Status of Women Committee on June 8th, 2006

[Deborah Tunis]

Yes, some of us are part of that.

We did get higher education levels and we do have higher income levels than our mothers. So the expectation is that we will have a different kind of retirement, and it is affecting retirement decisions in families. Recent studies by Statistics Canada show that in the past women's income was largely for supplementing families--helping decide if you'd have an extra vacation or buy an extra kind of property. Women's incomes have really grown. Is that trend going to continue? Are some of the challenges we see right now in terms of lone mothers going to be a problem?

The other part of our new department is responsible for post-secondary education, and when you see the rate of women's participation in post-secondary education, it's a great sign for the future. But we are still seeing unacceptably high levels of lone-parent poverty. Even though we still have increases in the national child benefit coming on board and we will be introducing the child care benefit, we don't know what's really going to happen.

Mitch, I don't know if you want to predict more.

[Mitch Bloom]

I won't predict, but perhaps I'll underscore how the CPP is a good tool when it comes to this type of question. It's a mandatory scheme and it covers people up to the average wage in Canada, which is $42,000 right now. As women's labour participation has gone up, the system has been maturing. So we're going to see equity at least--if we can call it equity--among women, because they generally still earn less than men. But when it comes to average industrial wage, I don't have the stats in front of me, but it will look better because of the $42,000 ceiling.

So maturation of the CPP means that women who've been participating increasingly since the 1970s have been putting into the plan, and they will have that to backstop them. They didn't have that, of course, back in the 1950s and 1960s. But the presence of the plan, participation in the labour force--it'll be there to help.

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

You also talked about stress in the workplace. Has there actually been any investigation into this?

My sense is that if you invest in things like child care and family stability you're going to prevent a lot of the consequences, like stress in the workplace, absenteeism, and economic loss to employers. Has there been any investigation of that in terms of the reality of young women, or is that something we need to take a very long look at?

[Sandra Harder, Acting Director, Families and Caregivers, Department of Social Development]

I think there are a number of things you might flag in the area of work/family balance. We know it's an issue that had a lot of prominence in the early eighties, and it continues to be an issue for many women and men. Balancing of work and family responsibilities has a huge impact on families. We know it has impacts on the broader economy as well--the health care sector and the employment and labour market.

A number of studies are going on. We know that some employers have taken large steps to balance work and family life. I've just returned from a meeting of ministers of social services in Lisbon, where the European governments were talking about and have done a significant amount of work on the balance between work and family. It's evident from those discussions that the role of employers is huge, and certainly in Europe the lobby is quite strong. There is a benefit to employers and certainly to families when employers take that responsibility on board. So there's a fair amount of work being done on it in Europe and in Canada.

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

Okay, so there's some real choice.

I have so many questions. I wanted to switch to a question about older seniors, and one of the things I discovered in reading is that when seniors are in nursing homes or long-term care facilities, very often they're charged for the room or accommodation and the medical services that come with that. One of the recommendations in the paper I was reading was that those things have to be separated.

If a citizen goes and seeks medical service, it's covered under our medical coverage plans. Why can we not make sure that seniors in these long-term care facilities have that same benefit, rather than double charging them, as it were?

[Mitch Bloom]

It's a good question.

Unfortunately, it's a provincial responsibility; the provinces regulate long-term care facilities, so it's not something that we particularly would be able to do much about. I'm interested in it. I haven't heard it before, so it's something we can raise with our provincial counterparts.

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

So this is a recommendation that the feds could take forward to the provinces?

[Mitch Bloom]

I said we can mention it. Recommending things to provinces is out of my purview.

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

Oh, yes, I forgot. Sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Sometimes it works the other way.

Thank you.

Ms. Neville.

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

Thank you very much. Thanks for being here.

I apologize for coming in late; I had a previous meeting.

I have a number of questions. I'd just like to follow up very quickly on Ms. Smith's comment on the guaranteed income supplement. I know we've done a considerable amount of outreach in our office, and it's been well played out by people who prepare taxes on a volunteer basis, so it's been caught.

But how many people, in your estimate, are eligible for the guaranteed income supplement but are not claiming it right now? Do you have a figure?

[Mitch Bloom]

My colleagues tell me I should try to answer. Of course, it's impossible to know people who are eligible. But if you ask for a figure, what we did was to use a combination of Statistics Canada data, which tell us how many seniors Statistics Canada thinks are in the country, as well as our own administrative data on old age security, as well as tax data. So those are the three sources we used.

If you take all of those things together, you come up with an estimate of about 90,000 people who might be eligible for OAS—old age security—who aren't filing tax returns. We then took that and said that about one-third of OAS recipients are generally getting GIS. Those are the only figures I have. That brings you down to about 30,000 people. We then further reduced that number, because OAS is paid out of Canada, but not GIS, which is only paid if you're residing in Canada. That brings us down to figure somewhere in the range of 10,000 to 25,000 people who might be in that situation--and I underscore the word “might”.

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

I'm surprised, because the figures I heard a few years ago were in the area of 300,000 to 400,000.

So are you telling me that everybody has been very successful in reducing that number?

[Mitch Bloom]

I come back to the point that those figures were prior to the data sharing we had in place with the revenue organization. It was a parliamentary committee, in fact, that pushed the government at that time to do those things. And they've been done.

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

Good.

I have a couple of other questions on two different areas. The first one is on caregivers and seniors. The previous government had committed a significant sum of money over five years towards the development of an ongoing caregiver agenda. I'm wondering if there is still a plan in place and an agenda for that.

Let me ask my other question before you answer, because I'm aware of the time. We're talking about young women and the implications of financial security for them. We all start out thinking it'll never happen to us, yet life has a funny way of playing tricks.

Are you aware of studies? Are you aware of outreach? Are you aware of education programs that advise young women of the financial realities of working, not working, being married, not being married, or marriage break-up, or all of the things that can happen that affect their ultimate financial security as they reach age 55 or 60? Is there any outreach being done at the moment that you're aware of?

I'll stop with those two questions.

[Deborah Tunis]

Those are excellent questions.

In terms of caregivers, as you're aware, the previous government had committed a significant amount of money, and that work is currently on hold in terms of how we are advancing on caregivers' issues. We think caregivers' issues are still important, and the sense we get from our minister and our parliamentary secretary is that they are very important to this government as well.

I think the format of how they respond will be different from the path we had been on. Is that sufficient or do you want more details on it?

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

Is the money still available for it?

[Deborah Tunis]

No, that money is no longer available. This government has adopted an approach of being quite focused on their preliminary priorities, and those priorities are advancing. Then they've signalled quite clearly that there will be other issues that continue to be important and will also be priorities for funding over the future. But that particular envelope of money is no longer available.

[Sandra Harder]

I would just add that in terms of the policy work and the thinking that goes on, those do continue.

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

What about young women, in 20 seconds or less?

[Deborah Tunis]

It's an excellent question. I'm not aware of a lot of advice that is available to young women in terms of future financial planning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

Mr. Stanton.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for joining us here this morning for this. I find it a very interesting topic because it affects so many people in my particular riding.

I have a couple of questions that hopefully I can get through in the five minutes we have here. The first question is on this topic of income splitting, which is so in vogue, particularly among representatives of seniors' groups here in Canada. There's the notion that in retirement many of the families, or couples, who are facing retirement right now came through a period of time when they didn't have things like spousal RRSPs and those types of mechanisms to find a way to balance a family income, and find themselves now in retirement with a disproportionate income scenario that ultimately disadvantages the family. And I must say I'm of a mixed mind on this. I've seen both sides of the argument.

I wonder if you could explain this a little bit, particularly as it relates to women in this equation. What would you be prepared to say in terms of how it might advantage or disadvantage women in a retirement scenario, presuming if one were to propose, for example, an income splitting ability for couples in retirement?

[Mitch Bloom]

I won't really be able to comment on the splitting of income--that's not really our purview--but I can tell you that under our programs good things are happening. We have a pension sharing provision under the Canada Pension Plan, which Madam Scotti mentioned, which does allow just that, an equal distribution of CPP credits across spouses or common-law partners. So that's in place.

Of course, I mentioned earlier that the old age security program is paid regardless of whether you were in paid or unpaid work through the course of your life. So, again, there are good sources of income provided through both of our core benefits relatively equally.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Conceivably then, considering that in many cases you have 50% or more of couples living with incomes essentially from public pensions, those pooling provisions are already there. Okay, good.

The next one is on this GIS clawback, very much another hot button issue. What can you as a government do about this clawback situation, where essentially the moment a senior earns some incremental income through whatever means, instantly it comes right off? In some cases they don't make anything, so there's really no advantage at all for them to look at.... Is there any ability to...or could there be any changes considered that would bring some relief to this issue?

I'm sure the department must receive tons of mail on this issue, and I wonder if you could comment on it.