Status of Women committee  What can be done currently is a little trickier, but I do think you need to take a hard look at it. Certainly more affordable housing would help. I think we need to look at affordable housing for seniors. You also see a concentration in the population. It becomes more and more female as people get older.

Status of Women committee  It was negotiated in the contracts. Yes.

Status of Women committee  There's always room for federal leadership on violence against women, and I think it goes a long way to setting a national standard and an attitude. It sets a standard for governments to meet across the country. I think the federal government working on sexual harassment in federally covered workplaces is key.

Status of Women committee  Across the country for the most part, we have a mature social service system in the shelters serving women fleeing violence, but there are definitely gaps in the system. In northern Canada, for example, in rural and remote communities, women don't have the same access. Women with disabilities don't have the same access, because shelters aren't necessarily equipped to support them, and of course shelters are always operating on absolutely shoestring budgets.

Status of Women committee  Yes. We know that there's a shortage of affordable housing across the country. There are massive waiting lists to get into social housing. Housing affordability has taken a real hit in the last decade in the major cities. It's very difficult, so one of the things that's happening is that women can't leave the shelters when they're ready to go.

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  One thing that happens when women are fleeing violence and go to a shelter is that they lose their employment. It's not all, but I think it's about two-thirds of them. They're giving up their income and they need to start over. Obviously, it's a long path to get back to having housing for those who lose employment, and to re-establishing an income and a stable living environment for their children.

Status of Women committee  I was reporting to you on the success of broad-based low-cost child care in Quebec in changing women's economic position, not on a detailed analysis of what's part of that program. I think it has been evolving. It started as kind of a Cadillac program, with many different kinds of child care, which no one else in the country has attempted as part of the system.

Status of Women committee  Well, it's always going to be piecemeal if it's the provinces.

Status of Women committee  Yes, so it's not that the federal government is ever going to provide a national system and be the service provider, but it needs national leadership. You have four provinces that have responded with full-day kindergarten in the last 10 years. The pressure continues, and it's a policy gap on which we haven't seen sufficient action.

Status of Women committee  A new additional paid leave for men that could only be taken by them? If it's additional, yes.

Status of Women committee  I think the evidence is that if it's not leave that can only be taken by men, it doesn't get taken up to the same degree.

Status of Women committee  If it's shared, women still take more of it.

Status of Women committee  I'm actually with YWCA Canada.

Status of Women committee  YMCA doesn't really advocate on these issues.