Status of Women Committee on March 13th, 2008

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

No. We had it for Budget 2006 and 2007. Basically, we challenged them, and they gave us some strange....

[Armine Yalnizyan]

The tax-free savings account is a measure that was introduced in this budget, in 2008.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

No, they haven't given us 2008.

[Armine Yalnizyan]

But my understanding—

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

No, but in fairness, we did ask whether they had done an analysis on the $5,000. They said yes, and then they gave us that kind of....

[Armine Yalnizyan]

Well, I don't know how you would provide a committee with information on the incidence of who collects the benefits of a tax-free savings account without identifying which income classes get it and how it is split between men and women.

I think if you were to ask your own bureaucrats, which you are able to do, to please provide—because they have a costing here.... They think it's going to cost x amount in year one, x amount in year two. They must have some modelling that indicates what the take-up rate is and which taxpayers they think will be accessing it.

You could ask for just an indication: can you please tell us who you think is taking up these amounts, which total almost $1 billion over a five-year horizon, by income bracket, by income class—because that's how tax files work, such as over $100,000 and between $50,000 and $100,000—and what proportion of tax filers those are, and what proportion of men and women fall in these categories?

It's just an objective analysis. Once you get the numbers in front of you.... I might not have calculated it correctly, but I can't be off by that huge a margin. If you ask the question with enough specificity, I think it is difficult for them to say everything's fine.

[Nancy Peckford]

Madam Chair, there are a couple of other issues here with Status of Women Canada. One is that Status of Women Canada only recently has had the benefit of a senior minister. But that senior minister is cross-appointed. Madame Verner, with all due respect—and this is not unusual—in terms of how she's dividing her time as the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister for the Status of Women.... You can see which ministry is getting the priority.

One of the things women's organizations, among others, have asked for is a dedicated minister. There are trade-offs, because that dedicated minister can be marginalized. On the one hand, you want a senior minister at the table; on the other hand, if their attention is divided, it's very clear that status of women issues typically lose out.

Another thing, sadly, is that Status of Women Canada took a 40% hit in its operating budget, albeit some of it may have been restored. But the reality is that there was a message there regarding the significance of the work.

Fortunately, the appointment of Clare Beckton, who is now deputy head, is a step in the right direction. However, I am not assured, even with Clare's extremely good leadership, that the department itself is well fortified and well equipped to do the analysis.

My experience with Status of Women Canada is that it's not seen to be part of the real politic of the federal government; it's not seen to be the player it should be regarded as being. In the absence of other imperatives and of other oversight mechanisms, often the work of Status of Women Canada is given lip service. It's given some attention, but at the end of the day, whether it can be translated into meaningful policy is, for you as much as it is for us, to be seen.

Fortifying the budget of Status of Women Canada is in my view an extremely constructive measure, but you also need to look at other ways in which the work of Status of Women Canada can be better shored up. That's why whatever gender-based analysis goes forward must be entrenched, must be captured within something much more compelling than itself, whether it's a legal framework, a commissioner at the Auditor General's office, which people pay attention to, or the meaningful leadership of a senior minister who's well-equipped to take on the challenges. In the absence of that, I'm not optimistic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We now go to Mr. Stanton for five minutes, please.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, I would like to welcome all our witnesses who are appearing this morning.

Ms. Yalnizyan, I listened to your comments and statements. I have two questions for you. If you feel it is that bad, is it your opinion that the government should have been defeated on its budget? Also, why do you think that the 2008 Budget received the support of the House of Commons?

[Armine Yalnizyan]

I think that's an excellent question, and I appreciate it.

I believe it is an irresponsible use of our surplus, and if I were a politician, I would vote it down.

Why wasn't it voted down? As you know, Mr. Stanton, it's because of the political calculus of the moment. That's a game that's outside my purview. Political calculus operates in a world different from mine.

On the face of it, I would not vote for this budget. I think it is the wrong use of a huge surplus. That's my answer.

Thank you.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Boucher.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Good morning, everyone. I really don't know quite what to say, to be perfectly frank. I don't dare say exactly what I am thinking. I am usually very direct, but I am going to be careful.

I would like to put a certain number of things in perspective. I am the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister responsible for the Status of Women. Despite what you may think, I meet with officials at Status of Women Canada once a month. I make it my duty to go and sit down with them for two hours once a month, and we get together every week to deal with other issues.

Having said that, for my own personal benefit, I would like to have your analysis, Ms. Lahey. You did an analysis of the 2008 Budget. I would like to have the one for the 2005 budget, the last budget tabled by the former government. I would like the same analysis, please.

Are you apolitical? At the beginning, I asked for apolitical studies. Whether it is me, whether it is them, or whoever is conducting these studies, we want gender budgeting to have an apolitical foundation in order to serve the interests of all women. However, having heard your comments this morning, I do not believe you are apolitical and, personally, that bothers me.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

To answer the first question, I can give you a partial analysis of some of the main features of the 2005 budget, because as table 6, which I handed out earlier, demonstrates—and I apologize for the typographical error because each of the two pairs of columns should be marked 2004 and 2008. So 2004 is not the last Liberal budget, but it's very close because there were not really significant changes between 2004 and 2005. Look at the first column, table 6, capital gains exclusions under “Personal income tax measures”. In the column that should be headed 2004, the cost to the federal government in forgone revenues for the capital gain exclusion would have been $2.8 billion for 2004. This budget puts that number at $5.2 billion. That number is drawn from this government's “Tax Expenditure Report, 2007”, which was released on February 19, 2008, just a week before this budget was released. This increase in this particular tax expenditure, which is symptomatic of the differences between 2005 and 2008 budgets, is because taxpayers now are being offered many more ways to not pay taxes on capital gains.

To give you another example, the dividend tax credit, 2004—this is in the same column—would have been $1.5 billion. In 2008 it's estimated to be costing $2.5 billion annually. This increase relates to the fact that shareholders are often being given a tax benefit for taxes that corporations no longer pay. In my extended written submissions, which will be distributed to you after they are translated, you will see that under the current dividend tax credit scheme, a person who has income that only comes from corporate dividends can receive $50,000 per year tax free. This is much more generous treatment than we give the poorest people in the country, and there's no comparison with the GST rate cuts and so on.

So this little table will give you a really good snapshot of the much more numerous tax expenditures that are given to capital owners and owners of corporations. They are really increasing the total of all tax expenditures, which are revenues forgone by the government. The number between 2004 and 2008 has easily doubled to a total, for 2008, of $74 billion of forgone revenue.

Am I apolitical? I'm deeply committed to women's issues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Armine.

[Armine Yalnizyan]

I share your frustration, Madame Boucher. I think we're frustrated about the same things from different vantage points.

To get to your question, am I apolitical, I must be apolitical because I wouldn't have voted for the budget and everybody did. It got passed. Seriously, on the issue about politics, Madame Boucher, I would be saying the same thing to a Liberal government, and I have said the same thing to a Liberal government that was focused on tax cuts.

From 1997-98 to as far as you can see—2012-13, which is your budget's projection—we've had $340 billion in tax cuts. It's not just the Conservatives that have done it, but the Conservatives accelerated it. I am against that unbalanced use of a surplus.

I'm not against tax cuts when our social deficits are met. Women have been asked to wait in good times and bad. Women bore the biggest brunt of the Liberal program cuts in 1995. The Liberal government introduced cuts in 1995 to the programs that women rely on. I've been railing against those cuts to programs and now I'm railing against tax cuts. I think women have been waiting for too long to have the needs met, not of women but of families and communities across this country.

So in the sense that I am not for this budget, I can see how you would perceive that as being not political. Frankly, what we are talking about in gender-budget analysis is any government, and I've said this in my opening remarks. Any budget needs to take a look at the gendered impact of their measures. If we had had it in place in 1995, they couldn't have balanced the books on the backs of women. They would have seen how those cuts disproportionately affected women.

We need gender-budget analysis to be apolitical, to say neither the costs nor the benefits should flow disproportionately to one group or another. So in that sense I am apolitical, and I am as committed as Kathleen. I've been doing this for 25 years.

Lastly, I don't know what miracle you worked to get a mention of a commitment to gender equality in this budget. You read this passage. It's 52 words in a 416-page document. I don't know what process you go through to get that inserted. I salute you and your colleagues who did it, and I really hope that opens up the opportunity to make good on it. So thank you for doing that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Ms. Peckford.

[Nancy Peckford]

I'm sorry, I must respond. The call for gender budgeting arose in 2005. We commissioned Armine to do a very detailed analysis of 10 federal budgets that were created under the Liberal government.

Just to note, I think it's easier for governments to politicize us, to accuse us of being political, when in fact we often act in the best non-partisan spirit possible. But it's you who politicize us and discount our voices because you think we're coming from a political place, and that's where dialogue often stops.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Nancy, I was just asked a quick question. Would you be able to do that analysis? Would you get the funding for the analysis if we had to conduct that budget analysis now?

[Nancy Peckford]

It's unlikely, though we haven't tested those waters.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Okay. Could you test it?

We now go to Madame Deschamps. We have another committee that will be coming soon, so I'll have to ensure that we keep to that five minutes.

Thank you.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I thought you weren't going to give me a turn.

I have no questions. Instead, I would like to give an overview of my understanding of what all the people we have heard from have told us—whether they be government officials or outside experts who came to present their vision of gender-based analysis or gender-budgeting of revenues and expenditures.

I have prepared sort of an overview, which I intend to call fiscal policy or social policy 101. I would like you to evaluate me at the end.

The federal government has limited means of intervention in spending programs that are primarily the responsibility of the provinces. Until 1994, the federal government maintained some control over provincial spending through transfers for health care, education and social programs. In 1995, provincial transfers were severely cut back. The government has stopped making those transfers.

When that happened, the federal government had to increasingly rely on its tax powers, as laid out in the Constitution, in order to do indirectly what it could no longer do directly. The result is a growing number of tax expenditures designed to support certain categories or foster certain activities that are good for the economy or society.

Nowadays, social policy is often implemented through tax reforms, rather than through program initiatives developed by departments spending government money. That trend seems to have become far more pronounced in this last budget, and others as well. The tax system is now being used as the central instrument for implementing social policy, the consequence of which is to place a heavy burden on the Department of Finance, whose role it becomes to conduct a more detailed analysis of the impact of current tax spending on men and women.

However, gender-based analysis—which could be called a social policy—funded using taxpayers' money has at least three disadvantages for women: these tax measures generally do not benefit low-income women, tax deductions and exemptions are not of equal value for women taxpayers, and tax expenditures may foster male type revenues and spending.

What can we do to remove that unfairness?

So, that was my analysis.

[Armine Yalnizyan]

I think you are absolutely right. Most of what has occurred in the last almost decade has occurred through the tax system, but there has been very little initiative on the spending side. In that sense, I am apolitical because we have done now, for almost 15 years, an exercise in how to jigger around with the tax system instead of how to invest in the next generation.

I'm not kidding when I say we have run the course on tax cuts. We cannot continue to strip the cupboard. We have more economic prowess today than we have had since the 1960s, and now we're pleading that the cupboard is bare. Meanwhile, cities are crumbling. We are not dealing with climate change. We're not dealing with growing inequality. Yet the fiscal resources are there. It is time to stop the tax cut agenda. I don't care which party starts that process. It is time to call a spade a spade. What is happening at the city level is people know it's either raising taxes or cutting services. Canadians do not want less service. They want more service and they want better service, and that is the equation.

I think it is a political discourse whose time has come. The pendulum has swung as far as it can. You are absolutely right. The difficulty with doing gender analysis on that front is it is very easy to do an incidence study on who gets the benefits of a tax cut because it's dollars and cents.

You cannot measure the benefit of a social spending dollar because it is not just what happens this year, it's what happens over the course of a person's life. So how do you capture the return on that investment? It's a very messy project. It's easier to do a tax cut and say, “Look, we gave you the money”, and then you can do a gender analysis and say, “Well, guys have more money than girls”, but in fact the spending has so many multiplier effects and it has such a long yield curve that it is extraordinarily difficult to say, “This is a better use for your dollar than the tax cut”. It is a job that needs to be done, and somebody needs to start doing it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

I have to cut this off and give Ms. Mathyssen two minutes. Then I'll give you some documents that we would like your help on.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank you all for your analysis, all this data and information, because numbers and data are definitely not partisan.

I have the government's analysis of Budgets 2006 and 2007 here, and I think you'll find it very telling and hopelessly inadequate.

My question is this. At this point in time, what one spending item would make the biggest difference in achieving equality for women in Canada?

[Armine Yalnizyan]

Housing. It would affect 68% of women. They are desperate to get out of some situations. We have no housing policy. We are the only industrialized nation without a housing policy.

We are not talking about affordable housing for just mortgage holders. We're not talking about just shelters. We're not just talking about places for women to flee violence. We're talking about everything. Let's have a decent national housing program.

Housing is the biggest bite out of our disposable income. It would reduce poverty if you did something about housing.