Status of Women Committee on April 30th, 2014

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

You have two and a half minutes.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Excellent.

So I'd like to share those two minutes, and ask a question of Ms. McInturff and Ms. Phillips that relate to your work.

Ms. McInturff, in the report “The Best and Worst Place to be a Woman in Canada”, I noticed that the two major Albertan cities, Calgary and Edmonton, rank quite low on your gender index. Of course, we know Alberta to be a wealthy province.

Ms. Phillips, you referred to the challenges that women face in your province, both rural and urban, indigenous women as well.

I'm wondering if you can both comment further on why Calgary and Edmonton don't rank higher. Perhaps, Ms. McInturff, you could take the one minute and we'll share it.

[Dr. Kate McInturff]

Sure.

Briefly looking at Calgary and Edmonton, what we see is a very segregated workforce. Not only do women tend to work in education, health care, and the service sector, but in those Alberta cities, women tend to work in the lowest paid of those female-dominated sectors, which is the service sector. This looks different in different provinces. So in Ontario we see women in the service sector but we also see investments through public policy in the health care sector and the education sector. That has made a big difference to women's incomes in that region. That's something we can translate to the federal level.

I'm not suggesting we shouldn't invest in jobs in construction and manufacturing and the extractive industries, but we also need to think about the industries where women work. Are we creating jobs in those industries, and of those industries, are we only creating the lowest-paying jobs? I think more jobs in health care and education are not only going to help women in terms of increasing their incomes, but they're also going to provide better services for families and communities. So it's a double benefit.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Ms. Phillips.

[Shannon Phillips]

There are two things I would say. Alberta does have a very low percentage of GDP spent on public services, that's both services that women access in order to achieve equality outcomes, but it's also where we find women working. So there's that part.

The second part of this is the lowest-paid sectors. While we see average weekly earnings growing in Alberta in the higher-paid sectors, what we see is a stagnation at the lowest ends of the labour market. One of the reasons for that is the massive influx of temporary foreign workers in Alberta. Only last week the C.D. Howe Institute issued a report in which they found that the TFW program was increasing unemployment in Alberta and B.C. in particular.

I'll share with you one community that I referenced in a report I wrote last year called “From Last Resort to First Choice” on the regional impact of the TFW program. Of the small cities in this report, Medicine Hat was the most shocking example of negative job growth. In one year alone, 2012, the economy shed 6,000 jobs, but 1,000 labour market opinions were issued for temporary foreign workers. You can bring in several TFWs under one LMO.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Ms. Phillips, but that's all the time we have for this question period.

Ms. O'Neill Gordon, go ahead for seven minutes.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you all for taking time to be with us today.

As you know, we are focusing on women's place in the economy and at the same time we continue to look at ways to create greater economic importance for women. We certainly appreciate your contribution here this afternoon.

My first question is for Alex Johnston. You mentioned Catalyst as being an important tool in helping Canadian women to prosper and to succeed economically. What does your network accomplish as a whole that you couldn't have made happen as a singular company? I'm simply wondering.

[Alex Johnston]

What does our network of companies accomplish? There are three things.

One, the power of peer pressure is quite significant. I've seen, even in two years, the OSC is driving a different conversation around boards. I think international pressure drove us to a different place, but individual leaders started to drive people to a different kind of conversation. So I think in a network of companies and business leaders, seeing each other connecting has an impact.

We're seeing it in the mining sector. Mining sector stats for boards and executive committees are terrible. Five years ago this wasn't a conversation. You have two worlds in Canada, a place where the conversation isn't happening around talent development, men and women fully leveraging talent, and a place where it is. That's changing, but that's changing because individuals are starting to say, “I don't want to be a zero. I actually don't want to be a zero anymore, so help me find qualified women. That's starting a conversation around engineers and geologists. You don't have to be in a mine in Angola to be on a board, but you do need to have the requisite experience.

Peer pressure is huge. Best practices is huge. The reason I share an example like Tom Falk is because it matters. The year before, Muhtar Kent was one of our global award winners. When you hear him—CEO for Coca-Cola, employing 700,000 people worldwide—talk about why he's betting the farm on women and developing women, it is very powerful and influential. That creates culture change.

I think the third piece, beyond best practices, really is strategies. There is no one-size-fits-all. That applies to most things in the world. But there are core things you see as very effective. When we look at companies setting goals, building their strategies, sometimes tying achievement of those goals for diversity and inclusion to compensation, pushing the envelope, when you share through your network those kinds of things, they create change that is much broader than a company having an isolated conversation here, a company having an isolated conversation there. Sector conversations—IT, mining, oil and gas—knowing that their sectors, on the face of it, don't feel like they are fully leveraging their talent, that is beneficial as well.

Mining isn't necessarily comparing itself to banking, but they are finding sectors where they have common challenges, common opportunities. so I think it's having a network of business leaders and companies sharing a lot of this. It's a lot of practitioners working together that really matters and is quite powerful.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Thank you.

In the work you are doing, I imagine you are hearing about the work experiences from different regions of Canada. How does equality for women vary from region to region across our great country, and why do you think that is so?

[Alex Johnston]

It's a very interesting question. When I look at it from a corporate perspective, it's a smaller sample size in smaller jurisdictions where you don't have as many headquarter companies. When we put out the census data we typically look at provinces and what's happening; I do think there are cultural differences, industry differences in provinces.

One of the things we are finding now, and this is relevant for you, is that governments are playing a leadership role. Governments typically, especially with business, don't want to be mandating things, but I'm interested that in Newfoundland and various places they are requiring goals and targets to bid on public projects. That is a real positive.

Different people are playing different roles. On Friday I'm speaking at a conference in Moncton. New Brunswick is trying to put together an action plan around women. I love the lineup of speakers. I love that they're bringing together 150 professional women. People are trying to figure out the right way to insert themselves. The federal advisory council led by Kellie Leitch is the same thing. What is our role? How do we assume that role?

My view is that you as a government and as a committee have a very influential platform. Partly it's driving the conversation, and partly it's honing in on two, three, or four things that you want to be pushing, with the influence you have to sensitize people, and beyond that, to move them to a different place. Is it a carrot or stick? I don't know. I like what the OSC has done because I don't think it's a carrot or a stick. I think it's somewhere in between, but I think it will have an impact.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

I'm glad to hear you are coming to New Brunswick. That is my province. I have seen gradual changes with women getting more involved in the economy and it is a great welcome to our economy.

My next question is for Shannon Phillips. Considering the vast natural resources, I would say a large part of your labour force is employed in skilled trades. Our government has recently invested in encouraging people to join the skilled trades through things like the Canada job grant to transform skills training and allocation, allocating $4 million over three years in programs that help apprentices in the skilled trades. I wonder how women have benefited from these skilled trades initiatives, and has this brought greater representation of women into the skills trade workforce?

[Shannon Phillips]

I can give you some insight into apprenticeship numbers in Alberta, and what we've seen in terms of the results of the various public policy initiatives. We have not seen a large growth in the number of women receiving Red Seal or other certifications in the building trades. What we see in Alberta, in fact, over the last few annual reports for our training and apprenticeship board is that the number of women in traditionally female apprenticeships and trades, which is to say hair stylists, some bakers and chefs, those kinds of trades have increased. This data lags a little bit too. The number of women in non-traditional trades, particularly the ones that are really exploding in their demand—steam-assisted operators, power engineers, and these kinds of trades—those numbers of women are not increasing.

We have seen some increase in the number of electricians, which is good, but where we find electricians and to a lesser extent plumbers and pipefitters, they are in municipal infrastructure projects. We see those women working in cities and towns where they can go home at night, not in the middle of nowhere up in Fort McMurray.

That says something about the kind of economy we are building if we want to attract women into the trades.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Ms. O'Neill Gordon.

Mr. Casey, it's now your turn. You have seven minutes.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Phillips, I want to come right back to you on the very same theme.

I'm from Prince Edward Island, and two very common themes that you touched upon, I hear over and over again. Those are the need for long-term jobs close to home, and the choices that have been made with respect to the provision of government services, or the removal of government services over the years.

I can tell you that I did a bit of a double take as I heard your opening remarks. I had to keep looking at the sign over your head to see that you were speaking from the economic engine of Canada and not from my part of the world, because the themes you touched upon, I hear about so much.

Going back to your last answer, you talked about apprenticeships and opportunities in non-traditional work. The federal government programs that were hugely successful in our part of the world were the labour market agreements and the labour market development agreements. In particular, there was a program administered through the Women's Network in Prince Edward Island called Trade HERizons. I'm aware of one particular success story of someone who went from receiving social assistance to becoming a welder, making over $40,000 a year, which is certainly darn good money in our parts.

May I have your comments, first of all, if these—the labour market agreement and the labour market development agreement—are programs that have resulted in some significant value also in your part of the world? As well, what are your comments more generally on government programs as they relate to making opportunities for women in non-traditional fields?

[Shannon Phillips]

First of all, I think we need to do more than advertise to women, if we want women to work in non-traditional fields. It has historically been the approach of the provincial government, as you know. There is a lot of overlapping jurisdiction in this area of training, and so on. It hasn't been a roaring success in Alberta, because the approach taken is essentially to advertise to people rather than to actually support people.

That doesn't just come from being able to access bursaries and so on. It also comes from being able to relocate to where the work is, and it also comes from the policy environment around apprenticeships. Are those apprenticeship spots available? Are the right incentives being made for employers to hire apprentices? I think that's something that the Canada job grant misses, and I think that's something that many provinces miss as well.

In terms of long-term jobs close to home and removal of government services, I note for Atlantic Canada that there is a lot of pomp and some very excited talk about the energy east pipeline. Quite frankly, all of those projects ship the raw bitumen straight past the refineries in New Brunswick, and even the refinery in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, is facing closure.

What we need to understand about upgrading and refining is that those have spinoff effects throughout an entire region, because it means that your economy can engage in things like tertiary manufacturing—plastics and other kinds of manufacturing processes that didn't exist before. If you're just shipping the raw bitumen away, you are taking that economic base away from an entire region, and I think that matters to people in Atlantic Canada.

Finally, the last point I think I'll make is about the EI program. Canadians need to be given a proper incentive to relocate to where the work is. I am not going to argue that there is an economy-wide labour shortage. I think there has been enough work done on that, and Stats Canada will tell you that there are six unemployed Canadians for every job vacancy in this country. What we have are skills mismatches, and potentially we have people needing more incentive to relocate to where the work is, or at least relocate temporarily. I think we can address that through the EI program, and we can make it so that we can relocate people—at least potentially short term for construction jobs, particularly in northern Alberta—so that we can fill those jobs with Canadians first; so that Canadians can have first crack at that employment and take the money they earn back to their communities in P.E.I. or elsewhere; so we do not have to bring in temporary foreign workers to fill those spots.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Don't get me started on the EI program. I'd invite you to come door to door with me if you want to learn a lot about it.

Ms. McInturff, I will start with you, and maybe there will be some comments from the others.

There's been a fair bit of discussion, certainly even within the Conservative Party, with respect to income splitting. Some Conservatives like it; some don't. What are your views, or the views of your organization, with respect to income splitting and how it fits with the causes that you advance, if at all?

[Dr. Kate McInturff]

Income splitting is not something that is going to benefit the families that need it most. It is essentially an upside-down benefit, so the wealthiest families reap the greatest rewards. I think there are many ways that we could better spend the billions of dollars that an income-splitting program would cost, not least on a federal child care program, which would itself yield great rewards, as I've said before, for our economy and for families across the country.

My colleague, David Macdonald, has written extensively and done the economic analysis of this. What you see is a huge concentration of benefits at the very highest income deciles and little to no benefit at the lowest income deciles. That in itself is a problem. Then if you look at the economic inequality between men and women, of course women tend to be concentrated in those lower income deciles, so women benefit the least.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Ambler, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our three witnesses for being here today and providing such interesting testimony.

My first question is for Ms. McInturff.

I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' Making Women Count program. I was just reading a little bit about it on my iPad here and I was hoping you could tell us about it.

[Dr. Kate McInturff]

Absolutely.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is a public policy think tank. We have a national office, as well as several provincial offices. I joined the national office a little over a year ago as part of this new initiative called Making Women Count, which is aimed at conducting research that examines the public policy challenges and solutions to the problem of gender inequality.

Most of my work so far has focused on economic analysis, the economic analysis of the different economic status of men and women, but also looking at, for example, the economic cost of violence against women.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

I've noticed you've published a number of papers and done a fair bit of research, including one on the job market and how it remains divided by gender despite progress in women's access to education. We hear all the time that more women graduate from university now, more women are graduating from law schools and medical schools. I'd like your opinion on why that doesn't seem to be translating into overall better economic outcomes for women.

[Dr. Kate McInturff]

I think there are a number of reasons. One is that even earlier than the university level, at the secondary level, in high school, we see girls tending to move away from the math and science classes that they would need as prerequisites to go into those male-dominated fields like engineering and the technology sector. There's not only a sticky floor, but women aren't even making it out of the basement at that high school level.

For the women who are going into education—and it's absolutely true that we have very well-educated women in this country and we should be proud of it. We've made huge strides in the last several decades and we have seen a steady increase in women's employment levels. But the thing that's happening, at least what the numbers seem to be showing, is that once men and women have graduated they're facing that sticky floor Alex mentioned, which has to do with a variety of factors. I don't think that there's any evidence that the reasons overwhelmingly are preference. It's hard to track what people's intentions are, but what you can see is how they behave. The way women are behaving suggests that they want to work full time, that they want to work in well-paid jobs, that they are going into these professions, but not only are they not making it to those senior levels, they're having a really tough time in the sort of mid-career level. Part of that, clearly, has to do with that work-life balance.

This is not just an issue for women. Women are, obviously, disproportionately impacted by the fact that they do that double burden of unpaid work. But if you look at the kind of inflexibility of our labour market, in terms of men and women both still tending to go into particular job types, men's roles in the job market have also been fairly inflexible. So I think when we talk about moving women into non-traditional trades, we also need to think that this could be a real benefit for men, that we could also open up new doors for men who maybe don't want to be engineers, maybe they want to be nurses and we're still putting up barriers to that kind of labour force flexibility.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

It's interesting that you would mention that double burden of unpaid work. A few weeks ago, some of us were at the Women in Communications and Technology dinner. I don't know if you recall, but I thought the comments of the guest speaker—the one who won the award, who worked at Bell—about balancing family and work were fascinating and interesting. I've never really heard it said like this before. If I could paraphrase, she said, so often we women try to micromanage our families and our work and we feel this burden of guilt that men never do. She said, get over it. Other people can make your kids' lunches and kiss their boo-boos too. I thought that was good advice for women. I know I had to get over that myself when I first arrived here in Ottawa three years ago. I was trying to micromanage.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Mrs. Ambler.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

I don't do that anymore, and they're still alive and it's all good.