ken McKinley

ALIGN="CENTER">[Page 1]

HALIFAX, FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2006

COMMUNITY SERVICES FORUM ON POVERTY

9:00 A.M.

CHAIRMAN

Ms. Marilyn More

MADAM CHAIRMAN: The second day of the Forum on Poverty will now reconvene. I ask everyone to take their seats and we'll get started. Thank you very much for coming this morning. I see some new faces in the audience so I just want to repeat a little bit of the background, the rationale for the Forum on Poverty.

I just want to mention that when the committee met last June to discuss what issues or what groups they would like to have appear before them for the coming year, it was obvious that a number of them had something in common. They were all helping people deal with issues around poverty. So we thought rather than deal individually with organizations and issues, we might sponsor this two-day forum on poverty. We were very, very pleased with the turnout and the information and the exchange that happened yesterday, and we're very pleased to have so many groups and individuals wishing to present to us this morning, to the point where we actually had to extend the morning session to 1:00 p.m. Then we will take a break for lunch. The committee will come back and again it will be open to the public. We'll discuss our strategy in terms of how we're going to deal with the information and the recommendations that have come forward to us.

Everything is being recorded. It will be available on-line under Hansard, but if you wish to receive a written copy of everything that's said at the forum, you can fill out one of the forms that's either at the side or the back of the room with your mailing address and name and we'll be sure that you do get a copy of the transcript. The washrooms are down at the end of the hall or on the main floor downstairs.

My name is Marilyn More and I'm Chairman of the Standing Committee on Community Services. At this point, I would like the members of the committee who are here today to introduce themselves.

I just remind everyone that we're an all-Party committee; because of the minority government situation, each of the three caucuses has three members on the committee. We've developed a very good working relationship, and we do take this issue very seriously and we are most interested to hear what you have to say. So, Jerry, perhaps we could start introductions with you.

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you. We've taken the list of groups wishing to present and sort of broken them up into time slots. So for the next hour we have five groups or individuals. We are going to start off with United Way - Halifax Region. Just take a seat. I'll just go over some of the ground rules. What we would like is perhaps if you could give your comments within 10 minutes or so. That will leave just a couple of minutes for committee members to ask questions. So if you wouldn't mind introducing yourselves, thank you.

MS. CATHERINE WOODMAN: Hello, I'm Catherine Woodman, President and CEO of United Way - Halifax Region. I'm joined here by our Voluntary Board Chairman, Peter Doig, and in the audience by two of our staff members - Peter Greechan and Kristen Crowell.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Catherine.

MS. WOODMAN: Well, thank you very much for this opportunity to present. As you may already know, United Way is a leading charity dedicated to helping others. We're very well known for our annual campaign which mobilizes 5,000 volunteers in over 1,000 workplaces across both the public and private sector. What you may not be aware of is that the United Way is also internationally recognized as a community-building organization, with examples of two current United Way-led initiatives, Action for Neighbourhood Change and 211. Today I would like to illustrate that the United Way is directly engaged in the issues of poverty and the role that government must take.

It's our vision to be a leader in building an extraordinary community. We're working to accomplish this by developing and investing resources, both human and financial, in ways that bring people and organizations together and build neighbourhoods that leverage strengths that already reside in any particular community.

Currently, the United Way funds 130 programs in over 50 agencies, most of which deal directly with issues relating to poverty in our community. I'm talking about agencies like Alice Housing, Leave out Violence, Elizabeth Fry Society, numerous housing associations, Boys & Girls Clubs, community centres. By measuring outcomes we know these programs provide necessary support to individuals and families living in poverty.

However, we're very convinced that issues of poverty must also be addressed at a broader community level and not solely on an individual basis. To make a significant and measurable difference in poverty, we must address a range of issues such as education, housing, crime, social capital, but we believe they must be addressed or they're best addressed at a neighbourhood level. In 2005 United Way - Halifax Region initiated a community development strategy to work with local residents to improve their own neighbourhood. With initial start-up funding from the federal government, through a project called Action for Neighbourhood Change, our United Way has made a five-year commitment to neighbourhood development. While currently focused in Spryfield, we plan to work within two additional neighbourhoods in Halifax over the coming years.

Our approach is based on successful neighbourhood work for improving conditions in poorer communities conducted in the U.K. and the States over the past 15 years. This work has shown that projects can be successful when they are focused on a geographic area, they recognize the interdependent nature of social, economic and environmental issues, and they operate with a community-building principle. Simply put, community-building principles recognize that the neighbourhood residents themselves have the skills, the strength, to identify the challenges, and they have the interest, the personal investment and the capability to develop the best possible solutions for that neighbourhood.

[9:15 a.m.]

Experience and research teaches us that a place-based approach is more successful in the long term than any issue-based approach. You cannot reduce crime by adding police; you can affect crime by inspiring a change in behaviour. Change in behaviour requires a change in beliefs and that can be spawned by collaboration and active engagement, active participation in problem solving. Action for Neighbourhood Change is tackling poverty in Spryfield by engaging those residents to start addressing the issues they identify, such as crime in this case, literacy, employment and others. The solutions will ultimately lie within that very community. However, solutions to poverty take long-term commitment - experience tells us that three to five years of dedicated effort and funding are required. In addition, there needs to be a teamed-up support of local, provincial and federal governments that respond to the solutions proposed by residents with the wisdom and the courage to change policies that directly affect community well-being.

We commend the fact that the community development policy recently adopted by your province, our province, is also based on the principle that communities know best how to deal with their issues. Today we have complex, overwhelming needs that are not distinct and isolated, but deeply entwined and connected. Simple calls for help are getting mired in a complex maze of busy phone lines, voice messaging, a myriad of unconnected services and volunteers. Frustration feeds the assumption that we need better services or we need more services. At United Way we believe that it's wiser to invest in improving the path and coordination of our existing services. In Nova Scotia, under United Way leadership, a provincial steering committee has been working since 2002 to bring a new service to this community - 211 is an information and referral system that connects people to a full range of non-emergency social, health and government services in their community.

Accredited specialists answer 211 calls, assess the needs of callers, and link them to the best possible information and services by consulting a comprehensive database. In Toronto, Calgary, and Edmonton, where 211 already exists, this is especially useful in addressing vulnerable groups such as recent immigrants, the elderly, homeless, physically and mentally challenged, and their families. This kind of coordinated integrated solution aligns very well with United Way's focus. It fosters self-reliance, improves local knowledge, and makes a measurable difference and reinforces the social safety net, giving hope and help through a rapid and humane response to individuals and families seeking help.

So, in conclusion, what are we asking of you today? First, we encourage you to continue using a place-based approach in solving poverty and that you work more closely with municipal and federal partners in supporting locally grown solutions. We ask that you commit to longer-term solutions with time horizons of greater than three and five years. We ask that you directly support the province-wide 211 initiative which is right now being considered by Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations as well as other provincial departments and, finally, we ask that you recognize that there is an opportunity for government to engage in a formidable partnership with organizations such as the United Way who are uniquely positioned with long-standing relationships across private, public and voluntary sectors and who are equipped, motivated and capable of helping you build an extraordinary community.

Thank you for your time and we would be pleased to answer questions.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Catherine. Are there any questions from committee members? Jerry.

MR. JERRY PYE: My question to the presenter from the United Way today, the CEO, is that I look at your Action for Neighbourhood Change, and your Action for Neighbourhood Change is obviously something that had been developed within the United Way. I will say at the start that it appears to be a positive action by the United Way. I say it

appears to be simply because I don't live in Spryfield and I don't know the actions or the outcomes at the present time.

You said in your presentation that there will be two more in Halifax. I'm wondering, when you use the term Halifax, do you mean the HRM?

MS. WOODMAN: I do.

MR. PYE: So that does not mean directly the City of Halifax?

MS. WOODMAN: No, and I should have said HRM.

MR. PYE: There are other parts of the HRM that will be the recipients?

MS. WOODMAN: Yes.

MR. PETER DOIG: We'll meet in Dartmouth.

MR. PYE: Thank you, Mr. Doig. That's music to my ears, particularly . . .

MS. WOODMAN: We like to say we chose Spryfield because Spryfield chose us. We let it be known we were embarking on this project, and Spryfield was a community that really wanted to partner and get on with this task. It will be in a similar fashion that we move to other neighbourhoods. We're looking to neighbourhoods that are very interested in taking ownership because this isn't something we're managing, it is something that's happening within the neighbourhood, and we're helping it come together. There has to be a strong degree of engagement with them.

MR. PYE: Other neighbourhoods are aware of this funding program that's going to be available through the United Way and that they can make application and be participants?

MS. WOODMAN: Yes, certainly. At the point when we're ready to spread beyond this initial first start of the project, we will ensure that other neighbourhoods are well aware.

MR. PYE: My final question, Madam Chairman, is, does this program that you're offering hinge upon contributions from other levels of government?

MS. WOODMAN: It began with a federal grant. We are now committed, with money from the United Way, in order to keep it moving along, but it is dependent on partnerships that will involve funding from businesses, from donors, from levels of government. We certainly can't take the investment that we've chosen to make and expect that we're going to make the full difference.

MR. PYE: Thank you.

MR. DOIG: Jerry, I would just add that we didn't wait for other levels of government to come to the table before we made a commitment to continue the program beyond the first year. We've done that, and now we'll continue to build the partnerships to make it sustainable.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Next I have Leo.

MR. LEO GLAVINE: Madam Chairman, just a question of real interest, since it's not a program that I'm familiar with being from rural Nova Scotia. Yesterday, however, we heard a lot of commentary, in fact very profound and compelling comments from people talking about poverty as deep rooted in communities, the cycle of poverty, the systemic nature and so on of the problem. I'm wondering how this is actionized, in other words, is it a contributory type of process, or actually people on the ground who monitor work that would go on in the community? Could you just elaborate a little bit, please?

MS. WOODMAN: It's a three-step process. The first step is one of very broad-based consultation. It's about bringing people together from that particular geographic area, whether it's in kitchens or in halls, or whether it's one on one or large groups. Together they identify what they treasure about their community and what they would like to change. So that first phase is the data-gathering stage, if you want. It's both qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative comes the views and voices of the neighbours themselves, but we also found very valuable information in statistics about that particular community.

Once that information-gathering phase is over, the next stage is to identify what differences the community wants to make, what are the changes that they want to bring to that particular region. The important thing is these are identified by the residents themselves. They decide what they want to change and they also decide, themselves, how they want to measure that change.

Then the third stage is about effecting those changes, which is likely the stage where residents will most certainly turn to the three levels of government and say, here's the policy or here's the change that we feel is most necessary in our community. That's when the neighbours will be most expectant of the three levels of government to be responsive. Does that help?

MR. GLAVINE: Yes, thank you very much.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Diana.

MS. DIANA WHALEN: I'd like to just get a little more information on the 211. Specifically, you've called on us to support it. It sounds like a great idea. I wasn't aware of it before either. This is something new for us. What stage is it at now in government consideration? You said it's with Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations.

MS. WOODMAN: It's with Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations. We've put together a summary paper, which is about three or four pages. We've been working very closely with the deputy minister there, and we have that support. There are letters of support coming across the community from businesses but also from health boards. The expectation is that once the input has been received from other departments, it will go forward to Cabinet, hopefully within the next month to six weeks.

MS. WHALEN: So it's current.

MS. WOODMAN: It is very current. Yes.

MS. WHALEN: Thank you very much.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Gordie.

MR. GORDON GOSSE: I'm just wondering, this is all pertaining to the metro area, have you ever spoken to your counterparts at the United Way in Cape Breton about some of these programs?

MS. WOODMAN: We certainly do, and I probably neglected to mention it. I am certainly aware this is a provincial committee. We work closely with the United Ways across Nova Scotia, in Lunenburg, Truro, Pictou, Amherst and Sydney. Now I have to say that they are smaller United Ways, and they don't always have the same degree of resources and abilities to effect the community differences that we strive to make in HRM, where we have a larger area. We do exchange information regularly, and we work quite closely together. We meet several times a year, and I know Allister in that community well.

MR. GOSSE: I know Allister Taylor pretty well myself, over the years, actually.

MS. WOODMAN: That's great.

MR. GOSSE: I'm just wondering now, the group in Spryfield, is that a non-profit organization that's registered under the Nova Scotia Societies Act? To work and to attain government funding you have to be registered. I'm just wondering, is that group registered?

MS. WOODMAN: The United Way attained the government funding. Action for Neighbourhood Change is a project underneath that umbrella.

MR. GOSSE: Thank you.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: I don't see any other questions. Thank you very much, we appreciate both your presentation today and also the excellent work that your organization is doing. Thank you, again.

I invite Shirley Marratt to come forward, please.

MS. SHIRLEY MARRATT: My name is Shirley Marratt. Right now I don't belong to any organization. I did belong, for about 25 years, and we were funded from the United Way, which was the Halifax Welfare Rights. Because of that, I still have an ongoing problem with being called on to help people who have problems. I'm glad that this 211 is coming on. Maybe that will cut down on some of the work I have to do. So many people have a problem, and then I have to go through my mind, well, where do I send them or what do I do?

I thought that when I got to my age I wouldn't have to worry about anybody else, but if you don't worry about the other people and how they're living and what conditions they're living in, then I don't think you're a very good human being. A lot of people say to me, Shirley, why do you do it? Well, when you have people who need wheelchairs, people who need medicine, need needles because they need them for insulin, and things like that, but they're not 65, they're between the ages of 55 and 60 - 65 is a magic number for a lot of people, because a lot of their problems are going to be solved. But when you're 55 or 58 and you get put into these senior citizen complexes, one thing is people look at you and say, why are you here?

[9:30 a.m.]

Well, if you have a disabling kind of an illness or some kind of a problem and you can't afford the rent outside, well, you soon are found a spot in seniors' places. That's another problem for seniors for the simple reason that if they put somebody in that isn't very well and has an emotional problem or physical problem, then the people around them feel responsible to help them. When you get somebody that's 75 or 80, we even have people there close to 90, helping people who are 55 to 60, for the simple reason that they are supposed to be getting help through social services, having somebody to come and help them with their problem. They get stuck in these places, and unless I call and get some social worker on the ball, sometimes I have to practically knock them over the head, they don't want to be bothered with them. Once they are in there and they're paying their rent for them and they're paying their lights and that, as long as there is no confusion or anything, as long as a person doesn't have a phone to call them and bug them, then they figure everything is okay.

So I think there's a lot to be done for people who are caught in that trap, before they're 65. I am really looking forward to this 211, because there are a lot of people who will say, well, I don't know who to call or where to call. You would be surprised the people who

call 911 and really what they're looking for is social services or unemployment, but that's the only number they know. You give them 211, and they'll remember it, at least.

The thing is, we have people who are 55 and 58 right now, today, who don't have much food in their house. Thankfully, we have a thing with Parker Street that they will come and pick them up, but like one person said to me, Shirley, what's a loaf of bread and a bag of potatoes going to do me? Around here, if you have a bag of potatoes and a loaf of bread, and you're not going to get any money before the end of the month, that's a pretty scary thing. I think there's a lot of things that social services should be really looking at and trying to improve for that age group, between 55 and 60. Especially if you have had to give up a job, you might get a pension, but the pension is not very much, and if you put in for your Canada Pension - that's another thing, I fight like heck for the Canada Pension for them. Sometimes it's maybe seven, eight months. I had one fellow, a year. Sure he got all his money back, but social services says - and I always warn them ahead of time, when you get that money it might look like a heck of lot, but just remember that you have to get in contact with social services and they'll give you a bill and you have to pay it.

I have no qualms with that, because if the person didn't have to put in for their Canada Pension and was getting the money from social services, that is one thing, but if social services is helping them out, I say it's just the same as the bank lending you money in the meantime. So I don't mind that. I'm damn thankful that they do that. The thing is, even people who get Canada Pension, if they are sick, if they are disabled, if they need things, even like a cane, there is no money in their budget to get that. So usually I have to call and scrounge around, either get a church or somebody, or maybe somebody recently died and maybe their family left his cane or maybe a beat up old wheelchair. Stuff like that. We save that and then we pass it on.

The thing is, why should seniors have to be responsible for other people who are falling through the loophole. I just can't believe there are so many people out there. There are an awful lot of people out there who I know that I don't reach because we're only in the small complex, then I'm helping them, but what about the people who are not? I think social services should be sending out some letters and telling people who are on a disability and that, if you have a problem call your social worker. Don't be afraid to call them, because even the social workers can help them get different things. They have enough knowledge to get them in touch with the food banks and things like that.

I had a person say to me, oh, well, I wouldn't go to the food bank. I said, well then, you only got one option, either go or starve. It might sound harsh, but I just don't have the time or patience, after so many years, for somebody to tell me that they are so self-righteous that they're not going to go to a food bank. I can remember - and Jerry Pye can help me out - I can remember a day when we didn't have any food banks. Brunswick Street was the only place that had a little food bank, but before that we didn't have nothing. People would call up and they didn't have any money two days before payday and they didn't have no

groceries, no nothing. So St. Pat's Church or St. George's, or anything that I could think of, I would call them and I would say, look, would you be able to help? Well, they didn't always have food, so they gave a little food voucher. I mean even $10 in those days used to buy a lot.

Like I say, now that we have the food bank, I think it's a marvelous thing. It's a thing that social services is just not helping the people who are disabled, and the people who are disabled, there are some of them who could have carried on with their jobs, but they couldn't put in the time frame to get paid and if Community Services would allow them to go and work for a few hours a day or a few hours a week, or a few hours a month, and get that extra money, then they would have the money for a cane, or they would have money for needles and things like that.

I really don't have any faith in what you do this afternoon in trying to make up solutions to give to the government to say, well these are the changes, because as Jerry told you, we've been through this so many times and the same damn argument has been put in boxes and I bet you, wherever they keep their old files, you go down there and you'll find them all going back to what? Anywhere from about 1970 on. So I'm just hoping that what comes out of here today is a positive thing and doesn't get stuck underneath the bushel. Okay. Thank you.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Shirley, and we hope it won't either. Stephen, do you have a question or a comment?

MR. STEPHEN MCNEIL: First of all, Shirley, thank you very much for coming in and your advocacy that you are doing. When you speak in the matter-of-fact tone, you remind me a little bit of my mother, so I'm not sure how I should address you and behave myself while I'm sitting here. (Laughter)

MS. MARRATT: Sometimes people will say, you go and see Shirley, or I'll get Shirley to go to you and when I get there they say, this and this, I say, well look, I'm going to tell you something, don't tell me that you're not going to do this or you're not going to do that because I'm out the door. If you don't want to help yourself then don't come to me, because I'm not going to do all the work. You have to be willing to do it too.

MR. MCNEIL: Well, I've learned to call my mother to see what her reaction would be. Sometimes it's better to learn a reaction from a distance than it is up close. Shirley, are you presently living in seniors' housing?

MS. MARRATT: Yes, I live at Joe Howe Manor.

MR. MCNEIL: How long have you been living in seniors' housing?

MS. MARRATT: I've been living there now for about nine years.

MR. MCNEIL: Is that run by the province?

MS. MARRATT: It's run by the province. Actually, it's all three levels of governments put their money into it.

MR. MCNEIL: How has it been maintained?

MS. MARRATT: Well, I'll tell you. The maintenance is not very good. A couple of years ago we had a little hole out the main door that was covered with a metal, I guess it must have been steel or I don't know. Anyway, it all got rusted, had a collar around it, and last Winter a couple of times it got pushed away with the plow, so last Summer I said to them, look, could you get it fixed? Oh, yes, oh, yes. So anyway, finally, I threatened. I said, look, after the New Year, if it isn't fixed, then I'm going to go to the safety people because that's wrong. If they pushed it away a little bit, your foot could have come down, you could have broken your leg, and there was no need of it. And you have to walk over it to push the button to open the door, if you're disabled, you know. We had a little runway like this for wheelchairs to go up. It had no rubber stripping on it, it wore off. So I said that needs to be fixed.

Well, finally they came and they cut off the old and they put some new on. Then this other thing was still there. So I said, well, after New Year's - and yesterday when I came down here, I came out the door and, God, what's this? Here's this great big shiny thing, new collar, and a new cover and everything, and it looks like it's made out of stainless steel or something but, boy, she's all polished up and everything.

MR. MCNEIL: Somebody must have told them you were going to be in downtown Halifax with a microphone.

MS. MARRATT: It was really funny, you know. But we have elevators that are so old that you get in them and you don't know if you're going to get down and the door is going to open, or you're going to stand there and the door goes oomph, oomph-oomph, so finally you have to get off that one and there's another one next to it, you push for that and eventually it will come and you get on that and you eventually get down. Then you have to go find the janitor or somebody and say, the elevator is not working. Oh, yeah, we know, the fellow has been called - but, you know, it's a thing that's beyond reason to me that these places are not really looked after.

I mean we all pay our rent and, believe me, every year you have to let them know, and when you get to sign a lease they ask you to include your income and, if you made $7, part of that is on the new increase for your rent. Well, a lot of people holler about it, but I don't really because I mean we get our heat and for an extra $10 we get our cable. So we only have

to pay for our lights and we only have to pay for our rent, but now some people - now people don't know it, but if the husband and a wife, or whether you're living common law or whatever, if there are two people living in one unit, they're both based on their income. So if one person's paying $350 and somebody else is paying $400, then they're getting $700 for that unit, and I have no qualms with that either because both people are getting an income, but I mean the thing is that if the federal government gives us in our Canada Pension, or in our Old Age Pension, we get a raise the first of every year for Canada Pension, and if we're given $10, you can bet we're not going to see that whole $10.

MR. MCNEIL: Shirley, I think that goes back to some of the comments we heard yesterday around the clawback and I think it's something that we, as a committee, need to look at in a little more comprehensive way than we were talking about yesterday.

Just one final question for you. You mentioned in your presentation around diabetics - the province has come out with a new program for low-income Nova Scotians, a diabetic program, and I'm just wondering, have you known people who have applied? I mean I have an issue with it and I'm just wondering if you've been exposed to that issue as well.

MS. MARRATT: Well, I will tell you, I called up about it just after I heard about it, and they said they'd get back to me. I haven't heard anything, and I called just before Christmas and they said to call after New Year's because they haven't really gotten a whole pile of information, it hasn't even been sort of put on stream. So I don't know whether it has been implemented or what it's all about, but the thing is, as a senior I have to pay a certain amount of money, and once I'm paid up, as far as my prescriptions go, once I pay up that money, then everything comes free and, to me - it's an awful thing to say and I imagine a lot of seniors will say, Shirley, I'm going to knock you in the head, but the thing is from the time I get paid up in September, say, to April 1^st of the next year, I get everything free. So if I have a prescription for $100-some, I don't pay any portion of that. The government pays it all. So what I'm saying is it offsets the money that they have to pay for people who are on disability or social assistance who need that help as well. I'm saying that it doesn't hurt any senior to pay a little bit. I think we should have some kind of a health care we all pay into.

[9:45 a.m.]

MR. MCNEIL: Most people are in agreement around Seniors' Pharmacare and I think when you look across the province, you know, there was a little hiccup which we seemed to solve in the last year, but the thing around the diabetic program that I think Nova Scotians need to look at, and I think the government needs to look at, is the fact that low-income Nova Scotians are having to pay up front and then be reimbursed later on. If this program is truly going to have an impact, and an immediate impact on low-income Nova Scotians, then the government needs to do a direct billing with pharmacies back into the government and not expect low-income Nova Scotians to be taking money out of what is their food budget or

their rent budget to pay up front and then send the bill back in hoping to get it back and you're kind of chasing your money back and forth.

So I would encourage you to watch that and keep talking about that particular issue. It's one of those that can be solved immediately. It's not reinventing the wheel. We already do it in the Seniors' Pharmacare Program. With a little tweaking, it could work for this program. So that has an immediate impact today on low-income Nova Scotians and especially the low-income who are ill.

MS. MARRATT: Well, I will tell you that's the truth. I'm going to tell you something, you'll be seeing us picket out the front door there because . . .

MR. MCNEIL: I'll be with you.

MS. MARRATT: . . . I know a lot of people who can't pay up, you know.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Excuse me. I appreciate that this is a very important topic, but we've had only two presentations and we're behind.

MS. MARRATT: I want to thank you very much for allowing me to come down because I didn't even know it was on the book to come. So I said, well, I'll come.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Well, thank you so much, Shirley, and we appreciate the advocacy you've been doing on behalf of seniors and people with disabilities. So thank you very much for coming this morning.

Could I invite Katherine Reed from the Antigonish Women's Resource Centre to come forward, please.

MS. KATHERINE REED: Good morning. I'm here to talk about the brief that I wrote called Fairness in Education for Single Parents in Nova Scotia. It's published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and it can be downloaded from their Web site which is just policyalternatives.ca. When I worked on this brief, I should point out that I had a lot of help. I had members of the Changes Coalition, which was a coalition that was formed about a year ago and our first action was to hold a press conference in Halifax at Saint Mary's University to call attention to the social assistance policy that disqualifies single parents who are in an educational program of longer than two years' duration which, obviously, excludes working toward a Bachelor of Arts degree or anything beyond that.

While we recognize that not all single parents on social assistance want to go to university and it's not necessarily the best option for every person, we know that we need a variety of career options for everyone, including people who are disadvantaged. There are a significant number of single parents, about 90.2 per cent of them are women who are quite

restricted in their options because they're poor, and they aspire to get a university degree which I think is a wonderful thing, which is probably why I did it when I was a single parent and for a couple of years got social assistance.

I remember calling the worker when I was a newly separated ex-spouse and I told the welfare worker that I would like to apply for family benefits because my husband and I are now separated, but I had to tell him that I'm in university and I'm getting student loans. He said, oh, well, we don't even look at that because that's a loan, you have to pay it back, it's not really considered income. So, you know, you just tell me about all the rest of your income and we'll process your application. Well, bless his heart. So I continued on and finished my degree in music and got a job immediately following that at the women's centre and I've been there ever since. It's a funny degree to have, you know, to end up doing community development work, but anyway.

The thing is for me, university took me from a place of real disadvantage because I had grown up in a very humble family with some extremely backward ideas about women and about education. I had never even heard, as I was growing up, that going to university was even an option for people like me. Women just grew up and had babies and washed dishes for the rest of their lives, so that's basically how it works. So I was quite shocked, you know, when I was about 25 years old and met a person who was teaching a job finders' club in Truro, where I was living at the time, and he said you just go to university, you can get a student loan. I had no idea that a person could get a student loan when they didn't already have a stellar credit history and they hadn't already graduated from high school. No, he said, basically they want your money and they'll let you in if you can prove to them that you're reasonably intelligent, which I'm sure you'll have no problem doing.

Going to university then, yes, I learned a lot about music and I also learned about sociology, history, and other things that I had paid absolutely no attention to in high school, but more to the point I learned about how the rest of the world lives. I had lived in that, I guess, roughly 20 per cent segment of Canadian society that is marginalized and isolated from the mainstream, and by going to university at the age of something like 25 or 26, suddenly this whole world of the real world opened up to me and I was no longer ignorant of how the rest of the world lives.

So now when I see this draconian policy implemented in August 2001, actually in 1998 it started - once the province took over social assistance it started to encroach and people started getting discouraged from going to university. So now we have the situation where tuition is now, I don't know, three or four times what it was when I enrolled. I think my first year was $1,300-some and now it's something like - well, I just paid some tuition and it was close to $7,000, and we have a social assistance program that bars access to single parents.

When the Changes Coalition did this press conference, the minister responded with, well, single parents can go to university, certainly we have nothing against single parents going to university, we just don't see it as our role to help them financially to do that - I don't know whose role he thinks it is - but he said single parents just need to access all the existing supports, they just need to get into some affordable housing, they need to get some subsidized child care, they need to get student loans and grants and things like that, and they shouldn't have any problem.

I knew that was wrong because I happened to have a very good friend, who was a single parent, and I knew that she couldn't get welfare. She was in university, and she was washing the laundry for herself and her little girl in the bathtub because she couldn't afford laundry facilities - never mind taxis to get to them - and she was regularly visiting the food bank and regularly having fairly humiliating experiences with, for instance, one food bank telling her you're a student, you shouldn't be here, and the other one telling her you're from the community, you should go to the community food bank. I don't think any intelligent, ambitious and honourable person should have to go through those kinds of experiences just so they can get a university education in Canada - the second wealthiest country in the world, I think last time I looked.

So I knew that was wrong and I knew also that since I had been working with the Antigonish Affordable Housing Society, through my job at the women's centre, we have been trying to build affordable housing. Well, actually we had been looking at the issue of affordable housing since we did a survey on rental housing in 1990 and we had been looking for ways because it became a passion for me, the idea of building new housing options for people who are poor in Antigonish. We had been looking for ways since about 1990 to build an affordable housing project and that was, unfortunately, just around the time that the federal and provincial governments were withdrawing from affordable housing.

So not only were the social and co-op housing programs eliminated around that time, but the public housing authorities also stopped building housing. I think there were four apartments, two-bedroom apartments, built in 1990 in Antigonish and then there were another two built in 1996, and that's all that was built. I don't know when the last ones were built before that but I can tell you, you can walk around Antigonish and look at them and they're very old buildings. So, you know, six units of affordable housing in something like 20 years is not exactly demonstrating a commitment to providing affordable housing for the poor.

So when the minister talked about, you know, don't worry, be happy, just get into some affordable housing, well, how on earth are you going to do that in the university towns in this province where affordable housing is at a premium? It's absolutely unavailable. I mentioned yesterday that there are 33 units of affordable housing, in total, in Antigonish Town and County. The last time I looked, there were 44 families on the waiting list. A family that has a single parent with one child is not likely to move up the waiting list very quickly

because the units are four-bedroom units, for the most part, and people are loathe to put a very small family in there when there are bigger families that need it.

So I pointed it out to the minister that, first of all, subsidized child care is not free child care. When we looked at the cost of subsidized child care in Nova Scotia for the hypothetical single-parent families that we looked at for three different university programs in three different towns, we found that their child care costs were - if you had two children, seven and nine years old, you could have child care costs of about $250 a month. If you had one child, you would have costs ranging from $117 to $173 a month. Then there's the problem of affordable housing, you just can't get it. So if I were just going through a marital separation now, getting on social assistance and then looking at going to university to build a better life for my family, I can't imagine how long it would take me, in Antigonish, to get into affordable housing. In fact, I may never get into affordable housing. My kids may be grown and I may have graduated years ago before I ever get the call saying we have a unit for you.

So we did a very detailed calculation of the costs of, actually, 12 hypothetical families. We took a single-parent family with one child under seven years, a child of four, and another of six; another family with two children, seven and nine years old; and one, six and eight years old. We did these different scenarios just to see how the Child Tax Benefit and things like that shook out. I remember going through the Sears catalogue, actually, and looking at, well, what would it cost to provide clothing and linens and that sort of thing for families like this.

So I was very conservative in choosing items of clothing that were very mid-range in the Sears catalogue, which is not exactly Tiffany's. Then I calculated that you would reduce these costs by about 20 per cent because most families in this situation get coats from the Family Resource Centre or donations of things. I know when I was in that situation everybody from professors to family members would say, here, my kid is not using these boots anymore. So I discounted that and then I put in a very modest amount of money for birthday gifts and a gift at the end of the school year for the children, but then I realized that I hadn't calculated in any sort of gift giving for other family members like, if it's grandma's birthday, do we just completely ignore her birthday, or do we give her a gift. What if little Mary is invited to her classmate's birthday party, does she show up empty-handed? So I didn't calculate in any of those things. It's a very conservative estimate of what their monthly costs would be. I came out with these families ending up with monthly deficits from $180 a month to $415 a month, depending on the ages of the children.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Katherine, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm getting an indication that there are several questions. So I'm wondering if you can just perhaps highlight or summarize the rest of it and we'll get on to the questions.

MS. REED: Sure.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

[10:00 a.m.]

MS. REED: Sure thing. So the three programs we chose were the Bachelor of Science in Nursing at St. F.X., the Bachelor of Social Work at Dalhousie and the BA at Acadia University. The Bachelor of Science in Nursing was the most expensive program. Ironically it's the program where you would graduate and make the most money when you start working. So, obviously, it's impossible without social assistance. A lot of people are saying when they hear about this, they say, well, I don't know why these women on welfare expect that the government is going to pay for their university degree when everybody else has to go into debt up to here. The answer to that is they are not expecting that. They would need student loans as well. It's just that the student loan is not adequate.

What is available through the Canada Student Loan Program is not adequate for a family. It's not designed for a family. There are the Canada Study Grants, which provide about $1,300 a year for a person with two children, and that program was instituted in 1995. It hasn't been increased since it was instituted almost 11 years ago, while the cost of tuition has tripled, and the cost of living has increased dramatically as well.

So we need for this policy to be overturned. It's backward. It's not helpful. It doesn't strike me as a very smart thing to do for this rather small group of people who could benefit from having those doors opened to them, instead of having them slammed in their faces. We've heard from the minister unless there is a groundswell of support from the citizens of the province that he's not entertaining the idea of advocating for overturning it. There is not going to be a groundswell. People don't like people on welfare. People don't understand poverty for the most part. People have a real attitude, you may have noticed, about people who want a government handout, and so there are only a very few people who understand the situation accurately and will create a groundswell. So I would say this requires leadership at the political level and I don't see it happening yet. So we continue to press for this change. Questions?

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Katherine. Gordie and then Jerry.

MR. GOSSE: Thank you very much, Katherine. This is a well-written document and very interesting. It's something that I've been pushing actually. I don't know if you know this but there is a Private Member's Bill as we talk in the Legislature right now, introduced by actually the chair of this committee, to deal with this issue. We've been dealing with this issue and I had once said since I got elected 23 or 24 months ago, when this issue came about it was probably the most phone calls I received in a one-day time frame, saying, Gordie, why should you support this bill, or why should you support this Private Member's Bill, when I put my two children through university and it cost me upwards of $40,000?

I said well, my thought was that if you train these single women and men to go back to university, upon five years of graduation, all the money that you invested in their university degree would have been paid back through taxes, and they can't see that, and that's the argument that I have out in the public is that they just can't see that part of it. If we invest in their futures now, it will be better for the Province of Nova Scotia and everybody else. We'll be better off, along with their families and their children. I think this is a very important issue and I do have a list of single mothers that I support in this endeavor in Cape Breton. I was just on the radio talk show on Monday about this issue in Cape Breton that I do think it's important that we give these - these single mothers are not looking for a handout, they're looking for a hand up. They're looking to attend university and make their lives better for their families and their children.

I really enjoyed this paper. I will take this back to Cape Breton with me and I will share it with everybody at home and I appreciate it and I see that the work that went into this paper for the different family members - I see you have seven- and nine-year olds and what their needs are and what would be the cost. It doesn't seem like an overwhelming factor, but you are absolutely right that the Canada Study Grant has never increased. That has been cut since 1994, or 1993? In that range anyway. We also have to push for needs-based grants for some of these single mothers. I thank you very much for your presentation. It was very thoughtful and well researched.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Jerry and then Diana.

MR. PYE: Thank you, Madam Chairman. Katherine, I want to say that very little has changed in Antigonish since the Standing Committee on Community Services met with citizens in that general area, in 1999. I want to talk to you about affordable housing in a university town. It's extremely difficult, particularly in Antigonish when we had met back then and I just want to take a few minutes to indicate that there was a presenter at the standing committee then who was a single mom on social assistance, who was renting a unit at an exorbitant rate and the landlord had increased the rent in anticipation of the students coming back to the Fall session of university. What had happened is that individual, because the rent rate had increased enormously, had to move out and as a result of that the individual even had to move out of the town because the town had no spaces available for the person, and into a mobile home on the outskirts of Antigonish. Even at that, the rate was exorbitant.

So in a university town where there are limited affordable facilities for people, what happens is that there is a tremendous cost to those individuals. It's the cost of transporting themselves to and from their hospitals, their family doctors, their places of consumer purchases, be it their grocery store or whatever the case may be, along with the exorbitant costs, so they're always finding themselves behind the eight ball, and I agree with what you say - excuse that term the eight ball, I shouldn't have used that, that's a recreational term and it shouldn't have been used - they find themselves behind the door all the time with respect to having the appropriate services.

I want to tell you, I don't know if you have spoken to the local MLA in that area or if the local MLA, who is a minister, was able to encourage affordable housing in that community, but that would be one of my questions to you. Have you spoken to the local MLA and to the housing agencies of the eastern region, who might have been able to put that on the agenda? I guess that in itself is one of the serious aspects of what I have noticed in the Antigonish area.

The other thing with respect to your tabled budgets on monthly incomes and your designations of families one, two and three, and so on, you're absolutely right. It's a very conservative budget because if people who make application to Revenue Canada because they are unable to pay their bill, they will give you a monthly budget sheet. Many of the items that are on that sheet, are not on this sheet. Particularly around personal needs and around entertainment and because someone is on social assistance, doesn't mean that they should not have some source of entertainment. So there is a whole host of items that are not on this list that could very well have been on this list. So you're absolutely right with respect to it being a conservative budget.

Also, I note that every one of the budgets that you had presented to us actually were budgets that showed deficits. So I'm just wondering if you can explain to me how are those deficits ever caught up on?

MS. REED: Well, I don't know. I guess every single mom that is in university now is making her way by hook or by crook. I know that Shaunderay Clyke, who had the well-known appeal that went forward to try to overturn this policy, as a result of the media attention an anonymous benefactor came forward and said, okay, I'll help you pay your bills until you get through university. So more power to her. She's making her way through university and her kids are in good shape. That's great. She also, I would note, is living in public housing.

One of the things about this paper is that we figured out that even if the child care were free or even if all these women were in public housing or some kind of a subsidized housing, they would still face deficits. The other thing about this paper is it doesn't really talk about what else - I don't know if it doesn't talk about it, but I don't remember writing it now - what else you lose when you lose your attachment to social assistance; you lose Pharmacare, and the dental coverage. So then you have to pay for the student coverage, plus all the co-pay that goes along with that, and the student coverage is not a real generous program.

So there are also costs like that, and there is the Assignment of Maintenance Program. If you happen to have been attached to someone who is not reliable with child support payments or who's sporadic and you're on the Assignment of Maintenance Program so that the welfare program fronts the money and they worry about getting it back from the deadbeat dad, you lose that if you don't have an attachment to welfare.

You look at the prospects. You think, if I were a single mother and I had two young children and I was going, okay, should I take this community college program so I can come out and earn $12 an hour or should I take a university program to become a nurse or a social worker and earn $30 an hour, you think about what are the risks involved. Well, the risks involved in my case now, unlike anybody else, are that my kids will go hungry or that I'll be threatened with having my kids removed from my home because I can't cope because we're so poor, or that kind of thing. Obviously you would decide, most of the time, not to take the risk. It's not worth the risk.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

Diana, and then I'm going to close off questioning for this particular presenter.

MS. WHALEN: Thank you very much for being here again today. I enjoyed your comments yesterday, and I'm very happy to have a copy of your report so we can go through it. I've marked the Web site as well, so we can show it to others.

What I wanted to really bring up today, and I'm quite sure you'd be aware of it, but just to let you know that all Parties are very interested in this - at least both Opposition Parties are very interested in this. On a non-partisan level, the women MLAs of the province have met on two occasions, and I believe it was on the agenda. On one occasion we were invited by Stephanie Hunter, who is coordinator, as you know of FemJEPP, Feminists for Just Social and Equitable Public Policy. Anyway, we met, it was put on the agenda, and then we met separately, just as women MLAs, sort of parking politics aside and saying this is an issue that is important to everyone.

Now, we haven't seen any change from the government side at all, but there has been a bill, as well, from the Liberal Party, April 22^nd this year, again supporting exactly what the Changes Coalition was asking for, that this policy be rescinded. Again, as was mentioned, that's two Parties that showed that same support. I think it's important to mention it, that this is - as you said, it makes good financial sense.

I was very impressed by the women who came forward, who gave their own stories, who are now teachers, nurses, social workers - I'm sure you could find somebody from almost every profession - showing that with a small investment, helping to maintain the family while the woman goes back, the single parent goes back and studies so hard, and it is a huge job to be a parent and a student, let alone having all the financial worries. I think back to my time as a student, and it's a lot harder if you have a family, I know. Just thinking about the effort that those students are putting into their work, and if we can support them a little bit, to take care of their family so they can concentrate more on the effort of getting an education, that pays back huge dividends down the road.

I think you've made the point very clearly that, really, it's not the majority of people who are going to want to choose this path, because it is a very onerous, difficult endeavour. You don't set off on a four-year mission like this lightly. There are so many hurdles, child care is one of them, as you mentioned, and there are so many others - housing. On the child care side, one of the concerns I have is about the portability of child care spaces. I wonder, in any of your research, has that come up?

MS. REED: We didn't really look at that. It was quite difficult, actually, to get the numbers on child care. We had Peggy Mahon working on that end of things, and she was in touch with a number of child care centre directors. Boy, what a patchwork, a mishmash of this and that. It's $2.50 over here, and it's whatever a day over there, but if you have two kids then it's a discounted amount, but they don't do it over in the other town - we really need a Quebec-style child care program.

I didn't answer Jerry's question about our MLA. Our MLA, as you know, is a Cabinet Minister, and we have approached him about this issue. His attitude was this is the policy and there's really nothing I can do about that, notwithstanding that he's a member of the Cabinet that instituted that policy, and that point is not lost on us.

The other point is that we also went to him for help to build affordable housing, because in the absence of development funding we just don't have the staff to do the work required to bring in affordable housing. He sent us off to try to get commitments from the two municipal units. Of course one of them said, no, we already gave you a piece of land to build the thing on, what do you want? So being that one unit said no, the other unit said, well, our yes was contingent upon the other unit, so when we went back to Mr. MacIsaac, he said, well, I can't do anything to help you, I don't have any money anyway.

[10:15 a.m.]

What we get from our MLA, and from the Minister of Community Services is, well, you know, this is the way things are in government, this is the allocation of funding, these are the policies, and there's really nothing we can do about that. Well, they're the people who made those policies and decided on those allocations. So I don't buy it.

MS. WHALEN: I think you're completely right in saying that. It comes back to what was mentioned yesterday, political will. This rule was not in place prior to 2001. It was a change in policy, and it can be changed back.

MS. REED: It can.

MS. WHALEN: The financial picture of the province looked an awful lot better last year when the budget came down and there was money to make changes. I think we do need to keep up the pressure, even if you've been discouraged about a groundswell. Again, coming

back and reminding the Legislature, reminding your own local members, wherever people live, those who support this must speak out. I think that makes a huge difference. I know from my own colleagues and myself, I'm very moved when I hear from people individually about what matters to them. I encourage you to keep up that fight and to engage myself and all of us to get involved as well. I definitely wanted to thank you for the work you've done, because it helps to clarify and really put it in very concrete terms. Thanks a lot.

MS. REED: Well, thank you. I appreciate your support. There was just one brief point that I wanted to make.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Well, if you think of it, you can always add comments to the comment sheet and they'll be included in the record.

Katherine, I want to thank you so much for your presentations, both today and yesterday. It's been most valuable. I also want to congratulate you on your paper. I know others helped you with it, but you certainly were the main author and researcher. Personally, I've used it a number of times as a resource. It's excellent, and I really think it's going to make a difference in moving this particular issue forward. So congratulations and thank you very much.

MS. REED: Thank you.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Could I invite Jen Powley and Bernadette McKeough to appear. You're representing the Nova Scotia League for Equal Opportunities (NSLEO). Welcome, this morning. As everyone is aware, we are running behind schedule, so I'm looking for everyone's co-operation, both the committee members and the presenters that if there's any way you can sort of highlight your points so we can get them in the official record. You always have the opportunity to add more detail in a written form, and we'll include that in the record. We'd appreciate your co-operation on this. Sorry to have kept you waiting.

MS. JENNIFER POWLEY: Thank you, Madam Chairman and honourable members. I will do my best to keep it brief. I have given a handout, so I won't cover a lot of the numbers and stuff because you can read them just as well, probably better than I can because of my vision problems. That's neither here nor there.

I'm Jen Powley and, as you said, I am representing the Nova Scotia League for Equal Opportunities. With me is Bernadette McKeough, who is kind of my counterpart on this. What I wanted to say is that most of you know that I'm kind of a political animal, I'm certainly a watcher. I've been watching the federal campaign and the platforms as they come out. The Liberal Party - and I'm not picking on them, they were just the first Party to release their disability platform - one of the things in the platform they committed to, if elected, was putting in place a registered disability savings plan, essentially to allow family members to

save money for children they were looking after, so there could be money for them in the future.

This is something a lot of disability groups have been advocating for, and I'm really glad the Liberals listened to them. On the other hand, it's really kind of a scary admission in that parents, as they get older, have been supporting their children, but when they're gone, or when they can no longer afford to do that, they don't trust this system to support their children. That's the reality, that people with disabilities are in such a bad state and the supports for people with disabilities are in such a bad state that even the politicians are admitting that we need to do something to make sure these people are supported.

So that really scared me, but it really points to a problem that is coming up with aging parents, with the aging population, that there's this huge group of people who aren't going to have supports and that the system isn't adequately supporting them, and that's something we need to address. I mean, all you need to do is go to the Halifax waterfront in the Summer and you'll see the man in the power chair with his coffee cup, hoping that passersby are generous and asked to put in a few extra coins, or the lady with the sign on the back of her power chair that says dishcloths for sale. Is this what people with disabilities should have to do in order to live a decent life?

I want to thank the Disabled Persons Commission. They were the body that supplied all the stats in the paper that I have. Almost one in three persons with disabilities in the province is living in poverty. That's 10 per cent higher than able-bodied persons, or the non-disabled as we like to call them. The Nova Scotia League for Equal Opportunities has been working mainly on three areas: affordable accessible housing, affordable accessible transportation, and on a universal technical aids program, and home care. We call it our daily living kind of platform, or paper.

The key thing to all of these is affordability. It's the poverty, that people with disabilities can't afford to pay for expensive things - I don't want to say expensive things, they can't afford the actual cost. Why is one-third of the population of people with disabilities living in poverty? Probably one of the greatest things is that living with a disability simply costs more. The manual chair I'm in today, $4,800, and then the power chair I have, $9,000. I just put a new lift in, like a ceiling lift, so I can get out of bed, $4,500. These are the types of expenses that people with disabilities face. Then to do my work, I have Dragon NaturallySpeaking on my computer, and jaws. I need a certain monitor size so I can actually see things. These are what people with disabilities need to get into the labour force. Yes, there are some supports, but a lot of it is just daily living kinds of things.

So people with disabilities have an average income of $5,000 less than the able-bodied average. People in Nova Scotia, their average income is $1,400 less than the average for people with disabilities across Canada. These are kind of scary figures. In the paper I had handed out I have some of the higher living costs.

Another reason people with disabilities are living in poverty is lower education levels. I've never seen stats where there are lower rates of university attendance because people with disabilities can't get to university, or if it's because they were disabled first, because a lot of people - 40 per cent of people with disabilities have less than a high school education. So if they're involved in manual labour, maybe there's just greater rates. So maybe we need to look at more programs to keep people in schools so that those disabilities don't happen once they are in the labour force.

There are lower employment rates for people with disabilities and some of the reasons why are employers' attitudes, and that's something we need to look at changing. The public in general often think that people with disabilities can't do the job, or if they do the job they can't do it as well as somebody who is able-bodied - they'll cost more, there will be more adaptations required, and it will just be a bigger hassle.

Underemployment is also a problem. People with disabilities have lower income rates and wage levels, and a lot of this is because there is a group of people with disabilities who can't perform at the same level that able-bodied people can or people without disabilities can. People with intellectual disabilities are often in jobs that society classes as less meaningful and, therefore, they don't pay as well. So maybe we need wage subsidy programs or top-up programs that would allow people to work but have their wages increased by an income assistance program to a living wage, and not just a living wage level, a living wage with a disability level because it simply costs more.

Then of course there is the low-income assistance and CPP rates, and that keeps people with disabilities poorer. Not everybody with a disability can work. If they choose when they work, they lose all of their assistance. They lose all their supports and, as mentioned before about Pharmacare, those things really reduce the incentive to work part-time or do anything like that because it means that you lose everything else. It was mentioned earlier, with single parents on income assistance.

One of the other points that I wanted to make that hasn't been raised is about caregivers for people with disabilities. These are often family members, parents, spouses, brothers and sisters who choose to care for their family members with disabilities, but that's at the cost of their own pension contributions. So when these people reach 65, they find they don't have enough contributions to income programs or to tax programs that they can actually get money back. The work they've been doing supporting their loved ones isn't considered work. There is no T4, there's none of that kind of stuff, and that has really been a problem. We have a couple of cases at NSLEO where - one is a wife who looked after her husband for 30 years and, because of his disability, they were getting a little extra with income assistance and through CPP. Well, now that he has passed away, she has nothing and can't claim anything because it was non-billable hours. That's a real problem and it's something that we need to look at. I know that's federal, the tax system, but really, we as a society need to look at these issues.

[10:30 a.m.]

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Jen.

MR. PYE: Thank you, Madam Chairman, and in the absence of time I'm going to be somewhat brief. I know that you asked us to respect that. Jen Powley, I do know that you get the opportunity to meet with all the political Parties, through your annual reports to those political Parties in Nova Scotia. The other thing is that you do a report card on the political Parties of Nova Scotia, and some of us might not be receptive to the responses of those report cards, but nonetheless, it's a report card and it perks our minds up to it. The only question that I have for you today is, the question around the receptiveness of the disabled community to a disabled persons Act. Is it possible for the disabled community to endorse a disabled persons Act in the Province of Nova Scotia, and I mean an Act that enshrines the rights of disabled persons?

MS. POWLEY: I would say right now the response to that is mixed. There are certain groups who support it. I know our parent organization, Council of Canadians with Disabilities, doesn't think that it's necessary on a national level. They think there are enough measures that can be taken, that there is enough legislation and of methods to go through the system. Other groups really support and believe it will make things a lot simpler. So I don't think the disability community, as a whole, has an opinion. I was meeting with a group yesterday and they were very much in favour of it, because I believe the CPA supports that. They were very much in favour of it because they saw what the Americans with Disabilities Act did for people simply in terms of accessibility, where you could ensure that businesses were accessible to a certain one standard, and that's one thing that we lack here in Nova Scotia with the different building codes and the different ways they are applied. What's accessible in one place may not be accessible in another.

MR. PYE: Thank you, Madam Chairman. I would just like to close by saying that I would like to hear your arguments for or against, and if there is such a paper or report, I would certainly appreciate having it in my possession.

MS. POWLEY: That is probably something we should really look into, thank you.

MR. MCNEIL: Jen, thank you very much for coming in. We all enjoy receiving your report card. It's always a way for us to look at where we can improve, and successes. I want to thank you publicly for the work that you did and your organizations across Nova Scotia who represent people with disabilities to help us finally get past a bill for self-managed attendant care, which I believe is long overdue and is making a huge difference in the lives of people with disabilities today and it's beginning to make that happen. I know of a constituent, personally, who is doing so. As a rural MLA, one of the issues that we're faced with a lot is around transportation. I just would like you to expand a little bit on that, on the

transportation side, and maybe explain to the committee the difficulty for a person with disabilities without having proper transportation.

MS. POWLEY: I wasn't able to come today in my power chair, and I'm kind of depending on Bernadette for help. I couldn't get transportation here for nine o'clock this morning, so I was here at 7:45 a.m., because my boyfriend had an eight o'clock meeting and it's the only time I could get here. It's really hard, a lot of people don't have boyfriends with cars who are able to lift them in and out of the seats. Essentially, the lack of transportation has really limited people with disabilities the ability to participate in society. I'm lucky that my work is flexible and it's okay that I get there at 10:00 a.m. and leave at whatever, 4:00 p.m., and do some work from home. A lot of jobs you can't do that. Even in Halifax, to get somewhere for 9:00 a.m., you're looking at getting picked up at 7:30 a.m., and then you need to get home care before that.

I know I'm one of only, I believe, two clients with Red Cross who gets service to go to work. Hopefully, this self-manage bill will change that and allow for that. That's the situation in Halifax, and Halifax is the best-case scenario in the province. Only half the province has any accessible transportation service. They could get a Dial-A-Ride service or something that is a community-based transportation system. The rest, you depend on your neighbours and friends. In some communities you need to get an ambulance to go to the dentist because that's the only transportation system there is that will accommodate people who use wheelchairs. Does that answer your question?

MR. MCNEIL: Perfect, thank you very much.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you and I just want to congratulate you, Jen and Bernadette, for your brief. It's extremely well set out, very well organized, and has lots of important information in there that I know we're going to be able to use in the future as well. So thank you very much. Thank you for coming today.

I have been asked to have a five-minute break, and because we are so far behind on our schedule, I ask people to really try to be back here in five minutes because I'm going to start in five minutes and I'm sure you don't want to miss out. Thank you.

[10:39 a.m. The committee recessed.]

[10:44 a.m. The committee reconvened.]

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Ladies and gentlemen, could I ask you to take your seats, please. Margaret, thank you very much for coming in this morning. The other committee members will join us as they get back in the room, but I think we had better start because we are running a bit behind schedule. So if you would like to make your comments now, we

would really appreciate that. Thank you for coming. Everything is being recorded and there will be a written record of all your comments.

[10:45 a.m.]

MS. MARGARET JOHNSON: Good day, everyone, from Caring and Sharing in the corridor area. As soon as you hear that term, you're going to freeze up and say it's the fastest growing area there is in Nova Scotia and practically in eastern Canada. Yes, it is. We live with the construction trucks, the sand trucks, the cement trucks, all the rest of it that's going through, and that's fine, and I'm not complaining about that at all. The fact is I'm not complaining, period, because we are well blessed in our Caring and Sharing program there. I used to, 22 years ago when we started it, even down as far as Maitland and, of course, into the HRM area, too, as well as Oldham, behind the airport, all those familiar areas that you people would know in your geography.

The only thing that I'm concerned about, and I want to leave you to think about it, I'm wondering actually - you see, I've got the fastest growing business that there is, that's very unfortunate; very unfortunate, with the usual things that happen to people. Not necessarily the homelessness, we have a little of that, not a great deal, but we look after that as well.

The municipality has wondrously given us a provision to house our health services, we are attempting to get more from our DHA, eventually from the Health Department, naturally. You know you're never satisfied with what you have, but you really are, a $5 million building to house those services, yes. I'm very concerned that I can run a business for 22 years and I can get to the point of 170-some family units; understand now, I'm defining this - family units. I don't care whether you're one and two children, or one and one, or one and five, or two and five, or what your numbers are, if you're over the line and you've left us and you're not on somebody else's computer, we'll look after you. Like I said, we're not in desperate need. We have both money in the bank and food in the cupboard. Can't complain about that, can we? I'm wondering, and my bottom line is actually are we going to come to the end of this or has this become an acceptable - and I'm not downing the idea - way of life, because it's part of our mission.

The mission started with the Riverview United Church, the Elmsdale pastoral charge, that's where the mission started. Now it has become a community mission, which it should. I'm very concerned. I don't expect you to answer me right now. We're probably running, an average family unit, two adults, two children, run-of-the-mill style, shall we say, we're running probably something like $100 a month short. When I'm laid off - I'm not laid off but - when I come to the end of that month, I'm just about $100 short, because I can't rent a place for less than $500. I can't possibly pay my power bill for less than $100 a month. I can't possibly pay my water bill for less than somewhere around, every two to three months, $50 or $60, broadly speaking.

If I have an ordinary phone, which I do - I'm blessed with two offices, because the church gives them to me - an ordinary phone is between $35 and $40 a month, broadly speaking, and then I haven't covered the heat bill. The trouble is that my power bill is more than $100 a month because I live in an apartment and most apartments are electrically heated and not oil-heated. I am never at the house - some of you would say that if you tried to get me on the phone, it would be impossible, I would be someplace between here and Halifax. And I do not carry a cellphone, because it's too expensive. And I do not carry cable, but you see these are expectancies of the average person. So I leave you with the thought, I wonder what we are doing.

Yes, we are members of Feed Nova Scotia, certainly, but I'm very concerned about what we are doing, and how we are doing it. I think if we were to visit my food bank, which is courtesy of the Enfield Legion, rent-free - can't go that one wrong, can you - with all the accommodations that are necessary to have it. I've told you all the pluses of where I live and the accommodation of an office within the church, free of charge. I've told you the free ones, to me. The car isn't free of charge, but that's all right. I would probably run someplace else. Grant you, I don't go to Florida and so on, personally speaking, because I have real things about that. If there are people out there in need, and I really believe in the program, if we were doing something that was the right thing to do and I leave it with you to think about it.

What are we doing with no EI, or EI in six weeks? We hit this just around - guess when - Christmas. Don't we? Because we're part-timers, we haven't built up a professional "pension" scheme, and we certainly don't have money enough to pay into it on our own. Now understand I'm not speaking for myself, I'm speaking for other people because I want for nothing - thank the good Lord above - a little common sense maybe occasionally would help.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: So, Margaret, you're basically talking about some of the challenges of people who volunteer and work at food banks, and the rhetorical question you are asking is, are expanding food banks going to be the new reality in Nova Scotia? Is that sort of the essence of your presentation?

MS. MARGARET JOHNSON: I'm wondering.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Okay, I believe Jerry has a question.

MR. PYE: Thank you, Madam Chairman. I guess I can go right on your train of thought. You had indicated that food banks are the fastest growing industry in the province. There is no question about that. I do believe that the government's agenda of believing that it is the avenue of last resort is an area of concern, but my question to you is this, do you believe that government's dependence on food banks, clothing depots, churches and charitable organizations has been responsible for government's inaction on bringing about progressive social services change?

MS. MARGARET JOHNSON: No, I think we have to realize that these things will always be there - it's to the extent that they are there. Particularly the food banks. We have a clothing bank, we have a "new to you" shop, and I have no problem with those things. We have a transportation thing, but I'm concerned that the food bank part of it is growing continuously.

MR. PYE: Can I put it this way then? Do you think because of the services that you provide that government does not provide those services?

MS. MARGARET JOHNSON: I don't know if it's necessarily the government or if it's a combination of all of us. I'm not really "damning" any one particular area. I think maybe it's a combination of all of us because certainly - and I'm not downing big business because I do a lot of business with big business, I won't name the concerns, but they use me very fairly. There's only about two or three in this province that you would be doing business with anyway in that regard, as far as food bank business is concerned, I'm talking about. I'm not just sure whether it's big business, it's not just government, it's the general set-up. Sure, we had the first one in our area, I did, in December 1984.

So I'm not really blaming anyone. I'm just saying that we need to go through our routine of living and examine ourselves as to what we are doing. Are we stressing enough education? I'm not talking about quitting school in Grade 10 because you've got a job. I went through that, too, you know, because I raised young people. Now, that person didn't quit in Grade 10, you can bet your life on that but, you know, sometimes we have to stress that a little more, making sure you go out with a Grade 12 and an extra business course of some description, like real computer knowledge, know how to run a cash register, know how to manage people as they go by you.

I'm not blaming any one particular group. I'm just saying we need to bring it to our attention, and very shortly, because we've got another generation coming on. You realize that I'm going through probably the fourth generation in my life, to be honest with you; 35 years of teaching, 22 years at the church. Well, do your own addition.

I'm concerned about the fact that it's taking about $100 a month to meet your need, or your need, or your need, beyond what you are getting. You see, when you add it all up, you're getting $1,200 a year short. That's what's happening with it all the time and, of course, as the $100 grows, it becomes $125 next month.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: We really appreciate you coming in today, Margaret. We want you and your colleagues with Caring and Sharing to understand that we appreciate the work you're doing in your community. We don't have any quick, easy answers for you today, but certainly we've taken note of your concerns and your comments and they'll be part of our consideration later. Thank you very much.

MS. MARGARET JOHNSON: Thanks very much for your time. I'm just leaving the thoughts with you.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you for coming. Could I invite Malcolm Shookner to come forward, representing the Halifax Peninsula Community Health Board, please.

MR. MALCOLM SHOOKNER: Good morning. I'm pleased to be here today as a member of the Halifax Peninsula Community Health Board to present to you some of the findings that are included in our community health plan which was just completed in 2005. I'm going to present those aspects of the plan that relate to poverty and health and solutions to reduce poverty.

Just as a bit of background, the Halifax Peninsula Community Health Board is made up of 15 community volunteers from all parts of the peninsula. Our brief explains exactly what those locations are. We are the eyes and ears and voice for the community's health. Our main task is to consult with residents and organizations about the various initiatives that affect health and to advise Capital Health about the various factors that affect health and what we can do to meet the needs of the community.

It needs to be stressed that health is a lot more than just health care services. People create health in their everyday lives, where they live, work and play. Health is a shared responsibility that includes caring for yourself, your family and your community.

[11:00 a.m.]

We spoke with hundreds of residents over the course of many months in 2004 and 2005 to identify their top health issues and suggestions for dealing with these issues. Because of the diversity of the community, we decided to address the plan from the point of view of four age groups: maternal, infant and children; youth; adult; and seniors. We did what we could to learn about each of these age groups, and we collected information in many different ways.

We looked at research and about these age groups. We used the results of a community-based telephone survey that was conducted across the Capital Health District. We had a community dialogue with over 100 people and 70 organizations to discuss their interests and concerns. We had over 300 youth surveys completed and 80 on-line surveys. We held 20 focus groups with various populations, including about 80 residents, to hear their concerns on their own turf. We collected data regarding health issues. We put all this together and, in the course of that, we spoke with people who were experiencing homelessness and poverty, people with disabilities, single parents, educators and many others. The variety of methods we used gave us passionate and thoughtful insights about concerns and what could be done to make our community a better place to live, learn, work and play.

So the community health plan presents the results of these inspiring discussions and maps out the steps that we will take over the next three years, both as volunteers at the community health board level and working with Capital Health District Authority to address priority issues in our community. One of those priority issues, of course, is poverty, because it's such a powerful determinant of health.

So I'm going to give you the highlights, which are in our brief, of the actual points in our plan that address this issue: advocate for affordable, flexible child care services, especially for families that need more support; we request that government provide financial help for licensed daycare, preschool and after school programs; support low-income families by advocating for minimum wage to be increased to a liveable wage. In fact, this particular recommendation resinated so much with the seven community health boards in the Capital District, which not only incorporates HRM but goes out Hants way, out as far as Windsor. The seven chairs of those health boards have decided to take up the issue of a liveable wage as an advocacy issue that they're going to pursue across the district. So you may well be hearing from them as well.

Advocate to government to increase transportation benefits for those receiving income assistance to improve access to services; join with other community health boards across the province to advocate to government to move from the current minimum wage system to a living wage, and for more benefits for people receiving income assistance. In fact, we are starting to have meetings with volunteers and other community health boards, and we've looked at all the community health plans that have been produced and the issues of food, security, problems with income, transportation, a lot of the issues you've been hearing about over the last day and a half are reflected widely across the province, as you would know as MLAs.

Advocate for more affordable housing options, support projects that improve equitable access to meaningful employment and those that assist new immigrants to gain employment in their trained professions; advocate to the Department of Health to freeze the premiums for the Pharmacare Program to ensure that the cost of medications will remain affordable. That one is specifically for seniors.

Those are the elements in our plan. Since that time, we've had further discussions about, more specifically, what we could be doing to address this big scary monster called poverty. So we are looking more specifically at raising social assistance rates to a level that would enable residents to meet their basic needs, remove barriers to the development of affordable and adequate housing options for people living in poverty, revoking the regulation that prohibits social assistance recipients from pursuing more than two years of higher education, and surveying people who live in poverty to ask for their idea about what can be done to make their lives easier on a day-to-day basis.

So this presentation to the standing committee at this Forum on Poverty is a great opportunity for us, as well, to add our voices to those you've already heard about the problems faced by people living in poverty and solutions that can be pursued. Having listened to the presentations yesterday from anti-poverty advocates, we would like to add our support to some additional recommendations: in the clawback of the child tax credit for families receiving social assistance, significantly reduce the clawback of earnings from part-time work for social assistance recipients; extend access to subsidized child care, housing and drug benefits for people leaving social assistance to enter the workforce; expedite the development of social housing under the federal-provincial agreement by eliminating regulatory and financial barriers, and advocate for increased funding for child care, social assistance and other social support programs through the Canada Social Transfer.

You've heard in more specific terms, yesterday, in the testimony about these so we're not going into that detail again today, but we want to add our support to those voices you heard as committed and interested volunteers in our community. We want to join with the volunteers across the province to improve the health of our communities and we want to advocate for solutions to reduce poverty. We have found that this forum is a great opportunity not only to present our views, but to identify allies in our quest, and we thank the committee for creating that opportunity for us to do so.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Malcolm. Are there any questions or comments from committee members? Well, perhaps that indicates how comprehensive your recommendations and brief are. I just have one . . .

MR. MCNEIL: Madam Chairman, I apologize, I should have spoken up at the time, but it is the work that the community health boards are doing, not only in the peninsula here in Halifax, but all across Nova Scotia . . .

MR. SHOOKNER: That's right.

MR. MCNEIL: . . . they are committed Nova Scotians who are committing their time in stepping up to their communities, and I guess on behalf of the people here, and I'm sure the people you are representing and serving, thank you very much and this certainly does bring together a lot of what we had heard around the issue of poverty and the fact that you're coming forward and showing the determinant that it has on health is important. So thanks.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: I just have one question myself, Malcolm. Is there any kind of mechanism for the community health boards across the province to work together on shared issues, or concerns, or initiatives?

MR. SHOOKNER: Not yet, but we're working on it. There is no established mechanism and so we are working on the poverty issue, starting with Capital Health, to meet with volunteers on the other health boards, and then leading to working with volunteers in

the other health boards around the province that also have identified these kinds of issues in their health plans. So we're going to try to create a mechanism in the course of doing the work on this issue that perhaps can be used in the future as other common issues arise.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: I think it's obvious to all of us, as some of the presenters have already said, that any sort of provincial strategy has to be community based and I see the community health boards being in an excellent position to help with that as well as sort of talk in terms of improved policies and regulations. So thank you very much. We're delighted to have input from the community health board and to hear some of those voices. So thank you very much for coming today.

MR. SHOOKNER: Thank you.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: I now invite Linda Carvery and Brigitte Neumann from the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women to come forward.

MS. LINDA CARVERY: Thank you and good morning, everyone. I want to start off by saying the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women has as its mission to advance equality, fairness and dignity for all women of Nova Scotia. The agency works with organizations inside and outside of government to achieve equality for women in four areas: inclusion in decision making that affects women in all their diversity; economic equality; equality in health and well-being; and the elimination of violence against women.

Now, these goals are universal among women's equality seeking groups because equality gained in these areas will create the most profound improvement in women's lives. Nearly everything we do at the Advisory Council on the Status of Women touches on reducing women's risk of poverty or removing barriers that keep women poor. Reducing poverty is a critical factor in achieving the other goals. It excludes women from society and decision making, harms their health and that of their children, and increases their vulnerability to violence. Women are more likely to live in poverty than men and poverty affects women differently and more profoundly.

In 2003 more than one-third of women and less than one-quarter of men in Nova Scotia earned less than $10,000 per year. What increases a women's chance of being poor over a man's? Women are less likely than men to be in the paid labour force, and women who do work are more likely to work part-time or in casual jobs that offer low pay and few benefits; in fact, more than two-thirds of Nova Scotians who work part-time are women. A significant underlying factor is unpaid caregiving.

Women trade income for the flexibility they need to raise their children or to provide unpaid care to other relatives, and I can speak to that. This is evident in statistics about part-time work and choices of lower-paying work. Women's child-bearing and child-rearing years are the same as their most productive income-earning years. Statistics Canada shows that

nearly three-quarters of women in Nova Scotia between the ages of 25 and 54 are in the paid workforce. Close to 30 per cent of women between the ages of 25 and 44 spend 60 hours or more per week caring for children. That's two and a half times as likely as men to be putting in these hours on these types of unpaid work. These are the most productive years of a person's life, and most women have significant unpaid responsibilities outside of paid work.

Having begun paid work, many mothers choose either to leave the workforce during the early years of their children's lives, or to reduce their paid workload. Either decision has long-term economic consequences for themselves and their families. Women care for others besides children, and again, it's unpaid work that can reduce their income. A woman may be the only or simply the best person to provide that care - care for an ill, or aging parent, or other relative, for example. However, she may have to reduce her hours of paid work by working part-time or taking unpaid leave, or by quitting a job or retiring early. These choices mean lost income immediately and in the future. If pension contributions have not been made, pension income is also reduced. Care is costly to the unpaid caregiver, in terms of health, in terms of social relationships and in terms of money, and the caregiver is overwhelmingly likely to be a woman.

People who live alone are also more likely to be poor than those who live in families, and this is particularly true for older women. While rates of poverty are higher for all unattached persons, unattached women are worse off than unattached men, and this difference is especially evident for those aged 65 and older. In 2000, close to 40 per cent of unattached women aged 65 or older in Nova Scotia were living before the low-income cut-offs. Compare this to 25 per cent of unattached men the same age. Low income is a fact of life for many women, especially those with low levels of education, lone parents, women of African or Aboriginal descent, or women with disabilities.

I'm sure some of the presentations yesterday and today will touch on the effects of poverty on people's lives. The most horrible effect of poverty upon women is, that having fewer options, they're more vulnerable to violence. They also have fewer options for escaping poverty - women who become poor tend to stay poor. Those are the reasons that women's economic security is a fundamental and ongoing goal for the Advisory Council. So what are we doing about it? I will touch briefly on three policy efforts.

In 2004, our Round Table on Women's Economic Security commissioned a research paper titled Building Transitions for Good Jobs for Low-Income Women. That paper detailed what has been shown to be the best way to support women with low levels of education and work experience to better provide for themselves and their families. It's a guide to best practices in this area. The paper has been presented to representatives of several provincial and federal government departments and is available on our Web site. I have also brought copies of the highlights report today.

Last February, we responded to a Department of Environment and Labour request for input on the minimum wage. The Advisory Council is concerned about the minimum wage in this province because women are over-represented among minimum-wage earners and because the minimum wage acts to anchor other wage categories. In 2003, more than 66,000 women earned less than $10 an hour. A woman working full-time, full year at such a job would earn only $17,500. The low-income cut-off in 2000 was $18,200 for a family of two.

[11:15 a.m.]

Our minimum wage brief makes two recommendations I want to share with you. First, that the minimum wage move back toward a living wage, where basic needs can be adequately met and, second, that the province index the minimum wage to the cost of living and to a proportion of average wages.

In November 2005, we submitted a brief to the federal Department of Labour which was reviewing the labour standards that make up Part III of the Canada Labour Code. The Canada Labour Code was written in 1965, and has long needed to be updated to better reflect the current Canadian labour force. Our brief provided background information on the most significant of those changes and discussed how gender is related to the workplace issues the department was reviewing. Again, the brief is on the Status of Women Web site, and I have copies with me. Three important recommendations are for better enforcement of the standards, for legislation that promotes a living wage, and for extending labour standards to non-standard work arrangements.

In addition to recommendations to government to reduce poverty, the Advisory Council supports community organizations dedicated to reducing women's poverty. For example, a staff member participates on the research committee for Community Action on Homelessness. This year the research group sponsored a conference, Homes First: Opening Doors to Supportive Housing. In addition, it sponsored Struggles for Access: Examining the Educational Experiences of Homeless Young Women and Girls in Canada. Researcher Jas Dhillon investigated this issue in Halifax, Saskatoon, and Vancouver, and her study found that young homeless women want to attend school as a means out of social, political and economic forms of deprivation.

Women Unlimited is a project of the Advisory Council and partners to support the fuller participation of women in science, trades and technology training programs, and workplaces in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia Community College campuses in Halifax and Bridgewater are acting as pilot areas. The goal is to move 20 or more women for each of three years through each pilot site, through a continuum of services, including recruitment, the application process, course selection, gender/diversity training, placement to a job, mentoring, and successful retention of workplaces in Nova Scotia. Other partners are the Nova Scotia Department of Education, the Department of Community Services, Human

Resources and Social Development Canada, the Status of Women Canada, and two community organizations - Women's Economic Equality Society and Hypatia Society.

To address the overwhelming financial hardships and employment barriers women with disabilities face, we are structuring forums for such women, leading off with Amherst. To help immigrant women bring forward their economic and social concerns we will be holding a second round table for immigrant women, in conjunction with the Office of Immigration and the Gender/Immigrant Women domain of Atlantic Metropolis, in mid-February.

These initiatives will allow us to hear from women with disabilities and from immigrant women, and bring to government their concerns and perspectives and the recommendations for positive change. Many factors contribute to women's poverty, and poverty makes women's lives worse in many ways: increased violence; reduced participation in their society and in decision making that affects them; worsened health status; and vulnerability to violence.

In conclusion, I want to emphasize that poverty isn't just about having satisfying employment and adequate income, it's also about being excluded from participation in the community, finding it impossible to take part in health promotion, recreation and leisure activities or supporting your children in doing that. Eliminating the daily humiliations, worries, stress and discrimination that are part and parcel of poverty, need our close attention to fulfill our mission, and to extend it to future generations.

If you have any questions I would be happy to answer them. Again, I invite you to visit our Web site, the address is on our brochures and the other reports I brought with me today. Thank you very much.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Linda. Are there any questions from committee members? Jerry.

MR. PYE: Thank you, Madam Chairman. I'm just wondering, through you to the presenter, Linda Carvery, when you presented your papers and your reports and your findings too, to government, you obviously presented them to a number of governmental departments because the Status of Women would fall into Health, Education, Justice and so on - have you received any responses back from government, with respect to your recommendations, and if in fact government has set an agenda whereby it will support or endorse some of those recommendations?

MS. CARVERY: I would like to direct that question to Brigitte, who may be able to answer that better than me.

MS. BRIGITTE NEUMANN: Okay. I always call it Building Transitions to Good Jobs, just for short form. It has been circulated and is of particular interest to the women's centres of Nova Scotia, who have used it in a number of settings to try to advance the cause. It has also been presented to ministers in a federal-provincial-territorial forum since many of the issues that it addresses are in fact federal-provincial-territorial issues. On the minimum wage brief itself, we did receive a letter of thanks, particularly expressing appreciation to the fact that we do some analysis as opposed to simply saying we want more, and we have not yet heard back from the Canada Labour Code Review.

I would like to say that one of the reasons why we do spend some time and effort to address an issue that is in the federal domain, namely the Labour Code Review, is that invariably that also has some impact on other labour codes, provincial labour codes, in the country and we felt at that point that it's most important to surface the issue of precarious employment. That is an increasingly important issue. There are so many people including, and perhaps especially, younger people who after finishing a course of education, nevertheless are caught in contract work, in casual work, where they get no benefits and have to spend a very long period of time, and in a way, economically, live in a house of cards - you miss the next contract and you're in serious trouble.

So the point, I think, that we want to make with that is that we need to s