Status of Women committee  Yes. They spent a lot of time and they heard from a lot of witnesses, and the report is like a phone book. I think there's a lot of work there that we could profit from.

Status of Women committee  I had a really interesting experience with my uncle, who is a senior academic at a medical school. They were saying that they're trying to deal with the fact that they have far more women now. There are lots of women in medicine and maternity leave is a real thing, so they were asking if they should create two tracks of different lengths, a 10-year one to go up for tenure and another one that is five years to go up for tenure.

Status of Women committee  Yes, the gap is almost everywhere. We had a commission on pay equity that made quite substantial recommendations. I would say implementing those very substantial recommendations would be a good start. I would also say that voluntary and awareness-raising activities are fantastic, making people aware of their biases is very important, but that the evidence shows that unless there's some kind of regulation, some kind of proactive tracking of pay gaps where they exist, then we don't close them.

Status of Women committee  In non-unionized sectors, and in the non-unionized private sector in particular, there isn't the same level of transparency. There are all kinds of reasons that private sector employers don't want to be transparent about who's getting paid what, but I think we have to weigh those interests against the interests of fairness, and indeed non-discrimination, as guaranteed in our charter, which require a certain amount of transparency.

Status of Women committee  I'm not aware of any country that offers child care 24 hours a day, so there's no model to say, “Here's what would happen if we had that.” What I would say is that when women who worked in mining, for example, were asked what the barriers were, child care was one of their top three responses.

Status of Women committee  In every country that has provided affordable and accessible child care, women's employment levels have gone up, so that evidence is clear.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for the question. If you look at women's employment and the gaps in levels of employment and levels of pay across the country, Quebec really does very well. I think that a couple of reasons why the gap is narrower—and indeed the employment gap is narrower as well in Quebec—have to do with the host of family policies it has in place.

Status of Women committee  I have to agree with the previous witness. This is creating a bigger opening for women at the front end, but the pipeline is still blocked. So you're not going to get any change at the other end of the pipe if you don't clear the blockage, and that blockage really does have to do with the way women are excluded even within the training programs, the inappropriate pictures on the walls, the lack of female bathrooms, all of those—

Status of Women committee  You gotta like a good Makita girl, but at a certain point it gets tiresome. I think women mentors as well as the witnesses from the Carleton program have demonstrated so clearly through their work, putting in place those women role models, and frankly, speaking to men in those programs.

Status of Women committee  I think any successful economic policy needs to recognize that women work in different sectors. We might wish that not to be the case, but that is the case right now, here today in 2015. They have different constraints on their economic lives because of the double burden of unpaid work.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for the question. The 65¢ is specifically for the oil and gas industry. As I mentioned with, say, construction or engineering, it's different but it is there and it is in the order of 20% to 30% less for those working full time, full year. In terms of the data that we have, we have very good data on what people earn and we can break that down by occupation, and by using our National Household Survey data by age group and educational level.

Status of Women committee  There were investments in higher education and research, which obviously, as a researcher, I'm going to think are a good idea. I think that I would just flag, for example, increased investment in the Canada excellence research chairs. This is a good thing. It's good to celebrate our researchers, but what we've seen with that program is that women not only do not receive those chairs but do not even get into the nomination process.

Status of Women committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to the committee for the invitation to speak today. My name is Kate Mclnturff. I'm a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The committee has already heard that women are highly under-represented in most STEM fields and in the skilled trades.

Status of Women committee  Well, partly it's an open question. I was interested to see that, and of course I welcome any investment in women's economic well-being, and this is certainly a welcome initiative. If we look at the financial statements of Status of Women Canada, it appears that their financial forecast for this coming fiscal year—the one that this most recent budget was concerned with—their budget is actually decreased by, I believe, $303,000.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for that. Two things: one, I am aware, obviously, that other programs, departments, and agencies spend money on programs that impact women's lives. I have looked at, in particular, federal spending broadly across all departments on violence against women. What I found for the year 2011-12—which was the most recent year for which I had fiscal data—