Status of Women Committee on March 22nd, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Committee members, we'd like to begin.

This is the study on economic security of women.

We have witnesses from Fédération des associations de familles monoparentales et recomposées du Québec, Ms. Sylvie Lévesque and Ms. Lorraine Desjardins. And from Neighbourhood Link/Senior Link we have Ms. Mary McGowan, the executive director.

As the clerk has mentioned, you'll be getting ten minutes of speaking time.

Madame Lévesque and Madame Desjardins, you are representing one group, so do you each want ten minutes or do you want ten minutes shared?

[The Clerk of the Committee]

Shared is usually the way it goes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Shared, okay. Merci.

[Sylvie Lévesque, directrice générale, Fédération des associations de familles monoparentales et recomposées du Québec]

Can we each have 10 minutes?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

No. Madame Clerk tells me no.

That's because you're a group.

If we could start off, Ms. McGowan, with you, and then after the two presentations are done, the committee members will be posing questions. So whatever you have missed, you probably can cover it in the Q&A.

Ms. McGowan.

[Mary McGowan, Executive Director, Neighbourhood Link/Senior Link]

Thank you very much.

I have never had the opportunity to give a brief before such a committee, and I am really honoured.

Just to give you a little bit of background, Neighbourhood Link Support Services is a multi-service social agency providing service in the east end of Toronto. We serve approximately 20,000 clients every year; of that, about 2,600 are seniors.

We only have 80 supportive housing units and we have 80 clients living in those units. The remaining 2,515 clients live in their own homes, whether houses or apartments, in the community. We are not an institution in any way, shape, or form.

We say we serve the oldest, the loneliest, the sickest, and the poorest. To go to the oldest, 50% of our seniors are over 75, and 20% are over 85. We have 64 clients over 95 and 10 over 100. The average age for people in nursing homes is about 79. In our case, the average age of our clients is 80.

Let us look now to the loneliest. These are people without families. Ninety percent of our supportive housing clients live alone, and 70% of our community clients live either alone or in a situation that is not with family, whether they have shared accommodation, roommates, or something such as that. Most of them are simply alone.

They are the poorest. A third have incomes of less than $12,000, and another third have incomes of less than $25,000.

And they are the sickest: 75% or more have two or more medical conditions that compromise their independence and their mobility, and yet these people are living independently in their own community.

As you can imagine, seniors are typically women, and we have the classic split: 75% of our clients are women. This is a statistic from a U.S. study, but it showed that women are almost three times as likely to go into nursing homes as are men. They didn't go on and elaborate as to why, but I can well imagine the reason women are more likely to go into nursing homes is that they don't have the financial security to purchase those services they require to stay at home.

In Ontario, and I gather for most of the country, the most common community support is the community care access centre or something comparable to that, which brokers hours of professional or semi-professional care, whether it's occupational therapy, nursing, personal support, or what have you. Typically, they order hours for people who are coming out of hospital. For seniors or people with chronic ailments, they have to report that they require personal support to get any care at all. Personal support is things like help with bathing, toileting, feeding, and things of that nature.

The way they make that judgment is that the stranger goes in with the clipboard and asks very personal questions about bowel function, and very often the senior is too proud to admit the level of need they have.

If a client gets service through the CCAC, if they do qualify, the average is 1.4 hours a week, which means that the vast majority gets one hour a week. What can you do in an hour? You can have a bath, maybe. I'm not sure that my 93-year-old mother could be bathed and redressed in an hour.

If you are only getting an hour a week, then your house becomes messier. If you get groceries they're from the corner store, where it's more expensive, or you're paying the delivery fee to have them brought from the grocery store. Maybe you can't get out to visit your doctor. You can't go to the pharmacy to get your prescription filled, so you don't follow up the medical regime and you're back in hospital, probably using an ambulance to get there. You don't want to invite people in because your house is a mess, so you become more and more isolated.

If you do have groceries, the trouble of making your meal is so great. Who wants to eat alone? So you start to subsist on tea and toast and pretty soon your health deteriorates and you're back in hospital.

Somebody somewhere along the line suggests to you that you'd better go to a nursing home for your own good, and when you look around and you say that if this is all the service I can get, is the only support I have to stay at home, I had better get to that nursing home.

A community support service agency intervenes to provide all of those practical services that aren't traditionally considered health care. That means drives to essential appointments, social-recreational things, changing a light bulb, cleaning up, or doing the laundry. There are a myriad of things—whatever it is that a client requires.

If a client is institutionalized, the human cost is incalculable. Institutions are very good for people who genuinely choose to go there, or who can't rationally make a choice—people with such severe dementia that they really can't make a choice. But if your infirmity is macular degeneration, which causes your blindness, or arthritis, and 42% of the people in that nursing home with you have dementia and another 33% have had recent documented episodes of depression, that's not the right place for you. You know you are stuck there. You can't leave because probably you don't have a home any more on the outside, and if you did, you wouldn't be able to care for yourself. You know you're there to die.

The best nursing home in the world is still an institution, and we know that institutions are not good for people. You can see I'm not a fan.

As health care costs escalate, the health dollars are more and more specific to acute care. The cost of a nursing home is $700 a week, approximately. It's hard to assign a sensible number to the cost of community support services. In our agency, we expend $3 million a year on senior services, and we have 2,600 clients. Divide that by 52 weeks and it comes up to $22 a week. So it's $22 a week versus $700 a week.

The problem is, who gets to pay for that? What silo should that money come out of? Is it housing? Is it community and social services? Is it health care? Is it a federal problem? Is it a provincial problem? And since nobody really knows, it ends up being given very short shrift, indeed.

In Ontario, I know there are quite comprehensive community supports in Ottawa and in Toronto. Everywhere else in the province, they are sketchy, if they exist at all.

What I believe is necessary as a sort of national initiative to support seniors, and in particular senior women, is to develop local agencies to provide senior services. You could use the mature agencies such as Neighbourhood Link to mentor those agencies that don't have experience giving senior care. Existing agencies also need to be funded to enhance the services they're already providing.

This should not be a big, heavy bureaucratic kind of undertaking. We don't need another broker like a CCAC. If the neighbourhood agencies can remain flexible and responsive to need, that's clearly the better way to go.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Madame Lévesque, or Madame Desjardins.

[Sylvie Lévesque]

It will be me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

All right.

[Sylvie Lévesque]

Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting us.

We sent you our brief, but it is being translated. It will not be available to committee members until tomorrow.

Our federation has been in existence for more than 30 years. Over the years, we have worked in particular to ensure the greater welfare of single parent and blended families. The federation's major issues are obviously the fight against poverty, the automatic collection of child support, family allowances and all issues concerning studies for the heads of single-parent families.

Today, we do not claim to be providing a representative picture of all Canadian single-parent families, since the federation is more concerned with the Quebec context. We work much more with Quebec's policies. However, we will try to make connections with federal social policies.

The major points we particularly want to discuss with committee members are the following five aspects: welfare, family support measures and the minimum wage, access to studies, social housing and work-education-family balance measures. All these issues are of more particular concern for women who are the heads of single-parent families.

According to the figures of the National Council of Welfare, the NCW, the poverty rate of single-parent families headed by the mother—since the majority of heads of single-parent families are women still today—is still, on average, between five and six times higher than the poverty rate among couples with or without children.

According to Statistics Canada, in 2001, the poverty rate among single mothers under 65 years of age was 42.4%, compared to 19.3% for single fathers, 9.5% for couples with children and 8.1% for couples without children.

In 2001, there were 1,260,000 families in Quebec. Of that number, 27% were single-parent families, the vast majority of which, 80%, were headed by a woman. In 2003, the rate of low before-tax income for two-parent families was 9.5%, whereas it was 40.9% for single-parent families and nearly 50% for single-parent families headed by a woman.

Inadequate social assistance benefits are one significant component affecting single-parent families. In August 2006, nearly 50,000 single-parent families in Quebec relied on welfare benefits in order to live.

Again according to an NCW report published in the summer of 2006, the estimated annual social assistance income for 2005 for a single-parent family with one child, including supplementary benefits and federal and provincial credits, varied between $13,000 in Alberta, which is theoretically the richest Canadian province, and $23,000 in the Northwest Territories. In this area, Quebec ranked slightly below the national average, with income of nearly $16,000.

These distinctly insufficient amounts are far from enabling these families to meet their essential needs. In addition, in Quebec, child support continues to be deducted from welfare benefits, except for the first $100 per month, even though those amounts have been tax-free since 1997. Some of you are perhaps familiar with the Suzanne Thibaudeau affair, which occurred in 1997. As a result of that decision, child support, across Canada, is no longer recognized as income, whereas it is for the purposes of welfare and social programs.

Various rate increases have also affected individual incomes in recent years: hydro costs, which have risen 11%, child care costs, 40%; public transit costs, 18%; and gasoline, 35%. During that time, welfare benefits were only indexed by half in January 2007, after a number of years of non-indexation.

[Lorraine Desjardins, Research and Communication Officer, Fédération des associations de familles monoparentales et recomposées du Québec]

All that obviously has a major impact on the consumption spending power of single-parent families.

In recent years, major tax gains have been made in Quebec under social and family policies. Among other things, the payment of support for children is a much more generous measure than under the former family allowance system in Quebec. Furthermore, this is a universal measure, which is very much appreciated.

There is also a tax credit, the working bonus, which increases the incomes of low-income persons. That's also very good. Unfortunately, this measure has a harmful effect. It enables businesses to keep the minimum wage at its lowest rate. In our view, an increase in the minimum wage should be considered in the short term, particularly in view of the fact that the vast majority of low-wage workers are women.

In Quebec, the minimum wage will be set at $8 an hour on May 1, 2007. A person working 40 hours a week at that rate can only accumulate $16,600 a year, which is well below the poverty line.

In July 2006, the federal government granted an allowance of $1,200 a year to families with one child under six years of age. Our federation gave this measure a lukewarm welcome, on the one hand, because the federal and provincial taxation of those amounts cut into the actual benefits of families and, on the other hand, because single-parent families were put at a disadvantage by that measure, since they cannot transfer income to someone else: since they are the only income earners in the family, this put the heads of single-parent families at a disadvantage. Perhaps we can come back to this issue during the question period. In our opinion, a refundable tax credit would have been much fairer for all Canadian families.

Compliance with the child care agreement signed by the previous federal government, allocating $1.2 billion to develop child care services, would have enabled Quebec to consolidate its child care services system. The effects of non-compliance with that agreement are being felt even more in the rest of Canada, where the other provinces do not have reduced contribution child care services systems.

Another way to increase income is to have access to education. Considering that 80% of new jobs created today require postsecondary education, the importance of facilitating access to education as much as possible is readily recognized. The problem for women who are heads of single-parent families is that this access is reduced, particularly when they have young children. The situation is quite difficult in Quebec. Some women heads of single-parent families receive smaller loans and bursaries than they would receive if they were on welfare. As is the case with welfare, support is considered in computing financial assistance for education, which deducts points.

The federation believes that an increase in the Canada Health and Social Transfer would be a more effective way of helping the provinces support Canadian students. Fair financial restitution of the transfer to the provinces would also enable the provincial governments to enhance their loan and bursary systems.

Another major problem for low-income families, particularly single-parent families headed by women, is housing. Greater effort should be focused on funding social housing, particularly at the federal level. In Quebec, women tenants are the most likely to have problems paying their rent. Since they are poorer than the average of other households, more single-parent families spend more than 30% of their incomes on housing, particularly where they are headed by women. According to the last census, in 2001, nearly 40% of single-parent families headed by women were in a precarious situation with regard to housing.

The last aspect we would like to address is work-education-family balance. This balance is already hard to achieve for two-parent families. You can therefore imagine what it represents for a single-parent family. Changes in the labour market in recent years have made life even tougher. There are increasing numbers of temporary and on-call jobs. It is hard to establish a schedule in advance, and work days are growing increasingly longer.

In Quebec, however, we must point out that Quebec has introduced a new parental insurance system, which is much better and more generous than Canada's employment insurance system. We must also note the advantage of having a public reduced-contribution child care services system, which plays an essential role by enabling women with young children to enter the labour market.

In conclusion, I would like to remind you that, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, in Canada, in 1976, one-tenth of persons with the highest incomes had incomes 31 times greater than one-tenth of the poorest individuals. In 2007, the incomes of the richest Canadians are 82 times greater than those of the poorest. These figures show that matters are deteriorating, instead of improving.

As previously mentioned, and as the Standing Committee on the Status of Women itself has noted, single-parent families headed by women are among the most vulnerable in Canada and the most likely to be poor. It is therefore imperative that measures be taken soon to remedy the situation and to ensure that all Canadian families can actually meet their essential needs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Merci.

We'll go to our first round of questions, for seven minutes.

Ms. Minna.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome to all of you and thank you very much, in particular to Madam McGowan, who is from my riding and with an organization that is 30 years old, I believe, and very well recognized and respected in the community.

I'll start with you, because I've always felt—just from going in the buildings and going into the nursing home when my father was ill—that women were by far the largest percentage of retired, but you've given us quite an astounding figure, 75%. Not only are they the largest number surviving, but they're also the poorest of the people surviving. Generally what happens when the husband dies is that the income goes down, and some women have had to give up their homes or at least are isolated in their homes, and, as you've said, are quite—

I know a great deal of what you've said, and I accept it and I understand it. I wanted to ask, though, in the last budget, for instance, there's a splitting of pensions that can happen, but if you're a couple already today without the splitting, I know that couples can live much more comfortably or a bit better off even if their income is not as high because they're sharing. A single person, a man or a woman—in this case most of them are women—on a reduced pension is even worse off.

Is there any other thing that you would suggest, in addition to, of course, the things that you've mentioned, such as housing and long-term care? At the moment we do not have a national long-term caregiver program, and I wondered if you might comment on whether that would be needed to set some standards or some drive.

In terms of income support, one of the things I suggested was that there be not so much income splitting as pension splitting, so when the couple are both ready to retire, the pensions are split so that the women receive 50% of their household pension right from the start, rather than losing it when the husband passes on.

Could you comment on those two things as one of two ways, anyway, of helping out?

[Mary McGowan]

If I could go to the second one first, I think the income support would be very useful. In the same way that women traditionally have not left bad situations because they were not economically able to, seniors are no different. There are abused women in situations. It doesn't mean you suddenly become nice because you're over 65; it doesn't happen.

A pension split from the beginning might actually give women a bit of economic independence that they don't otherwise have. At the end of the day, it certainly also provides them with some economic security once their spouse has died.

I've certainly given a lot more thought to the caregiver program. I mentioned earlier that I have old parents. If you mean I should be compensated in some way for the labour I expend on their behalf, I don't think so. What I think would be very useful is to fund the community support services to provide assistance that enables someone to make the choice to stay at home.

It's not the medical care that people need that drives them into institutions; it's the practical things. They can't do the laundry any more. They can't peel their vegetables. They don't want to eat, because they're eating alone all the time.

If you provide supports to that as the caregiver program, I think it could be extraordinarily useful. It wouldn't be terribly costly, and it would have huge dividends.

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

I was also looking at part of the national caregiver program. It would be income support for those women who are looking after elderly parents or sick families or what have you, and who are having to leave their jobs and—

[Mary McGowan]

They lose their pension as well.

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

They're going to be the poor seniors of tomorrow because they're losing out on their income and pension stability today.

[Mary McGowan]

Absolutely.

Again, that is classically going to be women. It will be women who leave the workforce in order to care for aging or sick parents, and it is women who will be the most poverty stricken in later years.

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

One of the things I would suggest, as a minimum, would be a dropout rate with the Canada Pension Plan for those who are working.

There are probably other pension structures that might assist them to build up their own pension structures as they get older. There is that and the splitting of pensions. I think there are a number of things to look at to ensure that current women don't become the poor seniors of tomorrow—as the seniors you've already described are.

I want to go to Ms. Lévesque and Madame Desjardins.

If we were able to pull the pieces together into a strong social infrastructure, I understand that an increase in the minimum wage, social housing, education, child care, additional training, would make a major difference to women in terms of their stability and income security. Of those—I imagine that education probably would be one, and maybe you could give me others—what would assist them to not only be financially stable today, but to build a proper pension for when they retire? We're not looking only at economic security during the work period, but also when they're elderly, so they're not in the same situation as the women we were just talking about.

In addition to affordable housing and child care and what have you, I wonder if you would add to what other things you would build into that to assist women—especially single women or single parent families—who are working today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

They have 30 seconds to answer.

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

Maybe they can do it as they go.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

No, we will let them have some time to answer.

Go ahead.

[Lorraine Desjardins]

We were clearly invited here at the request of committee members because you and the committee had realized that young women's present very much influenced their future. We read your documents. We did our homework.

So it's obviously in that sense that we're talking about having better living conditions, better access to education, better access to employment as well. So we need work-family balance measures and adequate family support programs. Of course, all these elements will make it so that women heads of single-parent families who have the resources to enter the labour force later on will see their situations improve. However, I don't think we should abandon women who haven't had that opportunity, women who have been on social assistance for a long time. I also think adjustments must be made to pensions, old age pension benefits and the Guaranteed Income Supplement, among other things.

Provision must also be made for measures for women who have not had the opportunity to find a well-paid job. Well-paid, high-quality jobs do not necessarily grow on trees. Particularly when you have young children, you often go from one job to another, because employers are reluctant to give us positions precisely because we have problems. If a child is sick, we are the first ones to respond.

Do you want to add anything?

[Sylvie Lévesque]

What I wanted to add is that we do know that, when we become mothers, there is always a withdrawal, a period of time when we are out of the labour market. During all those periods, unlike most men, we lose the opportunity to contribute, for example, to the Quebec Pension Plan. As a result, we have less money when we're older.

So the work we're also doing, with other groups in Quebec, is to press for tax credits and to enable the Quebec Pension Plan to provide a family caregiver tax credit or to provide, for those years when we do not contribute, for recognition for women who are not—

[Lorraine Desjardins]

So it would ultimately be a recognition of the years that would be excluded from pension calculations.