Status of Women Committee on Dec. 5th, 2007

[Lissa Donner]

Can I answer? You have to start in-house. You start with your own budgetary initiatives, as I think my colleagues on the panel have said. That would mean starting with cleaning up your own house, and being clear, when as parliamentarians you vote to support or to oppose budgetary initiatives, that you do so in the full knowledge of how those will or will not differentially impact your constituents who are men and women.

You ought to know. When you vote to support a government motion or a private member's bill, do you not want to know how that will benefit or not benefit the women and men of your constituency?

I would suggest that you should ask yourselves, and demand answers to, this question: will this increase inequality or increase equality among the men and women who live in my riding? I would suggest that's part of your job as a member of Parliament. You're there to represent all of your constituents, women and men, so that's part of the information you need to make informed decisions. I would say, to use some business lingo, that it's part of your due diligence as members of Parliament.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Okay. You have a minute and a half left.

Madam Grewal, do you have a comment?

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

According to Professor John Bartle of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, for gender budgeting to succeed there must be buy-in by both government and society at large, so it isn't enough to have just the support of stakeholders. With that in mind, is the climate ripe now in Canada for gender budgeting?

[Armine Yalnizyan]

I'd like to remind you that I have submitted a five-page document, which I hope will be translated for the members of this committee. The four things I have mentioned--affordable housing, affordable post-secondary education, affordable child care, and raising the minimum wage--are not gender-specific initiatives, and they are supported by between 80% and 90% of Canadians in every region of the country and following every path of political persuasion. If you were to do something in any or all of those areas, you would see a material difference in the lives of women.

I completely agree with what Lissa said, but if you were to move forward on child care, who is the beneficiary of that, the man or the woman in the household--or both? You know it makes a difference in the lives of women, because we're the ones who are trying to make ends meet financially, we're trying to make sure our kids are well taken care of, and there aren't enough spaces for us to feel comfortable that they're being well taken care of at a price we can afford.

Those four things, Madam Grewal, are in fact not gender-specific, yet they completely intersect with the women's agenda for achieving greater equality. I believe we are ready for that in this country.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you very much for your answer.

We have a few minutes left. If you wish to go for three minutes, we can.

Madam Minna, would you like to start, please?

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

Thank you. Actually, I might want to go back to the question I asked earlier; there wasn't an opportunity to get an answer to it.

Obviously, I personally agree with all that has been said with respect to housing, child care, minimum wage, and all the things we need to get done. I also know there are a lot of tax expenditures in our country. Maybe one of the ways we can start trying out our gender-based analysis would be to start reviewing the tax expenditures.

I am wondering whether there are specific ones that you would recommend. I haven't looked at them yet. We've asked for a copy. The last time I saw them was 1994 or 1995, but I'll take a look at them again. Are there specific ones, apart from the obvious ones, child care and housing, the ones that we know are needed and are of major impact?

[Armine Yalnizyan]

We know there are some tax expenditures that are on the personal side, but much of the tax expenditure package is on the corporate side. When you talk about reviewing tax expenditures, I presume you are referring to the personal income tax side of the equation, in which case we know that the biggest line item is the RRSP deduction, and we know that it....

I want to echo what Lissa was saying. Women and men are not two big, monolithic blocs. The biggest difference between women and men, foreign-born and Canadian born and all the rest of it, is the difference between rich and poor, which is growing dramatically.

Both tax policies and spending policies have reinforced this divide in society between rich and poor. If you are going to look at tax expenditures, particularly on the personal income tax side, I would highly recommend that you take a look at who benefits from those. Who benefits from the RRSPs? Who benefits from the RESP? We match dollar for dollar the savings of those who can afford to put aside money for their kids, but we know that the biggest thing that is happening to poor families is that they can't save. They are spending most of their money on the basics.

If you want to do something for post-secondary education, that would be an obvious place to go to re-examine our tax expenditure on this item.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you.

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

Do I have time left?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

You have 25 seconds.

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

That's okay.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

We'll move, then, to Madame Boucher for three minutes.

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

I'd like you to provide us with a list of indicators and information that is important for the budget analysis process promoting gender equality.

Can one of you three answer me?

[Lissa Donner]

Not off the top of my head; I'm sorry. A list of indicators of...? What are you interested in measuring?

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

A list.

[Lissa Donner]

Indicators measure change over time or indicators measure differences between and among groups. What are you interested in measuring? If I understood that more, I could perhaps do a better job of answering the question.

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

When you want to prepare a gender budget, you define an indicator between men and women; the needs of men and women are different. Everyone knows that; we are all different. I want to know whether you have any indicators. When you prepare a gender budget, you attach importance to women in order to make a difference. What are the most important indicators in establishing a gender budget?

[Armine Yalnizyan]

Let me just refer you back to the fact that Canada has a platform for action that it wrote in 1995 and has not yet acted on. If you take a look at that platform for action, there are indicators there. You don't have to start from scratch.

You can determine which of those indicators.... Any of them will do, whether you're looking at the differential in pay between men and women, looking at the issue of core housing need, access to legal supports. There are a thousand different indicators embedded in that document. You can pick and choose where you would like to start.

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

All right. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Professor Sharp, did you want to add to that? Professor Sharp?

I think we may have lost our connection.

Did you have anything else, Madame Boucher?

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

No.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Okay. Then we will move for three minutes to Madame Deschamps, please.

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

As regards indicators, I could suggest that you go and see what's being done in Quebec. I think Quebec can serve as a model for the introduction of child care services and access to legal aid, in particular. Quebec has made major progress and listens closely to women's groups. Social development is a real concern for it. What is slowing it down today, and my colleague Christiane Gagnon criticized this earlier, are the financial resources required to put in place measures designed to preserve that equality or to improve the situation.

I find it somewhat unfortunate that we're dealing with a government that will probably rack up a surplus in the order of $13 billion for the fiscal year ending in March. Would associations like yours be closely listened to by the Minister of Finance, since he must currently be consulting all of Canada in order to polish up the next budget that will be presented to us in March?

I think he should be listening closely to everything being said today. He should attach priority to the comments by your associations.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

We have less than a minute left for a response.

[Armine Yalnizyan]

What she's doing and what I'm doing is on a voluntary basis. There's no money for doing what we do. So if you want us to participate in pre-budgetary policies and whatnot, there are just no avenues. I pulled this thing together in the last 24 hours. This should not be the way civil society is engaging on these discussions.

So there's the answer to your question. There's no support to NGOs for important work.