Status of Women Committee on Feb. 15th, 2007

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

I think you also made a comment about the inability of women to collect EI, compared with men.

[Monica Townson]

Yes.

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

Could you elaborate on that a little bit please? Why is that?

[Monica Townson]

The rules were changed in 1996, as I mentioned, and they became much stricter in terms of qualifying. First of all, you have to have a certain number of hours worked in the previous 52 weeks to qualify for benefits. And when the rules were changed, the number of hours worked doubled, and in some cases tripled, so that many people don't have the requisite number of hours.

Secondly, if you leave your job for certain reasons that under the act are not considered just cause, you're penalized and you can't get benefits.

Thirdly, whether or not you get benefits depends on the unemployment rate where you live, whether you've worked during the previous two years, and so on. It's a very complicated system. But you could have a woman, let's say, who's been in paid employment for years and then suddenly drops out and has a child. She might be out for a couple of years and try to get back in. She's then considered a re-entrant and she has to work something like 900 hours.

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

So she's starting from scratch all over again.

[Monica Townson]

Exactly. Instead of taking into account the fact that she has a long-term commitment to paid employment, she's really, as you say, starting right from the beginning again. So there is a whole bunch of reasons that were introduced when the act was changed in 1997 or 1998 that make it almost impossible for most people to qualify.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Ms. Davidson, that's it.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

We'll go to Ms. Mathyssen.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for the information you've brought here. I have so many questions. I'll start with Ms. Townson.

You made mention of a report of yours that was funded by Status of Women Canada. I'm wondering how important it is to do that kind of research. What value does it have in terms of our ability as a Parliament to react to the needs of women in the community?

[Monica Townson]

You're getting into political questions here, clearly, but if you're asking my personal opinion, I think it's vital to have this kind of documentation of women's inequality. If we don't have this information, then we can't lobby for change; we are not aware of what the differences are and where the inequalities exist.

The information I've just given on unemployment insurance, for example, forms part of a study I have just completed with another person for Status of Women Canada's policy research fund. It was scheduled for publication in March and now will no longer be published. Unfortunately, you will not have access to that information, unless I can find somebody else to publish it. It's really a shame that the kind of information you need to document, where you need to do your lobbying or make recommendations, will no longer be available.

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

Thank you.

I wonder to what degree the lack of affordable housing and the fact that we don't have a national child care program contributes to the poverty of women.

[Monica Townson]

Quite significantly, I think. The child care issue is a big problem, especially for single-parent families where a mother may be on social assistance and want to get off it but can't find subsidized child care. There's a huge shortage of spaces, particularly in certain parts of the country. It makes it almost impossible for women to support themselves.

It's not just a question of being able to engage in paid employment; it's also being able to engage in further education and training to upgrade your skills. If, for example, you've been stuck in a low-wage job and would like to get a better-paying job, but you need more training or more education, then you need the child care support services in order to get that education. If they're not available, you can't progress, and so you're rather stuck in the low-wage situation.

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

Thank you.

I'd like to ask a question of Ms. Glover and Ms. Poter. We heard from a women's organization that advocates for rural women that there are specific problems with respect to the needs of rural women. Among those problems are isolation, the depressed economy we're seeing in rural areas, inadequate or unavailable child care and health care services and transportation.

Are there any specific programs in HRDC that would address this very specific need of rural women?

[Barbara Glover]

There are non-specific programs—just, of course, employment insurance and active measures. I realize that's both the income side and the active measures side, and it's worth saying, simply because the program is so big. We focus often on employment benefits, but as well, of course, there's about $2 billion spent across the country on things such as wage subsidies, upskilling, and retraining. That's just one program.

The government announced in the fall a targeted initiative for older workers, a $70-million national program that is much more targeted to what you are talking about. That is, It's a targeted program for displaced older workers in areas with higher unemployment—not in Toronto or Montreal, but in areas of higher unemployment. It's aimed at people who have lost their jobs and been displaced for a variety of reasons. Maybe a factory has closed, or a pulp and paper mill has closed down. That was announced in the fall, and programs are being set up.

Those are two that I can think of right off the bat. My area is more to do with employment and the labour market.

Less targeted but also broad, dealing with some of these issues, would be the youth employment strategy, which focuses on trying to help young men and women get a good start in the labour market. That's mostly focused on youth at risk.

Another area that I think is worth talking about is aboriginal programming. Obviously, that's going to have a rural component. The department spends quite a bit of money through aboriginal programming to try to support entry into the workplace. A lot of it is done on reserve; some of it is done in urban areas as well. The intent is to focus very much on barriers to labour market participation.

I've done, in four minutes, a little overview of the kind of program we have to assist people to get into the labour market.

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

Has HRSD done any specific research into the inequities experienced by disadvantaged women in trying to secure EI?

I'm thinking about the fact that there are low income women and self-employed women who work part-time. We've heard that only about a third of these women, despite the fact that they pay in, can actually access the money. Even at that they get 55% of their earnings, which would seem to be very difficult for trying to survive with.

I just wonder whether you've done research. What can you tell us about the accuracy of that particular situation?

[Barbara Glover]

I can answer just to say I'm not an expert on employment insurance.

I know there is a range of studies on what you asked about. I know that one of the studies on whether part-time women should get maternity and parental benefits was tabled with the committee in May or June.

Those are great questions. I'm not an expert on it, and it looks as if I don't have enough time to answer the questions, so maybe you'd want to follow up on them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We will now go to round two. It's five minutes.

Mr. Dhaliwal, you have five minutes.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses who have come here and who have done good work on this issue having to do with senior women in our society.

Madam Chair, my riding of Newton--North Delta is a very diverse riding from a cultural and economic perspective. In fact, it represents the true face of the new Canada that we have.

I would like to pose a question to the panel. What observations have you made, especially about the women who are already retired? I can see that you're already predicting a better future for the women who will retire compared with women who are already retired—the women who didn't have any pension plan and who did not have any other resources, such as RRSPs, and who worked hard. Those are the women who are the majority in my riding.

Also in my riding I see a lot of immigrant women who have come to our shores. They probably face different challenges.

Would you have any suggestions for this committee to look into concerning the economic security of these senior women?

[Monica Townson]

Women who are immigrants and men who are immigrants are in a particularly difficult situation because they may not have been in Canada long enough to qualify for certain benefits. For example, as I think you've already been told by other witnesses, to get OAS or CPP you must have been in Canada at least ten years.

People have told me, in meetings, of older family members who have come in as family class immigrants and can't qualify for those benefits because they haven't been here ten years. Other people who have been in the paid workforce, but maybe not as long as Canadian-born people, will not have as many years and therefore will not get as much in benefits.

For example, for old age security you get a pro-rated benefit, depending on how long you've been in the country. Canada Pension Plan is based on your contributions.

There are problems with the CPP for immigrants too, because the benefits are calculated based on a contributory period that starts at age 18. You may not have been in the country at age 18, but nevertheless it goes back then.

One of the recommendations I've made in my report here is that we look at how we calculate those benefits so that we take into account people who haven't been in the country that long.

Canada has social security agreements with a number of countries that allow immigrants from those countries to use years that they contributed to the social security programs in their home country and add them to what they've done in Canada, to improve their benefits.

But we don't have social security agreements with all countries, and in fact for the countries where most recent immigrants come from--in Southeast Asia--we don't have agreements with many of those countries, and many of those countries don't have the same kinds of social security programs we have.

So it is a big problem for immigrants, and I think it's one we need to have a special study on to see how we could adjust our programs to give better benefits to immigrants who perhaps haven't been in the country that long.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Are there any other persons who want to add anything?

[Colin Lindsay]

I can give you some basic numbers, just to clarify your situation.

Indeed, Monica is quite correct. Among senior women immigrants, whether they live alone or in a family, they do tend to have a much higher incidence of low income than other senior women do. I think currently something like 70%--or at least it was at the time of the 2001 census--of senior immigrant women were below the low-income cut-offs.

The good news, if you can put it in those terms, is that the living arrangements of immigrant women tend to differ quite considerably from native-born women. Senior immigrant women are much more likely to live with their family or with other relatives, so the number of those women who are living alone is actually quite a bit lower than the overall population. It's kind of a mixed bag.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Ms. Townson, you mentioned that you need a complete study on these issues. Further to Ms. Mathyssen's question, with the elimination of these funds for Status of Women Canada, do you see any other resources with which you could pursue a study like this, or is it going to affect you negatively?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

I'll give you half a minute to answer, because his time is up.

[Monica Townson]

Okay.

There are studies that are done in universities, but they tend to be sort of academic-type analyses. What Status of Women Canada was funding was sort of policy-based research that looks at it perhaps on a more practical level, if you want to look at it that way, and that focuses particularly on gender-based analysis, which you do get in some universities.

But in my experience, university studies tend to be fairly inaccessible to the general public. They're not very readable, if you want to look at it like that. They also take a long time to get carried out and printed and published and so on, so that by the time you get them, they may be out of date. It's not really comparable to the kind of thing that the Status of Women Canada policy research fund was producing.