Status of Women Committee on March 13th, 2008

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

I have a very short one.

[Nancy Peckford]

I think Kathleen and I would like to also add—

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

I'm sorry; they want to answer.

[Nancy Peckford]

I'm looking at your introduction to “The Budget in Brief 2008”, which outlines the areas that were being prioritized for the federal Budget 2008. I think it would be very useful for the committee to ask whoever is doing the gender-based analysis within the Department of Finance for its gender-based analysis of each of these categories.

I would invite you to pay particular attention to number two, which was the careful management of spending “to ensure programs and services are efficient, effective, aligned with the priorities of Canadians, and affordable over the long term”, and to pay attention as well to “Investing in the future...for students and increasing support for research in science and technology”.

A GBA here would be very revealing, to see what the Department of Finance concluded was in the best interests of women as well as of all Canadians. I expect that the analysis they may have done either didn't make it to the minister or the senior ranks of the ministry, or it was disregarded for other priorities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Ms. Lahey.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

I want to very quickly touch on the question of a gender-based analysis of the post-secondary education funding. When you remember that women with university degrees are now earning less than 70% on average of what men are earning and then look at the fact that young women are graduating with anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 in debt, if they've gone on to a professional degree.... That is a different kind of payment for somebody who has a much lower income to pay.

One of the things universities are looking to right now is trying to figure out how to come up with some sort of income-contingent tuition repayment scheme to help students finance this huge debt into the future. But no one is looking at gender. It's going to be very onerous for women graduates if they have to repay on lower salaries the same high tuition costs and borrowing costs that the student loan programs currently are structured to give them. That's another place where a gender-based analysis really needs to be done in detail.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We'll go to Ms. Mathyssen, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

We've been struggling for several weeks now with bureaucratese and the response “that can't be done” and “I can't answer that question”. I'm so glad you're here, because I have a number of questions and I'm sure you can answer.

I want to start with Ms. Yalnizyan. I'm not going to phrase this nearly as eloquently as you have. You talked about committing the Department of Finance to GBA across the budget, an analysis of major policies, and an incidence study in regard to the macroeconomics of tax cuts compared with finding benefits for women and low-income people.

Could you explain and illuminate that?

[Armine Yalnizyan]

I would turn to what Nancy said. Take a look at “The Budget in Brief 2008” and what the major strokes are that the government itself says are the important characteristics of this budget.

The way you do this, Ms. Mathyssen, is simply in pointing out, for example, what Madam Grewal's question was. We have two programs here, post-secondary education and the services to veterans, which, combined, are roughly $400 million over the next few years. The tax-free savings account, on the other hand, is worth $900 million over the next five years and is estimated to cost the public treasury $3 billion.

I have a section in the report I've submitted to you, “Budget 2008: What’s In It For Women?”, that shows that the tax-free savings account will accrue primarily to those earning over $100,000, just because of its structure. It's worth $3 billion when it's fully implemented. It's a big price tag for that, and it goes primarily to those earning over $100,000.

What proportion of the Canadian taxpayers do you think are in the over-$100,000 group? I'll tell you: it's 7.5% of men and $2.5% of women. So 5% of your taxpayers are getting about 70% of this $3 billion a year. That's an expensive program for a small number of people who.... Again, as Ms. Lahey has pointed out, it turns the welfare concept on its head and gives the most to those who need it the least.

There is money there. When you do gendered analysis, it permits you to see where the money goes and whom it's benefiting. You see what is happening, what governments are doing and for whom, and then put a price tag next to it. You say, we're doing something for students: 57% of graduates are women and this is how much we're giving them; we're doing something for those who earn more than $100,000: this is how much is going to them and this is the proportion who are women.

It helps you actually say, “If these are your big-stroke initiatives”—and that's what I said, I didn't say every budgetary measure—“just tell us what it is that you think are the important things you're doing with this surplus”, because the surplus is huge, “and who benefits from them.”

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

My next question is for Professor Lahey. I think you have spoken about this.

Under the current government expenditures, taxpayers who support a spouse or a common-law partner are entitled to a tax credit. The cost of this tax credit is about $1.3 billion annually and is projected to increase.

In 1942, interestingly enough, during the Second World War, Canada repealed this in order to get women into the job market to help in the war effort. Of course, once the war had ended, the tax credit went back on, to ostensibly get women back into the home and free up those jobs for returning soldiers.

Other countries have abandoned this tax credit, but in 2007 the Canadian government actually increased it. I'm wondering whom the tax benefit impacts most and whether we would be wise to invest that $1.3 billion elsewhere.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

The question is a really good one, and it goes to the heart of what is wrong with all of the hundred or so provisions that relate to family relationships in the Income Tax Act and other taxing provisions.

It's absolutely right that at the beginning of World War II, this was removed to get women into the paid workforce. At the end of World War II, this was reinstated, and the precursor to the Canada child tax benefit was put into place—the family allowance—to help women feel that they still had some money in their hands, to literally ease the political opposition to driving women out of paid work.

This dependent spouse credit is now larger than it has ever been. It is only available to families that have a high enough income that everyone can live on that one income. So it's really for a very relatively small proportion of the population who can take advantage of it.

It is a form of income splitting. It treats a woman as a tax shelter. It treats a woman as someone who can essentially be expected to do unpaid home-centred work that is untaxed and that adds value to the family, and it is itself one of the key mechanisms by which the tax system prevents women from engaging in paid work.

When a couple sits down to decide whether a woman should enter into paid work, one of the calculations that is done—women are very aware of how much tax they pay—is how much the loss of that dependent spouse credit is going to cost, in conjunction with the loss of the unpaid work the woman can do in the home and what she can earn.

It used to be, right after World War II, that Chatelaine was publishing articles showing why it didn't even pay a woman lawyer to go back to work, because the net after-tax profit to women was simply too low at the margins.

Definitely, if I could rewrite the Income Tax Act, this would be repealed, as it has been in many other countries and as it was slated to be in Canada some years ago, along with the dozens of other provisions that work exactly the same way.

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

Thank you.

Do I have time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have, for a very quick one.

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

Ms. Peckford, you talked about this GBA checklist, which really doesn't translate. I have to admit I've had that feeling too.

We know that CIDA uses GBA. Can you comment on how that works, where it's working, and whether it is working well?

[Nancy Peckford]

The value of CIDA's framework of gender analysis is that its policy objectives are explicitly equality-focused. Their objectives are to advance women's equal participation with men as decision-makers in shaping the sustainable development of society, to support women and girls in the realization of their full human rights, and to reduce gender inequalities in access to and control over the resources and benefits of development. Clearly, with this set of policy goals, when you do gender-based analysis you're looking for very particular outcomes.

In our case, what's happened is that gender-based analysis as a policy framework was implemented with the best of intentions, but other policy priorities got in the way very quickly, back in the mid-1990s.

In my view, gender-based analysis was never able to get fully on track. Even when the Unemployment Insurance Act was being reformed, gender-based analysis was done, but it was never taken into account.

I think there's an opportunity, with the action plan that has been committed to, to look very specifically at enhancing, improving, enriching the gender-based analysis strategy that has been put into place, however weak and marginal it might be. One of the key ways to do that, and one of the things the federal plan for gender equality neglected to see done, is to develop a set of indicators that actually helps you to define your success.

It would seem to me that those indicators should be defined in such a way as to fully situate women's equality as key to the whole exercise of GBA. That should give you some better sense of where you're going and why you want to get there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We now go to Mr. Pearson.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is pretty frustrating. I come from an advocacy background, and we've been sitting here on this committee for some time now tackling this GBA idea. I just want to see it work.

Let me put it this way. I think the main group we have to rely on to help us as we go through this process is Status of Women Canada. They're the ones who are supposed to be the vehicle through which this comes to us. However, the Status of Women Canada officials, when they are here, actually present a fairly rosy picture to us. They say training is being done in all these departments, and we have been doing GBA in these various parts of the finance department.

We had a champion here just a couple a meetings ago, or last meeting, and I asked about the $5,000 tax-free savings account. I asked whether any GBA had been done on that. They said absolutely.

[Armine Yalnizyan]

That it was all nice.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Yes.

Just bear with me. I think I'm trying to get to the bottom of how we as a committee hear these things from structural people whom we are counting on.

We know that when we speak to advocative groups that come in, they give a different picture; we understand that. But I'm trying to ask, is the problem within Status of Women the fact that perhaps it's not high enough in the ministerial rank? Is it because, when you consider the finance department and the massive resources it has and the minuscule resources Status of Women has, that it actually can't do the job, that it doesn't have the resources to do the proper GBA?

We as a committee are going to have to depend on them long after you're gone, and if we're getting one bit of information from them and getting a totally different thing from you, and yet they're supposed to be champions....

I would like to hear your comments on this, because it has been frustrating.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

This is a cynical view, but it is, as Nancy said a little while ago, a matter of political will. When you have a Department of Finance official who's allowed to sit there and say “We don't have to account for the pension income splitting because that's a benefit that goes to families, so there's no gender analysis. A family is a different entity from a woman; it's different words, so you don't need a gender analysis.” If you don't have people in Status of Women Canada who will call people on that, then you simply cannot function in this area.

It is a great tragedy. Status of Women Canada was a world leader in the development of gender-based analysis and saw the implementation of training programs and policies of a very detailed nature in every one of 24 departments of the federal government through to the end of the 1990s. The work has been done, the people were trained, the programs were put into place.

Within the federal government, then, short of a change in political will, all that can be done is to keep shining the light on it as brightly as you can.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Just before you move on, do you believe Status of Women would need more resources—I think you do—to be able to get to all the different levels within Finance?

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

Yes, absolutely.

I used to receive funding to do exactly this work from Status of Women Canada. It's no longer available. I can't apply to IDRC, because Canada is not a developing country. The women in Canada are underdeveloped, but we can't apply for that funding there either.

[Armine Yalnizyan]

I'm having difficulty understanding how you could receive an analysis from Finance. Is that what you said occurred, that you did actually have an analysis from Finance tabled on TFSA?

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

Yes, and everything was okay.

[Armine Yalnizyan]

No and yes.