Remembering Jennefer Laidley, a passionate and expert advocate for income security
We were shocked and saddened by the sudden passing of our colleague and Maytree Fellow, Jennefer Laidley. She will be dearly missed by family, friends, and colleagues alike.
With Jennefer’s passing, we have lost one of Canada’s most experienced and knowledgeable experts in the field of income security.
Jennefer devoted decades to understanding poverty and changing the public policies that create and sustain it. She spent many years working in politics, supporting members of the House of Commons, the British Columbia Legislature, and Toronto City Council. Jennefer went on to complete her master’s degree at York University before joining the Income Security Advocacy Centre in Toronto, where she combined policy work with government relations, community outreach, communications, and public education.
She used her considerable expertise and passion to advocate for income-support systems that would allow people to live with security and dignity, and for governments to involve people living with low income in decisions about reforming these systems. Jennefer was an instrumental part of the success of several important advocacy campaigns to defend the rights of people living in poverty. The Hands-Off campaign convinced the McGuinty government to end regressive claw backs of social assistance, and she devoted her leadership, energy, and creativity to the 25 in 5 Coalition’s success in achieving Ontario’s first Poverty Reduction Strategy.
We invited Jennefer to join Maytree as a Fellow in 2020, as researcher and lead author of Maytree’s annual Welfare in Canada report. Her work helped document the inadequacy of social assistance incomes across the country and inform efforts to improve our income security systems. It is complex, detailed, and profoundly important work that informs public policy across Canada. Jennefer pursued this work year after year, with diligence and humility. Her contributions to Welfare in Canada shored up its place as one of the most trusted and widely used sources for data on income assistance in Canada. Researchers and policymakers across all levels of government and academic institutions have come to rely on this body of work.
All of us who had the chance to work closely with Jennefer are grateful for her expertise and professional contributions. Her infectious energy and positive spirit made her a joy and inspiration to be with. We will remember her as a plain-spoken, generous colleague and mentor, with an incredible wry sense of humour.
We extend our deepest condolences to Jennefer’s family and friends. We will miss her.
This article was originally published on Maytree’s Substack.