Status of Women Committee on June 13th, 2006

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Sounds fascinating.

Thank you, Ms. Mourani.

I'd just like to acknowledge Ms. Stronach, who is now going to be a permanent member of our committee.

Welcome, Ms. Stronach.

Ms. Guergis.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Thanks very much.

Good morning to all of you. I appreciate you being here.

No doubt you're familiar with income-splitting--you maybe had the conversation a couple of times in some of the research you've done--where in the traditional family one parent has stayed home to raise the child, and they haven't had any acknowledgement of their unpaid work. Some of you have referred to the unpaid work.

In fact, Mr. Dobie, you talked about perhaps making it mandatory for separated and divorced spouses to share or split their pensions. Something that I have been very focused on in the past 10 years is actually income-splitting--aside from the petitions, actually engaging in conversations with a lot of retirement associations, national associations, and having that conversation. They would like to see us implement that, starting with seniors.

If we had implemented this ten years ago, say, what would be different today if women, with the work they had done in the home, were actually considered to be contributing equally, splitting the income, contributing to the pensions, in the same way as the husband had? What do you think would be different? Is this something that perhaps you have done some research on, even going forward, and that you could share with this committee?

[Robert Dobie]

In our particular case, the example I gave was of an unattached older woman; consequently, there is no income-splitting there. As a matter of fact, that's the problem, that they are relying only on their own particular income. Many of them, for many reasons, have not even asked for the pensions, or half the pensions, that were due them.

It was a different mentality at that time, and unfortunately for them, they're paying the price for it right now. Had those rights, that are theirs, been applied for, they would been in a much better situation today.

In some of these cases, the couple has divorced, and the woman has never claimed what was rightfully hers. I think there's a sensitization aspect. It's very hard to try to convince an 82-year-old or a 74-year-old to go after the guy, that they're entitled to it. She'll say, “Oh everything's all right,” when she's living on $12,000 a year. I run a seniors home, and I've had that experience. It's a very hard barrier to break. They're still madly in love for whatever reason, and want to let things lie. I don't think we'll be able to change that.

That's why we're recommending that if this were automatic, it would resolve so many problems. An 82-year-old doesn't want to start a new conflict, either, especially in that particular field. So that's the nature of our recommendation.

[Sheila Regehr]

Thank you. It's an interesting question.

I should preface this by saying that what I'm about to say is not a council position; it's just kind of some things I know, and my thoughts on things.

First off, dealing with the seniors population, there is a really neat income-splitting thing for seniors that it appears a lot of people don't know about. Robert has talked about credit-splitting, which is one aspect of things, but there also is an ability to split your pension if either party applies. Just like the guaranteed income supplement, the cheques go out to both parties. If you apply, you can have that done with CPP as well.

That's interesting, because for a lot of women, who maybe haven't had control over their finances over a certain portion of their lives, just having their own cheque, having equality in the household, knowing that they are very likely to outlive their partner, it gives them some ability to plan and use their own money to plan their own future.

So that's one thing. If I'm correct, though, what you're referring to is more an income-splitting for tax purposes in younger households, that type of thing.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Yes and no. Some of the seniors groups I have spoken with are well aware that they can split some of their pensions, but over the years, and the income they have coming in from their pension.... It might be interesting for you to have a conversation with them to see what they have to say. It's not just specific to that; they are asking for some laws to be changed, specifically to help them, other than what's existing right now.

[Sheila Regehr]

As Robert alluded to, though, it really is a very complex thing that needs to be sorted out. Any time you make one change with one population, you have to see how it affects others, and I understand that income-splitting for tax purposes runs into a few problems.

First of all, it gives kind of a tax subsidy to those households compared to lone parents, who can't split with anybody and have to do all the work and earn all the income. That gets kind of complicated; you don't want to penalize lone parents.

The other issue I've heard talked about is that if you could make the theory of income-splitting in a household a reality, if you could actually ensure that the wife got the income for the unpaid work she's doing, that would be one thing. But you have a lot of enforcement issues there. For instance, how do you guarantee that's actually happening?

One of the other ways around that...and it came up around the committee hearings that were looking at tax treatment of dependent children and that led eventually to an increase in the maternity benefits system. Another way of managing that unpaid work situation is to, at least for the youngest years, try to open up the employment insurance maternity and parental system so that it's available to all mothers who have newborns, not to base it just on past labour force participation. I mean, it's for a more limited time, but it would provide a much more egalitarian start to households with children, to women who aren't immediately put into a situation of dependency. It becomes de facto income-splitting, because she has, for that year, her own source of income and her own ability to plan to re-enter the labour force when the time is right for her family, and that type of thing.

A number of things can be looked at, and there are different, creative ways to do them. But it is complicated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

Ms. Mathyssen.

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

Thank you very much for your presentation. You gave us a lot of really good information that certainly we have to get out to the general public. There are these populist notions about poverty that simply aren't true, so I appreciate what you had to say.

I want to come back to Ms. Mourani's question in terms of the anti-poverty plan. You said that Quebec and Newfoundland have begun that process of putting in place a strategy. What would be the components of that strategy? What do we need to look at? Is it a national child care program? Is it a national affordable housing program?

There was a reference to the provinces coming up with affordable housing, but some provinces have more ability than others in terms of all of these kinds of programs. What role does the federal government have to play here, and how would these programs address some of these issues of poverty among young women and young families?

[Sheila Regehr]

That's a really easy question. I'll answer it on two levels, I think.

Starting with the Quebec experience, I think it's really interesting; they have looked at putting the infrastructure in place first. They focused not on specific, one-by-one policy areas but on the mechanisms and the things that will make it run. So they have a law that requires certain things to be done. They're going to have indicators so they know exactly what they're measuring. They know when they're achieving results or not, and therefore know how to plan better. They've created this consultative committee and a research body so that they know they have the information they need. They have a mechanism to consult with the people who are going to be affected.

Those are major pieces in place, and I think you have to look in a comprehensive way at your own situation.

With regard to child care, for Quebec in particular they're well advanced compared to the rest of the country in that, but they're looking at other areas of family policy. They're looking at starting to increase welfare rates. Newfoundland is looking at similar kinds of things.

In terms of the role of the federal government, again, I don't want to speak for other organizations, but there are a lot of examples of things out there. The group that I referred to before, this coalition that produced the report, is Ontario-based, but it has a lot of applicability to the rest of Canada. It's called MISWAA, or Modernizing Income Security for Working-Age Adults. They've made a series of recommendations for different things.

I believe the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives recently put out a paper calling for a much more expanded federal role in social assistance so that the federal government would have a more comprehensive role in income security generally, given that it already has employment insurance, the pension plan, and those sort of things. If they had a greater role in social assistance, things would work a little more seamlessly.

That's something we hear constantly from people living in poverty, that this gap between EI and social assistance puts people in horrendous binds. It's hugely problematic. There are so many cracks. I mean, when you fall between those two programs, you fall through more than a crack; it's more like the Grand Canyon.

[John Anderson]

I would add that most of the jurisdictions that have embarked upon an anti-poverty law or strategy have, as Sheila said, first set up targets that they're going to reach. Then they've begun to coordinate existing policy. This is extremely important in the sense that at the federal government level, there are often many different programs going on but no coordination between what we're doing around housing, or what we're doing around child care, education, literacy, etc.

So part of that is developing coordination and breaking down some of the silos that exist in government, around programs and areas within government that can help to move the anti-poverty strategy along. This is extremely important.

There's obviously also an important role for the federal government in this area of work jurisdiction--it has about 10% of the labour force that it can do, which is extremely important--and a role in terms of working with the provinces, taking that role of coordinating with the provinces, which are beginning to develop these strategies themselves.

[Sheila Regehr]

Especially in terms of the major income transfer programs.

[John Anderson]

Yes.

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

I read through the report, and just very quickly--I asked this question last week, and I'll ask it again--in regard to women in Quebec who have not applied in time, or have not accessed their full old age income security, there's a recommendation that Canada adopt the Quebec model of five-year retroactivity instead of the current 11 months.

I just wondered if you could comment on that.

[Sheila Regehr]

Yes: it's a good idea.

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

Thank you; that was succinct.

[Robert Dobie]

You mentioned something about housing. That's something we haven't really discussed today. The flavour of the month in aging is home care. Home care dictates that you live in a home or you live in a residence for seniors. The Canadian government has not been in the business of offering affordable housing for almost a decade now, or more than a decade; I think it was 1993. Although it's a provincial jurisdiction, and there are lots of discussions about that, there are no transfer payments that have been going out from the federal to provincial governments, and affordable housing is very much a need.

The recommendation we're making is to keep seniors at home or in an autonomous residence as long as possible. First of all, the quality of life is much better. Second, you have support systems that are usually given by volunteers and by the community. Third, it's so much cheaper than having a person in a chronic-care or hospital situation. So far, 3% or 4% of seniors are in those types of institutions. We can diminish that--seniors are much more healthy now--by at least half a percent, but there are no residences, no affordable housing.

It would be such an easy investment. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see it. People are very anxious to go in. At the residence I operate, we have a waiting list of four years. It's absolutely ridiculous; four years.

Consequently, the affordable housing thing has to be looked at very seriously.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you, Mr. Dobie.

Ms. Neville.

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

Thank you.

Thank you for your fine presentations. They have certainly been very informative.

I have three areas of questions. I'm going to put them all out, because I know my time is limited, and I'll let you manage the time in the responses.

You talked about the fact that there is no official government-mandated poverty line here in Canada. How do you analyze not only the incidence of poverty but the depth of poverty? How poor are the poor, and how long are they poor? Do you do that kind of analysis? So that's one line of questioning.

Second, I was particularly interested, Mr. Dobie, in your comments about pension reform. I was surprised to hear you say that many do not take up the mandated pension-splitting for the Canada Pension Plan. You also raised something that a number of us have talked about for a period of time, which is the importance of a mandated pension-splitting of other government-supported pensions, like RRSPs and employment pensions, which are supported through the tax system. Are you aware of any studies that have been done on that or of advocacy that has been done in that area?

My third area of questioning relates to aboriginal women or seniors. I look at the poverty rates you have here, and the rate is high as it relates to aboriginal women. What it seems to say, though, comparing the two graphs, is that many more aboriginal seniors live in a family setting, or move into a family setting, than perhaps do other groups. I don't know whether that's fair or not, but I'm interested to know if there are any studies.

The time is short, I know, but I'll leave it to the four of you to manage in terms of the responses.

[Robert Dobie]

On the question of income-splitting of pensions, I'm not aware of any studies that have been done, but it would seem kind of easy to legislate if there was the political willingness. I understand it's already on the books in certain provinces. Quebec is certainly one of them, with le patrimoine; people can avail themselves of it.

If that were part of the legislation, at least it would make it more comfortable for those who are vulnerable to make those applications. Right now there is a lack of willingness on the part of aging single or divorced women to ask for that. It needs a certain amount of education on our part to tell them what their rights are, but if more information goes out, it would be easier for people to avail themselves of that particular provision.

Now, for many of them, it's too late--the former husband has either remarried or is deceased--but for the future, I think we can anticipate that.

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

Aboriginal people, the depth of poverty; those analyses.

[Sheila Regehr]

I'll turn to John to talk about that, perhaps, because he's in the process of writing an aboriginal report for the council.

On that one, it's just so hard. Trying to understand the trends, from some of the limited data we have, is tricky too. It's important to recognize that comparing the aboriginal population to the non-aboriginal population with any of the measures we have is a bit limited. If aboriginal people are on reserve, they're subject to a different tax regime. If you're looking at pre-tax or post-tax LICOs, you get different numbers.

The other thing that's really critical to understand is that the aboriginal age structure and family arrangements are so different from the non-aboriginal population that it does take a lot of analysis and putting together a lot of different bits of data. I'll let John talk to that a little bit more, if he wants.

I just wanted to talk a bit about the no official poverty line and how we analyze things. You'll notice, for example, we gave you a chart that shows a number of different poverty measures. Some of those apply better to some situations than others. Actually having those different measures gives you a good basis for analysis. People say that the LICOs are just a relative measure, they're too high, and it doesn't really make sense; we want to see what poverty really looks like, and that's just a fake relative measure, complicated for people to understand.

The market basket measure--unfortunately, we have only one year for that now, although I understand two more years are in the works--was created as an attempt to show that, in some senses, those lines were too high, that for people to live and meet the basic necessities, you need less income. It turned out that when they looked at what it actually cost to buy things, that wasn't the case at all.

So the market basket measure, or something like it, could be used as a good target to start looking toward if you want to increase welfare rates. That's something for the provinces to look at.

In our publications--we've left copies for you--Poverty Profile on a regular basis looks at a whole range of things. A lot of the information here, Cathy has derived from the work that she's done on Poverty Profile. It does look at depth. It looks at persistence. There is also data available from Statistics Canada that allows you a certain longitudinal look.

So we have lots of data, lots of information beyond just those poverty lines, that are useful in analyzing the situation, but until there's an agreed understanding amongst governments and the population that we have a certain set of indicators that describe what we mean by poverty, and that those are the levels and have to bring them down.... It doesn't matter what they are or how you measure them, you have to start bringing them down. That's the important part.

Did you want to add anything...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We've run out of time here.

I'll go to Ms. Smith now.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank the panel for their presentations. It's been very insightful today, and very worthwhile. Certainly it's a panel that I would like to see come back, because we will be running out of time today.

I taught school at the junior high level for 22 years. A lot of my students--quite a few of them, an inordinate number of them--over the years landed up pregnant because they were older kids, and if they had a baby in our province, they were allowed housing. They were allowed an apartment. Of course, this was all under the social welfare program in the province.

The thing that always struck me as a teacher--I taught in the area of mathematics and science--was that in the teaching of students, when you start young, I believe, and you educate a population, it's very important to give them information. Here in our committee we have discovered that many older women do not know what they can apply for, so they don't apply for it. I know that many young people going out into the workforce do not know about RSPs and what they should do. They don't start planning for their retirement when they enter the workforce, which, as we now know, is what people should do.

I'm wondering if the National Council of Welfare has ever had an initiative that worked with schools, especially starting at the junior high level, where they had lobbied to have courses put into schools that would actually teach the population: this is what the world is like out there, this is what it costs to live, this is what happens if you make choices and become an unwed mother, if you make choices and have to leave home for whatever reason or leave home because you want to, to get in with peers. The courses would teach about the practicalities of living out there, the meat and potatoes of surviving and building a household.

When we talk about poverty, we all sort of shake our heads and wipe our brows and say, “My, this is a terrible problem, and we need to solve it.” We try to implement initiatives that will help that. But have we done anything to actually target the younger population before they enter the workforce so that they go out with the tools, with some sort of understanding of what they have to face, when they get out there?

There's a whole population in the public and the private school systems that.... I can tell you, as a teacher of 22 years, that what you teach in that classroom makes a huge difference. I'm wondering, when you look at all these alarming charts, if some of the focus should be right on the school systems.

I know it's a provincial jurisdiction, but here at Status of Women we also put transfer payments into the provinces for post-secondary. By the time they get to post-secondary, I think there's an overlap there, as there always is, in everything. When you're talking about affordable housing and things like that, it's a symbiotic relationship. Transfer payments are sent to the provinces, and the provinces make those decisions.

So we can't just make gross general statements, we have to be very targeted. I'd be very interested to know if there's any concerted initiative to do that, or if we can think about doing that, in all the provinces across our nation.

[Sheila Regehr]

Thanks.

That's a very interesting question. As you said, it is a provincial jurisdiction. On the specific question of whether the National Council of Welfare has been involved in schools in that regard, I can't say with any certainty, but I think probably not. What the council does do, though, is put out a lot of information that's used within the school system.

It is an interesting question. In a lot of the work I've done previously, on women's economic situation and that type of thing—

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

Can I just interrupt you and ask you a question?