Status of Women Committee on March 22nd, 2007

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Yes, it's very short.

In your experience, do senior immigrant women require any special assistance?

[Mary McGowan]

Yes. They particularly require culturally sensitive service. When I talk about providing services through the community agencies, that's one of the reasons for it, that they might very well be ethno-specific agencies or what have you.

We had the light-going-on experience of hiring a Pakistani-trained physician who has not been certified as a physician in this country. We hired her as a community worker. She found a group of women who had never seen a physician since they'd come to this country, and some of them were 12 and 13 years here, because they weren't going to go into an emergency room and not know who would treat them, a very serious problem.

As I say, I think it's the culturally specific agencies that are going to be best able to address that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you, Ms. McGowan and Ms. Grewal.

We'll go to Ms. Mathyssen for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for being here. It's good to have such expert advice.

I want to ask questions of everyone, but I'll start with Ms. McGowan.

In June 2006, the NDP critic for seniors issues introduced what we called “the seniors charter”. Some of the elements of that charter were income security, protected pensions, indexing public income, access to affordable housing, access to universal health care including primary care, home care, palliative care, geriatric care, pharmacare, free pharmacare and dental care, in addition to access to affordable recreation, education, training, government services, programs, and included family reunification for immigrant women.

What is your reaction to that idea? Would implementing that seniors charter help senior women? Would it be of benefit?

[Mary McGowan]

I dare say it would. You can't very well argue against any of those points.I think what needs to be understood, though, is that when you talk about affordable housing, it's one thing to have your housing subsidized, but if you're stuck within four walls and there's no one to help you get out and there's no one to share a meal with you, the loneliness and the isolation will destroy your health.

So all of those measures need to somehow take into account the human factor, because if through those income supports that individual is able, then, to purchase in the service that they need, that's terrific, but if they don't really have the capacity to arrange that and organize it, then you still need someone who can do that.

I think that's the gap that is often missed, the fact that we've given you a house and we've given you income, and why is it that you're still sick?

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

Yes, and you've touched on something near and dear to my heart. I was in Ontario and opened many not-for-profits and co-op buildings that were geared to seniors, and they did have the component—that care within the community, the access to meals, the little extras you were talking about. And it made such a difference. In addition to that, they were bringing in children from child care centres to be mentored by the seniors. They were surrogate grandparents, and it had quite a tremendous effect in terms of their longevity and their general overall health. It was a very exciting thing to watch.

I want to talk quickly about a couple of other things. I was very interested in the caregiver program you were talking about. It seems to me it would free up nursing home beds.

In my situation, my father just had a second stroke, and there is nothing in the city where we live. There's a wait of two and a half years. He's now 65 miles away from home in a rural area. My mother is 73 and can't visit back and forth, and his well-being depends on that contact. It's a terrible dilemma for them; they've never been apart. It would seem to me that this kind of care would be much more intelligent.

I'm wondering whether home care, caregiver programs, long-term care should be part of the Canada Health Act.

[Mary McGowan]

Yes, they should, with the proviso that they are not exclusively medical-modeled. The community worker who changes the light bulb in the corridor going to the bathroom is not providing health care. But if the client falls and breaks her hip because there's no light in the corridor to the bathroom, then there's really expensive health care. So yes, if it's going to be under the Canada Health Act, that's terrific, but it can't be exclusively medical. That's the problem with the Community Care Access Centre: they are providing acute care or care immediately after acute episodes of illness. Chronic care and frail elderly care is lost. And I'm not saying don't do the acute care; I'm saying don't forget this other care.

One of the reasons it's poorly funded, poorly understood, is that it doesn't fit anywhere comfortably. It's a little bit of many, many things.

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

We need to do better with such a number of seniors coming into the system. We're going to have to find them solutions, aren't we?

[Mary McGowan]

Yes, and I truly think that ours is the solution.

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

Very good.

Madame Desjardins, Madame Lévesque, I have a couple of questions.

I was interested in what you were saying about helping families, particularly single-parent families, with respect to education and of course with making sure they had the kinds of salaries or wages—income—that would benefit. I wonder whether you also considered, in terms of the impediments women face, the access to employment insurance, as well as some of the situations women encounter in the workplace, such as harassment and some forms of violence.

Secondly, you spoke about the need for a minimum wage. Would you encourage the federal government to increase the federal minimum wage to set that example and show the leadership that would encourage provinces to follow suit?

And would you encourage proactive pay equity to make sure there's the access to income that women need in order to manage?

[Sylvie Lévesque]

We had little time to prepare, because we didn't find out until last week that we were to appear before you today. We could have provided much broader coverage. We tried to cover the essential issues concerning women, particularly women heads of single-parent families.

Obviously, if we want to fight the poverty of women heads of single-parent families, particularly the poorest of them, the minimum wage has to be increased in Quebec and in Canada as a whole. That would enable them to get out of poverty. People and young women increasingly have higher education levels, which is another way of getting out of poverty. To get a good job, you need a good education. However, there also has to be a reasonable minimum wage because, as Lorraine mentioned earlier, more than 60% of people working for minimum wage are non-unionized women. Being non-unionized means that working conditions are not very good. In that sense, this is important for us. These are demands that we're making in Quebec, but increasing the minimum wage could clearly benefit all Canadian women. That's a measure that we think is essential.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We'll go to a five-minute round now, with Ms. Neville.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you.

Thank you very much for attending here today.

I have a question that's a bit different. We're talking a lot about seniors, families, and the impact of couples when they get older and one dies. We've been talking a lot about single parents. I know that the federation has been dealing with blended families. I'm particularly interested in knowing from both organizations what, if any, are the challenges of blended families? We've heard anecdotally stories about people paying for two families not being able to put away the pension money for one or the other, and all kinds of issues.

Could you speak to that and how it affects women in a second, or sometimes third, partnership situation?

[Sylvie Lévesque]

Blended families must have been blended for a long time. A number of families are blended, but they fall apart because the more children there are, the more difficult factors there are, depending on the state of the relationship, the break-up and so on.

However, in economic terms, a first break-up, in 90% of cases, in general mainly impoverishes the woman. Men are impoverished as well, but, since we know there is no pay equity, it is mostly women who find themselves in poverty.

If a second union occurs, that leads to specific situations. For example, in a blended family, family allowances may be lost. Family allowances are often based on family income. So when women remarry or have a second union, they in fact lose money. There are economies of scale because they are living with someone, but, at the same time, they lose income; that's clear. Some things must be reviewed regarding taxation, because a blended family is different, even though it is a family.

In the case of second, third or fourth unions, and where support must be paid after each of those unions, that obviously impoverishes couples as a whole—that's definite—more particularly, women. It isn't because you're in a second union that you no longer need support for the children. Sometimes the fathers try to go back to court to have support amounts reduced, as a result of which these women in fact suffer a drop in income. So there are various situations, and blended families generally aren't very rich either.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have another one and a half minutes.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

That's okay.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Perhaps Ms. Minna wants to go.

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

Thank you very much. I was trying to get in for a question.

Let me ask both Madame Lévesque and Madame Desjardins, and actually all of you, about pension reform. Pension reform has to happen even though we provide education, social housing, and all those other things for women today.

I have six things. I thought maybe you could highlight which of those things, or a combination of them, you think would work.

The RRSPs don't work for the average Canadian, so I was looking at expanding the Canada Pension Plan or merging that somehow. There could be a drop-out rate for child-bearing and care-giving years; we have child-bearing but not care-giving years. Then there is pension splitting at retirement time; increasing the threshold of the GIS; paying the GIS to the lower income earner, if we're not going to split, and if we are splitting, then it doesn't matter; allowing stay-at-home moms to pay into CPP or some other form of pension retirement.

What combination of those six—one or two—do you think—? Have you thought about—? This is important. We're talking about—

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Ms. Minna, you have to let them answer.

Who is taking the question? Go ahead.

[Mary McGowan]

I am not really equipped to project what I think might be best. I would expect that the increase to the GIS would most advantage our clients right at the moment. In order to prevent as much poverty as possible as we all grow older, I think it's a CPP issue. I think you're quite right that not enough of us save enough in our RRSPs, and we don't have the old-fashioned company pension; we're not staying with a company for 30 years. I think there is a real possibility of greater poverty, or as great poverty, in the next generation of seniors as we're seeing in the current one. For my seniors, I would like to see an increase in the GIS.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Stanton now for five minutes.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for your very well put-together presentations this afternoon.

One of my questions is part of sort of a recurring theme, and I'll direct it first to our witnesses from Quebec.

It's great to have you here. You talked a lot about issues that in my view were largely in the realm of provincial jurisdiction, essentially home care and social services. I think at one point, when Madam Desjardins was speaking about education in particular, she noted that the best way to deal with that was through transfers. Even in Madam McGowan's presentation, I had the sense that there was great need. I don't disagree: there is definitely need for these types of social programs to exist to help those who are particularly vulnerable in our society. I'd ask both of you for a general comment.

Would it not be better to have the federal government make sure that provinces have the dollars they need, and then allow the provinces to manage those programs? They're closer to the situation. I get concerned when we start talking about a national program. Believe me—I've been here fourteen months, and this is no criticism, but it's a reality that national programs can become very costly from an administrative point of view. As well, you are removed from the reality of delivering those programs to citizens.

One of the biggest themes of this week's budget was to make sure that those transfers were better divided and that those dollars got into the hands of the provinces so that they could do that work. I wonder, since the budget just came out Monday, if you would have some comment on whether that in fact will help, particularly for Quebec. I think that the new transfer there was some $3.5 billion.

Madame.

[Sylvie Lévesque]

Quebec is in midst of an election campaign. The present premier has emphasized that he would use that amount to cut taxes. For the moment, we aren't very satisfied with what the premier intends to do with the $800 million that Quebec has just received.

When you talk about transfers, you're talking about tax transfers. The purpose of the coalition that we established with the rest of Canada on child care services, when Mr. Harper proposed the $1,200 amount, was precisely to ask the federal government to give all provinces the necessary financial means and resources, through the transfer, to provide child care services to families, education, transportation, housing and everything the provinces are able to offer their populations as a whole, that is elderly women, fathers and so on.

That should be done in the same way as parental insurance. It has been shown that, since the creation of the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan, which was transferred to Quebec, there has been a significant observed increase in the birth rate. This direct support for families shows that governments support families more. That enables each of the provinces to use its own resources, but, for that purpose, they have to receive money from the federal government.

[Lorraine Desjardins]

Yes, that's for sure. I want to close by saying that, when we meet with our elected provincial politicians, they will once again advance the argument that they don't have enough money and that they can't meet our requests. When a better division is done with the provinces... The provinces are definitely responsible for spending those funds in the best way possible.