Status of Women Committee on March 10th, 2009

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

I would be entitled to something else.

[Louis Beauséjour]

Exactly. Employment insurance offers up to 15 weeks of benefits to people who are sick. There are other reasons, such as when a person joins his or her spouse who has been relocated. Similarly, someone who is harassed on the job and who can prove it could be eligible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Mathyssen.

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

Thank you, Madame Chair.

I want to thank you for coming.

I have a number of questions. I want you to understand that I have no wish to shoot the messenger, but I'm very concerned about some of the policies I've seen in place. I know you don't make policy, but I'm very concerned and I'm going to pursue my questioning in terms of the policies in place.

Ms. Davidson referred to the action plan. We haven't seen the action plan. Have you seen the action plan we've been promised with regard to Status of Women Canada?

[Paul Thompson]

I'm sorry, our reference was to Budget 2009, Canada's economic action plan.

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

Oh, okay.

You also talked about the panel, the task force that's been established with regard to extending EI to the self-employed. What is the status of that panel? Where are they in terms of their recommendations? When can we expect to see the recommendations in place?

[Paul Thompson]

The intention to create the panel was announced in the budget. There has not yet been a further announcement on the composition of that panel or the timelines. That announcement will be coming in the not too distant future.

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

I think we do need that.

You made reference to this discrepancy in regard to the access to employment insurance benefits. In the information you provided you said that 97% of women working full-time qualify for special benefits. One of the really significant problems we have here is the fact that women's lives are very often chaotic. They're caregivers, raising children, sometimes they're victims of abuse, and sometimes they're providing support to elderly parents. They're part-time workers, contract workers, so they're falling between the cracks; they are not benefiting.

You also mentioned the supplementary incomes that are available. On page 110 of the budget, the specific reference was to the Canada child tax benefit, and I think this page also refers to the national child benefit supplement. Families making less than $20,000 receive nothing in 2009, nothing additional in regard to these benefits--nothing. It would seem that these are the very people who are most negatively impacted by some of the other statistics that we have here.

For example, reference was made to the fact that benefits are proportional: if you work full-time you're going to get more than if you worked part-time--if you qualify at all for benefits. But we see here, in a chart that was provided by Mr. Shillington, or one of the groups we saw last week, that actual benefits in terms of hard dollars and cents have actually declined over the years. The peak was in about 1994, but they have actually declined, despite the fact that the cost of living goes up, the cost of educating our kids goes up.

All of these discrepancies are very, very troubling. I'm wondering, do you look at these hard figures instead of looking at percentages, and how do you get out of really analyzing.... Do you look at the fact that the real amounts have actually gone down, and the fact that part-timers and women on contract are negatively impacted by the current public policy? I know that's a hard question.

[Paul Thompson]

We certainly look at a number of issues. I haven't had the opportunity to look at the presentation you're referring to, but with access to employment insurance for part-time workers, as noted in the remarks, it depends on the region you live in. So there are some regions with a lower entry requirement, and it could be as little as eight hours per week over the course of a year. In an area of very high unemployment, eight hours per week for a year would ensure access to EI. That goes up to about 14 weeks in the areas of lowest unemployment. So that's the range of hours required to get into the EI program. And as noted, it's one of the fundamental principles of EI that the benefit you're entitled to is based on the income you've earned during that employment, since it's insuring the actual earnings you had. So the benefit level tracks the actual amount of earnings you had.

I would note that there is a built-in feature that raises the level of benefit, though. The maximum insurable earnings increases on an annual basis, which is the basis on which benefits are established, and it's gone up. It was $39,000 and it's now in the $42,000 range. That's the amount of earnings that are considered insurable, and the benefits grow in accordance with that level.

These are the types of issues we look at pretty closely.

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

Do you have statistics on EI eligibility for aboriginal, immigrant, or disabled women?

[Louis Beauséjour]

No. The information we have in terms of trying to figure out the eligibility is based on the surveys done by Statistics Canada, and we don't have all the details. We can sometimes get some details by province, and over time we can break it down by gender. The sample size is small, and I don't remember seeing any statistics that indicate whether they are immigrants or not. I don't remember seeing that.

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

Would that be helpful, inasmuch as these are the very people who are most vulnerable, the very people we should be concerned about providing income support to? Would that make sense to have those stats, that information?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

This will be your last question, Ms. Mathyssen.

[Paul Thompson]

That would be a question of whether Statistics Canada is able to collect that information, the costs associated with it, and the sample size needed to do that. I'm not really in a position to answer whether it's possible to gather that information.

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

I meant would that be helpful information in terms of developing the kind of policy.... Clearly HRSDC wants to provide something that works, that meets the needs of people. We're talking about real people; we're not talking about statistics.

[Paul Thompson]

Certainly that would be helpful information; I just don't know the complexity associated with gathering it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Mr. Thompson.

I would like to ask the witnesses a simple question.

We heard from Statistics Canada that they could collect particular data, such as the data Ms. Mathyssen and Ms. Neville mentioned, but that they aren't asked to collect that data. I think what this committee is trying to get to the nub of is that you cannot do good gender-based analysis if you don't have disaggregated data, not merely between men and women, but if we're talking about women, let's say, women by region, women by employability, self-employability, etc. I think because women have children or because women have children and an elderly parent they may not be able to work more than part-time, and they don't ever qualify. They're always behind the eight ball, because by the very nature of being a woman they often meet these challenges.

It might be helpful if some of that information could be collected. It would help to look at, for instance, in the case of weeks of work or hours of work, which one would be the better way to judge and whether there should be a built-in ability to deal with that difference.

I think we would like to leave you with the concept of that data that isn't there. We cannot answer some of the questions because the data isn't there. Maybe the collecting of that data might be very interesting, if you can do that in the future.

Thank you very much for coming.

We'll suspend for a minute or two.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Perhaps we should begin.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

The time passed so quickly, but I had some questions I would have liked to ask. May I submit them in written form?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes, you can.

Now, I want to welcome Lucya Spencer, who is the executive director of Immigrant Women Services Ottawa, but used to be the executive director for the National Organization of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women of Canada. She has a huge wealth of information.

And we have now an individual who is going to share personal experiences with us. This is Athina Ngjelina—is that the right pronunciation?

[Athina Ngjelina, As an Individual]

Yes, it is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

You each have ten minutes, and then we'll open it up for questions. If you could do it in under ten minutes, we would be very pleased, but you have ten minutes.

We'll start with Ms. Spencer.

[Lucya Spencer, Executive Director, Immigrant Women Services Ottawa, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants]

Thank you very much, Honourable Hedy Fry.

I have one small correction. I was the president of the National Organization of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women of Canada—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Not the executive director.

[Lucya Spencer]

—and not the executive director.