Finance committee  Yes, that's true. I think that is a good summary. The fundamental problem that women in Canada face is that they have not been able to close one of the biggest income gaps in the OECD. The biggest barrier really is this insistence that everyone should raise their own children personally and privately and for many years, which always detracts from women's long-term income-earning capacities overall.

Finance committee  I would agree, but there are two problems here. The first is that the reasonableness test is really well litigated and will work in this situation, but it basically then buys the change in justification for the small business corporation rules in the first place, and says that they're intended to provide educational funding, retirement plans, and so on.

Finance committee  Yes, most definitely there are advantages, but what has to be recognized is that the advantages are not gender equal, and they're not equal by age, either. This is a system that is actually contributing to the growing income inequality between women and men on an after-tax basis in Canada.

Finance committee  Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to speak to the proposed changes that are being considered by the government in relation to the small business corporations sector. I'd like to approach this issue from a slightly different perspective, which is to stand back and say that the changes being considered have become necessary, or some response has become necessary, because Canada has for decades maintained what is called the Canadian corporate income tax integration system, a very unique approach that is not used in quite the same way in many other countries.

Status of Women committee  It is a pervasive cultural challenge, and it begins with regulation of advertising, which increasingly stereotypes women as being more concerned about keeping their nails intact than thinking about driving heavy equipment. There is that. It is well established in educational research through detailed gender-based analysis that this kind of streaming of women and men begins as soon as they set foot into any kind of culturally organized institutions.

Status of Women committee  No. The numbers are going backwards.

Status of Women committee  The university does everything that it can, but the Canadian Human Rights Commission does not. It does not enforce the rules. It produces results that are insulting and that put the blame on women if they do mind the harassment that they generally experience when they are the first to enter into these areas of work.

Status of Women committee  It's very low. It's been going backwards seriously. The women who do graduate are increasingly focusing on the earth and biological sciences, and not on the hard-core built environmental and chemical engineering environments. They are also falling out of computer programming, which was the area people thought women were going to make strides in.

Status of Women committee  I think the most important thing to do is to get women into a position of complete parity when it comes to paid work. Just with respect to Alberta, I did a small pay equity exercise to look at the overall revenue impact of doing that. One of the slides that I copied into the handout demonstrates this.

Status of Women committee  It's a complex system because women's work lives define what their eligibility is going to be for all forms of pension support, with the exception of old age security, GIS, and the other low-income supports. On the one hand, what you see is deterioration in the quality and level of retirement income that's available, as defined benefit and defined contribution systems or hybrid systems are all dissipating and being replaced.

Status of Women committee  —received from pension sources, from the top income earner.

Status of Women committee  —but I'm talking about pension income splitting, which goes all the way up to 50% of total income—

Status of Women committee  The federal compliance mechanisms for universities have no teeth. I cannot even get access to the pay equity figures for my own faculty. I have to get them from my dean. If my dean doesn't want to give them to me, then I can't see them.

Status of Women committee  That is not correct. Pension income splitting is something that is absolutely all the way up to 50% of total pension income. The only sort of—

Status of Women committee  No. No, you may be thinking of the parental income splitting mechanism that was in effect for only a short time.