Access to Quality Jobs

Our Lone Mothers’ Economic Inclusion initiative is a community-driven effort to address the deepening poverty and systemic economic exclusion of many lone mothers in British Columbia — a crisis made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2022 to 2024, we partnered with the UBC School of Social Work to conduct peer-led research with 165 lone mothers across BC, uncovering urgent policy gaps in income supports, child care, housing, mental health, and employment standards.

Backed by Women and Gender Equality Canada and the McConnell Foundation, this work continues through 2026 with four Regional Impact Committees made up of mothers with lived experience of poverty and committees bringing a racial equity and disability justice lens to this work. These committees are leading advocacy and knowledge mobilization efforts across the province, working to advance evidence-based policy solutions that support economic recovery and lasting inclusion for lone-mother families.

Out of the Margins is a community-engaged research project and preliminary case study that explores parental disability status, precarious work, and family poverty in British Columbia. The project is led by the UBC School of Social Work and the Centre for Family Equity, and funded by the Understanding Precarity in BC (UP-BC) led by SFU and the BC Society for Policy Solutions. 

Led and shaped by trained peer researchers with lived experience, the study engages parents and caregivers living with disabilities, their partners, and youth, and takes place in both urban and rural locations in BC. The study conducts interviews and focus groups to examine how disability related policies, labour market accessibility, and other issues impact partnering, household income, and holistic family health and well-being in households where one or more adult receives a provincial disability assistance income in BC.

Implement the ABC model as the legal test for determining employee status, reverse the onus of proof so workers are considered employees unless the employer can prove otherwise, and eliminate exemptions and carve-outs to the Employment Standards Act.

Ensure that employers provide all full and part-time workers with extended health benefits.

Annualize the earnings exemption for those accessing income assistance and raise it above the poverty line.

Provide an additional five days of employer-paid sick days per year for caregiving responsibilities related to dependents’ and other family members’ sickness and care needs.

Remove the Annualized Earning Exemption (AEE) for those accessing disability assistance in full. 

Provide priority access to $10-a-Day child care to parents accessing income and disability assistance, particularly those in the expected-to-work (ETW) category.

Close the gap between the minimum wage and the Living Wage: raise BC’s minimum wage to $20 per hour now with scheduled increases up to the Living Wage to ensure all work in BC lifts families out of poverty.