I would say no, we have not advanced very far, because, as you say, we still have more or less the status quo. We thank you for bringing that up.
I think this is something that is really, really important and is necessary to address in order to have full and equitable funding between men and women.... That's not the right word. It's necessary in order to have gender equality, to have pay equity, and pay equity is very, very important.
So I think that's something the government really has to look at very carefully, and with the cuts to Status of Women Canada, I'm very afraid that we are still going to be in that same situation for a while. It's going to be very difficult to progress and work toward that.
There are a couple of other things I would like to mention, such as older workers. I didn't get a chance to mention this before. If you don't mind, could I talk about older workers for a minute? Many of them are women, and, as you said, essentially older women, older workers, are often stressed because they face being made redundant before they're ready to retire. They often have little or no financial compensation. In fact, most of the workers in our society are not in a position to get a company or government pension when they retire. By government pension, I mean they are not receiving a pension from being an employee of a government agency or department or a corporation.
Many of these people have lived their lives as the working poor and will therefore only have CPP, QPP, and OAS to live on in retirement, supplemented by the guaranteed income supplement, at a rate based on their gross income. Many of these people, especially women, have had to take time away from their careers to care for family or elderly parents, resulting in years when they were not able to contribute to the CPP or RRSPs. The result is that they're compelled to live out their days on fixed and inadequate incomes, or are forced to find part-time work to supplement their retirement. This is another facet of the inequity between men and women, because women are being penalized. Because of the time they spent out, they are ending up with less than adequate retirement incomes.
I could go on and on, but I have a couple more points. Would you like to hear them? Is that okay?
I don't know if anybody else actually did mention the recognition of foreign credentials. At this time in Canada there is a significant shortage of health care professionals, such as nurses and doctors. And although qualified foreign-trained professionals could provide a partial answer to the shortage, they face a lack of recognition of their credentials. In order to ensure a level of competence for health care professionals across Canada, standard tests for accreditation have been set up. But fees for these exams are often high, and it is often difficult for foreign-trained professionals to obtain Canadian experience.
At HRSDC, the budget for language training has been cut, and this particularly penalizes immigrant women. The process of accreditation of health care professionals trained in other countries should be made more accessible while ensuring that a uniform standard of competence is maintained across Canada.
We urge the Government of Canada to work with provincial governments, professional organizations, and licensing bodies to ensure loans and other resources are available for qualifying exams and upgrading, to develop academic assessment tools and testing, and to ensure retesting is accessible and affordable. We need to increase the opportunity for foreign-trained professionals to acquire more Canadian experience under supervision, and accelerate the accreditation or retraining process through English and French language training, including long-term and/or immersion language training where needed.
Someone else mentioned, too, that funding for literacy programs has been cut. Again, this penalizes immigrant women in particular, and is a barrier to getting these people into the workforce.