A Letter to Hon. Judy Streatch, Minister, Department of Community Services
28 June 2006.
The Hon. Judy Streatch, Minister,
Department of Community Services,
P.O. Box 696, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 2T7.
Dear Minister Streatch:
Congratulations on your appointment to the Cabinet of the Government of Nova Scotia. We wish you well in this challenging position.
In January 2006 the Face of Poverty Consultation participated in the Forum on Poverty organized by the Legislature's All-Party Standing Committee on Community Services. We were pleased with the seven (7) recommendations for immediate action which were forwarded to both the Premier and the Minister of Community Services for action in the 2006-2007 Budget year. The Standing Committee also developed recommendations for more mid-range and long-term actions, all of which can have significantly positive effects on the lives of Nova Scotians who live in poverty. Most of these various recommendations either reflected or expanded upon those which our interfaith coalition had included in our presentation to the Standing Committee, many of which we have brought to the attention of the Department of Community Services in the past.
You may be aware that the Face of Poverty Consultation circulated a Petition to support the recommendations of the All-Party Standing Committee to faith groups and community groups throughout the Province. Some eighty-four (84) different groups of Nova Scotians responded in support of the Petition with some two thousand eight hundred persons (2800) signing the Petition. These Petitions were tabled in the Legislature on Tuesday, the ninth day of May of this year. This was the day the Budget was presented; a Budget which gave scant attention to the alleviation poverty in Nova Scotia.
Since that time representatives of Face of Poverty Consultation have participated in the working sessions on the "Struggling to Survive" Project of three Nova Scotia women's resource centres which focused on social assistance reform in Nova Scotia to move forward a woman positive public policy agenda. The "Survival Strategies" developed by these working sessions are very exciting to us because they too reflect and expand upon the work of the Legislature's All-Party Standing Committee.
Further to this, at meetings of the Community Advocates Network and anti-poverty coalitions held in Truro in May, representatives from various areas of the Province and numbers of community groups also called for changes to the Employment Support and Income Assistance (ESIA) program which are very similar to those put forward by the whole "Struggling to Survive - Survival Strategies" project. As recently as June 2006 researchers at Mount Saint Vincent University released a report which underlines the fact that persons in Nova Scotia depending on ESIA do not receive enough financial support to allow them to provide a nutritionally adequate diet for themselves and their families.
An important consensus has developed among groups working with persons affected by poverty and persons who themselves are living with poverty which points to the fact that changes to legislation and methods of working with poverty need to happen in very specific ways, and that these changes must take place in Nova Scotia now. The 40,000 Nova Scotian children living in poverty attest to this critical situation.
The Face of Poverty Consultation is pleased to support the work of the three women's centres which focuses on "survival strategies" for women in Nova Scotia who are living in poverty. Putting these strategies into effect would benefit individual women, their families, their communities and their province. Strategies based on cooperation and positive outcomes permit individuals to have dignity and self-respect as well as security and opportunity.
In particular we support the call for a joint Department of Community Service/ Women's Working Committee to be established as soon as possible in order to implement the recommendations in the "Survival Strategies" document. For the Face of Poverty Consultation, operating with the fundamental premise to love our neighbours as ourselves, it is imperative for all government and community partners to act together now to take care of Nova Scotian women and their families.
Thank you for your attention. We look forward to your response and to an opportunity to meet with you in the near future.
Yours truly,
Elizabeth Brown Carolyn Earle
Co-chairs, Face of Poverty Consultation,
23 Walton Drive, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3N 1X6.
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