Status of Women Committee on Sept. 21st, 2006

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I call our meeting to order. This is meeting number 12 of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

I'm pleased to welcome all of you back and I look forward to having a successful session as we move forward on very important work that we all want to see accomplished here.

Our lead researcher has been Julie Cool for quite some time. Julie is now taking a change and moving on to some other challenges. She has been a wonderful resource for us in the few months that we've been here, but clearly from what I understand from the previous chairs she's been a wonderful resource to them as well.

Julie, thank you so much for advancing the issues of equality of women and Canadian issues for all of us.

Marlisa Tiedemann is going to be taking the lead and Lyne Casavant is going to be adding support. They will replace Julie after today's meeting.

Thank you, and welcome to the others.

Just to remind the committee quickly, while we get ourselves organized, we have retabled recommendations contained in the reports in our last Parliament with regard to funding for women's organizations, gender-based analysis report, parental benefits for self-employed workers, and report on pay equity. We completed the study and reported to the House on matrimonial real property rights. We did accomplish a fair amount in our last session. I hope we will be as successful in getting some reports into the House in this session.

You should have in front of you, just to confirm that everybody has the same thing, the agenda, a proposed work plan for consideration, and by internal mail you should have received a copy of the government response to reports 1 through 5 that we had tabled. You should all have received that already.

I have asked the clerk to try to ensure that we get all of the reports as quickly as possible to our offices, electronically if possible.

Does everybody have everything in front of them that they need? The work plan is what we will be working from. Everybody should have that in front of you. There's a preliminary work plan for discussion purposes. This is the issue that we will work forward to.

I might add that until the House leaders table all of the committee membership, we're going forward as today with who we are. There may be changes next week and we will have to have an election again for chair and vice-chairs, once that's been tabled in the House. Hopefully they'll do that today. We can take care of that business on Tuesday morning. I didn't want to miss time waiting and miss an opportunity for a meeting by not going forward. So what we're doing today in mapping our plan will have to be reaffirmed next week, once we've gone through the election process again.

In total we have 20 meetings between now and the Christmas break. We've set aside four meetings for government responses and for main estimates, which leaves us 16 meetings.

If we're going to try to get a report on whichever area we're going to move on, whether it's the economic issues or others, we need to allow ourselves two or three meetings in order to draft some instructions to be able to table something in the House before Christmas. If we continue to work in these sessions and try to get a report into the House at the completion of the session, I think we'd be advancing the issues that we're all working on in a much more effective way.

Two studies would make it very difficult for us, so what you have before you are the two suggestions for the two different studies.

We have been requesting Minister Oda to come before the committee from when we started. We have a tentative date this morning from the minister of October 5, that she would be before us to discuss the reports from the House and possibly the main estimates.

I'm asking for two dates from the minister because I think it's going to take more than the one meeting to cover off all of those issues, as well as to find out what her desires and directions are for the status of women committee.

We've requested that Minister Finley, Minister Prentice, and Minister Toews appear in response to the reports that the government has tabled.

We still have the five reports that we had tabled in the House and that were responded to on September 18. We have a follow-up report on pay equity, which is due from the government on October 5. A report from the government on matrimonial real property rights is due October 19, and main estimates are due to be reported back to the House by November 10. We're going to be working within those dates as we move forward.

We are lining that up, just to put into perspective what's before you.

Ms. Davidson.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Yes, Madam Chair. I just wonder if I might interject at this time.

I am wondering if we can request that Minister Blackburn appear. I believe he is the one dealing with the pay equity issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Yes, he's dealing with it jointly with Minister Toews. They have both been requested to come. We don't have a date for the meeting yet.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Oh, okay. I didn't see his name, or I didn't hear it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Yes, I didn't say it out loud, but Minister Blackburn as well.

[Belinda Stronach, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Madam Chair, you said that you had requested two dates from the minister. I think it's important that the minister come before this committee--it has been eight months now--before we review the estimates on November 10, so we have an opportunity to hear what her vision is. We know that at estimates it becomes less about vision and more about numbers. I think we specifically need to hear her vision as it relates to the committee and then the funding criteria for the program for women, which many women's groups across this country are extremely concerned about at the moment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Yes, very much so.

I was pleased to see that the minister had given October 5 and October 26 as two possible dates. We are trying to confirm both of them so that we would have sufficient time to talk about the vision, plus the reports, plus main estimates. We're hopeful that the minister will be able to be with us on those particular dates that she's given us this morning.

Ms. Mourani.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Why would the Minister appear in October? I don't understand the delay. What do we have on our agenda for next week? I don't have my calendar with me. What are we doing next week? Isn't that scheduled to be our first meeting?

You forgot you have francophones here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

No, I didn't. I thought I would have picked it all up, but I didn't grasp it all, so, please, if you don't mind....

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Earlier, you said that Ms. Oda would be appearing before the committee in October. That's the plan. However, what are we doing next week? Won't that be our first meeting? Shouldn't we be hearing from her next week, for example, on Tuesday? Things are likely to heat up.

Wait a minute, Tuesday the 26th is the deadline for renewal of the Women's Program.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I think the minister is aware of some of the pressures on the funding issues. We have asked her for some time to come, and she has not been able to get here. She is now planning to come October 5. The request was that she come as urgently as possible, given these issues.

If you like, we could put in another request that as a result of the committee's request today that she come next Tuesday. Again, it's a scheduling issue, but if it's the will of the committee, we will make another urgent request to the minister today that because of the funding issue that she appear next Tuesday. We will adjust our schedule if she can manage to do that.

Is that agreeable to everyone?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mrs. Smith

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I talked to the minister, and she wants to get here just as fast as she can. October 5 was the earliest she could be here. I will talk to her one more time, personally, as well, because of the funding issues, and see if it's possible at all for her to get here earlier. She's very excited about coming, and I know she will be here as quickly as she can.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Normally, for all of us who have been ministers, once you are appointed a minister, your very first responsibility is to get to your committee so that we can share an idea of where the minister wants to go and in what direction as well. So it has been difficult for us because she hasn't been able to make it. So if you could....

I have spoken to her as well. Given these funding concerns, if she could possibly come next Tuesday, I think it would be very helpful to all of us.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Yes, indeed I will do that. She has many committees that she has appeared before. I guess everyone wants her first, and she's trying to get to all of them as quickly as possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

So we will put that request in to the minister. Thank you.

Ms. Minna.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

On a point of clarification, Madam Chair, maybe I misunderstood, but I think you said the pay equity report was going to be in in October.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

There's report number six.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

We have the other one already.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

There is one that we have received. This is another report that we had also tabled in the House, which we are awaiting a response to. There was a smaller one on pay equity.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I just wanted to understand, because I knew we already had this one, which we need to discuss as well. Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Okay.

So the suggestion is that we would move on to the discussion on our work plan, that we would be moving forward on it. What we did put before you were several proposals for study. One is option one, which we had been talking about, the economic security of senior women, and a list of possible witnesses. The second option on the economic security issues would be to focus on federal programs and whether there are shortcomings in the current federal programs.

Again, given the fact that we probably have about 14 meetings in total between now and our Christmas break, if we want to be as diligent as possible, let's try to narrow in on what we want to accomplish between now and then.

There are two possibilities put before you as far as the economic security of senior women is concerned. One would be to focus on the larger picture, including income tax splitting and a variety of other issues that have been raised and that we've seen in our previous one; or to focus on the federal programs, whether our federal programs specifically are meeting the needs of women in Canada today. Those are two options on the economic security file. Perhaps we could narrow down which of those we think would be of most interest to the women of Canada, that we might have much success on. So we could look at those first.

Ms. Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I think option one looks quite significant in terms of covering a broad range of areas. But as broad as it is, there are things that I do believe are missing. I would like to see housing added to that list, because we organize our lives and everything in terms of families in terms of our housing. I'd like to see immigrant women and the situations they face added.

I was quite interested in the barriers to work in terms of child care. But in addition to that, there are barriers once you're in the workplace, and I think there are some things we could look at in that regard. For example, 68% of women are still in what are regarded as traditional female roles. I'd like to hear from groups such as Women in Leadership; from some businesswomen; from women who are in non-traditional roles--for example, women who are scientists, etc. I hear there's a group of construction workers who have some interesting job experience. I'd also like to add pay equity to that list, because clearly there's another report coming back in October 5.

I must tell you, Madam Chair, I am less than happy with the response that we received back from the minister. In addition to speaking to her about that, I'd like to hear from groups such as Bell Canada, CEP, CLC, and the Public Service Alliance in regard to their experiences around pay equity.

So I think this first option is very good, but it does need to be added to. We need to do a really thorough job and come up with a first-rate report that we can present to the House of Commons and really advance the cause of women.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We have tried to include as many of the possible witnesses whose names were submitted by committee members as possible. I wanted to make sure that we have a wide range of discussion and opportunity here as well, considering how many meetings we have.

I have Ms. Minna.