Evidence of meeting #7 for Status of Women in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was unemployed.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
We are about to begin again.
We will begin the second round. It's five minutes, Madam Sgro.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
Thank you very much.
To all our witnesses, thank you very much for coming out. In particular, thanks to Ms. Dépatie, who chose to come out today and share her story. I think her story is not unusual. I hear stories like that all the time in my riding, of people having to deal with these challenges.
What do you see in store for yourself in the next ten years, from an employment perspective? I realize your desire is for independence and that you want to work. I believe everybody wants to work, because that is what gives them satisfaction in life. Under the current support systems that are there, what do you see the oncoming years will be like for you?
12:20 p.m.
Representative, Conseil national des chômeurs et chômeuses
I hope that the help provided women will improve, precisely because I wish to work as long as possible. Given my condition, I must make choices, but I want to continue working. We need more normal avenues than a reduction in the number of hours or of the waiting period if we want to have a life. It is all fine and dandy to say goodbye to certain things and to cut everywhere, but there comes a time when there is nothing left to cut.
It is wrong to say that we choose to work part time. If I had the choice, I would certainly return to working full time, and today I would have a fat salary and I would be living the good life, which I no longer have the means to do. It is but a small proportion of people who choose to work part time. I do not believe that single parent women who are having trouble making ends meet and who are holding down two or three jobs when they are able to are making this choice.
12:25 p.m.
Representative, Conseil national des chômeurs et chômeuses
It is not an easy choice.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
From a woman's perspective, many women are working part-time because they have to fit everything around the family. That is just a reality. You work around the schedules of your children, around the schedule of your husband, around the schedule of everybody else. In order to make that work, you work on a part-time basis. Subsequently, the part-time work and full-time poverty is very accurate for women. It's a big part of the reason women are in the situation they're in.
To Ms. Byers and Mr. Battle, we very much appreciate your comments and your desire to see changes. I can only imagine that when they made the changes to the EI system earlier, the region-by-region benefits.... If you live in Toronto, you are much more apt to be able to find a job much faster than if you're in Thunder Bay. It is a very dangerous area to change. We know that. Many people have paid a price for changes on the EI issue, in a variety of ways, politically.
In trying to find a system that's fair, in particular for women.... Listening to you folks today, it makes me think we have a maternity and EI situation for women when they're on maternity benefits, but maybe we need to have a separate system for women, recognizing all the issues women have to face.
We can say we're equal. We can talk all we want. The reality is that women face a whole lot of other obstacles to being able to be in full-time employment. If we're talking about change and reforming the EI system, should we be isolating women? I say women because we're talking about women in particular, but should we try to reform the system to recognize more specifically the challenges women are facing?
12:25 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
I don't think we need to separate the system and have an EI system for women and an EI system for men. What we have to do is modernize the EI system so it recognizes the kinds of work various people do—to make sure people have access—whether it's part-time work, casual, temporary, whatever.
If we made those kinds of changes.... We've been advocating this for a long time at the Canadian Labour Congress, that we need to modernize UI. We have to recognize the kinds of work people do.
Again, we have to get back to the whole question of the three things that have to be done. There's access, which we all come back to. There's benefit levels: you have to have a benefit level that's adequate while somebody is looking for other work. And there's the duration of benefits. Then there are a number of other things.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Ms. Byers, excuse me. I'm not going to cut you off, but if we could cut our answers shorter.... I understand Ms. Sgro wanted Mr. Battle to answer that, and you are well over seven minutes already.
Please, finish your sentences.
12:25 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
All I'm saying is I don't think you need to split it. What you need to do is recognize that they are gender biases built into that system. Get rid of the gender biases, and then quite frankly the fairness will become much more evident.
12:25 p.m.
President, Caledon Institute of Social Policy
Just quickly, I think we have to have two programs, but not one for women and one for men. I don't think we can change EI enough to take into account the changes in labour, the growth of non-standard employment. That's why we're proposing another kind of a program that could help people who are new entrants to the workforce, or part-time, self-employed, or whatever, who will never do very well in a real social insurance system. At the same time, we want a stronger social insurance program than we have now.
That's part of the thinking behind our proposal, to have a program that could meet the new realities of the labour market.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thanks very much to all of our presenters today. I think we've heard some really interesting ideas.
I have a couple of comments and then a couple of questions. I'll talk and then open it up for answers.
One of the things that's been said here several times today is that most people don't choose to be unemployed and sit around. I think we all agree with that. We all represent people in our ridings, who we know struggle to find jobs and keep employed.
Ms. Dépatie, I really commend you for coming here and telling us your story. As has been said, unfortunately it's not a one-off. There are many stories similar to it. I congratulate you on your strength and the way you have handled the issues, as well.
It's also been said that the EI system is based on how much is contributed. I think, Ms. Byers, you are the one who said that. If that's not right, then what should it be based on, and how would you fund the system? That's one question.
Second, when I was doing my research I know the Canadian Labour Congress put forth several recommendations for reform. One was increasing the period for benefits to 50 weeks, which is something we have recommended. Investing part of the surplus on better training and labour adjustment programs is something we also recommended. I wonder if you could comment on why you would support those measures and how those two in particular will help Canadians.
The other thing I want to point out is the discrepancy in the stats that we have to deal with. We talked about women working part-time. The stats we got at our last meeting said that 78.4% were voluntary part-time women, and men were less, 75.4%. I find it really difficult to make complete sense of the situation when we're dealing with different stats all the time. These are Stats Canada figures.
I make those comments, and I'll open it up for answers, please.
12:30 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
Okay. And I know from the chair that I need to be quick.
First off, I want to go back to a discrepancy in the stats. It's exactly what we talked about earlier, that we are not drilling down to find out why that's voluntary.
Now, I may voluntarily choose to work part-time because I don't have the child care to be able to do it. So if I've got a partner, it's a matter of working part-time because I know I can work that around my spouse's work schedule. And oftentimes it's the woman who's making that choice, because she doesn't make as much.
On the basis of contribution, we're saying that there are other societal elements that fit into this. The question of pay equity or pay inequity fits into this very clearly. But also it fits into it in terms of how women contribute if they're not working in full-time, full-year jobs.
So, yes, there are going to be discrepancies in terms of the level of income, but those are exacerbated by the kinds of jobs we don't always voluntarily choose to take, because we're into part-time jobs and we'd like to have a full-time job.
In terms of the increase to 50 weeks, we absolutely think that is important. We would say it should be increased generally, so people have that right across the country, because as Mr. Battle has pointed out, when you're unemployed, you're unemployed. There are other things that come into play there, as I said. But the reality is, if you can't get access, then you can't get the 50 weeks.
And the same thing goes for the training. Now, we believe in training. But I would also say that what people haven't talked about in this room is that there was a $55-billion surplus of money that people paid into unemployment insurance that they couldn't get benefits from, that they paid into, and they still can't get it.
12:30 p.m.
President, Caledon Institute of Social Policy
Just on the different stats kind of thing, this is a complicated thing too. But just simply, the numbers we're talking about, in terms of coverage, are very simple. It's the number of people receiving regular employment insurance benefits divided by the number of unemployed.
What the government does is this. Its counter-argument is that the denominator, which is the number of unemployed, is too broad. For example, you're including self-employed. Well, the self-employed aren't part of the program. Or you're including somebody who is new to the labour force, and they're not included.
So basically what happens is that StatsCan and the EI Commission come up with a definition with a narrower denominator. They're saying, well, not everybody who's unemployed deserves benefits, so we're going to throw them up. So that makes a difference.
What we're saying is that we believe people who are unemployed should receive unemployment insurance. It's not certain kinds of people who are unemployed; it's everybody who's unemployed.
And there are pros and cons to all these definitions. As Barb was saying, there are nine definitions of what unemployed is. But I think it is important to take a broader look at things.
Just one quick thing on what you get, compared to what you put in, in terms of premiums. That's not the way it works. For Canada and Quebec pension plans, your benefits are related to your contributions. With EI, the amount of benefits is based upon your insurable earnings, which is 55%, which is extremely low internationally. So it's not really how much premium you put in. We all put in, actually, the same premium. It's just that the benefits you get are based upon your insurable earnings.
One of the things that happened—I didn't have to chance to mention it—was that the government froze the level of maximum insurable earnings for about ten years. That meant that the maximum benefits you could get declined every year, in terms of the amount of inflation. And that's why benefits, all benefits, are lower than they were before, because the maximum is lower. It's what I call “policy by stealth”. I mean, people don't understand, but when you don't index a benefit, then its value declines over time.
Again, another problem with a program that is so complicated—
12:35 p.m.
Bloc
Michel Guimond Bloc Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I am pleased to be replacing my colleague, the member for Laurentides—Labelle, on this committee. I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to express to you my best wishes for Sunday, International Women's Day. Once women will have achieved full equality, we will no longer need to celebrate that day, because it will be International Women's Day every day of the year.
My question is for Ms. Harvey. I know that she is a specialist, as all of you are. In the Charlevoix region, she participated in the launching of the Mouvement Action-Chômage de Charlevoix and in the activities of the Comité des Sans-Chemise. She has been an activist on behalf of the unemployed for several years now.
Ms. Harvey, you know that in regions such as the one I represent, contrary to urban areas, people live with the reality of seasonal work. Most of the seasonal jobs are held by women, be it in the restaurant, the hotel or the tourism industries. Given that the employment insurance system is inequitable in our view—and you too are of this opinion—, it is mostly women you suffer from this problem. I would like you to answer my question based on reality. In what ways are women more affected in those regions where there is a higher concentration of seasonal work?
I would also like to underscore a subtlety of the French language: one must not talk about seasonal workers. We are talking about people who occupy jobs in seasonal industries. It is not the unemployed who should be wearing the label “seasonal worker“; it is the industries that are seasonal.
12:40 p.m.
Representative, Conseil national des chômeurs et chômeuses
Indeed, it is worth mentioning that, Mr. Guimond. In the Charlevoix region, the industry is seasonal. The work is seasonal because of our industry. Your typical seasonal worker in the Charlevoix region is a woman employed by the hotel or restaurant industry. I see women filing through the office as early as September. As soon as tourism starts to drop off, these women inquire as to whether or not they are entitled to employment insurance benefits. Often times, these women are not entitled to benefits because they have not accumulated enough hours. They are not included in the statistics.
We were talking about statistics a little earlier. Those people who have not accumulated a sufficient number of hours to be eligible for benefits do not even fill in an application form. Are they included in the statistics? We no longer see those people and we therefore must be careful. Earlier, we talked a lot about statistics. This too is important data. In the Charlevoix region, we have the good fortune at present of having pilot projects which are of great assistance to new entrants or reentrants, to the people coming back, who apply for benefits every year. In my view, these pilot projects should bring about permanent measures. They demonstrate the importance of improving the employment insurance system. If there were no room for improvement, why did the federal government launch these pilot projects? I believe there are signs of uneasiness. These pilot projects are a good example of that.
In the Charlevoix region, the women who work are for the most part employed in seasonal industries. When I see them in my office, I congratulate them and tell them that they are making miracles with very little. Theirs is the lot of many single parents. I talked earlier about women who are ill, who have been diagnosed with breast cancer and who have children to care for. What do we do? I am a single parent with cancer and I must fight for my life, for the livelihood I need to raise my child. These are realities that we see everyday in our work.
Today, things are looking up; we are trying to bring change. However, we must remember that there are people at the bottom who are fighting for their dignity, who are fighting to earn their living. In the Charlevoix region, it is a glaring reality, it is the daily lot of many people.
12:40 p.m.
Bloc
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
12:40 p.m.
NDP
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
There is a lot of information. People are dying to ask questions. If we could be shorter with our questions and our answers, we could get far more into our timelines.
Thank you.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Federal budget 2009 proposes that consultations take place to develop a plan so that self-employed Canadians can access EI and parental benefits. Should that be modelled after the Quebec parental insurance program? How does the Quebec plan differ from what the federal government is proposing? And third, how do we ensure access to maternity benefits for not only self-employed women, but part-time women and women who are contractual workers?
12:40 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress
Many of us are dealing with what was announced during the last election. So we would say we need to model the self-employed.... And by the way, we supported benefits for the self-employed for many years. But we would model it more along the Quebec model, because what we heard during the election, as well, was that basically people were going to be able to pay in for six months ahead of the maternity benefits. And then what? They don't have to pay again.
You can't have a system where people can come in and out, and therefore use the money that has been paid in by a lot of other women, by the way, who can't get it because the numbers are too high. There's no reason for somebody who is pregnant to start paying before the six months starts. Why would they pay into the system? And it also has to cover everybody. Like Quebec, we have to say everybody is in. Or if the government at one point were to make noises about having a separate fund for the self-employed, well, it's not sustainable. There's not enough money to do it that way, with people coming in and out. You have to do the Quebec system.
In terms of access to maternity and parental leaves, I keep going back to 360 hours. If you take it down to 360 hours, you'll find a lot more women will access maternity and parental leaves.