Status of Women Committee on Feb. 15th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you, Ms. Bennett.

I will now go to Madame Demers for seven minutes.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you for being here today.

I come from Laval, where there is a very high percentage of seniors. They account for approximately 40,000 people out of a population of 350,000. In that group, 38% are over the age of 75, with some 12,000 women over the age of 75, which is something that does not very often appear in the statistics the way you present them, since all those who are 65 and over are in one group.

So Mr. Lindsay, I am very pleased to see that your statistics were a bit more detailed and made a distinction between women aged 65 to 75, 75 to 85 and 85 and over. That is the reality today and it is important to realize that women over the age of 75 are the poorest group. So it might be helpful, from now on, to avoid putting everyone over the age of 65 in one group in the statistics.

Ms. Townson, in your study entitled: ''Reducing Poverty Among Older Women: The Potential of Retirement Income Policies'', you state the following:

Retirement income policies could serve to reduce poverty in future generations of seniors and guarantee economic security for older women. However, public policy in the area of retirement income needs to take into account the causes of poverty among senior women...

We are all familiar with the various causes of poverty among women. We have talked about some of them, such as part-time work, family responsibilities and lower income.

Do you have any concrete solutions to propose so that elderly women, now and in the future, can be better off at the end of their lives and have better pensions?

[Monica Townson]

Some of those were the ones I mentioned in my presentation. There are a lot more detailed recommendations in this report, which you may have seen. I think we have to attack it on a number of fronts.

If we're looking at women before they get to retirement age, we need to look at how they're treated by various programs—for example, lone mothers who are on social assistance. The National Council of Welfare has produced an analysis of that showing that social assistance rates are now lower than they were in the 1980s, when you take into account inflation, and the fact that most women who lose their jobs now can no longer qualify for employment insurance, and that their wages are very low in these very low jobs.

All of these are things we could address individually, but my argument would be that we need some kind of national strategy whereby we would review all of those programs to see what the impact of those is on women's ability to set aside money.

For example, you've had witnesses here who have suggested a particular way of saving for low income people—a tax-prepaid savings plan, for example, whereby people could set aside some money for retirement, and when they took the money out it wouldn't be taxable.

The problem is that most low income women—and most women do have very low earnings—don't have any spare cash left aside to save. We might need to supplement some of those to give them better benefits when they get to retirement, to improve the CPP for people who have low incomes.

For example, there was a proposal that came out of Quebec in the 1980s that suggested that once they got to retirement, those who had low incomes and hadn't been able to accumulate very much could have a higher pension from the CPP than those who had higher earnings. There is a whole range of different things we can do. There isn't any one silver bullet, if you want to put it like that.

My argument is that we need to look at the whole mix and develop a comprehensive strategy.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you very much, Ms. Townson.

Ms. Glover, with respect to how much income women make compared with what men make, Ms. Townson mentioned 63%, whereas you indicated it was 82%. That is a difference of 20%. How do you explain that?

[Barbara Glover]

Thank you for asking the question, because I went so fast I didn't have a chance to explain very well. I may turn to the Stats Canada folks, because they're the experts in methodology.

I used figures that were comparing average hourly salaries. The reason to do that is that it compares like with like: that is, a person in a job working for one hour gets how much money compared with a person in another job for one hour.

When you do the full year comparisons, you are including things such as the fact that women generally work less in a year, so you're not so much getting a handle on whether pay is differing for someone who has a certain level of education or training. Are they getting the same pay per hour?

Let's take doctors. I don't know what doctors make an hour, but let's say they make $100 an hour. That probably sounds low. If you look at the full year, women doctors on average work fewer hours than men doctors, so if you compare their average annual income, part of the difference is about hours of work. That's just one example.

So if you're trying to get at the question of whether women and men are paid differently for the similar work they're doing at similar levels of education, I think you probably want to look at hourly pay. On the other hand, if you want to get to the issue of hours—whether women are working fewer hours—you'd probably want to use the yearly.

I often read in the literature or in newspapers articles wherein I think people are using the 70% figure as a way of saying women are getting paid less for every hour they work. It doesn't quite mean that.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Do you not think that if they work fewer hours, it is because they have more work and responsibility at home? Should they not receive financial compensation in exchange for that work?

[Barbara Glover]

I'm not sure. I haven't thought about that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We will now go over to Ms. Smith.

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

Thank you very much.

I would like to thank the presenters today for coming here for this very important analysis of the economic security of the senior population. It really grabbed me, as you were talking about the women who are over 85 years of age. We have a lot of women over 85 years of age in our country.

Could someone expand a little on what they know not only about how many are here, but about some of the challenges they are facing? I was particularly taken by the comment that was made—I think by you, Mr. Lindsay—that the financial part is very important, but also the social support, because there are many issues coming forward right now on that side.

I would ask you, if you don't mind, to answer as briefly as possible, because I would like to share my time with Mrs. Davidson as well.

[Colin Lindsay]

The general comment I have would also follow up on what Madame Demers said; that is, that we also do some work on seniors. When you look at the senior population, people tend to look at it as a homogenous group. But there are very clearly three distinct groups when you look at it statistically.

You have the 65-to-74-year-old women, which in many in cases is a kind of golden age. That's the time when these people generally have the same kind of health as people under age 65, have good incomes, and have the time to enjoy it.

You see 75 to 84 as kind of a transition phase. Then you really see in that 85-and-over population the kinds of problems we usually associate with old age: low incomes; living alone; needing social support. That's when it really comes in.

What's of concern right now is that it's a fairly small population in Canada right now, about 10% of the overall senior population, but it's the fastest-growing segment of the seniors population. And down the road—I forget the dates, but at some point in time, within two or three decades—we're going to have as many people in Canada over the age of 85 as we have seniors today.

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

Okay, Ms. Davidson. I'm going to share my time.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have a just a comment for Mr. Lindsay, and then I have another question for Ms. Townson.

You made a comment about women over 85: that right now there were...did you say six or eight in the caregiver age group—45 to 65—for every one over 85?

[Colin Lindsay]

Yes.

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

And that would decrease to four—

[Colin Lindsay]

About four and a half, yes.

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

—and that would increase the load for the caregiver age group?

[Colin Lindsay]

Yes.

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

I would suggest that it is probably going to decrease the numbers who are 85 and over who have somebody to look after them, and that it's going to increase the load on social assistance rather than increase the load on the age group from 45 to 65. But that's just a comment.

[Colin Lindsay]

Oh, yes.

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

Ms. Townson, I also was interested in the difference in the figures between you and Ms. Glover. Could you please comment on the statistics as they've been presented?

[Monica Townson]

I'm not sure what figures you're referring to.

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

It's the difference in the percentages earning below the wages the men are earning. Ms. Glover just explained it in response to Ms. Demers. One was talking about total wage over a year; one was talking hour to hour, comparing apples with apples. Is that your take on those figures?

[Monica Townson]

The figures I was using were the average earnings of women compared with men over a year.

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

So it wouldn't actually compare the same number of hours worked; it would be over a yearly period. Is that...?

[Monica Townson]

That's right. And what Ms. Glover was saying is that one reason for the difference is the difference in hours worked, and that of course is quite true. In fact, even when women and men theoretically are working full time, women are working on average fewer hours per week than men, I think for the reasons Madame Demers refers to: that women are not able to work overtime, for example, because very often they have family responsibilities.

It should also be noted that even if you look at hourly wage rates, very often women are paid less per hour than men are. Some of that reflects the kinds of jobs women do, which have lower hourly pay than those men do. There may be several reasons for the wage gap there.