Status of Women Committee on Feb. 7th, 2007

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

In your opinion, women's lobby groups remain just as important and we must continue to subsidize them.

[Lucille Harper]

Absolutely.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Would you like to add something, Ms. Greckol? You have half a minute.

[Sonja Greckol]

Yes. I'm going to make an assumption that you have brought women from the aboriginal community to address this panel, to hear directly what it is that women in the aboriginal community need.

In terms of what we do in Toronto, we do outreach and we work in collaboration with the aboriginal community when we are doing our coalitions, and so on.

In terms of assaulted women, I can tell you that probably the way to ensure that we will continue to have assaulted women is to deliver services to assaulted women through the private sector. We will continue to provide them with an assured clientele for a good long time if the private sector is also encouraged to bid on services for assaulted women.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We'll go to Ms. Smith.

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

Good afternoon, ladies. I want to thank you so much for coming today, Lucille, Stéphanie, and Sonja.

Lucille, I have a question for you, first of all, if you would. I thought your presentation was extremely compelling. I have worked for years with abused women and have worked for just about a decade now on the trafficking of human beings. Of course, you know that aboriginal women and women on reserves are very much at risk, and there have been incidences of this happening across our nation.

Just to give you a little background, I know of what you speak. Our son is an RCMP officer. He is married to an Ojibwa girl. Her family is in social work, and she has done a lot of it as well.

I thought some things you said were very interesting. I looked at your website for the kinds of projects you have worked on, things like workforce re-entry and workshops on issues related to health, self-esteem, and violence against women. It seems to me that a lot of very good things have been done through your organization and through your dedication. I would like to commend all the women, and especially, Lucille, what you've done with your organization and the women there.

Now, you said that you didn't need to speak for the aboriginal women, that the aboriginal women can speak for themselves but that we have to listen. I couldn't agree with that more.

The fact of the matter is that I've been on the status of women committee now for two terms, since I became a member of Parliament. I'm a mother of six children. I myself have four daughters, and I've been a really strong women's advocate. I was in the math and science field prior to that, with a master's in education in that area, so I was in a man's world for a long time. This is something I brought to the status of women committee.

When I came, I saw all the wonderful research and the stacks and stacks of research material we had. One of our members even brought the stacks in one day to the status of women. And you know, this was very credible, very good research. Do you know what struck me? What struck me was that, along with all that research--we know a lot of the problems--a lot of the programming, a lot of the things you're doing with your projects, hasn't been happening. There are a lot of reports, there's a lot research, there are a lot of motions on Parliament Hill, but for the on-the-ground work that needed to be there, the funding, wasn't always there. I think you would agree with me in that area, because it's very self-evident when you look at the history.

In looking at what you've done, I wonder if you have applied for some of these projects through Status of Women. As you know, opposition members have been touting the fact that Status of Women has been cut. I say that it's been redirected. That $5 million is not lost; that $5 million is going directly into women's programs, and within that project, women can still advocate and they can still do research. But those projects are designed to do what you're doing, and what many of your women's groups are doing, which is to be on the ground helping women. I wonder if you have actually applied for some of this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have about two and a half minutes to respond--she took five minutes to ask the question--so go ahead.

[Lucille Harper]

One of the recommendations that have been made is that we substantially increase the funding to Status of Women Canada. Our women's centre was one of the women's centres that received core funding at one point, until that core funding was cut by the previous government. That core funding allowed us to do two things: it allowed us to provide services and to do the advocacy work.

Because such a small amount of funding is available through Status of Women Canada, and because the policy change is so critical, and because there is no other avenue to take right now to be able to do that policy change, it is equally important to our organization that we're able to do policy change as well as service delivery, because otherwise it leaves you in an absolutely heartbreakingly hopeless situation in providing services. I firmly believe we need to be able to provide services.

One solution would be for Status of Women Canada to take a leap and begin to work with the provinces to ensure equal amounts of funding in the provinces, through the provinces, for a service delivery, and that Status of Women Canada holds on hard, very hard, to that advocacy and research function, because without you it's not going to happen.

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

Do I have a minute?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have about 45 seconds.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

That's the first time I've heard this put so directly, to make sure that the provincial and federal funding is matched or is enhanced, because we are federal-provincial partners in this regard. I will take that forward for you. I thank you very much for that suggestion.

[Lucille Harper]

I appreciate your taking it forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We now go on to Ms. Mathyssen.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to ask questions of all three panellists. I thank you for your expert testimony.

I want to begin with Lucille Harper. You talked about the realities that women in Antigonish face. It's seems to me that rural women face a different reality than do urban women, and part of that is that we tend to base services on population as opposed to needs. Can you explain that? Also, tell me what the impact of closing those regional offices will have on the work you do.

[Lucille Harper]

Thanks for that question.

Closing the rural offices will have a huge impact, because it is really with our local program officers that we are able to build a good sense of what's happening in the smaller communities and what the needs of women are and translate that back to Ottawa in a way that ensures the research and the projects and initiatives that are carried out really do reflect and meet the needs of the smaller communities. Without that, we're really relying on a lens, which in my experience has always been an urban lens, in looking at rural issues.

As I said earlier, the lives of rural women are particularly complex because of everything that I mentioned earlier, and particularly in rural areas where we have out-migration and disintegrating infrastructure. So right now, trying to have a woman's voice within rural communities is more challenging than ever. We really require and rely on our program officers to understand that, to work with us, and to be able to translate that back to Ottawa, which is where the funding and the projects are actually stamped.

As far as value for the dollar goes, the program officers work so hard. In Nova Scotia, our program officer works far beyond the actual number of hours she is paid for. The kinds of supports she is able to provide to women's organizations are really significant, particularly for organizations that are not as familiar with applying for grants, etc. She is really a valuable person in making sure that very good projects go through, particularly for communities that are less organized. The work done in some of our African Nova Scotian communities has been absolutely critical. And it's the same with our Acadian communities; the work has been really critical.

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

Thank you.

We've heard about the dedication from the women who are working in the regional offices across the country, which of course have been closed.

My next question is for Sonja. You talked about the fact that women's experiences are missing from decision-making. What are the benefits of bringing marginalized women, or women specifically, into the decision-making process? Have you had success with that in Toronto? What remains to be done?

[Sonja Greckol]

I would say we've had limited success in Toronto.

For the group that I work with, in the course of our public education work and outreach work, we have a continuing series of new women who come and go through the organization. We are coming to understand that it is in fact a necessary piece in our organization for women from the more marginalized communities who haven't been fully involved in the political process. Women have fewer economic resources and fewer political resources. We've had to adapt our structure in order to be able to make those voices present within our organization. It was the first step for us.

The second step was then trying to understand how we could mobilize those voices for the local government. One of the ways that local government can in fact start to mobilize those resources is by collecting data differently. It's one of the areas that we looked at.

When we start to break out our housing data and our homelessness data so that it reflects women's experience of homelessness, what do we get? Most often when we talk about women's experience of homelessness, we in fact get something that people refer to as hidden homelessness, and that they don't know what it is. Well, we know exactly what it is. We know that it's women having to move from family to family, from friend to friend, with their children, and so on, but that is not visible.

Our research projects need to be informed in a different way to bring back part of the picture, which the government can paint for us into visibility, while we provide the access so that women whose voices aren't normally heard are brought forward.

I want to add to your piece about rural women. The corollary of that in the large urban environment is all of the disenfranchised communities, the marginalized rationalized communities that don't have access. As we cut back outreach and make administration more efficient, in fact, the only people who can grasp at the money are people from established groups and organizations. It's the urban corollary of your rural experience.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

The time is up. We will be able to take one last question, and then I'll give you two minutes each to wrap up.

Mr. Stanton, you will be the first to ask the question for the next panel.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

I appreciate that, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Ms. Stronach.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to point out that the minister was here last week. She clearly stated that women have had 25 years to do advocacy work and women can still do advocacy work without the funding.

We all know there has been a change in the mandate of the women's program, with the removal of the word “equality” and our advocacy work no longer being funded. I am still trying to understand this. I have not come to a rational reason for why they would remove the word “equality” and prevent advocacy work. There is so much work to be done on behalf of women and on improving the quality of life for women. It's only through research and advocacy work that you can bring about changes.

What I'm interested in hearing from you is more about the future. With this change in the mandate, the inability to do the research and the removal of the word “equality”, how is that going to directly have an impact on your organizations? Are there any programs on the table or any future plans that you had to grow your organization that will be compromised, or off the table, or you will no longer be able to do them?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Who do you wish to have respond?

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

Any one of the participants, whoever would like to go ahead.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Take a minute each.