WESTLOCK, Alta. – Money is the biggest issue farm women are dealing with, according to the president of the Alberta group Women of Unifarm.
“Women are getting very, very concerned. They’re telling their kids not to farm because there is no income,” said Florence Trautman.
More farm women than ever are working off the farm to make ends meet and their husbands are starting to follow suit, said Trautman. The federal aid package isn’t going to help farm income, she said.
“The programs out there are not helping the people we need to help.”
Read Also
Man charged after assault at grain elevator
RCMP have charged a 51-year-old Weyburn man after an altercation at the Pioneer elevator at Corinne, Sask. July 22.
At the group’s annual convention June 16, the women also discussed the low income situation of retired farm women. Many of these women couldn’t contribute to the Canada Pension Plan because they didn’t work off the farm, said Trautman.
“A lot of these farm women will not have a pension.”
Phyllis Kosik, a member of the Alberta Women’s Institutes, said she worked at off-farm jobs but retired early to care for her now deceased husband. She’s barely scraping by with a small monthly cheque from the Canada Pension Plan and her Alberta Widow’s Pension cheque.
She wants to rent a house in town but doesn’t think she can afford it. If she moves into a senior’s home, the facility will take only a specified portion of her income per month, but she thinks the residence would limit her freedom. She wants pets to keep her company, but they’re not allowed into most of those facilities.
“It kind of puts you between a rock and a hard place.”
She’s coping now but notes that when she wants to visit her kids she has to ask for help with the gas money.
“That’s hard to ask for. I’ve been independent all my life.”
She didn’t apply for the Canada Pension Plan until long after she had quit working and thinks she would be making more money now if she had understood the system. Women need to become more informed about it, she said.
While she’s living on a tight budget she knows some women have it worse.
When women who are now senior citizens retired from farming, registered retirement savings plans were not well known, said Elizabeth Rushton of the AWI. It’s hard to know how many women are in that situation, she said.
“They don’t like to talk a lot about their income.”
Pay women
At the conference, Women of Unifarm members discussed a proposal to either allow all women to contribute to the Canada Pension Plan or to pay women for their homemaker role. The resolution failed to gain consensus.
Jackie Kohl, of Stony Plain, Alta., said contributing to the Canada Pension Plan isn’t the best way to generate income. Women would see better results through buying RRSPs or other investments.
As well, she questioned whether the government plan will even exist over the long term and thinks it would be best if people could opt out.
Resolutions that did pass during the conference included asking the Alberta government to hire more teachers to reduce classroom sizes to 25 students or less. Delegates also passed resolutions urging the government to prohibit for-profit health facilities and to ban people from riding in the back of pick-up trucks.
“It seems ironic to me that we have a law to make people in trucks wear seat-belts and these kids can ride in the back without them. Something is not kosher here,” said one member arguing for the resolution.
Members will make the resolutions that passed known to appropriate government officials.
