Status of Women Committee on May 15th, 2007

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

You can dissolve today, but you can't carry on like this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

I'm not dissolving; we're not dissolving. If you wish to leave, that's your prerogative.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I'm staying.

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

Do I have the floor now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Yes, Mr. Stanton.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm mindful of the fact that in 2005 the tax rate at the very end of the year, through a process in the House, was put down to 15%; however, at the eleventh hour it was legislated at 16%. So it does in fact represent a legislative change from 16% to 15.5% in 2006.

My question is to Ms. Glover and Ms. Poter.

This has to do with the CPP survivor benefit. I ask this question principally because some of my own constituents have brought this question to me, and I've indicated that we're delighted to be able to study this field. What it comes down to is the CPP survivor benefit.

The question is, considering that the CPP is essentially contributions from employers and employees, in the end those moneys flow directly from individuals, not from the public sector, per se. If the survivor benefits were expanded, for example, to allow a survivor to realize the full benefit of what the deceased person had gained in his or her CPP account, if you will, to the degree to which those benefits could be completely realized by the survivor, have you ever done any studies to see how much premiums would have to be increased to accommodate that larger survivor benefit?

This has been a topic of considerable interest. Perhaps you can consider that.

[Virginia Poter]

I'm not familiar with any studies that have been done with regard to the cost of expanding the survivors benefit. It's not an area directly within my responsibility, but certainly I would endeavour to go back and confirm whether or not there has been any work done on that. I'll provide it back to you if that is the case.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Great. I appreciate that.

Just on another point, through the course of this study that we've been conducting on the economic security of women, we have had representations and presentations that have given us insight into a suite of programs, including your presentations around the labour market partnerships, around core social benefit programs like CPP, GIS, OAS, EI, now WITB, and various targeted tax credits.

Could you comment generally—I would ask this to both departments represented here today—on how this suite of social benefits has in fact addressed the incidence of poverty in Canada in, say, the last ten years?

[Virginia Poter]

I'll have a bit of a go at it.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Just a general comment.

[Virginia Poter]

Okay.

If we start with seniors, the low-income rate for seniors has come down considerably. The low-income rate for seniors is currently at 6.1%. That's acknowledging that it's higher for women. The rate has dropped since 1996, when it was at 9.8%. It was at 16.3%, I believe, in 1989. That's a considerable drop for a vulnerable part of our population.

If you look at the investments in old age security, guaranteed income supplement, as well as CPP, certainly those investments would contribute to that reduction. As well, in the case of women, their increased labour market participation prior to having gone into retirement meant that they were able to contribute to registered pension plans, to the Canada Pension Plan and so on. That would have contributed as well to women's reduction in low income. As we know, women make up the majority of seniors.

If we look at child poverty rates, or low-income rates for families with children, in 1996 the rate was 18.6%; now, the most recent figure we have is 11.7%. That's a significant drop. It compares with 1989, which was a comparable point in the business cycle.

Again, you can look at some of the investments on the Canada child tax benefit and the national child benefit. I'm just trying to think of other programs that would relate to children. There have certainly been good investments.

The CCTB and the NCB together, I believe, are projected to be $9.5 billion of investment this year. It goes to low-income as well as modest- and middle-income earners for this child tax benefit.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Sorry, we should have gotten the finance department into the picture; perhaps in another round.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Ms. Barbot, cinq minutes.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, ladies. Thank you for joining us today.

When we discuss the economic security of women, we always start at the lowest level, because that is where we still find these women, despite their many years of hard work and determination. However, when we met on February 15, we were told that the wage gap in traditional sectors like teaching had begun to close. However, other witnesses, including representatives from the Canadian Teachers' Federation, told us that professional women were lagging behind since, in order to earn more money, they were expected to continue their studies while holding down a full-time job.

In Quebec, in the 1980s, when we were striving for equality, it became obvious that women teachers were always paid less because they had to upgrade their education while they were working. That is why the requirement to teach in a CEGEP is now a B.A. rather than a Ph.D or a master's degree.

The same situation applies to many professions. In medicine, for example, women never go beyond the first level. During their entire professional life, even they are at a higher wage level, they are paid less than men. And, of course, that continues right into retirement.

Since this situation obviously has a bearing on policies, I would like to know if you have taken a close look at the problem and if you have considered any possible solution. How do you think we can finally solve this problem by reconciling work and family life or by bringing in pay equity?

[Barbara Glover]

Thank you.

We did talk about this on February 15.

I generally agree with your comments and with some of the witnesses' comments that an explanatory factor for the continued wage gap can be related to the level of education and ongoing training, which was the question that was raised earlier.

Part of the answer is related to trends in education. We did talk about that a little last time. Currently, I think approximately 60% of graduates with undergraduate degrees are women. That's expected to change the master's and doctorate level attainment rates in women's favour. Some people are predicting that if you take the 60% trend in undergraduate degrees and project it out to the master's and doctorate levels, over time it could well be that women will have more master's and doctorates than men. That will start to deal with the part of the wage gap that is due to different educational attainments. That's one part of the answer, I think.

A second part is probably related to the fact that women are taking time out of the labour force. When they come back from raising kids or taking a leave to have a child, they may not have taken the upgrading while they were off looking after their kids, and when they get back, they may not be inclined to spend additional time in school.

So there are probably two things. Currently, if you compare the hourly wages of full-time workers who are just out of school, there is not a wage gap. So I would observe that you can expect the educational part of the equation to start to take care of itself, which is to say that as women are entering the labour force with higher and higher levels of education, the part of the wage gap due to initial educational difference has disappeared for kids just getting out of school.

The question then is what happens as people live their lives? Will that wage gap stay at zero? It remains to be seen as part of the answer. But I think part of it is what you are saying, which is that as people make choices about entering the labour force and taking time off to raise kids, that will have an impact. I'm not a researcher, but I wouldn't predict now that the wage gap will stay at zero. That's true for Canada, and as you know, that's true for OECD countries in general.

I had said that we were doing a study with the OECD to compare what's happening on the educational attainment side and on the wage gap side, because obviously we want to see what's going on in these other countries.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

C'est fini, Madame Barbot.

Ms. Mathyssen for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you.

If you could answer my question from the last round, I would appreciate that very much.

[Virginia Poter]

If I recall your question, it had to do with what work had been done looking into various proposed changes to the EI program.

I think I've got them down here. One was to eliminate the two-week waiting period. I'm not sure if there has been work done in this area or not. Nobody is here from the employment insurance—

[Brenda Lundman]

I can help a little bit there in the sense that a number of these proposals have been made, both in private members' bills and in committee reports, particularly from the HUMA committee. And in a number of cases the government has made and tabled responses that have dealt with the cost of some of these, which can be fairly significant, and whether or not these are consistent with the sorts of behaviour effects we wish to have from the employment insurance program and so on. So while they may not be exactly in those words, raising the replacement rate for employment insurance has been suggested and studied and responded to on a number of occasions.

The 360 hours as well, the 12 weeks...and I will mention that this year, for the first year after many years of the maximum insurable earnings being frozen, it has risen, because the index it was associated with has now risen to the point where maximum insurable earnings will go up and hence maximum employment insurance payments go up as well.

[Barbara Glover]

I just wanted to add one little point. The very last suggestion that was recommended was around reach-back, and I was a little unclear what that is. If reach-back means eligibility to get EI, part II, or the active labour market measure benefits, that's in place. So if people are off for parental or separated from the labour market for a certain number of years, they still are eligible for EI, part II, which is to say the active labour market measures, job training, skills upgrading.

I didn't have the recommendation in front of me, but I'm curious if it's about the active labour market measures side of the access-to-skills upgrading.

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

Actually, it was the situation where a woman has been working over a period of time but hasn't managed to accumulate the number of hours on an annual basis, so that in the year of the birth of her child she just doesn't have enough hours. The recommendation was to be able to reach back three to five years to manage to get that number of hours so that she wouldn't de-qualify.

It's interesting. The business of cost keeps coming up, but we have a remarkable surplus in the EI account, and I would hope that would be taken into consideration.

I have another question here, and it pertains to women living in rural and remote areas. Some of the witnesses told us that government services should be allocated on a needs basis rather than a population basis, simply because when you base it on population, remote communities and rural communities are very disadvantaged. I wondered whether there has been any thought given to making that shift and looking at the needs of a community and meeting those needs.

[Barbara Glover]

Are you asking about a specific program or in general?

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

I'm asking about services in general.

[Barbara Glover]

When the targeted initiative for older workers was announced in the fall, $70 million was intended to help older workers who had been displaced. The money was in fact intended to be for areas of higher unemployment or where factories had closed down. For example, Toronto and Montreal were not eligible communities. I'd have to say it was probably an extreme way to do it. I don't recall that people were 100% happy with it. That's on the one hand.

Another example is employment insurance, which isn't really done on a population basis at all. It is very much driven by employment insurance claims. That's a second way to divide the money.

The labour market program that I talked about in Budget 2007 is $5 million for people who are not eligible for employment insurance programming, and it was divided up per capita. The idea was that employment insurance would be directed to areas of higher unemployment, but this would be directed to a broad set of needs. For example, a province could choose to support people who are in northern, rural, or urban areas. I think the intent was to be deliberately broad in terms of clientele and coverage.

It's a very general answer to say I don't think there is a perfect way to divide anything up. Whenever you talk about a program, it depends on its purpose and it depends on its reach.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you, Ms. Glover.

We'll now go to Ms. Grewal, for five minutes.