Status of Women Committee on May 15th, 2007

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

We won't start your time. Yours will be the last question.

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

In 2003, the CEDAW committee made 23 recommendations to the Government of Canada. Some of the recommendations included the following: introduce employment-related measures to bring women into more standard employment opportunities; accelerate the implementation efforts of equal pay for work of equal value; ensure income-generating activities for aboriginal woman; expand affordable child care facilities; raise the benefit levels for parental leave; redesign efforts towards socially assisted housing, after a gender-based analysis has taken place, for vulnerable women; assess the gender impact of anti-poverty measures; and increase efforts to combat poverty among women.

It's been a long time since we had that recommendation, and I guess admonishment, from the United Nations. I wonder, in the four years since, has HRSD been working on any of these issues in order to address the CEDAW concerns? If so, has any progress been made in that regard?

[Barbara Glover]

I'll start, and then maybe Virginia wants to add.

I was taking notes and may have missed some, but the first point was on employment-related measures. I would say that the proposal in Budget 2007 to put in place $500 million a year to address labour market issues for individuals who are not covered by employment insurance or who are in the labour market but have low levels of education or literacy is pretty directly responding to the recommendation you set out. It's meant to have a broad degree of eligibility. That's one action.

I know that the program in support of homelessness that was coming to a sunset has been extended. That's the second area. And I believe we shared some questions and answers around homelessness and the impact on women and what the department was doing in support of that, following February 15.

I think it's worth saying that over the past few years women have continued to enter the labour market in ever-increasing numbers, and that has had an impact not only on wages but also in capacity to prepare for and save for events, including retirement.

I think it's worth saying that educational attainment has increased steadily over past decades, supported in part by Government of Canada programs—for example, Canada student loans, but also the RESP program, as well as the bond that was introduced, making it easier for people to save for education.

We've expanded our support for aboriginal programs, also announced in Budget 2007. We have two main programs that do that, AHRDS and ASEP.

Did you want to add to that, on some measures?

[Virginia Poter]

The national child benefit has continued. There has been continued investment in the national child benefit. In both 2005 and 2006 there were increased investments in that regard.

I think it's worth noting a couple of statistics, one of which is that I believe the employment rate overall, for all Canadians but also for women, is the highest it has been in 30 years. So that, of course, is certainly a good contribution to improving economic security for women.

The last point I would make is that the low-income rates for all types of women, be they children, working age, or seniors, have decreased over the last decade. So that's good news.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We will now go to Mr. Stanton, who will be sharing his time with Ms. Grewal.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Correct. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just before I put my question—my brief question, Madam Chair—one member had a document here today that she read from for the committee, and I wonder if we could have that document tabled for the committee's benefit.

I'll get on with my question, and this is to Finance—I get a chance to come back to a Finance question.

We had a number of witnesses who talked about, in all fairness, programs that were effectively within the jurisdiction of provincial and territorial governments. I wonder if you could shed some light on the degree to which, particularly with Budget 2007, the government has in fact tried to put more money in play for the types of social benefit programs that speak right to economic security issues, such as housing, child care benefits, employment training, as in the case of the LMPA that we talked about earlier, to just give us some idea of the scope of those transfers to the provincial and territorial governments to support that kind of good work.

And then we'll go to Ms. Grewal.

Thank you.

[Brenda Lundman]

In Budget 2007 we started out by strengthening and renewing the equalization and territorial formula financing programs to ensure that all Canadians across Canada could have, with the assistance of these programs, a reasonable possibility of getting a reasonable, comparable level of services from their provinces. So we're working on the fiscal capacity of the provinces there. That's significantly more money—$2.1 billion more over the next two years.

There was also a commitment to shift the support cash component of the Canada social transfer, which is a program that really provides the support for the provinces when it comes to welfare and social services. That has been shifted to an equal per capita basis, meaning that some provinces will receive more, but it will be an equal amount in terms of cash.

There was also an $800 million increase in the support for post-secondary education provided through the Canada social transfer. A $250 million increase in support for child care spaces was to be provided to the provinces through the Canada social transfer as well. You can add to that the $500 million for labour market training and infrastructure money, which is also significant.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

That's $33 billion, if I'm not mistaken.

[Brenda Lundman]

It just depends on how you add it up. That's not quite my area.

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

I want to continue with Ms. Barbot's question. She was talking about old age security, and your answer was that after people have lived in the country for about 10 years they can get it. I was under the impression that people from certain countries get it after 10 years, but people coming from European countries get it as soon as they land in this country. Is that true?

[Brenda Lundman]

That is only if they are eligible under their previous country's program and we have an arrangement with them that makes the benefits from one program recognized in the other—a reciprocal agreement. It's called a social security agreement. It is not in place with all countries in the world. It also requires that the country have that sort of programming and security system in place.

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

Which countries do people have to come from to get the benefits as soon as they land?

[Brenda Lundman]

I don't have that list, but I could provide it to you.

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

People who come from third world countries get it after 10 years.

[Virginia Poter]

I believe we have agreements in place with around 50 countries right now. We can give you that list if it would be helpful.

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

As soon as people land from those 50 countries they start getting old age security, right?

[Virginia Poter]

No. I think we have to look at each agreement in detail and the actual provisions within it. I would assume it has to do with their residency requirements as well as ours, and a matching of them. I haven't read any of them, but I expect there's a fair bit of detail around that. We could endeavour to provide you with the list of the countries and perhaps some of the relevant provisions, if that would be helpful.

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

Sure. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Would those be tax figures we have with different countries and therefore—? They're just special agreements.

[Virginia Poter]

I think they're called social security agreements.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Okay.

Thank you very much for being here.

As we study the economic security of women, you are the key departments that help us. We have heard so many witnesses, and witness after witness has talked about how women face the impact of going out of the workforce due to maternity, due to giving care, etc. We rely on the two departments to do some gender-lensing. Through that gender-lensing, we are hoping that you can help us in alleviating the impact.

When the deputy minister of finance was here—we asked them to give us some feedback on the working income tax benefit and its threshold, and why somebody who earns $22,000, or a lower income than the poverty threshold—I was just going through this book here that asks what is the threshold for poverty. If the threshold for poverty is $25,000 to $30,000 for a single person, then why is an income of $22,000 too high for the working income tax benefit and too low for the child tax benefit? Those are issues that we have to grapple with, and I think we are all working in tandem trying to see how we can alleviate poverty.

I didn't mean any offence, but just so that you would know what I was talking about, I had the two forms brought in showing the actual rates for 2005 and 2006. We were not debating it, but we were just trying to clarify it.

There is so much information that you have given us, and there are certain things that have been put in place, and we have asked Finance for information on them as well. As it goes through its gender lens—how do all these credits that have come through help women?

There is some mechanism on which I think you were questioned by Madame Deschamps. How does a person who does not qualify for EI access that fund you were talking about? We do not have information on the mechanism and we don't understand the mechanism. So there are a lot of things we do not know, perhaps because this mechanism has come through this budget and has probably not been mechanized. That's our frustration. If we could just find out how the mechanism works, and the information that Madame Barbot and Madame Grewal have asked for, that is, the treaties we have with different countries on social security—

With that, do you want to have any last words?

You had a question, Ms. Mathyssen, and I did not let them answer. Do you remember what your question was, because I can give them the last minute or so to finish off any closing remarks they want to make?

I know you didn't make any opening remarks, but if you had some final words to say, we would appreciate them.

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

Madame Chair, if I might, I have some concerns.

I want to begin by saying I appreciate the efforts to answer the questions, but there are some things from my last question that disturbed me profoundly--the notion, first of all, that somehow or other we've created this regime of child care, when we have created no spaces; and that this new employment is a miracle, when we know that a lot of women are working two or three jobs, because the reality is they are working low service jobs.

But what is most upsetting I think to me is the issue of housing and the efforts made to house homeless people, particularly vulnerable women. I must tell you that in my riding there are 10 programs, and they received half the money this year that they received last year, and as of February and March, they've begun to close, and will all be closed by September 30. This is not the support I was looking for.

I wanted to put this on the record, because I think it's important that people, and this committee, know what is happening.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

Does anybody have any last words before we suspend?

[Brenda Lundman]

We didn't quite get through our response on poverty and how the poverty rates have come down and the causes of that, and so on, where we did describe some of the programs that have an impact on this.

I don't think we should underestimate the impact of other factors on this, the fact that the economy has grown a lot. When we are looking at the impact of these programs, that's the real challenge. Okay, poverty rates have come down—even if we may disagree about the definition of poverty and LICOs, and those sorts of things, and by the LICO measure, poverty rates have come down—but the real challenge is, what is the root cause of it? You can see that some of these programs do contribute to increasing the incomes of families, particularly low-income families with children. But we then have a lot of difficulty separating that out from the overall impact of the growth in the economy, the fact that some people have higher levels of education, and that there have been, generally or fundamentally, some fairly reasonable economic times.