Government Operations Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2017

[Dennis Merrell]

Yes. I'd like to refer to your previous question, though, about how the federal government could justify buying advertising...and obviously the significant numbers of community newspapers and other print publications, and there are a few out there.... What I would say to that, first of all, is I don't think we really expect that the federal government should buy every single newspaper for every campaign. I think it would depend upon what the objectives of that advertising campaign were. We have a Statistics Canada database blended in with our newspaper circulation area so that we can actually target pretty well whatever demographic group the federal government is trying to reach, whether it be seniors, or according to spending on certain services. We're able to help target specific markets that would be beneficial for a particular campaign. I don't think it's about necessarily expecting every single time the federal government has an ad campaign that we should see that ad in every newspaper. I don't think we're saying that. We understand the government has a duty to be effective in how it spends its advertising dollars, and we can help with that.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Unfortunately we'll have to conclude with those remarks. I want to thank all of our witnesses, both those here in person and those by video conference. Your testimony has been extremely helpful. As you know, this committee will be taking a few days to consider all of the testimony given and will be ultimately writing a report, which I'm sure all of you will be very interested in reading. I do thank you for your testimony and your suggestions. It's been very helpful.

Colleagues, we will suspend now for a couple of moments while we prepare for our next witness.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Colleagues, we'll reconvene now.

We have with us today from Vancouver, via teleconference, Margot Young. She is a professor at the Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia.

Madam Young, thank you very much for being with us. I understand you have a brief opening statement on Bill C-24. If we can hear that, then we'll go directly into questions from our panel.

[Professor Margot Young, Professor, Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, As an Individual]

It's a pleasure to be here. I really have three simple points to make. I'll make those quickly and then I'm happy to have a conversation in more depth.

The first point I want to make is that this particular piece of legislation really doesn't, as far as I can see, have much to do with gender equality. On its face, what it does is some reorganization and arrangement of ministerial categories and pay associated with that. That may very well be an important logistical or administrative matter for issues of cabinet governance and allocation of responsibilities, but I have trouble seeing how this is really about substantive gender equality.

As someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about gender equality, about how we capture it in a full, substantive sense, how we express it in legislation, how we understand how gender inequity plays out, I don't see this bill having this as its central core or heart.

The second point I want to make is that to claim that it is about gender equality is dangerous. I think it's dangerous because too often we cut off the really important, substantial, and tough conversations about gender equality by claiming that we've already dealt with it and we've dealt with it in some more formalistic way. I think to point to this legislation and say that the expansion of categories that get the same pay level is actually dealing with gender equality is to essentially short-sheet the conversation.

The third point I want to make is that dealing with gender equality, and in particular dealing with the issue of gender equality in leadership positions, is more subtle and I think more heavily engaged with tax. The issue with respect to cabinet equality is a small set of the larger issues of the disproportion of men in leadership positions across Canadian society. So, we have one piece of that leadership picture that is definitely characterized by the under-representation of women in leadership positions.

Dealing with the issue of gender equality in the cabinet has to do, I would say, with some softer forms of law and policy. It has to do, of course, with the appointment process, how many women are appointed, what positions those women are appointed to. I feel that I am reiterating some really obvious points here.

Pay equity is a piece of but not the whole of gender equality. People want these jobs and women need these positions of leadership, not because of the actual amount of dollars, but because of the responsibility, the profile, the prestige, the authority that those positions command.

Matters that deal with gender equity in cabinet composition will be different and will engage more directly, explicitly and obviously, with notions of who gets appointed to what particular positions in the cabinet, what cabinet culture is like, all the ways in which we know women are excluded from positions of leadership.

This may be an essential piece of housekeeping legislation, but I think to frame it as a piece of legislation that speaks substantively to the issues of gender equality and cabinet composition is wrong, and it's dangerous.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much, and I appreciate your economy of words, Professor.

We'll go to our seven-minute round of questions.

Mr. Peterson, for seven minutes, please.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Before I get into my intervention, I'd like to take a moment, Mr. Chair, to commend you for your speech in the House last week on the retirement of our colleague. The words you said were nice; they showed the great regard that you held for Judy. I think all members on our side of the aisle were impressed with your candid and frank words, and it meant a lot to a lot of people. You brought tears to many people's eyes.

I wanted to show appreciation for those kind and generous words last week. I wanted to make sure we formally thank you for that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I appreciate, Professor, your indulging me for a few seconds so that I could commend our chair for his conduct last week.

I don't disagree with anything you've said. I'm not sure the purpose of this bill was at all to express gender equality. In my opinion, it elevates certain ministries and shows the importance the government has to that subject matter. You look at La Francophonie, the Minister of Status of Women, and Science, these departments are all now given full ministerial status, which I think is an important part of Bill C-24. It technically is, as you correctly alluded to, a legislative housekeeping bill. I don't think it's meant to be a tool that's going to address gender inequality, pay equity, or any of the other issues you raised in your opening.

Maybe the chair will indulge us a little since we have the professor here. Could you elaborate on some of the research you're doing? These goals are very laudable, and we appreciate them. I'm going to go to the framework of the technical...Bill C-24, and maybe some of the research you're doing, some of the objectives you see, and what goals a federal government should be striving for in this regard.

[Prof. Margot Young]

Thanks. You've definitely opened the conversation up, and I'm going to take a piece of that opportunity, but not a whole chunk of it.

I did think about what we would want the federal government to do. I want to reiterate the point that it's critical to be clear about what is or isn't a gender equity measure. To loosely categorize legislation that essentially isn't really about gender equity as responding to a gender equity concern is, as I said before, dangerous because it obfuscates the fact that something that substantively makes a real difference isn't being done. Framing this as a bill that somehow addresses issues around gender equity in the current cabinet composition is a mistake, and it's a mistake of significant ideological character. I want to make that point clear.

In terms of what the government can be doing, there are lots of things governments can do. I'm going to narrow it specifically on the issue of women and leadership, and women in cabinet positions. One of the ways the government can show leadership in a substantive way is to talk more fully about what gender equity is. I have to say, to respond to a question about women in the cabinet by saying simply “because it's 2015” loses a key leadership moment to articulate and shape opinion about what it means to actually have women in positions of equality, in positions of leadership and power.

The framing of this legislation I think is, at minimum, a lost opportunity to do some important public education and show some leadership on substantive measures such as thinking about whether you want to have a kind of quota system, a formal commitment every time in some way the government binds itself through some form of policy statement—or even a bill like this—to equal representation of gender, or thinking about the range of particular cabinet positions that are being given to women, or about the placement, for example, of the ministry for Status of Women in the hierarchy.

This bill doesn't remove categories; there isn't now just one type of minister. If you parse this bill in light of other pieces of legislation with which it interacts, you have three differently constituted or statutorily defined categories. To engage more fully with the positions that women are occupying and have that conversation more explicitly is an important piece of dealing with gender inequity in leadership. To prioritize pay equity for women more broadly across Canadian society and not simply in terms of women in the cabinet, to move that up on the legislative agenda, would show the kind of commitment that some of the rhetoric around this legislation professes to adhere to.

Really, there's no gender substance, no equity substance on the basis of gender equality, to this legislation. It's important not to talk about it as if that's what it's about, and to talk about where the decision points are, in terms of changing the profile of women's participation in leadership.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I appreciate that.

I don't think anyone was proposing that this was a gender equity bill. I know I haven't. I'm not sure if any of my colleagues have. We're elevating key, important portfolios based, I think, on their subject matter.

[Prof. Margot Young]

Well, my understanding was that some of the material in the press release mentioned this as a gender equity measure. It's really that framing of the bill that I'm assuming the government did purposefully. That's what I'm speaking to.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I just thought it was a mere housekeeping piece of legislation that would allow us to elevate some key portfolios into full ministerial status.

Again, however, that doesn't take away at all from the important points that you're raising.

There is about a minute left so it's kind of awkward, but could you take some time to talk about some specific legislation, policies, that you'd like to see come forward that would help achieve the goal of gender equity and equality? I hate to put you on the spot; maybe you haven't even thought about it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Unfortunately, Professor, it will have to be a very brief answer, but please, go ahead.

[Prof. Margot Young]

I can be brief.

First, I'll mention pay equity legislation: move it up on the legislative agenda. Second, there are real problems with employment insurance in terms of access to parental and maternity leave and basic unemployment insurance benefits for women because of the way their involvement in the precarious labour sector works out in terms of the number of hours they need to qualify.

Those are key issues that have been identified for decades. I've heard them criticized at the United Nations in its periodic reviews of our human rights commitments to women's equality. There is no excuse not to get on that now, especially now that you're a government that's doing gender analysis of its budget.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate those comments.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We'll now go to Mr. McCauley for seven minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Welcome, Professor. My wife and I are both ex-UVic people, so it's nice to see someone from UVic, although I know you left a while ago.

[Prof. Margot Young]

My heart is still at UVic.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm glad to hear that.

We heard earlier from one of my colleagues that this bill is not about gender equity, but I have a press release, dated September 17, from the leader of the government in the House of Commons entitled “Government of Canada to formalize the equal status of ministerial team”. It says that being committed to creating a one-tier ministry recognizes the equality of all cabinet ministers. So it is, I think, all show, as you were saying, about gender equality.

You talked about changing the profile of leadership in the government. We hear so much about gender equality in the cabinet when we know it hasn't actually happened. I'd like your take on that. Despite all the bragging, we see, for example, that in the case of parliamentary secretaries that there are 25 men and 10 women in the government. With respect to committees, of 27 committees, only four are chaired by women and only three are vice-chaired by women, including our own Ms. Ratansi. Can we have your thoughts on this government that claims to be about equity when we see in the cabinet itself that the junior ministers were all ladies, and then in the committee and parliamentary secretary positions....women... In the parliamentary secretary positions, it's mostly men again.

[Prof. Margot Young]

Well, that's a leading question because of course that's a real concern.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I meant about changing the profile of the leadership.

[Prof. Margot Young]

I think a very important point to make is that the substance of gender equity is going to take much harder work and some redistribution of who has power and who gets access to resources in these positions of leadership. To claim that you've reached gender equity when it's observable that the positions at the top of the power hierarchy are disproportionately filled by men and those at the bottom are filled by women is simply, I think, to obfuscate and to skip doing the very hard work that a substantive commitment to gender equality requires.

The data on women in leadership are stark in their representation of a significant gender gap in leadership, and that leadership gap is not simply a gap in pay. It's a gap in power, resources, who gets to shape the terms of debate, and who is involved in the key decisions in our society.

An important site for this, of course, is the House of Commons. It goes back to how many women we elect and how many female candidates parties nominate to be elected. We are not a country that leads in flat numbers of women's participation in the House of Commons. Clearly, participation in committee structures and leadership positions in those committee structures similarly echoes this same problem of an absence of women in positions of leadership.

I looked for newspaper articles on this bill. Nobody is really engaged with it, because it is piece of housekeeping. It's a little technical in how it describes the different categories of ministers that get set up in their relationship to pay scales. The point is that it is true that in the arcane details of administration we have to give effect to gender equality. It's also the case that we really have to engage with the substance of gender equality, and not simply pass off a tinkering or shifting of categories as having engaged with that substance.

It's revealing that there's no discussion of gender equality in this amendment. It would be inappropriate. This is really not about the balance of power between men and women. It's about the structuring of ministerial authority and titles. The only piece you can find in here that you could spin into a conversation about women's equality is where the Ministry for the Status of Women is placed and why it's not a more free-standing ministry. That's one conversation you could have about the profile, the responsibility, and the resources of that particular ministry. Otherwise, this is not a bill about gender equality.

I'm sorry. I'm talking into your seven minutes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

No, that's fine. We're here to listen to you and not the other way around.

In other words, had the government appointed an equal number of male and female ministers and an equal number of male and female ministers of state, would you have considered the cabinet itself—not the parliamentary secretaries and not the committees but at least the cabinet itself—as being gender equal?

[Prof. Margot Young]

No, I wouldn't. I would look at what particular ministries women were occupying. There is a hierarchy of ministries that is important and profiled more heavily, and we've had some—