Status of Women Committee on April 1st, 2008

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

Are you serious?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

I am very serious. I want to go to five minutes.

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

Fine. In trying to get at all this, I think we may need what I would call a full-day seminar here. We would have to pay our experts to make sure they get proper treatment.

Let me start. Professor Lahey, was the table that you gave us an analysis that you did or a response to what we asked you to do in response to what the finance department had done? Is that what this is, your table 1?

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

Table 1 is my scoring of what they did. It incorporates a report on what they said. That's the gender impact score by FIN, which is the Department of Finance, and then the gender impact score by KL, which is me. That's my grade.

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

I got all that. That's fine.

You said earlier that the department is basically turning the tables upside down in order to make it look positive. Can you explain that exactly? It's important for us, when we meet with them, to know what that means and to be able to discuss it with them.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

Yes. You will have some written materials that give numbers and spell it out, but I'll go through it orally.

Think of it this way. Say somebody gives you $100 and says, “Here, we're giving this to you because you're a woman and we know you need more money.” Then they turn around and give $1,000 to a man and say, “Here, we're giving you $1,000. We know you make more income, so for this gift of money to have any impact on you, we need to give you more.” And you both say, “Thank you.”

Now you say, “But wait a minute, he's a man and he got $1,000. That's more than I got.” And the giver, the giftor, says, “No, no, you got more. You got proportionately more, expressed as a percentage of your income, which is lower.” Let's say your income is $1,000 a year. So you got a 10% gift.

Then you say, “But still, $1,000 is worth a lot more than $100.” And the giver says, “No, but the man we gave this to has an income of $100,000. So proportionately you got more because $1,000 is only 1% of $100,000.”

So you're supposed to say, “Oh, right, 10% of my little income is more than 1% of his big income.” That's what I mean.

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

I understand that clearly. I know exactly. Actually, a little light went on in my head exactly with an experience I had when I was volunteering in community services and trying to get some funding for immigrant organizations from the United Way. I couldn't get any. They told me they had given me a huge increase—“After all, you got a 30% increase over the mainline organizations; you should be happy”—except they were only giving us $50,000, and 30% was peanuts over the $5 million that was going to another organization. I said, “Thirty percent of $5 million is a hell of a lot of money”—excuse my language—“compared to $50,000.”

So I get very clearly how that works. I understand it, having lived it in a different kind of life. Okay. That's good.

You say you had a breakdown.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

Yes, written examples of it. But unless there was more to your question, there is another part to my answer that I'd like to drag in here.

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

Please go ahead.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

It relates to these economic gender equality indicators here. I agree with everything that Nancy Peckford has said, because the most important thing is to develop substantive gender analyses, not just the numbers. But what's important about this document is that—

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

I'm sorry, are you referring to the Status of Women document?

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

Yes.

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

Okay. That's fair.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

The important thing about this document is that beginning in 1995 a federal-provincial-territorial committee led by Status of Women Canada calculated each of these different gender gap measurements.

Page 3 lists the measures that were developed for incomes. If you look on the left-hand side of page 3, you will see that this index has already been calculated for 1986, 1991, 1994, and 1997. For purposes of monitoring the work that comes out of the Department of Finance, including the $100 versus $1,000 type of analysis, these three measures--the total income, the income after tax, and the total earnings indexes--are the specific tools that have already been in use in Canada for over a decade. They haven't been updated recently, but these are the tools that will show what happens if you do that.

If you have a proportionately greater reduction, you should be happy because you have a proportionately greater reduction, right? These tools will show how, on a macroeconomic level, that's not working. These are the tools that have already been road-tested and put into place here.

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

This only goes to 1997, so you're also saying they need to be updated. Okay, that's good to know.

I wanted to go next to your table, and also our main.... I have too much paper on my desk right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have one minute.

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

Is that all I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Yes.

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

Good grief. Okay. Thanks.

I have a quick one to both of you, and then I'll come to back to some more detailed questions later.

I think we asked, Madam Chair, for the actual analysis on gender budgeting for this last one, did we not? Did we ever get that? Did you have access to the actual analysis from the Department of Finance that they used?

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

Yes, but the problem is that they were very cursory. A supplementary question that you might want to consider asking them is whether this is a summary of a more extensive analysis that may be sitting in their files somewhere, because they are saying things that even the best mathematicians could not really meaningfully work out in their heads.

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

Okay, that was my question. You didn't have access to the data that they used.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Ms. Minna, we'll go to the next round.

Please go ahead, Madame Demers.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I also agree that a one-day seminar should be held.

Thank you for your passion, for believing in what you do and for making us believe in what you do. I think that is very important. I would like you to emphasize once again that you do your job with complete objectivity. I have the feeling that there are still doubters out there. Earlier, Sylvie seemed worried about whether or not you were being objective.

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

I was asking myself some existential questions. It had nothing to do with the witnesses.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

As a rule, the committee tries to work in an objective, non-partisan manner. I would very much like us to move forward on this matter. I would like us to take the report that was shelved and implement some of the measures that were recommended.

I would like to hear your suggestions as to some initiatives that the committee could take to ensure that this action is not seen as being anti-government, but rather as pro-women.

Regardless of the government in power, an atmosphere of confrontation seems to prevail at all times. We must get past this to ensure that women benefit from the measures advocated in the 1995 report.

Ms. Lahey, in your brief you talk about cuts to Status of Women Canada. Recently, I was pleased to learn that several projects had been approved by Status of Women Canada. To what extent will these projects genuinely promote equality for women? I have not seen the details of the projects that were approved. However, we are told that the aim of all of these projects was to promote equality for women. Therefore, I would like some assurance that these projects will in fact achieve their stated aim. We also have some concerns on this score.

I have so many questions that my head is spinning. I will stop here. Would you care to share your impressions with me?