Status of Women Committee on Feb. 24th, 2009

[Armine Yalnizyan]

As you and many of the members of your committee probably know, all of the EI information is available in an administrative format. In the United States, they produce weekly bulletins on what is happening with EI. There might be an argument, actually, to work with the department that is in charge of producing the administrative information to produce it more regularly.

I don't think you need to table it in Parliament. I think the thing is there and it is up to parliamentarians and people who are in the extra-parliamentary process to bring to light the information that is there in an administrative database, and to make sure it is free and openly available to the public along the parameters that you believe are the most important and significant in this period of economic downturn. A lot of that data is already there; you can just speed up the rate at which it gets delivered. StatsCan, of course, released this morning the EI beneficiaries. That's based on the administrative data. You won't see that again until the end of next month.

I'd like to just piggyback, though, on your question by saying that not in this last budget—Budget 2009—but in Budget 2008, the Conservative government did say explicitly in its documentation that it was going to have, within a year, a plan for women. I don't see much evidence of that. I really hope the Conservative members of this group and other members of the women's caucus, if there is one in the Conservative Party, can influence what the nature of a plan might look like. They might also request more fulsome gender budgeting analysis.

I understand the Department of Finance does produce every year a gender budget analysis. When I was in the budget lock-up this year, I asked the woman who is the gender champion, whom you heard from last year, Louise Levonian, whether that gender budget analysis had been done. She said, yes, it had been. I asked if it was public, and she said, no, it wasn't. I asked on what parameters the gender budget had been done, and of course it was done yet again on tax cuts. Tax cuts are part of it, but what are the spending changes that are going to help women?

We are in a crisis situation. We're not going to waste a lot of money on dickering around with what these reports look like, but what we have should be public, because it is a matter of public record that this government and the previous governments said that gender budgeting analysis is important to assure that governments are working for all Canadians, men and women, and in equal measure. There should be nothing to hide there.

Just in keeping with what you were asking, Madame Mathyssen, it's just more public information so we can assess together where we can make improvements at this stage. Are the scarce public resources being allocated in an effective and gender-neutral way at a time when women will be picking up the slack, as they have in every recession?

There is no more slack; there is no more fat in the system. People are running as flat out as they can. If jobs dry out, I'm not clear what people are going to have to do. So let's use our public resources really well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

One minute left, Ms. Mathyssen.

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

Ms. Lahey.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

I'd like to just make two comments following on that.

If it is possible for this committee or Parliament to take the kind of responsible action that really does need to be taken, then simply publishing data more frequently is not going to do the job. Status of Women Canada has over the decades produced hundreds of detailed expert reports, has collected a huge database of gender-based analysis tools of every possible kind, as well as comparative literature, etc., which has been the mainstay of academic and social policy research on the part of people working in this area all across this country and around the globe. Sometime between December 10 and about a month ago, it was all removed from the Status of Women Canada's web page. It took myself and our reference librarian a good hour and a half before we could find it in an obscure, unindexed, inaccessible, non-usable, unfriendly government archive some place off in a corner. The human technical capacity to solve the problems that need to be solved has been removed from the reach of not just the public but also the academic and technical sphere as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Ms. Lahey.

Now we have Ms. McLeod, and that will bring us to 12:30. We do have some in camera future business to do, so I would suggest we end with Ms. McLeod, if possible. That would give us two full rounds.

Ms. McLeod.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. We have deviated perhaps a little bit within this discussion today from what we're really trying to accomplish, so maybe I'll try to bring some of that focus back.

I do represent one of these communities we're talking about. I have six aboriginal communities. I live in the pine beetle forestry area, so we have been particularly devastated by what's been happening around us.

Now, I was back in my constituency last week, and I need to bring forward a few of the comments I was hearing from the men and women in my constituency. First of all, they don't have their heads in the sand, but they say we need to have an optimistic approach. So to suggest we are heading down a spiral of doom and gloom they suggest creates a spiral of doom and gloom. Perhaps we need to temper how we present things. Indeed, we have challenging times, but....

To be quite frank, they wanted the resources of the government focused on opportunities for jobs. They are incredibly enthusiastic about ideas around innovation. Yes, employment insurance is important, but you can help our communities move forward to a long-term future. So we can't lose sight of that within this.

The small businesses did talk about tax cuts in that they help them keep people employed, and that is making a difference.

We have an opportunity around the commitment to move towards maternity benefits, EI maternity and parental benefits. Right now I understand there's pretty good access—600 hours and you have 91% qualification—and we're moving forward to that expert panel being developed to look at self-employed Canadians. Being as I actually think I had about 12 weeks when I had my children many years ago, I would really like to spend at least a minute or two focused on comments from our panel in terms of self-employed access to maternity and parental benefits.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

I'll just make one quick point, and it is that it certainly would have to be structured with some sense that people can't decide two or three months after they've discovered they're pregnant that they can get a job for the six months that it takes. It could probably be designed a bit better.

[Armine Yalnizyan]

I'd actually like to echo what you were saying, Madam McLeod, about depressions begetting depressions. It is important not to overstate things, in a doom and gloom way, because it will beget a bad psychology. That's why the Great Depression was called the Great Depression. It was psychology actually trumping economic fundamentals in a prolonged way and feeding on itself. We may face exactly the same thing. But the truth is that without a government that restores confidence and says this can be done and we will create jobs, there's nothing on which to anchor.

Everything else in the private sector is about hunkering down. We are not talking about a cyclical downturn now. We're talking about a structural de-leveraging. Banks are over-leveraged. Businesses are over-leveraged. Households are over-leveraged. People are looking at what's going on and saying that if they lose their jobs, the whole house of cards will fall down, and people are pulling back. When you get all of the sectors of the private sector contracting, including exports, then there is nothing to fill the breach, other than someone who can say with confidence this is how we're going to actually use this moment to create the platform for the next phase of growth.

It is quintessentially a government's job. I understand how difficult that is. We've had 30 years of hearing that governments are the problem and markets are the solution. You don't turn a mindset like that around in a matter of weeks. But governments are indeed not the problem. Governments are the solution at this moment to be able to create the long-term opportunities that you're talking about.

Given the fact that we are off topic and we need to talk about EI, with the very small part about the self-employed coming into maternity benefits, anything that expands the ability of people to raise their kids and not worry about where the food is going to come from is helpful. You have an opt-in plan that is terrific for people who can afford to opt in.

But may I just say this, as a feminist and as an economist? Maternity and parental benefits should not be part of the social insurance program for the jobless. You want to support people who are raising their kids in the few months after the adoption or the birth of a child. Create a program that does that, which includes everyone who has a child and not only those who are eligible for EI. Surely we want people to be able to stay at home in the first few months of that new child joining the family. I welcome anything that improves support for young families, but it's going to help those who can most afford it. People who are very poor won't be able to opt in and they won't get much out of the system. Let's actually redesign this to help young families in a meaningful way.

Quite apart from that, I agree that you need to look at the long-term options in jobs and not EI. But the purpose of this discussion is the question of what we can do about EI. The answer is to make it easier to get into it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

I would like to thank Ms. Lahey.

How do you pronounce your name, Armine?

[Armine Yalnizyan]

Yalnizyan.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Yalnizyan, thank you very much.

I will now give you a three-minute break to get some food. We'll then proceed in camera, because we have a bit of work to do.

Thank you.

Proceedings continue in camera