Status of Women Committee on April 17th, 2008

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Welcome this morning. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we resume the study on gender budgets. We will call this meeting to order.

Before we start with our first presenters, Ms. Minna would like to make a statement.

Ms. Minna, please.

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

I just want to put on the record, given what we're working towards, congratulations to Spain. I know this sounds weird, but yesterday's Toronto Star showed a 37-year-old woman, seven months pregnant, as the Minister of Defence while she was reviewing her troops, and a picture with the Prime Minister that showed that the majority of cabinet are females in Spain now. And he says in his comment that he is going to deal with the “criminal machismo” of his country. What I'm saying, ladies, is it's doable.

I just want to put that on record, to congratulate at least one nation on this planet of ours that has actually taken control of the issue and moved on.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Madam Chair, the Prime Minister of Spain has also decided to establish a gender equality department. I congratulate him.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you very much, Madam Demers, for your input. That's exciting news for the study we're doing.

Now we will go to our presenters. We have several presenters this morning. We're going to ask each of the presenters to give their presentation for ten minutes, and then we will go to questions and answers after they have all given them. They're all related presentations.

Heather Dryburgh, if you're prepared to start, please go ahead.

[Heather Dryburgh, Chief of the General Social Survey, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada]

Thank you for inviting us today.

I'm from Statistics Canada, and I'm here with my colleague, Louise Marmen. We're very pleased to have the opportunity to give you a brief overview of Statistics Canada’s approach to gender statistics and how our data can be accessed.

I'll begin with a brief introduction on the Canadian context for gender statistics. The implementation of gender-based analysis throughout federal departments and agencies has ensured demand for gender statistics at Statistics Canada. This was an important development coming out of the 1995 federal plan for gender equality. Our main contribution is the provision of gender statistics, which are then used by policy departments to conduct gender-based analysis.

Here are the definitions we work with when we talk about gender statistics. Gender statistics are data that reflect the situation of women and men, taking into account their different socio-economic realities. Gender statistics are then used in gender-based analysis to assess the differential impact of policies, programs, and legislation on women and men.

As a statistical agency, our gender-based analysis involves assessing existing sources of data and questioning the assumptions underpinning statistical concepts and collection methods, ensuring that we provide sex-disaggregated data as well as data relevant to both men’s and women's experiences.

Statistics Canada collects and analyzes a wealth of gender statistics. They're available in tables, in microdata form, and in analytic publications. I want to talk about each of these sources of information and provide some examples of each type.

First, let me say that a broad range of gender statistics is available on the Statistics Canada website and all of the agency’s outputs are announced in The Daily, which is Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin.

In preparing for today's session, I conducted a quick search of The Daily for the word “gender”, and I had 82 hits on that particular day. I've put a couple of examples in here. There are many data tables as well as studies. Among the data tables were tables broken down by sex on public colleges and institutions, enrolments, and graduates. There were also data tables on shelters for abused women. Those are just a couple of examples. There were many studies, analytic studies, including recent studies on the rising education of women and the gender earnings gap, gender differences in quits and absenteeism, and employment growth among lone mothers in Canada and the U.S.

Also on Statistics Canada’s website are statistics by subject. Under the subject “Society and Community” you'll find “Women and Gender”, where there are links to the latest releases, data tables, publications, and analytic studies. So there's a wealth of information there.

A joint project between Statistics Canada and Status of Women Canada is a publication called Finding Data on Women: A Guide to Major Sources at Statistics Canada . I've brought copies that I can leave with you in both languages. This excellent resource was recently updated and released in March 2007, and it has summary information on a wide range of surveys and administrative data sources that can be used for gender-based analysis. This publication is available for free on the Status of Women Canada website.

Sex-disaggregated data tables are one of our most important sources of gender statistics. These tables include both statistics and indicators and can be found, through links on or after their release, on the Statistics Canada website under “Summary Tables”. For example, you'll find tables on topics such as days lost per worker by industry and sex and many others. Or you can find them in CANSIM II, which is Statistics Canada’s socio-economic database, for a small fee. In CANSIM II you'll find tables such as the number of women and children residing in shelters by facility type and reason of admission, together with types of smokers by age group and sex. Those are just a couple of tables

These tables are prepared with policy-makers and the general research community in mind, so they're very easy to use. They're broken down not only by sex, but also, as often as possible, by geography and age. They are the basis for much of the gender-based analysis being done across the Canadian federal and provincial governments.

After each census, sex-disaggregated table series are produced, based on the analytic themes for census releases, including labour, families, income, and so on. These are another source of data tables disaggregated by sex.

Finally, if among all of those existing resources government departments and researchers have specific needs that aren't addressed, then custom tables can also be purchased directly from Statistics Canada. It's also possible for policy departments to access microdata to do their own analysis, and many policy departments do this.

For cross-sectional surveys we have a process of assessing disclosure risk that enables us to protect the confidentiality of individuals while releasing the majority of information to the public as public use microdata files. These files are available for the general social survey, the Canadian community health survey, the census, and more are made into public use files.

Statistics Canada has established research data centres across the country where academics and government researchers can access more detailed longitudinal microdata, as well as many fully detailed cross-sectional data files. Access to these microdata files allows researchers to use much more complex, multivariate methods. Some examples of those are the national longitudinal survey of children and youth, the aboriginal peoples survey, the national population health survey, and so on. So it's possible to access the microdata in detail there.

Statistics Canada also produces a range of analytic products using gender statistics. One key publication, which I know you're probably aware of, is a statistical compendium called Women in Canada, and again I've brought copies that I'll leave with you, in both languages. It's been produced every five years since 1985. This report paints a comprehensive gender-based portrait of the Canadian population and it includes sections on population, family status, health, education, paid and unpaid work, and detailed sections on sub-populations such as immigrants, aboriginal people, seniors, and others.

The census tables and analytic releases include gender analysis on such topics as labour, education, and place of work, which complement the table products I talked about earlier.

Other highlights in Canadian gender statistics have included the measurement and valuation of unpaid work and the measurement of family violence and spousal violence.

A full list of the analytical work on gender can be found, as I mentioned, on the website under The Daily, or under the subject link of “Women and Gender”.

I will just mention one more analytic product.

The federal, provincial, and territorial ministers responsible for the Status of Women commissioned a report from Statistics Canada in 1997 called Economic Gender Equality Indicators. These indicators were updated in 2001 and published in our flagship journal of Canadian Social Trends.

Statistical programs are funded either by base funding or by cost-recovery funding. In both situations the norm at Statistics Canada is to collect sex as a variable. Canada has been a leader in the field of gender statistics, largely because of its long history of household surveys, where data are routinely disaggregated by sex. Examples of base-funded surveys specifically addressing issues of gender include the time use survey and the victimization survey, and the census can be seen that way too, because there are many variables in there on family and income. Examples of cost-recovery projects on gender-related issues include the maternity experiences survey, which was funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the transition homes survey, which was funded by the family violence initiative. Those are just a couple of examples.

Although Statistics Canada does not have a special division dedicated to the promotion and production of gender statistics, much expertise in gender analysis exists across the agency. For example, the agency provides resources for our involvement in interagency and expert group meetings of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe on gender statistics--that's a long name. As well, we represented at the UN global program for gender statistics meetings. Resources are also dedicated to special partnership projects such as the Women in Canada publications, which I mentioned, with Status of Women Canada, and the gender and work database project with York University. Those are a couple of examples. That is currently being updated to 2006.

It is through continuous consultation and collaboration with stakeholders and data users and a willingness to innovate that we've made important advances in gender statistics.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

You are running out of time, so I'd ask you to quickly wrap up, please.

[Heather Dryburgh]

To conclude, at Statistics Canada we routinely disaggregate data by sex, and we take into consideration the different social, cultural, and economic contexts for women and men in the development of new projects and the planning of analytic analysis.

The Statistics Act governs the collection of data and protects the confidentiality of respondents, and that enables us to gather information on sensitive subjects important for understanding gender equality, such as spousal violence and income.

These departments wishing to access Statistics Canada can do so through free or low-cost tables, custom tabulation requests, microdata files, or in our analytic products.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you very much.

Louise Marmen, do you have a presentation, or are you part of this same one?

[Louise Marmen, Assistant Director, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada]

No, I'm part of this one.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Okay, that's great.

We will then move to the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development, Sheila Regehr.

[Sheila Regehr, Director, National Council of Welfare, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

And I just clarified with the clerk to be very sure people understand that I do not represent the department. I understand that I've been invited as director of the National Council of Welfare and as an individual. And the council is an arm's-length agency, so the department, I think, would be very unhappy they thought I was speaking for them.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thanks for that clarification.

[Sheila Regehr]

May I also have a two-minute warning, so I can truncate some things at the tail end of my presentation and leave it for questions?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

We'll do that.

[Sheila Regehr]

Thank you.

First, I'd like to thank the committee very much for the opportunity to answer some of the questions I believe you have related to statistics and data for gender budgeting, especially with regard to three publications, a couple of which Heather has already mentioned: Women in Canada, the Economic Gender Equality Indicators, and a smaller version we call the mini women and men report, which is an at-a-glance publication based on a Swedish model.

I also understand that the committee is interested in both the content of these initiatives and the processes and mechanisms by which they came to be. And I was involved in all three of these, going back to the early eighties, as well as the sort of international version of Women in Canada, the United Nations' The World's Women. So I'm kind of the dinosaur in some of this, I think.

I want to use my presentation time, however, not to talk too much about those specific publications but to put them in a larger context. My current position is as director of the National Council of Welfare, where my focus is on poverty. There are clear links, however, between this work and gender equality, and I'm sure the committee is well aware of this. I don't need to tell you that.

But I also deal with questions of process and mechanisms, as well as content, in this job. In fact, the council concluded that the persistence of gender inequalities and poverty in Canada is very much about governance and values. I'm not going to talk to you a lot about data. These people can do that.

This conclusion was reached after an evaluation of 25 years of poverty statistics and countless recommendations that have gone on a shelf. The council advised the government very recently, based on this work that we did, and I'll quote a phrase that's often quoted in the newspapers and elsewhere.

If there is no long-term vision, no plan, no one identified to lead or carry out the plan, no resources assigned, and no accepted measure of results, we will be mired in the consequences of poverty for generations to come.

And I would contest that this is equally true of gender inequality.

Our recommendation for a national plan to solve poverty is in fact the subject of hearings that have just started in another committee of this House. And I want to draw on a couple of parallels. They've only had two meetings, but already gender is very high on the list there.

So there are three points I'd like to highlight that I think are important to this committee. First, all the traditional poverty indicators—and we've had big arguments about these for the last 15 years—do not do a very good job of capturing the situation of women. This is very important to you, I think, because the economic gender equality indicators project that Heather mentioned does fill in some of those gaps.

Second, aggregate indicators are important, but finding the perfect ones should never serve as a diversion from actually doing something. What matters is the impact that programs and policies are having on people and how we can make them better.

Third, indicators are based on values. And numbers will not speak for themselves; human beings need to do that.

And I want to offer here a very short but powerful story that was told to me in a very different context and it makes so many points that I have to tell somebody, and you're my victims.

This is about a project on an aboriginal reserve. The federal government, concerned about accountability as it is, noticed that this project listed ten employees but only one was getting paid and that person was getting a huge pay cheque. So to Ottawa this is an indicator of a problem, maybe even corruption. It could be huge. It's an indicator; that's all the information Ottawa had. They needed to actually go out and find out what was going on, so they talked to people.

It turned out that the nearest bank for this community was three hours away and this group of people decided it was not the best use of time to have all 10 people take a whole day off to go and cash their pay cheques. So one person received the cheque and distributed it to the others and, by the way, this included court-ordered support to ex-wives, who got paid first.

They had it all figured out, but it wasn't a traditional way of doing things. There was a fix found, and it was quite a simple one. But that's not the point. The point is that there are so many lessons--for example, that time is as much a resource as money, and that you need to talk to people.

The next little section I'd like to talk about deals specifically with gender budgets and program data. To me, this is the biggest gap that exists now.

If you start with an objective like advancing gender equality or solving poverty, then you need to know whether programs are bringing you closer to that objective and how they could improve. Employment insurance is one example. I won't go into detail, but I think many people think that clearly this program has been going in the wrong direction recently. The women with low income who need it are now paying in, but their odds of getting anything out are slim. Nobody would buy a car insurance plan like that.

Similarly, mothers of newborns, who need income the most, have the greatest difficulty accessing maternity benefits and get the least out of them. The program works best for the elites like me who designed it.

EI, however, does do a relatively good job of reporting information, and this is in stark contrast to the personal income tax system, which is increasingly being used as a vehicle for social policy. There are some really good reasons for that, but we don't know a lot about the impacts of that, and they're not regularly published.

I think the taxfiler database is probably something that contains a wealth of information that Canadians should know about, which is quite underutilized. I think the Department of Finance, in particular, is unique in having the capacity to do extremely sophisticated, thorough gender analysis of exactly how some of these impacts work.

I would just very quickly draw the committee's attention to a National Council of Welfare publication, which is a report on the income tax system. It's from back in 1976, so it's really old. Nobody else has really done anything like this since.

I will skip the next little bit and leave it to questions. I was going to talk a bit about the background of women in Canada, and I will certainly entertain questions on that.

The point I would like to make about that publication is I think the greatest value of this compendium is that it helps fill in the detail behind key indicators in order to analyze what's happening. So you can have big indicators, but you need more detail. For many years, the only consistently reported gender equality indicator was the full-time, full-year wage gap. That's really inadequate to understanding the situation. You need to bring things together to look at women's fertility, labour force patterns, education, violence, unpaid work--all of those things.

On the little mini “women and men at a glance”, I don't know if you are aware or have seen this one, but the point of doing that when it was initiated at Status of Women Canada was to make sure that in between this major publication that comes out every five years a key set of indicators could be updated much more frequently for people to use readily.

On the economic gender equality indicators, again, I will talk at only a very surface level about this, but I think the point that's most important for this committee here is that in this FPT ministers' project, the conceptual framework of this document took far more time to develop than the technical data work. This is the way it should be, because the selection of any set of indicators is about values, and in this case the different jurisdictions did not come to a common framework easily. I have some examples here that I can give later if people have questions.

The final thing I would like to say is particularly about the unpaid work--though I don't like using that word and prefer the term non-market work--indicators that are there. They're a critical part of the value system that's really going to work for gender equality, recognizing that women do work of economic value that benefits others, but for which they currently receive little or no monetary compensation.

If Canadians and Canadian politicians decide not to continue to use an indicator like that or don't formalize it and regularize it more, then that's basically like saying that we, as Canadians, know that everybody needs money to live, but some women simply will not get enough money, and that's fine with us. I don't think many people in this room or anywhere else in Canada, when it is put that way, would say that's fine, but tragically our policies make it so.

Thank you.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you very much.

Moving on, from Status of Women Canada we have Suzanne Cooper.

[Suzanne Cooper, Research Analyst, Status of Women Canada]

I'd like to thank the committee for having me here today.

I'm a research analyst with Status of Women Canada and I am responsible for the gender equality indicator project, so I'll be providing you with a brief overview of the project as requested by the committee. I think you all have a deck to follow along with.

The Government of Canada has, as we have seen from our previous presenters, a wealth of statistics disaggregated by sex; however, we have discovered that there is a need to create a link between these sources of statistics and a development of a clear set of indicators. This development of a clear set of indicators really builds on the previous work, which was outlined by Sheila and Heather, on economic gender equality indicators and violence indicators put out by the FPT forum of ministers responsible for the Status of Women.

We see that gender equality indicators are being increasingly recognized as an important tool for establishing the state of equality between women and men, both nationally and internationally. We're also starting to see elements of these indicators in other countries. For example, Britain and Ireland have started preliminary work on the creation of gender equality indicator sets, and multinational organizations such as the United Nations and the Commonwealth have also started.

For decision-makers, gender equality indicators could be quite beneficial. They provide evidence for setting policy direction; for monitoring progress on equality for women and men; for taking corrective action; for communicating any progress to a wide variety of audiences, such as policy-makers and the general public; and they support federal GBA policy.

The purpose of the current gender equality indicator project is really to develop a policy tool that tracks the situation of women and men over time in certain key domains--which I'll review shortly--on an annual basis; to monitor key gaps in progress between women and men, and of course, diverse groups of women and men; as well as to provide data to conduct gender-based analysis. We often hear from other departments that they lack the ability to access gender disaggregated data, so this project will address some of those concerns.

We are currently in the preliminary stages of the gender equality indicator project. Status of Women Canada, as the lead on the project, does coordinate a working group that has representation from a number of different government departments. I've listed them here: Agriculture Canada, Citizenship and Immigration, Health, HRSDC, Indian and Northern Affairs, National Science and Engineering Research Council, Statistics Canada, and Treasury Board Secretariat.

The role of the working group is to finalize the draft domains and indicators and present them for approval to our interdepartmental committee on gender equality, who set up the working group; to provide ongoing support to the project and work collaboratively to identify gaps; to liaise with line departments to bring in relevant expertise, feedback, and support--and of course, that includes liaising with our own research and evaluation units to bring in that expertise to help us identify the types of resources and data available. As well, working group members advise on the overall design, measurement, and plan of the project.

The working group has a number of principles that have guided its work. For example, the indicators should be consistent with international reporting, and of course domestic priorities. A key for us was addressing the interrelationship of gender with diversity factors such as race, disability, age, all that kind of thing, as well as addressing data gaps--there may be a need, for example, to collect new data for particular groups. They need to be accessible to users--the policy-makers, the general public, for example. They need to be based on the frequency and availability of data, and provide, of course, data for trends over time--we're not interested in just a finite snapshot in time, but in trends--as well as be selected in key domains. This is basically a notion that less is more. We can't measure everything under the sun, so we have to focus on the areas where women are particularly lagging.

What I'm going to present to you very quickly are the domains we have identified. They are draft domains. If you have questions about them after, I can certainly answer them.

The first one is personal safety and security, which basically looks at improved physical and mental well-being of individuals, a reduced occurrence of violence, and an increased perception of safety. Elements to measure under this domain could be things like health and well-being--so health status, including mental and physical health--rates of violence between women and men--sexual abuse, physical abuse, that sort of thing--and access to justice in trafficking. Other elements to measure in terms of personal safety and security are things like housing and homelessness, not only affordability of housing but also accessibility to housing and shelters.

Another domain is economic security and prosperity. It's basically looking at gender differences in economic prosperity. Elements to measure here would be financial security, so income and earnings, the wage gap potentially, incidents of low income, among other things—as Sheila was saying, it's not exclusive. We would also look at the work in labour markets, so labour force participation; occupational segregation, the segregation of women into what are called pink collar jobs, such as teaching and nursing; unemployment, as well as underemployment; and also measuring things under learning, not only degree attainment as youth, but lifelong learning.

The third domain—and unfortunately Sheila won't like the terminology—is unpaid work. It's the equality of women and men in terms of unpaid work. Although unpaid household work is not an indicator of economic equality, it certainly will have an impact on economic variables. So that's why it was decided to have it as a domain in itself. And of course the elements to measure here are domestic work, such as housework; care work--not only in terms of the care of children, but also care of the elderly, as well as people with long-term disabilities--to illustrate how that can affect the sandwich generation, particularly women; and looking at the impact of unpaid work on labour and income. What are the negative economic consequences of care work for women and men?

The final domain is social-political engagement. What is the nature and level of women's and men's participation in civic activities and in decision-making? Some of the elements to measure here under social and civic participation are voting participation--how many women and men voted in the last municipal, provincial, and federal elections, for example--as well as looking at social networks: What kinds of groups are they involved in? What sorts of social clubs are they accessing? What is the size and composition, for example?

Finally, look at power and decision-making: what's the representation of women and men among elected officials; senior officials in the public service, such as ADMs and DMs; as well as CEOs in the private sector; and in academic institutions, not only presidents and vice-presidents, but also tenured versus non-tenured faculty?

So those are, in a nutshell, the draft domains and indicators. They're bigger than what is probably presented here.

I do want to highlight the crosscut issues and that this project has really focused on the importance of including disaggregated information by diversity factors, particularly because we know that certain groups of women are particularly vulnerable to the effect of inequality.

In terms of next steps for the project--as I've indicated, it is very preliminary, as we just started convening the working group in September—we will finalize the draft domains and indicators in 2008. There will be a verification of these domains and indicators with key stakeholders, and of course that would include this committee as well. We would build on the input to identify specific data to populate the indicators once they're finalized and identify the forum and format indicators. Will they be one publication? Will they be concept papers? Will they be web-based? I hope selected indicators will be available in 2008-09.

That's a brief overview. I'll stop there, and I'm open to any questions the committee might have.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you very much.

We've heard from all our presenters. I thank you very much for keeping your presentations within the timeframe. That does open up more time for questions and answers.

We will go to round one, for seven minutes.

Ms. Minna.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Welcome, all of you, today. This is great.

I have to say I feel as if I've come full circle, to some degree. We started out looking down this road some time ago and talked to a lot of different departments, talked to the Department of Finance, talked to different people, then we had experts come in, and here we are. And it's amazing, because some of the information we got from some of the officials, especially the Department of Finance, is that they don't have enough data. And of course our experts told us we had lots of data, and they said to look at Stats Canada. Thank you for coming. You've got tons of information. Obviously, Status of Women Canada has commissioned you to do some good research and so have other people. And then I hear from Madam Regehr, who has a wealth of information of how to pull it all together, what kinds of indicators to look for, what kinds of things to do, and so on.

To Stats Canada, have you been involved in training and working with anyone at the Department of Finance so they can pull together a good and proper gender budgeting analysis pre- or post-budget in the last, I don't know...ever? I'm not trying to be facetious, but since you have such a wealth of information, I'd like to know. That's my first question.

[Heather Dryburgh]

I'm not aware of any specific training initiatives. It would likely fall more to Status of Women Canada.

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

It would default over, okay.

[Heather Dryburgh]

I would think so. I think they're more involved in the training on gender-based analysis.

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

But I'm bringing in another piece, because I think Ms. Regehr mentioned the text-filer database that only the Department of Finance would have access to. Am I correct about that?

[Heather Dryburgh]

No.