Status of Women Committee on April 17th, 2008

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Sure.

[Sheila Regehr]

One of the interesting things I did when I came on as director was that I asked people at Statistics Canada—not Heather's group, but another group—to come to talk to me about everything that's available, everything that I could possibly use. Then we'd sit down and see.

I think that's something that maybe the Department of Finance could consider doing as well. Maybe there are some areas where they're not aware of data; maybe that would be a useful place to start.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Okay, thank you.

We will now go to Mr. Stanton, for seven minutes, please.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning to all the witnesses. Thank you for coming to join us.

I have one quick question here for Madam Dryburgh. We have this little quick snapshot, Women and Men in Canada: A Statistical Glance, from 2003. Do you still do this?

I think it's a Statistics Canada publication, or maybe it's a project.

[Heather Dryburgh]

It's a collaboration, I think.

[Suzanne Cooper]

Yes, it's a collaboration between Status of Women Canada and Statistics Canada. It's actually the one Sheila was referring to, which falls between the larger documents.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Do we still do this, then?

[Suzanne Cooper]

We've not had an update since 2003. Whether it will be part of the new indicator project is probably something up for further discussion, actually.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Okay, it's very good. I just wanted to pass that along.

To Status of Women Canada, one of the topics that seems to run into some conflict is that we've heard two different scenarios from the departments through the course of our work on gender-based analysis, and gender budgeting in particular. On the one hand, there is the sense that Canada is lagging behind with regard to some UN and international indicators and, on the other hand, we see, even by your own reports to the committee—and I must say this is backed up by some departments as well—that we've in fact made some gains, not only structurally and internally within the departments, but also in terms of your organization even, Status of Women Canada, being sought out by other countries to help them with their development of gender-based considerations in their own governance.

So could you comment on this apparent disconnect?

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

Yes, I'll do it from the perspective of gender-based analysis processes, and Suzanne may want to add to that from the standpoint of indicators, perhaps, if it's of interest.

This tiraillement, this pulling of the blanket—I'm trying to find the right word in English—has been historical and has been with us for many years. I think it's the difference between the notion, carried by a lot of non-governmental organizations, I would say—people from outside the government—who think that gender-based analysis is not a valid tool because it does a comparison between men and women.... I think the groups would rather see a woman-specific tool used in practice, looking solely at the situation of women and not doing any kind of comparison work.

The premise for us, and for many countries around the world—and you're right, we have countries that come to Status of Women Canada practically on a weekly basis to ask for help on their governance structure—is to take the approach of integration into the policy development process, so that the responsibility to consider gender in all policy development and policies is not just the responsibility of a specific group inside government or inside a department, but of policy makers, and it is in all areas of government business, including decision making.

I think some groups would rather have this done more from what they would call an integrated feminist framework, one in which there's a premise.... I'll take an example. I once heard something like if women make up 52% of the population, they should therefore have 52% of the resources out of the budget. They would have premises and then build the process to achieve the premise. This is not something that is conducive to government making.

Perhaps when I retire, I'll switch sides, but I don't think so. My long term in the public service has shown me that when your average policy analyst, who may never have heard of gender, may never have heard or thought that what he or she is about to develop will have a negative impact on women, changes that behaviour, we've reached a result there. In this, Canada is the envy of the world.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

If I have some time left, Madam Chair, I'll give it over to Madam Grewal for a question.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

You have two minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, let me thank all of you for all the wonderful work you're doing in your area.

I recall from our committee's previous work on gender-based analysis that Statistics Canada is world-renowned for its work in the area of gender statistics, particularly in the area of unpaid work. I offer my congratulations to Statistics Canada.

What sort of resources and human resources does Statistics Canada devote to the completion of gender statistics? Are they sufficient, do you think?

[Heather Dryburgh]

As I mentioned in my presentation, we don't have a gender unit at Statistics Canada. First of all, all projects have some commitment to collecting information on gender, so it's rather hard to measure in terms of the amount of resources.

There are person-days devoted to particular projects; we are represented on the UNECE committee and the UN committee for gender statistics; we're involved in task forces for gender databases in both of those organizations; we have a member on the committee who's developing the new indicators; and we devote certain resources to cost-recovery projects. As I mentioned, a lot of the time our base-funded projects are those for which we have longstanding legal obligations to provide data, and then we have a lot of other things we would like to do, obviously, and we work in collaboration. We devote resources to those partnerships as we have cost-recovery funds coming in.

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

In your opinion—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

You have just ten seconds left, Mrs. Grewal.

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

I think I'll take ten seconds in my next time. I don't want to waste them.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

We'll move along, then, to Ms. Mathyssen, please, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much. I think the information we've received here today is going to be very useful to our study, and I'm very glad you're here.

I want to start with Ms. Regehr. You talked about persistent inequality and persistent poverty having to do with governance and policy, and that we need leadership, resources, and a measurement of results to really make a difference in addressing those issues.

You went on to talk about programs and policies. We've heard that tax cuts, for example, don't benefit women; women benefit from programs, spending, and initiatives. You said that employment insurance has failed women most in need, as far as maternity leave. We've heard this over and over again.

What would you do to change employment insurance to make it a functional kind of program?

[Sheila Regehr]

I'm not the expert on employment insurance. The council's position is that it's something that really needs to be fixed. I would also mention, just to substantiate your view on this, that when we did a major online questionnaire about poverty and insecurity in 2006, we got tremendous individual and organizational response. We asked people about programs that were important and how well they thought they were working. The top two that were considered most important and most broken were social assistance and employment insurance. So I think most people consider that employment insurance worked much better in the past. Obviously the lesson there is to go back to see what worked in the past.

I also know that particularly around maternity and parental benefits there are many organizations of women on the ground who live these situations, and they have made some very practical kinds of recommendations. Some of them are not even going to cost that much. There's so much out there to look at; it just takes the commitment to do it.

On what Hélène was talking about--the business of GBA and the integrated feminist framework--to be really blunt about this whole thing, the problem is that there are no clear objectives. There is no clear vision. When departments go into an analysis, it's not clear what they're expected to come out with, and that's a political thing. There has to be a general consensus that we're aiming toward something, and that's the only way you can hold people accountable for getting there. The analysis is a tool.

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

You also mentioned a 1977 document that the national council produced on income tax. I was quite intrigued by what might be in that report. Is there anything in there the committee should know about, in terms of what we're talking about?

[Sheila Regehr]

I think the most important thing is that this information is really outdated. It was done by Neil Brooks, who is a real tax expert. To my knowledge, nothing like that has been done since by government or others outside government. I think there are pieces of it, but to us this is one of those governance accountability and transparency issues.

It makes the point that there are so many income tax credits and deductions and things that go out for so many different things. If governments over time generally put these out as direct programs and said “You're low-income, and under this program you're going to get $5; and you have a higher income, so we're going to give you $50”, people would say that's crazy; you can't do that. But in the tax system those kinds of things happen all the time.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

You have two minutes left.

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

I was quite interested as well in the discussion about women's unpaid work. I noted in the deck that there is a draft domains and indicators section that addresses this issue about unpaid work, and the work that women do isn't put into the mix. It isn't valued.

One of the big issues we will need to grapple with is how you compensate for this unpaid work. We know it has tremendous value in terms of billions of dollars in our economy. How do we measure it accurately, and how do we set about to compensate women so there is a recognition of what they do and what they contribute, and a way, I suppose, of providing them with better economic security than has been the reality up to now?

[Heather Dryburgh]

I can't answer how we compensate for it, but I can tell you how it has been measured.

National accounts has a satellite account for unpaid work. They use time-use data: they calculate the amount of time spent in unpaid work and they have a method for giving it value. That's how it's calculated in Canada. The last time-use data were released in 2005. I don't believe funding was put into that project at the time, so we didn't do a formal satellite account project for the valuation of unpaid work.

We have also added questions to the census. There are questions in the census on unpaid work, so that's another source of information.

How to compensate for it is beyond Statistics Canada's mandate.