Thank you.
We had been asked to focus, I had understood, on more the strategies and solutions related to women's poverty rather than the facts and issues. We did give you a written submission that includes documentation on some of the issues related to women's poverty and also the policy challenges.
We'll try to highlight today a few of the possible strategies or solutions that we think might address women's poverty, but before doing so, there are just two quick points I'd like to make in terms of the issues.
One, the gap between men's and women's income and the relatively higher level of women's poverty in Canada is persistent. It's been ongoing for a long time. That gap has not been significantly reduced. Women more than men are likely to be poor, children in considerable measure are poor because their mothers are poor, and older single women are disproportionately poor because of their marginal location in the labour market.
Other developed countries, particularly in northern Europe, have been able to reduce the gap quite significantly between men's and women's income and the level of women's poverty more than we have in this country. We think the European countries offer you some good benchmarks in that respect. We understand you'll be looking at some of them.
We have four core principles, because we think principles are important when you're trying to look at the issue of poverty.
Fundamentally, in relation to women's poverty, a high employment rate is very significant for low-income women in developing sustainable jobs. It is essential to reduce poverty. As we see it, work is the basis of welfare.
Second, supportive social policy includes a family perspective and gender equality. They're fundamental factors to promote women's security and well-being.
Third, social inclusion and equal opportunity for women, as well as men, require adequate, accessible, financial, and sustainable social protection. I think that's just echoing what Katherine said a moment ago.
The fourth point is that women's stakeholders should be involved in the design, implementation, and monitoring of social programs that affect their lives and their livelihood. Very often, as you well know, these are designed by men.
There are, on the basis of these four principles, five multi-dimensional proposals that we think, if they were pursued, would help alleviate the poverty of women.
The first is to revise the poverty line, or low-income cut-off, so that it is more comprehensive and reflects the reality of women's lives. As Richard mentioned earlier, and Katherine, we do have a publication on that particularly in relation to women. I think it's been given to the committee. We think a composite poverty line is important in order to establish targets for a reduction in the rate of poverty.
The second is a proposed reform of welfare and employment insurance. It's based upon the model of the Caledon Institute. We presume you have that. We would just try to echo it and say why we think it's a useful model.
The third set is a promotion of active labour market policies for women, based upon particularly the European experience and European research.
The fourth is a proposal to improve retirement benefits such as OAS, GIS, and CPP. Unlike men, women primarily draw upon those for retirement. That is not the case for a lot of men.
The fifth is a modification of housing supports and subsidies. We think these can be changed to improve the accommodation of senior women and women in general.
I'll go over a few of those things, just to explain them a teeny bit, and then leave the rest to the discussion.
With regard to the composite poverty line, we think it's possible. You're familiar, I'm sure, with the UN index. Other European countries have developed a composite index on poverty. The advantage of doing it is that it doesn't rely upon just income. The research that's been done in England around that issue shows that in fact when you use other indices, you get different results. By having a composite index, you probably get a better picture of poverty. For women, certainly, a lot of issues just don't get picked up with income issues, because it's based upon household or family data very often as well as individual data. For women and families it says nothing about how those resources are used within the family. Very often women are shortchanged on that one, for sure.
So a composite index is kind of important, we think, and we stress that in our report. We elaborate in the report on how we think that can be done.
The reform of welfare and EI is a model that's been put forward by the Caledon Institute. It's a three-tiered system, as you probably know. The first tier is basic income support for anybody looking for employment. The second tier is more geared toward services operated by the provinces. The third tier is for the disabled, who will, I'm sure, elaborate on that when they speak.
We think it's of value for two reasons. One is that it gives the federal government the main responsibility for the income transfers and the income support. That's the level of government that can sustain and support these things much more than the provinces can, particularly around the welfare problem. Other countries in the world have done that.
Secondly, it is a clear division, we think, of the powers or responsibilities of different levels of government. That is a distinction that this current government has been stressing and that we support.
The third area is in terms of active labour policy. Recent European research confirms that active labour market policies of various kinds, whether in relation to standards, discrimination, equity issues, and so on, as well as various types of support, show that women disproportionately take advantage of those programs in Europe and end up employed quite significantly at higher rates than men. So we think that sector certainly needs to be developed within Canada more.
As part of that, we think also that child care is a very important part, because without that, certainly single-parent moms are not going to be able to move into the workforce in any significant way. And it's important to keep in mind also in relation to that child care—because arguments are often made in terms of the advantage to children—that it is also an advantage in terms of labour productivity. So keep that in mind.
The fourth area is improvements in the OAS, GIS, and CPP. I won't get into the details of that, but we can get into that, if you want, during the discussion. There are various ways in which we think those programs can be improved to assist women in relation to both the OAS and GIS in terms of making it more accessible to some women who are currently excluded, and also in terms of CPP, in terms of opening up that program a little bit. One of the disadvantages is that for women who drop out of the labour force for caregiving reasons other than for children—for example, in middle age, to take care of a senior member of the household, or to take care of somebody else—it doesn't have the same dropout provisions as child care for a mother does.
Finally, in relation to housing, again we won't get into details, but we think two aspects about that are important. One is to have a much bigger push in terms of shelter allowances, housing allowances. At the moment, almost all shelter subsidies are tied to social housing units. They're not free and don't go with the individuals. The other aspect is trying to move towards more mortgage accessibility for low-income women.
I'll stop there. Thank you, Chair.