Sistering and Street Health’s forum Back Talk: Women Speak About Reducing Poverty in their Lives provided homeless, marginalized and low-income women with an opportunity to speak about strategies for reducing poverty in their lives and to have input into provincial government consultations on the Poverty Reduction Strategy for Ontario.

It was a full house at Sistering’s Bloor Street Drop In space, with hosts Angela Robertson, Sistering’s executive director, and leading anti-poverty advocate, Pat Capponi. Women spoke openly about their lives, often directly addressing Deb Matthews, Minister Responsible for Women’s issues and Chair of the Cabinet Committee on Poverty Reduction, who attended the afternoon forum. Women chose to take the risk of sharing very personal stories, stating clearly they were doing so to bring about change in their lives. As one Sistering participant said, “The reason we are willing to show our faces is because we want change.”

Others pointed to flaws in the system that cause harm, echoing the 2007 report Why is it so Tough to Get Ahead? which documented how tangled social programs create disincentives and punish recipients when life starts to improve.  “They lowered my rent $6 and I made 22 cents too much,” one Sistering woman explained, “so they took my drug and health card away…22 cents.”

Over and over, women’s stories echoed Sistering’s “ordinary women in extraordinary circumstances” as they told how illness, random and domestic violence caused a spiral into homelessness that cannot be turned around within the context of current social programming. 

One woman, with an MBA, explained how a stroke took her from a comfortable life to homelessness and an ongoing struggle to meet basic daily needs. Ontario’s social assistance programming forced her to liquidate locked-in company retirement savings plans, ensuring that she spiraled down into poverty, rather than providing a safety net or a bridge to keep her out of it.

Minister Matthews assured everyone present that she would remember what she had heard at Back Talk as she drafted the province’s Poverty Reduction Strategy.

The forum was videotaped and the Back Talk video distributed to all members of the provincial Cabinet Committee on Poverty Reduction as well as city councilors, other MPPs and MPs.