Status of Women Committee on May 17th, 2007

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you very much.

Again, I want to thank you for your contribution here today and your insightful comments. It's very good to hear from you.

There are two things. I was very interested, when we were talking about women, in this woman who went back to work, who was a widow. Of the 20 women who you talked to, Louise, all of them said it's because they needed to enhance their cost of living.

With the CPP, I was very interested in what you said, and I want you to expand on it briefly. Taking the cap off would allow them to live much better. Our CPP fund has money in it.

Could you expand on that a little bit, about the merits of why that would be good?

[Louise Nesterenko]

Yes. Thank you.

Right now, the way it's set up, it is designed on the premise that two people can live as cheaply as one. But if you remove that one salary, that person now is only living on one salary, which is greatly reduced. Let's not kid ourselves, we all know it's greatly reduced.

What do I think is the benefit there? If we can look at removing that cap—and let's say for argument's sake it's $600 a month—I don't know the exact figures—but if you can remove that cap and the woman then applies, and that CPP moves to the woman, that $600 then becomes her income until she dies. I will use that as an example. Now, that $600—two live as cheaply as one—but that woman is still living, probably, in the same house. Or she has to find another method of care. She still has to have transportation. She still has to eat. She still has to get around. She still has to take care of her family. So that money would allow her to live in the same lifestyle that she, I guess, sort of enjoyed when she was living with her husband, without having the pressures of going back to work.

There's the other side of that, Ms. Smith. It's very hard being 65, going out and getting a job, because people look at you and they think that you're at a dead end. But it's not true. It really is fulfilling to work at 65. I'm only 57. We know that, don't we?

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Of course we do. All around the table we know that.

Having said that, I really like the problem solving kinds of ideas that you have. I've run a business myself and this makes a lot of sense.

Anyway, the second part of my question--I'll direct it to Carole, if I could. I'm very interested in what you said in your presentation about young women with a lack of education and lack of credit ratings. Sometimes they get married and sometimes they don't, but often it's much more difficult for them, if they want to buy a house, to qualify for that house.

Could you give us some suggestions of things we could do as a federal government to make sure these young women have the kind of wherewithal they need to get this information and to be looked on favourably when they go into a financial institution?

[Carole Presseault]

Absolutely. A few years ago we convened a round table of women entrepreneurs who were certified general accountants and we looked around the table and talked about the problem today, but we also talked about how we would do it for tomorrow. How do we make sure that young women...? I think you have to bring it into the education program. It goes back to education.

There are a lot of things that need to start with education. The federal government needs to make sure there is money there for education. That's the first thing in terms of post-secondary education. But it starts much earlier than post-secondary education. Parents need to have the tools to teach their children. I know the banks have been loudly criticized but if you go to their websites--and I have because I have three children, two daughters--they have the right kinds of tools. It has to be part of what you do in bringing up your children. There has to be a supportive atmosphere to be creating that. And I think education, tools, and training is what the federal government could do.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

How much time do I have, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have about two and a half minutes.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

What about atmospheres where we have families that don't have the support? There has to be another venue to deal with that because a large part of our young population does not have that support.

Perhaps working with young entrepreneurs, you might have some ideas as to how we can put that information out there or allow that to happen.

[Carole Presseault]

You're going to talk about mentoring, I hope, Louise.

[Louise Nesterenko]

Yes, I was just going to say, if I could talk about my vision of what the government can do to help young women or people who are trying to access capital, it is called mentoring. It's called networking.

I think what the government can do is set up these centres of excellence. I know the United States has them. I know they're in Europe. These centres of excellence will be like a one-stop shop where women, or anyone, can go to access information, meet someone, talk with them, and understand what they can do. And that mentor actually guides and helps that person along.

I can say that I have probably been a mentor to 25 to 30 young people, helping them get loans but only because I'm an entrepreneur and they have that trust factor. I'm not the only one. According to statistics, by the year 2010, there will be one million women who are running small businesses. So by the year 2010, there will be one million of us. Look at that pool you have. You have such an opportunity, using that pool--one million women who can mentor and foster other women--bang, bang.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

It's nice to listen to you. It truly is. It's very exciting because this really impacts on young women, senior women, and you talk about the real world. This is great.

Carole, do you have any comments on this, as well? Anything else you would--

[Carole Presseault]

I was going to say, I hoped Louise was going to talk about mentoring and she's done a really good job because she's there and she's on the ground and she knows how it works.

I think you can use business organizations and professional organizations, but there have to be facilitating mechanisms and that's why the federal government is there, to create the right conditions for this to happen.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Like the centres of excellence that you're talking about.

[Carole Presseault]

Yes, like the centres of excellence or getting the right information out.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Do you mean like the Women's Enterprise Centre and things like that, those initiatives? Yes, because it's very successful in Winnipeg.

I think my time is running out, so I'll have to thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much.

I just want to add to what Ms. Smith said. CGAs, CAs, and I think the CMAs if there are now no longer CMAs, do work with the Junior Achievement and do a lot of mentoring, so I think the professional bodies are helping out. And I think there is a lot more to be done.

With that, we go to Ms. Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much. This has been very, very instructive.

You talked about your association and you talked about mentoring and how women need access to capital. I want to switch gears a little bit. I wonder about these round tables and if at any point you talked about the work-life balance, because that's another reality in terms of women's economic security—achieving that balance between having to worry about child care at one end and perhaps providing caregiving to elderly or sick relatives at the other end and all of the demands on a woman that many of us face.

I'm wondering if you could discuss that in terms of our need for an affordable regulated child care system, affordable housing, and support from government for that caregiving element in many women's lives—long-term care, home care—and how governments can help make sure that women meet those incredible demands.

[Carole Presseault]

I'll take a stab at it.

[Louise Nesterenko]

Then I'll go next.

[Carole Presseault]

Yes, we're quite balanced. You can talk to us about work-life balance.

The first thing I want to do is dispel a myth and state that these one million women entrepreneurs who will be around in 2010 are not becoming women entrepreneurs because it's the easy way out. They work as hard starting at their businesses—and I don't know who I'm saying this to, but you know this as much as I do—as they are doing any other things.

They are like Louise, starting up different kinds of businesses, but putting in as many hours and the hundreds and hundreds of hours a week if there's that need to do it.

On the issue of child care, we don't have a position on what form that would take, but absolutely, to succeed, women need access to affordable, quality day care. There's no doubt in that; it's the statement.

Louise, did you want to comment?

[Louise Nesterenko]

Can I expand just a little bit, if that's okay? Again, I'm not speaking on behalf of CGA when I talk about that day care. As she just said, they don't have a position.

It is very difficult today for us to balance our work life. One of the problems we have is a day care problem. There are very few day cares. It's hard to get your child into day care now because it's not accessible any more like it used to be, or maybe because those day care workers have gone out to work themselves, to meet the demand of the economic situation.

Some women ought to stay at home, because day care is very expensive. No disrespect to anyone, but a child tax credit or whatever it is— have six grandchildren—that $1,200 that a family gets per child and you can't put a child in day care for $100 a month. So if you use that on economics of scale, a woman goes out to work and—let's just keep it simple—she makes $12 an hour, but she puts her child in day care, and that's costing her $7 an hour. So her net return is only $5, because day care is no longer affordable.

What happens is that it is cheaper most of the time for a working woman or a woman who's chosen to work to stay at home, but then that creates other problems. So you are correct that our vision should be that we should be looking at affordable day care and what the government can do to help facilitate that.

What's going to happen is, if you look at us aging baby boomers, we're going to leave the market, so that means down the road, let's say in 2030, only four women are going to be in my sector. So what you have to deal with, as a government, is that you are going to have stress and pressure on our young. How are they going to sustain our economy? We need to look at that sooner rather than later, which is affordable day care. We need to provide or find spaces.

So you can approach it through individual taxation, and I'm not going to say I'm a tax expert, or you can have incentives to help people set up day cares that are affordable.

Does that help you?

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

That's wonderful.

At the other end, the caregiving for elderly parents or relatives, the long-term care, the home care.

[Louise Nesterenko]

To me, it's one and the same. It's very hard when you have a parent who is sick and elderly. Even as an owner, I now have to take a minimum of ten hours off a week to take care of someone who has Alzheimer's.

Again, I haven't studied that far, but if we could parallel it, we could parallel it like child care and do the same thing for the elderly. You could have one program that can fit both.

[Carole Presseault]

I just really like it when Louise gets excited. When Louise chaired the board, there were just such amazing times.

Also, to add to the point in terms of elder care or caregiving, one of the new measures of course is the EI measure that some of us are benefiting from. But I think we need to look at it also from an employer perspective. I think employers need to take into account—We're off the topic of small entrepreneurs, and that might not be as easy, but large employers need to take account of caregiving leave, and I think some of them are. I know at CGA Canada they've instituted a caregiving or family responsibility leave, because it's more than—

Our children are getting older and moving on to university, but our parents are needing our care.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Would a flexible work week make sense? One of the things I've been talking about is allowing women to create their own working environment, for example, flex time. Is this something that fits into this picture in a positive way?

[Carole Presseault]

It fits in for large employee organizations. I don't know how well it fits in for organizations like Louise's. I don't know what accommodations you would take away from your enterprise to accommodate people and creating caring environments. That's where the government can come in and provide incentives for employers to allow that, whether it is EI contribution breaks or holidays to allow that flex time. I think there has to be some really creative stuff happening to recognize that that is a problem.

Looking at the EI system, it's already supporting how the employer gets the EI contribution break to be able to support, because the real cost of having employees on the payroll is still covered.