Status of Women Committee on June 13th, 2006

[Sheila Regehr]

It's not something we have specifically looked at. We didn't introduce ourselves at the beginning, but there's a little flyer that's going around.... We're a very small council. It's not an area we've looked specifically at.

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

Is it something you might consider? Because it is a significant population, and they are aging as well, just in terms of the Canadian reality.

[Sheila Regehr]

We'll certainly note that and take it to the membership.

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

Okay, thank you.

We're planning our work for the fall. As Madam Bourgeois has indicated, it's very frustrating, this whole reality of the lack of action. Could you give us some advice in terms of the priorities of this committee? If we really are going to address the disproportionate poverty faced by women, what should we be doing? What kinds of things should this committee put into its work plan?

[Sheila Regehr]

It's a....

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

Loaded question?

[Sheila Regehr]

Well, it's a tall order.

What strikes me most about the work that we put together, to pull out very specific things related to women from the overall work that the council's doing, is that you really do have to take a life cycle approach. That what jumps out most, that if you're looking at any area of poverty, you can't take one population or one moment in time. There's a tendency to talk about “poor people” or to talk about “lone parents”, thinking that there's this group of lone parents who are always lone parents, or that somebody living in poverty now is always going to be living in poverty.

Those groups move in and out. A woman who's a very contented middle-class woman is going to be a lone parent tomorrow. In a few years, when her children age, statistically she's not counted as a lone parent any more, she's an “unattached older woman”--but she's experiencing the legacy of her earlier years.

For me, one of the critical things would be to take a really holistic and long-term approach. There are a few underlying things. For example, the whole unpaid work question that's come up in different areas in different ways is obviously new on the political agenda.

We had mentioned the business of time poverty. Ironically, Canada is in the situation of being a world leader in time use measurement. We have an incredible amount of data that's so rich in telling us things, and it's not used. It's not used for policy development. It's not factored into the work we do--and it can be. That one underlies so much of women's vulnerability to poverty and their risk of not having economic security.

[Robert Dobie]

I have three priorities with regard to senior women. Number one is that the amount of the GIS should be increased so that the sum of GIS and OAS is equal to or greater than the low-income cut-off. It's much too low right now. Two is that we reinvest in affordable housing, which I mentioned before. And three is that there be more systematic sharing of the pension of the former spouse. That's a recommendation we made as far back as 1993. I don't know if this was the committee that got it, but somebody on the Hill got it, and it's still there.

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

I think it was the social policy committee...[Inaudible--Editor]...three times, but didn't succeed in getting it through; put it forward, though.

[Sheila Regehr]

If I might just add one more word--John wanted to say something too--I'm reminded that in the council publications, including the ones we've distributed to you, there are some very specific recommendations on things that we would certainly encourage you to look at, specifically around child care, around the child tax benefit, the clawback issues.

So there are a number of recommendations. I won't go through all of them, but a lot of them do pertain to areas of women's lives that are very important.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Stanton.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, to both councils actually, for taking the time to share with us some of the findings you have gathered over the last few years.

My question is first to Mr. Dobie, in regard to your initial comments regarding the “catch-up” period, as you call it. Many of the charts we saw in the presentation this morning are showing certainly a closing of the gap.

I note, for example, that compared to 2003 and 2004, even the number of senior citizens that are below LICO continues to diminish. When you look at the participation rates of women in the workforce--and I will preface this by saying that I know this doesn't impact the same proportion of women and seniors in general--the level of private pension plans continues to be an increasing share of citizens facing their retirement years.

Taking in all these considerations, wouldn't we tend to see a continuation of that downward trend in terms of the incidence of poverty among senior citizens? It's at 7% now. Why wouldn't we continue to see that trend continue downward?

[Robert Dobie]

I think we will, except the point that I was trying to make was that there is still a vulnerable group of seniors, and that's the unattached. That group is not going to see any improvement, and that's the signal I'm giving here today.

Otherwise, yes, you will, because women have been in the workforce longer, and they've been contributing longer to pension plans. For those over 45 anticipating pensions in 15 or 20 years, yes, I think there will be some improvements, and I think a trend will be there. But addressing that particular problem of those unattached women over 80, or over 75, I think that's alarming, almost.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Is the percentage of seniors living below LICO increasing, or is it staying close to that 60% mark?

[Robert Dobie]

It's about that 60% mark, yes.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

So it's fairly consistent. Okay. Thank you for that.

I have another question. Much of the discussion we've shared and heard from you this morning certainly relates to the measure of income, and income supports, as a measure of the incidence of poverty. I think it's certainly fair to accept that.

If we mine slightly below that line, is there a measure or an incidence at which for seniors, men or women, who may choose to, for example, share living situations or circumstances with other seniors, or friends, or family...? I don't want to suggest for a moment that there shouldn't be the ability for all seniors to live independently. I support what you indicated earlier, that the very best circumstance is for seniors to be able to live at home. But if we look only at income, are we missing a segment of seniors who in fact may have low incomes but truly may not be necessarily in circumstances of abject poverty? Is there a measure here that 240,000-odd folks, yes, are in that low-income category, but by virtue of their chosen living conditions, they aren't in fact experiencing the kind of abject living circumstances that one might conclude otherwise?

[Robert Dobie]

Most seniors that I come in contact with are not very demanding, and their lifestyles are relatively moderate. I don't have any measure, but it would seem to me that if we could spend a very little amount of money on making sure there is a certain amount of security, there is a certain amount of leisure time....

If a senior--or anyone, for that matter--feels secure, feels happy, usually that transfers into better health and better quality of life. It's a very minor investment. Previous governments, or present governments, have a Horizons program. That's the type of thing I would encourage and improve on. If you can keep them happy and secure, amongst their peers and out of institutions—and I'm not degrading the institutions, because there's a certain amount of necessity for that--for as long as possible, then that would be an incredible investment at a relatively low price.

[John Anderson]

Just to add to that, the market basket measure is an attempt to measure the costs of housing, the costs of food, and therefore to give a measure of poverty that distinguishes exactly what people are spending on these items. We've only had one year of it, and there are two more years to come out. I think that's going to be very important.

In terms of your previous question, I want to add that it's important to note that while there are trends that are going to mitigate poverty, there are also trends going in the other direction. One of them is the question of housing costs. If housing costs continue to spiral upwards, particularly in our major cities, this is going to affect seniors, particularly senior women, who have not had the paid-up mortgage, or not had the house, or who find the property taxes too high to pay as they are ramped up in many cities. It's very important that we have more affordable housing, and we don't have enough right now.

Second is the question of precarious work. There's more and more contingent and precarious work where particularly women are not working in the kinds of jobs that allow them to contribute to a pension plan on a regular basis. The jobs are not long term, they're temporary, etc.

Linked to that is the question of the decline in private pension plans. Private defined-benefit pension plans are on the decline. There are hardly any new ones being created, and many of the old ones are actually in trouble. This is also a problem, because obviously our retirement system was geared on having the three legs of OAS/GIS, the CPP, and having the private pension. But if you can't get into the private pension plan because you're working in a job that doesn't have one, then obviously your retirement is not going to be as good as it was for people in the past, who had jobs in companies that had good pension plans.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

We have about three minutes left. Ms. Minna, Ms. Bourgeois, and Ms. Smith want to ask further questions. I'm not sure we can accomplish that. There's also Ms. Neville, and I'm sure others.

I can clearly see that we're going to have to ask you to come back.

I think it's Ms. Minna who will have the last question.

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

I'll be quick.

First, I was going to suggest that we ask them to come back, so that's a good thing.

Second, Madam Chair, perhaps we could bring all of this back in the fall with an eye toward making recommendations on a poverty strategy for women, developing a poverty strategy solution ourselves--with the help of the supporters we have here today; that would be great.

I have tons of questions, but very quickly, it's obvious that there are some things we can do right now. There are things we can address with respect to the poverty issue, the child care issue, the issue of clawback for income support, the issue of mending EI to make sure that women are...and maybe making the dropout rate for CPP, for caregivers. So there are a number of things the governments could do now in terms of actually beginning to address some of these issues.

You said earlier that most women, regardless...or they're poor in the first place because of unpaid work. On the issue that I suggested earlier, the guaranteed income, would that help, in that case? And how would that work? Ultimately we're looking to address a lot of the things that I have just mentioned that I think could be done, but at the same time, how do we actually do a holistic approach to address the core problem, which is unpaid work for women; would income security do that?

Finally, has your shop done any analysis at this point on the impact of the most recent budget with respect to child care or structure changes and the $1,200 and all of that with respect to poor families and poor women?

[Sheila Regehr]

I'll answer the first bit very quickly and let John talk about budget impact. I have, what, 20 seconds left now?

Yes, a guaranteed annual income would address a number of things, I think, as long as it's developed so that it understands unpaid work and recognizes that women, even if they're in the workforce full time, still have to look after their children when they come home and on weekends and all of those things. You have to recognize that everybody does this to some extent. The time and the money have to kind of match.

There was an interesting study, and I can't remember who did it, in the United States where they developed a welfare rate system that compensated lone parents for lost time by increasing their welfare money. It was quite creative; I haven't seen anything like that since, and that was quite a while ago.

So yes, the money would answer some of it in terms of a guaranteed annual income. I think there are still probably other elements around unpaid work that you'd have to look at. You mentioned EI, maternity and parental benefits, CPP dropouts, and things like that.

On the budget, John?

[John Anderson]

Very quickly, in terms of budgets in general, I think it's important that, in the future, budgets have a link to them, an analysis of the impact of that budget on poverty. This could be built into the budget itself so that when the budget proposals are being put forward we know the impact. What will the budget do for low-income Canadians? Is it going to reduce the rate of low income, and by how much? It's very important that there be some targets in there, which could be done as well.

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

The council hasn't done an analysis with respect to the most recent budget?

[John Anderson]

We haven't done a detailed analysis in terms of that. We've looked at the latest budget, and of course within that budget some of the proposals and how they're going to work, but we haven't done a long-term analysis of the impact of that on low-income Canadians.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

To all of you, thank you so very much for coming this morning. I said to you that we would have lots of questions, but clearly we could manage an additional good hour with you.

We will be moving forward on our study, and no doubt narrowing in on specifics to do with the issues we're looking at. We would welcome you back at another time. Maybe we can narrow in on some specifics on which you could give us some direction and advice.

Again, thank you very much.

We will suspend for a couple of minutes while our witnesses leave.