Thank you for inviting me. I'm just going to make four points, and my colleague has already made at least two of them.
The first point I want to make is that the inequality in the labour force is totally reflected in CPP/QPP, in RPPs, and RRSPs, and in savings, and until such time as that issue is addressed, probably in labour market policy, there will continue to be a gap between men's and women's pensions.
I would also add that one of the factors we have to keep thinking about is that women still have babies. Yes, women have the child dropout clause, but what the most recent research is showing is that when women come back into the labour force, they do not get back into the same job they had. They are further down on the ladder when they come back. Oftentimes, they may come back just part time because that's the only kind of work they can get. It's not always guaranteed.
The second point I want to make is a rather important point, and that is on the decline in the prevalence and stability of marriage, and that is to say that marriage rates are down and divorce rates are up. Single, female-led families are on the rise. There is a huge increase in cohabitation and common-law relationships. All of this translates into women not having the legal and fiscal protection of marriage, which they have had for some time.
There is a very large change, and this is being reflected even in the first wave of baby boom women. The problem with this is, as they say in academia, that women are always one man away from poverty. This is quite true, when I go to my third point, which is.... We've talked about unattached women. I would like to say that unattached women--you refer to them as single women--make up 38% of the older population over age 65. It's 38%, and 14% of them live in poverty.
Who is carrying the burden of this poverty is an interesting question. When we break down the categories, there are single women, there are widowed women, there are divorced women, and there are separated women. The women who are carrying the burden of poverty in this country are the divorced and separated women.
If I just give you one quick example, if you take divorced women and put them in the male bottom quintile, which would be 20% for men, 43% of divorced women have the same salary, so it gives you some idea.
I want to also add to that women from visible minorities and aboriginal women. Aboriginal women are the most dependent on our public pension system in this country and they are the poorest of the poor of the poor. The visible minority women are the second poorest of the poor, with a rate of about 25% who live below LICO.
The fourth point I want to make is about caregiving. Women are double caregivers, and they are serial caregivers. In other words, one in five baby boom women are caregiving, just for starters--five million people. The problem is that 17% of them are what we call the famous “sandwich generation”. When that's over, then they serially go on to look after their husband's parents, their husband, and so on and so forth. The caregiving issue never ends. It's not quite as short and small as we think it is.
There's a huge issue attached to this that nobody has even thought about, and that point is, what happens when the caregiving is over? What the latest research is showing, in the U.S., in Canada, in OECD countries, is that through the caregiving process, women are forced into early retirement, and it's retirement by stealth because they don't think they're going to retire. So what happens is when the caregiving is over, which could be up to 10 years, they then try to go back into the labour force. Their human capital has deteriorated, they have wasted or used all their savings to live, and they can barely afford to even go out to look for a job. Then they face age discrimination because they're an older worker, and who wants an older worker?
I would say we need to look at pensions to cover, maybe not the first point, because I think it's a labour market issue, but the other points. I think we need to look at doing something about the allowance for women who are divorced and separated. I think we need to look at the sponsorship agreement and make some changes for older women there. I'm thinking of expanding GIS, but I won't say any more.
Is that it?