Following several months of consultations with community groups, you promised, Madam Minister responsible for Social Solidarity and Community Action, a reform modernizing the law that governs social assistance in Quebec: the Law on help to individuals and families. So much waiting has made us optimistic. However, after having read Bill 71 tabled on September 11, we are worried. In fact, you rework the elements that are already there, without much improvement.
To our great dismay, the basic issues remain the same: our ultimate social safety net does not cover essential needs and pretends to reach all those who need it. Women are also experiencing a major setback in terms of their ability to access this last resort aid.
Single-parent families
Single-parent heads of a child under 5 years old can currently access an increase in their social assistance benefit of $161 per month, which allows them to have an annual benefit of $13,177 instead of $11,245. Your bill plans to reduce the eligible age of the child to 18 weeks after delivery. This represents a major setback for the 8,882 single-parent mothers and future mothers who benefit from temporary employment constraints due to pregnancy or a dependent child under 5 years old.
This will also affect nearly 491 fathers in the same category. In the midst of a crisis in access to daycare, no, parents of children aged 4 and a half months will not be able to take steps to find a job with a child at home. To fight poverty, we must cut the complex eligibility criteria for social assistance, not the aid measures already in place.
Financial dependence and domestic violence
As you say, single-income couples have become the exception and adults tend to be more and more independent. Paying a single benefit for two people in a household inevitably places one person in a situation of financial dependence on the other. This represents a major risk factor in terms of the dynamics of domestic violence and complicates the victims’ efforts to escape from it.
The bill provides for the individualization of benefits for 2028! The slow pace of implementation worries us. Domestic violence is a serious issue. To modernize the law, each person receiving social assistance must receive a benefit in their name, without having to go through their spouse’s account. In addition, if one of the two people in the couple earns more than $1,224 per month, the other person will not have access to the Social Assistance Program; it is deemed to be the financial responsibility of the other.
Women are, still today, the ones who reduce their working hours, or even leave their jobs to take care of children and household chores. It is they who become poorer first to support the home, to ensure family responsibilities. A so-called “modern” reform of the law must respond to the imbalance that persists between the roles of the different members of a household.
Your vision of modern financial independence is outdated. To prevent toxic situations linked to access to resources in households, benefits must be granted according to the financial situation specific to each person, without taking into account the income of others.
Married life
Cohabiting for more than 12 months, sharing household chores and appearing to be a couple in the eyes of neighbors, this is your definition of a modern couple which allows you to cut financial aid benefits, or even make them inaccessible. The status of married life in particular prevents women living in a dynamic of domestic violence from having access to meager savings which could facilitate the steps to get out of it.
The status of married life is archaic and must be abolished so that help is accessible to anyone who needs it. Bill 71, as presented, is not without cost for many, including women, because it contains more obstacles making access to assistance more difficult for them. Madam Minister, we are not asking for heaven, we only want to cover our essential needs.