Status of Women Committee on March 29th, 2007

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Perhaps we could pick it up there.

We need to link these responses to specifics around the economic security of women,and we were starting to get a little far apart.

I come from a background in small business and echo the same kind of sentiments, Ms. Fyfe, that you expressed with respect to pensions and the kinds of things that inhibit people who are essentially self-employed and don't have the same access to those things. Typically farm families, or families who have built small businesses of their own, ultimately end up having to use the equity they build up in their own properties.

I'm wondering if there's been any response from NFU with respect to some of the positives we saw come out of budget 2007, especially with respect to the increase in the lifetime capital gains exemption, which went from $500 to $750. It essentially allows farm families to keep more of their money upon a rollover, and that will help in their retirement years, I hope.

Has there been any response to that?

[Karen Fyfe]

Not officially, and I will admit that's not something we've had a great deal of time to look at because we've been so wrapped up in the Canadian Wheat Board campaign and the supply management. Here's what's happening in the Wheat Board, and it's going to roll over into supply management.

Let's assume my husband and I wish to sell our farm to our children. First of all, they can't afford to buy it because of land costs, machinery costs, and we can't afford to sell it to them at a price they could afford to purchase it at because of the incurred debt over the last 20 years of our farming operation. I'd say that's certainly in supply-managed sectors, where quota has such an increasingly high price attached to it. For most dairy farms in my province, which is a small province where the average herd size is 80 to 100 cattle, the price tag on the quota alone could be $1.5 million to $2 million. You'd have to be crazy to want to buy into something like that, and as a mother, I'd have to be crazy to want my sons or daughters to go out and try to finance that by borrowing the capital.

So it's available, but not really.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

I only have seven minutes, so I'm going to try to move it along. I don't want to cut you off, but thank you.

I didn't get a chance at the opening to thank you all, by the way, for taking the time to join us here this afternoon.

I want to go to Ms. Spencer, if I can. You gave us a very full presentation with lots of statistics, and I look forward to getting into those in a bit more detail. But having listened and summarized as you were going through some of the numbers, I wonder if it would be fair to say—perhaps you can help me out with this—that when it comes right down to it, you painted a picture of a situation where immigrant women in particular are in a situation where average incomes tend to be less than those of non-immigrant sectors of society, particularly among those who have been here between one to ten years.

When it came right down to it, you mentioned education and language barriers as being the two main thrusts of what appears to be preventing this group in society from achieving full access to the kinds of incomes they need. Is that a fair statement?

[Lucya Spencer]

Yes, but just to qualify one part of it, I referred specifically to racialized immigrant women who are at the lower end of the ladder.

Yes, it's a fair characterization of what I said. You have a number of these individuals who have come into the country at the age 49 or 50 and cannot speak either English or French. Many of them are at home with their respective relatives and do not get the chance to get out into the community even to be able to articulate with others in the language, so that they can even pick up a couple of words. Then as they age, they still cannot speak. This is a fact, that many immigrant women who have been 25 or 30 years in this country cannot speak English or French. Yet they need help; they need assistance; they need services.

What we are saying is that we need more in-depth study on this particular issue so that it will help you as policy-makers to put systems and structures in place to make the funds available that will allow them to grow old in this country and feel comfortable.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

In budget 2006, and then backing it up again in this recent budget, the government has made substantial commitments to language instruction, to education, to a temporary foreign visitor program, even a new foreign credential referral office, in an attempt to try to bridge some of those gaps. Madam Bose spoke very eloquently about this gap that exists as well, in terms of trying to bridge the gap to get new immigrants into jobs, because they do exist. They are, for the most part, bringing the skill sets that are needed.

That really leads me to another question. I wonder whether, in the course of your statistics, there's any breakout.... There are generally two or perhaps three groups of immigrants, if we look at those who are coming on an economic type of application, those who are coming to reunify with family members and on a compassionate basis, and then refugees. Is there any breakout for those who are coming on economic grounds, who are actually coming with the skill sets that, for example, we're matching up with Canadian needs? Do we see how those folks are performing relative to the other groups, so that we can see where the priorities need to be put?

[Lucya Spencer]

We are talking about newer immigrants, as opposed to older immigrants.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Yes, ma'am.

[Lucya Spencer]

If I can backtrack a bit, you talked about the training, etc., that is available. We also have to look at the restrictions that are placed on access to these training programs. Some individuals, more so older immigrants, cannot access some of these training programs out in the community.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Why can't they?

[Lucya Spencer]

Some of them come into the country as sponsored immigrants. I'm trying to remember the exact words here, but some of them, because of the way they have come in, come in as refugees or refugee claimants, and it takes another period of time before they are eligible for many of these programs. At the same time, they're aging and they also need assistance and need help.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you. I'm sorry we ran out of time. That was very good.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

You've run out of time.

Ms. Bose, you would like to make a brief comment.

[Dr. Anuradha Bose]

I was just going to say that I have here with me the executive summary of a Statistics Canada study of “Chronic Low Income and Low-income Dynamics Among Recent Immigrants”, and I would refer you to this, Mr. Stanton. It talks about the economic welfare of immigrant families, not just the individual, and talks about the “low income syndrome”. It treats it as a syndrome.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

It would be very helpful. Thank you.

You can continue in this vein with the next question, if you want to, Ms. Crowder.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you all for coming before the committee today. For me, this is a return to a familiar place, as a former member of this standing committee.

I want to start with Ms. Fyfe.

We're talking about economic security. My riding in Nanaimo—Cowichan is one of those odd mixes of rural-urban ridings. We have a substantial number of farms, although they're much smaller in scale than prairie farms.

One of the things the women in my community talk to me about is the fact that, particularly if there's a marital breakdown, they have trouble around access to housing. If they need additional services, it's very difficult in rural communities. Most of our rural communities aren't served by public transportation. They often can't get easy access to health care clinics and what not.

I noticed in this very good report that was put together, called “Farm Women and Canadian Agricultural Policy”, there are some very good recommendations. Could you specifically comment on some of the other issues, child care for example, facing rural women and farm women?

[Karen Fyfe]

Bear with me for a second.

Jean, this is the executive summary of a much bigger document.

We see there are four pillars to maintaining a viable farm and a viable rural Canada. We see financial stability as being a foundation pillar; a domestic food policy, a made-in-Canada food policy for Canadian farm families that is a true agricultural policy, not a trade policy; healthy food and the environment are of the utmost importance to us, because it's where we live; and then there's strengthening the social and community infrastructure.

You're absolutely right, Jean, when you talk about the public infrastructures that we assume would certainly be there in the urban setting. Whether or not you can access them is another matter. They're not available in rural Canada.

In fact, my home province of Prince Edward Island has changed significantly over the last 20 years. When I was first having children, we had two day care centres in a little village of 100 people. They were seasonally run because of the farming, fishing, and resource-based industries we had. But they were there, we could access them, and we were subsidized because of our low economic status on the totem pole. They're no longer there.

To say you can access child care in a vacuum is really ludicrous. If the child care spaces are not there, you can't access them, whether you need them in July or whether you need them in January.

As for public transportation in Prince Edward Island, the only city that has public transportation is Charlottetown. If you live outside the greater Charlottetown centre, there is no public transportation. You're almost held hostage by your friends and neighbours. If you want to escape an abusive situation, you have to get on the phone in the strictest confidence and ask to be picked up and taken to the women's shelter or to the hospital.

Access to services, the public infrastructure that most of you around the table would assume exists, does not exist.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Perhaps I could go to Ms. Bose and Ms. Spencer. Ms. Fyfe sounds like she's also describing some of the isolation many women are facing.

I have a question.

A couple of times you've referred to the need for additional information and further study. It's interesting, because in the context of the recent census data from 2006, of course, Canada's birth rate has fallen to the point where the reason Canada is growing is that people are coming to Canada from somewhere else. I heard you say there's a significant gap in really understanding a number of factors, including financial security, access to training, and access to other services. Could you quickly outline a couple of the key things you would recommend in a future study to address this?

I know you've touched on some of them, but if you could succinctly put it to us, it might help to frame terms of reference for a future study.

[Lucya Spencer]

As for some of the issues that need to be looked at from our perspective as an organization, who are the seniors coming into Canada? What resources are available to them?

We also have to look at the legislation currently in place and at how it is having an impact on those individuals for integration into this new society.

We also have to look at the resources available to them in the community--i.e. settlement services, as an example. How many of them are accessing these services?

When it relates to those who are experiencing abuse, how are they getting the information to let them know there are resources in the community and where they should go for some of these services?

I think there's also an educational part that comes with it. How many of these service providers, etc., have an understanding of some of the issues relating to senior immigrant women?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I want to comment quickly on pensions for older women. This applies across the board. There's an organization out of Vancouver, British Columbia, called WE*ACT, Women Elders in Action. They weren't specifically focused on immigrant and racialized women, but they did do a number of very good recommendations about reforms to the pension system.

They recognized things like the non-standard flexible employment. They recognized things like that there needs to be an expansion on the drop-out provisions, for example, because although there's a drop-out provision for women with child care, there isn't a drop-out provision for elders.

Anyway, it was more of a comment that I think it's an additional piece of information that would be helpful for us to look at. I don't know if anybody has a quick comment on it.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you so much.

We'll go into round two now, and this is five minutes for question and comment. We'll start with Ms. Fry.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank all three of you for excellent presentations.

I know very much about farm women and the issues they face. I was Secretary of State for the Status of Women in 1996 and spent a lot of time speaking to farm women. As a result, this came about: the ability for farm women to be able to talk about their economic reality, their social reality, and the isolation that they face and what happens when they become seniors.

I think it's a pity that this, which was an extraordinarily important document to help us to understand the complexity of immigrant women's lives, of farm women's lives, or rural women's lives, is now cancelled. This will no longer be available, this policy research fund. I think that is an extraordinarily devastating thing for women in this country, because it brought together academic research and real-life research for the first time. The two collaborated to be able to come up with some good solutions and some real answers.

I was going to ask you about your ability to have access to quality child care and to early childhood education, but I think Jean already asked you that question. But I do want to talk about the issue of access itself.

In Prince Edward Island you had two child care centres that are no longer there, and it was a small community. In places like Saskatchewan and in certain farms in the Prairies where there are huge distances, I think there needs to be a very innovative way to have access to early childhood education and to child care.

I know the problem with farm women is that you are neither fish nor fowl; you tend to fall between the cracks, and always have. You're not considered to be women in the paid workforce. You're considered to be stay-at-home moms, when you're not really. You're not staying at home. Somebody has to look after your kids while you are out there on your acreage doing work. This is a real problem that I would like to see us address.

The issue of seniors' pensions is one that has always concerned me, not only for farm women but also for senior immigrant women, who have often come to this country--as Lucya knows very well--and who have been babysitting their families, doing that unpaid work that they have had to do within the home, for which they get no recognition.

I would really like to hear you tell me how each one of you feels about the concept of having some sort of pensionable benefit that values the unpaid work that women in Canada do--farm women, immigrant women who take care of their children. And I would like to find out how we can structure that. Part of it may address some of the pensionable benefits for farm women. So I would like to hear about that.

The second thing I would like to ask a question about is the Wheat Board.

I note, Karen, that you've been trying to speak to that. I'd like to hear you finish it, please, because it hugely impacts on your economic viability.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

There's only a minute and a half left, so please keep that in mind.

[Karen Fyfe]

Three numbers, Joy.

In terms of the Canadian Wheat Board barley vote that was put out to the western grain farmers, 14%, Hedy, voted for the open market. Really, we're the growers and buyers--

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

One-fourth?

[Karen Fyfe]

Fourteen per cent voted in favour of a complete open market. The other 86% voted for a combination of either keeping the single-desk selling--that is, keeping the status quo, keeping the Canadian Wheat Board--and the other portion bought into the misinformation campaign and the manipulation--