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.
When you add into the mix a system that is designed to think of family businesses as replicating and depending upon historical traditional male-female roles in the family, regardless of the gender and sexual orientation of the individuals involved, it incentivizes withdrawal from the support systems that exist.
To give an example, if the retirement income is dividends coming out of the corporation, then the women involved have no entitlement to GIS if there is a low income or to OAS, because their qualification space will be used up by the dividend income, which may not in some situations even be their income. That's the other problem.
The divorce and separation situation is quite different because from an equitable perspective any spouse does accumulate equitable rights in property that is produced in the matrimonial estate. That sits somewhat uncomfortably with what we're talking about here because there are some more traditional sectors of the economy than others. One of them is agriculture; another could be fishing. I think it is important to get the kind of data that is needed to scrutinize this. The data on where women are located in the economy has suffered badly over the last 20 years. It is not what it used to be. It needs to be ramped up and more information on women's economic situation needs to be brought into this discussion.
This can go forward, but it needs to be with a great deal of focus on how people are differently situated. I'm also talking about people who may not be in the highly paid professional careers, who may be more engaged in business because they can't get paid work in the employment sector, and who therefore are de facto running businesses, and may have been talked into forming a corporation because they're thinking they'll do better, but they have to withdraw all they earn because they can't live on their profits.