Status of Women Committee on Dec. 13th, 2006

[Paulette Senior]

First, let me say that we did not make the list of those applications that got signed on September 25, so in fact we don't have the money to do it.

The importance of phase 3 is that...phase 2 left off with a number of recommendations, the primary one of which was to be able to look at how we can have the various systems that respond to women who experience violence have a more integrated response and approach to making sure that women who end up in shelters are able to build their lives and to not experience further barriers because they end up in a shelter. This involved such things as the response in terms of the justice system, the response in terms of health issues, and the response in terms of housing and homelessness.

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

In this province we've had God knows how many coroners' reports, so I assume that the work you were doing would have followed in terms of the recommendations of those coroners' reports in regard to the death of women in this province and in this country.

[Paulette Senior]

Absolutely.

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

Thank you.

I have another question. There's been a lot of discussion about the need for the participation of women, in terms of political parties and in the legislatures and in the House of Commons. Only 20.8% of this House of Commons is made up of women. What are the consequences of that kind of imbalance?

[Jackie Steele]

Quebec has the best performance in Canada. It is no accident that we have a public daycare program and pay equity in Quebec. Nor is it an accident that public policies in Quebec really respond to needs and reflect the realities of a wide diversity of women and men.

We need better representation and a more diversified group of elected representatives to ensure that all voices can be heard when decisions are to be made. I clearly find it troubling that only 20% of members of the House of Commons are women, and that the Government of Canada's current caucus has only 11% women. I believe that influences the views that are presented and subsequently implemented through public policies.

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

Thank you. My caucus has 41%. I'm quite proud of that.

Minister Oda has said that SWC women's program applications are now online. They're there; you can just dial them up. What do you think about that, the fact that they're online?

[Louise Riendeau]

In terms of checking it every day, there is nothing like personal contact to be in a position to understand what is being discussed. I could cite the example of the women who work in shelters. If you want to be sure that they get a message, it is better to call them on the telephone than it is to send them an e-mail, because they are extremely busy. In addition, new technologies do not reach every layer of society.

So, if we intend to use the Internet as a means of communication, we can certainly assume that the most disadvantaged women will not be in a position to make an application or have their voices heard.

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

Okay. We've lost 12 offices and the expertise of 61 full-time employees. What's going to happen? What are the consequences of that move?

[Paulette Senior]

Let me jump in. I think it serves to really silence the voices of women, particularly in those parts of the country where the voices cannot be heard because of lack of access to technology, for example, or lack of access to major urban centres, where it's easier to get in touch with those who represent you.

There are barriers experienced by rural women in communities where there are not a lot of available people for them to connect with on issues of equality that impact their daily lives. This becomes an issue for a lot of women, who suggest that the response to just go and access the Internet doesn't really respond to their needs in their daily lives.

[Jackie Steele]

I want to add that I think there's a fundamental disconnect, if we're thinking that women of all economic classes have access to the Internet at home, with a laptop in their houses. Whereas you know there are 16 offices that are often located in downtown cores, and it is possible to find that assistance and receive that technical help for project development, it's unrealistic that most women would be able to access these programs.

I happened to be given the advice from Madame Smith that perhaps our group would be able to qualify, but if I'm not able to have this conversation, even at this table, because I cannot get here, if I'm not able to meet with Status of Women personnel, how am I going to receive this information?

This means that having criteria that say social, economic, and cultural and that disregard the political aspect in the funding criteria—I'm supposed to figure that out on my own, or by making personal calls to my member of Parliament or to Madame Smith to get privileged information.... I don't think that leads to systematic, equal access of all women across this country.

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

We keep hearing over and over again that the actions by this government, by this minister, will silence the voice of women.

Why on earth would a government want to silence women?

[Paulette Senior]

I don't understand how that helps democracy. To me, it seems that the ability and the opportunity for government and community to work together can only help the government of the day. To silence people means you're not really exercising or practising democratic access for people to fully participate in society.

[Jackie Steele]

There is something else that comes to mind.

There is an inconsistency here that I don't understand. The Minister of International Cooperation, Ms. Josée Verner, is pledging to implement programs to promote equality and enhance the civil society's participation in the government's efforts abroad. And yet, as things now stand, women's groups in Quebec and the rest of Canada have no opportunity to make political representations, present their specific concerns, engage in democratic life or obtain government support to that end.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much. We are out of time for our first panel.

I want to thank all of you for taking the time to come today and to present to the committee. We will take this under consideration when we put our report to the House later on, in 2007.

Thank you all very much.

I'l suspend for a moment for the other panel to come to the table.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We'll bring our meeting back to order.

If everybody could resume their positions, I will move to introduce the next panel we have with us.

From the Canadian Labour Congress, we have Barbara Byers, the executive vice-president; from the Manitoba Association for Home Schooling, we have Gladys Hayward Williams; from the Parents for Healthy Teens, we have Doraine Wachniak, who also brought us some cookies to keep us all alert through the presentation; and from the Sexual Assault Centre in London, we have Louise Pitre, the executive director.

Thank you all very much for coming.

Ms. Byers, we will turn it over to you for a five-minute presentation. At four minutes, I will raise my pencil, so you will know that you only have one minute left.

[Barbara Byers, Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress]

Okay, and I should try not to avoid your pencil going up by continuing to look down.

Thank you very much for the invitation, the opportunity, to be here. I'm not going to read the document that you've received from us before, but I will highlight some key points.

As pointed out, the Canadian Labour Congress represents over three million working women and men across this country; about half of our membership are women.

Our document says that we are extremely concerned about the reduction of the Status of Women Canada budget and the changes to the terms and conditions of the women's program. It would be closer to say that we're outraged by it. This is completely unacceptable in terms of what's happened to women's programming.

We, in the Canadian Labour Congress, don't receive funding from Status of Women Canada, but we rely very much on the work that's done by women's organizations across this country—whether it's fact sheets, research, education, or work that we might use in our conferences, in on-the-ground community-based work, and all of that advocacy work that's so important to moving women's equality ahead by the labour movement.

As well, it's used by the labour movement internally to create change within our organizations, because we too come from a history of male-dominated organizations and inequalities. So the work that's being done by women's organizations is vitally important to the labour movement.

It is about creating change. It's not simply about providing money for the problems. It's about the advocacy work that creates change, and in particular change for highly disadvantaged groups, such as aboriginal women, women of colour, and women with disabilities.

Our issues are complex and obviously they're unresolved. We should not confuse people who say, well, you don't think women are equal. Of course, we think women are equal, but what we know is that women are not treated equally and that there is systemic discrimination in this country that needs to be dealt with in an advocacy way.

Policy directions have to be improved by the full participation of women and women's organizations. You had a discussion earlier about Canada's abysmal record, in terms of parliamentarians and people in our legislatures, in terms of the percentage of women. I believe I heard on the news on Sunday that we are something like 47th, or somewhere around the same area as Pakistan and Rwanda, or maybe we are after them.

We called for an increase and originally agreed with the increase in the budget. Certainly we didn't expect to see a decrease in the budget. The administrative reduction to the Status of Women Canada's budget is disturbing, to say the least. What it's going to mean is that as well as the on-the-ground work that we just heard groups talk about, we're going to see significant losses in the government's internal capacity to achieve women's equality; loss of the independent policy research fund, which was a unique initiative supporting independent research that could be used as a basis for developing policies with positive impacts; loss of the dialogue and work between the federal government and provincial governments responsible for the status of women; and cuts that will limit our own country's ability to intervene on women's economic, social, and political equality at the United Nations and other international forums.

I would indicate here that there was a letter sent I believe by six women who are Nobel Peace Prize winners. They wrote to the Harper government, calling on it to change the actions against the Status of Women Canada and equality rights.

To the question of identifying emerging issues....

Is that one minute or am I at the end?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

One minute.

[Barbara Byers]

All right.

I want to close by saying that we shouldn't look at these cuts in isolation. What we've seen are other cuts by this government in the area of literacy that greatly affect women: the whole question of post-secondary education losses that are going to affect women; obviously the loss of the child care program; the lack of movement on pay equity; the loss of the court challenges program; and no movement on unemployment insurance--currently, about 30% of women get UI, and in fact in some areas it's as low as 16% or 9%.

Finally, I just want to say that our push on reclaiming the rights to advocacy and reclaiming the rights to make change are about honouring our mothers and our grandmothers who created the change that we now get the advantage of. It's also about honouring what we need to do for our daughters and our granddaughters.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mrs. Byers.

Our next presenter, from the Manitoba Association for Schooling at Home, is Gladys Hayward Williams.

Welcome.

[Gladys Hayward Williams, Past member, Manitoba Association for Home Schooling]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am an ex-member of the association and am not speaking on their behalf.

I'm at least the third generation of empowered females in my family. It was interesting to hear you speak of mothers and grandmothers. My grandmother on my father's side was an original Canadian pioneer, actually breaking sod as a homesteader in Saskatchewan and building a stronger Canada in the process. Before my grandparents travelled to Saskatchewan, she spent the winter sewing the tent they lived in until they built a house on their homestead. Later, when their children—my dad and his sister—became school-aged, the family moved to Manitoba and settled on the farm outside Winnipeg, where I live now.

About the same time, my grandmother on my mother's side had her own home-based business, in that she operated a boarding house in the early days of Winnipeg. Her family's favourite client was Garnet Coulter, mayor of Winnipeg. Because he boarded with the family, conversations around the dinner table were both eclectic and dynamic.

Both my mother and I were raised with a great respect for education, and we each went to university and pursued our careers. For each of us, we conscientiously left our careers to focus on raising our families and putting our best efforts forward to build a strong new generation. During that time, we each joined our respective husbands in home-based businesses. For my mother and father, they were successful farmers in what is becoming an increasingly rare accomplishment. They were able to earn a living and raise a family solely from their farm income. For myself, I joined my husband in raising our family, schooling them at home, and developing a home-based company for computer-based geographic information systems.

My mother and I re-entered our professions after the demands of raising a family became fewer. To that end, last year I attended the University of Manitoba, upgraded to a degree of physical therapy, and wrote the national physiotherapy exam, as well as winning an election for school trustee.

I said all that so that I can say this: women are at the very least equal. And I agree again with my cohort. We are pioneers. We are entrepreneurs, business owners, professionals, and nurturers. We are building strong generations and a better Canada, and we are doing it alongside women and men.

In my family, we are intelligent women. We are educated women. We are not afraid to make tough choices, not afraid of hard work. Running a home, with its budgeting, management, prioritizing, and time efficiency issues, is the equivalent of running a small business. When Status of Women is pursuing equal pay for work of equal value, should they not also place a greater value on the work that women do in our homes and with our families?

The fact is that under the Charter of Rights, all Canadians, male and female, are equal. What isn't equal are the barriers and challenges that we each individually face. What makes us who we are and sets us apart from each other is how we deal with those challenges and barriers. I support the fact that by changing the mandate for the Status of Women, we have removed at least one barrier for women and made more funding more available to more women. More front-line groups will now be eligible for funding for their efforts to support women in overcoming their day-to-day barriers. I also support making more dollars available to groups giving direct assistance to victims of violence. We have spent many years and many dollars on research. Let's get on with putting money into the hands of groups that help women overcome barriers. We've cut enough bait. Let's get on with fishing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

The next witness is Doraine Wachniak from Parents for Healthy Teens.

[Doraine Wachniak, Representative, Parents for Healthy Teens]

Madam Chair, I would like to thank the taxpayers of Canada for inviting me to this meeting.

It is my second visit to Ottawa in my 50 years, and at the pace I've seen since I came off the airline, I'm hoping I don't come back too soon.

Parents for Healthy Teens is a group of volunteer women committed to advancing the promotion of lifelong sexual health for teens.

It is well-documented that young women suffer proportionately more from the consequences of early sexual involvement. We agree with the Manitoba government that the primary responsibility for education about issues of sexuality, including AIDS, rests with the family.

Parents for Healthy Teens was formed around 1998. Our involvement with teen sexual health has been at both the local and the provincial levels. As a group of women, we have single-handedly raised funds in our community to circulate flyers to the homes in our community, identifying the value regarding lifelong sexual health.

We have worked to host a Canadian obstetrician, gynecologist, clinical professor, author, researcher, and writer, Dr. Stephen Genuis, to come to our community and speak to parents and community groups such as the RCMP, school trustees, health care workers, school staff, and parent council representatives, etc.

On our own efforts, we have purchased hundreds of dollars of research resource materials to be available to our local high school.

We have made presentations to numerous government bodies to share our concerns about the physical, social, and emotional consequences of early sexual activity within our youth population.

We have collaborated successfully with our local high school to implement an option for parents and students in the area of physical education and health.

All of the above has taken place with volunteer hours and our own dollars.

We are pleased and extremely supportive of the broadened mandate for the Status of Women. This change will provide us with an opportunity to apply to Status of Women for funding if we wish to do so. The previous mandate excluded us.

We would disagree that the changes to the terms and conditions of the women's program under the Status of Women undermines the very basis of our democracy. Our opinion is that in time and with widespread notice of these changes, your department will mobilize more women to assist women and girls in need.

Thank you for listening.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Louise Pitre from the Sexual Assault Centre in London, welcome.

[Louise Pitre, Executive Director, Sexual Assault Centre London]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Because my community had a local Status of Women Canada office, we had technical support that was easily accessible, and those most marginalized in our community, as well as their advocates, were able to access women's program funding. Because of that, we were able to achieve some very important outcomes.

Some of those successes include a women's mental health survivors' group, which started as a non-incorporated grassroots group that later became a provincial group, developed evidence-based guidelines for women's mental health, and best practices that were shared and adopted across the province and the country.

From there, they developed a program for homeless women called My Sister's Place, a program that has seen countless women who otherwise were completely disenfranchised take up their citizenry and participate in the community in countless ways.

We also had a grassroots group of women living in poverty in rural Ontario produce and publish a resource book, How We Count, a book that has become a springboard for people to talk about the links between women's poverty, woman abuse, and women's economic security.

We also had a centre for research on violence against women and children that has been successful in engaging and giving voice to marginalized young women, our future.

And in northern Ontario, aboriginal women, the most invisible in our country and in our communities, through the efforts of Equay-wuk, a women's group, worked with women in isolated communities in the Nishnawbe Aski Nation to conduct and deliver leadership workshops.

These examples illustrate significant and meaningful outcomes in the lives of women, in particular marginalized women in their communities. These are local outcomes that respond to the particular issues, needs, and challenges faced by our communities.

These outcomes were possible because local and accessible support was available to us. These outcomes were possible because we were given ongoing social development support through a local office.

The implications of the changes and the cuts are devastating. Grassroots women's groups, mostly non-incorporated groups, mostly marginalized communities, such as refugees and immigrants, girls, first nations, francophones, will no longer be able to access the women's program funding, resources, and knowledge. All of the examples I gave you earlier, all of those groups, under the new terms and conditions, will not be able to access funding.

If grassroots groups become incorporated, we will have to compete with for-profit organizations for women's program funding. If grassroots groups become incorporated, we will have to navigate electronically the proposal writing process. Contrary to the minister's belief, electronic access to the funding application results in less access for marginalized groups of women, who from the get-go have little access to resources.

By gutting the infrastructure that connected the government to its citizens at a local level and centralizing program delivery in one office with two people for the entire region of Ontario, as well as for the national groups, the government has guaranteed that access will be diminished, if not completely eliminated. The government has guaranteed that those most marginalized in our society will remain at the margins. The government has guaranteed a low return on investment for every $1 of funding disbursed. The systemic changes required to address the issues of social justice, women's economic autonomy, and violence against women and children will no longer be possible.

Prior to the changes made to the mandate of the women's program and the cuts to Status of Women Canada, grassroots women's groups and other equality-seeking groups had access to district and regional offices. We were able to help the government understand our local issues. With the technical assistance and funding we received, we were able to explore the realities of women's lives and use these insights towards transformative social action and change. We were able to increase women's participation in all levels of Canadian life, including political, legal, social, economic, and cultural. We were able to contribute to building healthier communities. We were able to move out of the margins of society to become more active and productive citizens.

Women across this country will not accept these changes and these cuts. The cost is too great. The issue here is not $5 million; the government has a surplus of $13.2 billion. The issue is this minority government's ideological opposition to women's equality.

I urge the standing committee to further extend its consultation to local and regional women, to find out what women across the country are saying about these changes and what they are saying about women's equality in Canada.

I urge the standing committee to exercise its power and reclaim women's equality for all women in Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Okay. Thank you very much.

We will go to questions.

Ms. Minna.