Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to appear today on behalf of YWCA Canada.
For almost 150 years, YWCA Canada has worked to improve the lives of the tens of thousands of women and girls who use our services annually. My remarks today respond directly to their life experiences.
YWCA Canada and our 32 member associations across the country in nine provinces and two territories are committed to building a country that works for all women and girls. That includes first nation, Métis, and Inuit women, young women, and newcomer, refugee, and immigrant women. We welcome the quick initiation of the development of a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, and look forward to the government honouring its funding commitment to this in federal budgets 2016 and 2017.
Gender-based analysis is essential across government departments and should already be incorporated in the development of this federal budget. It is particularly important for allocation of infrastructure funds to affordable housing and early learning and child care to ensure that this spending responds equitably to the needs of women and girls. The Auditor General reported that in the 20 years since the government committed to applying gender-based analysis, it has been implemented in only some departments and agencies. Correcting this will require ensuring that Status of Women Canada has sufficient staff capacity.
YWCA Canada welcomes the government's support of the motion on pay equity earlier this month. Women working full-time year-round earn 20% less than men in comparable work, feeding poverty and inequality. We look forward to funding in federal budget 2016 to support recognition of pay equity as a right, implementation of the 2004 pay equity task force report, and restoration of the right to pay equity in the public service.
The new Canada child benefit, or CCB, is a potential life-changer for single mothers and all families living in poverty if the federal government can ensure that provincial and territorial governments refrain from deducting it from social assistance payments, or counting the CCB as income for access to means-tested benefits. If it is to lift 300,000 children out of poverty, women and children living on social assistance must retain the entire benefit.
The Minister of Status of Women is responsible for ensuring that no one fleeing domestic violence is left without a place to turn. Often violence survivors are unable to leave women's shelters because they can't afford housing. This leaves shelters full to capacity and turning away women in need. The CCB would provide a single mother with one child under six with $580 a month. With two children under six, she'd receive $1,160 a month. These payments could be enough for women to secure housing in the community and reduce the system bottleneck if they remain fully in women's hands.
As Canada's largest single provider of shelter for women and children fleeing violence, we work to end the interconnected issues of violence against women and women's homelessness. Federal budget 2016 needs to provide a minimum of $5 million to Status of Women Canada to support participation of the violence against women sector in the development of a national action plan on violence against women. Federal budget 2016 should restore the shelter enhancement program at $10 million per year to achieve the promise of no one turned away.
The promised national housing strategy requires a gender lens and gender-based analysis. Male bias pervades perceptions of who is homeless, despite women and girls comprising almost half of the estimated 235,000 homeless people in Canada. Homelessness is gender differentiated. Violence and poverty are the major drivers for women. Forty per cent of women leaving shelters don't know where they will live. Women and girls hide their homelessness because the streets aren't safe.
For women, housing first is not a panacea. The shift of funding from the homelessness partnering secretariat to the housing first model was not accompanied by gender-based analysis. This is absolutely critical before expansion. Transitional housing is an essential service for survivors of violence. It doesn't fit the federal government's current housing first model. Actual housing first for women and children living with violence would leave them in the home, remove the perpetrator, and secure their safety.
The national housing strategy must address housing for women and families in the northern territories. Women with children trying to escape violence are profoundly impacted by the northern housing crisis and seriously disadvantaged by the lack of federal social housing funding that has continued for years.
YWCA Canada welcomes Minister Duclos' statements indicating quick progress by federal, provincial, and territorial governments under a framework for a national early learning and child care program. Federal budget 2016 should dedicate social infrastructure funds to a short-term emergency-style fund for transfer payments to provinces, territories, and indigenous communities for early learning and child care during funding negotiations.