Status of Women Committee on May 26th, 2010

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I will call the meeting to order, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the study of Status of Women Canada's funding decisions.

On April 28 the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women adopted the following motion to study Status of Women Canada's funding. The motion reads:

That the Committee hold a special meeting to examine the manner in which funding is distributed by Status of Women Canada, and in particular, examine the apparent denial of funding to previous Status of Women Canada grant recipients in the 2009 call for submissions; and invite the current and former Ministers of State for the Status of Women, the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, Womanspace Resource Centre, the Pay Equity Coalition, Conseil d'intervention pour l'accès des femmes au travail, and any other witnesses that the committee wishes to invite.

The meeting is therefore to listen to these groups and to what they have to say with regard to funding. I will give each group 10 minutes. I will let you know two minutes before the 10 minutes as to whether you have two minutes left or not. It would be lovely if you didn't have to take all 10 minutes, but we'll give you 10, and then we will go into a question and answer session.

I will begin with the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women.

[Jane Stinson, Coordinator for the FemNorthNet Project, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women]

Thank you very much.

My name is Jane Stinson. Thanks for calling us to appear before you as part of your investigation into why so many long-time women's and feminist organizations, including our own, were denied funding this year by Status of Women Canada.

CRIAW stands for the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, ou en français, ICREF, l'Institut canadien de recherches sur les femmes. It began in 1977 to provide a forum for feminist research geared to advancing women's equality. It aimed to produce evidence that would establish just how and where changes needed to be made. Maybe this is called advocacy, but it is also part of our original mandate. CRIAW also sought to bridge the gap or link the research capacity in universities with activists working directly in the community to bring about lasting changes.

For CRIAW, as with many other mature feminist organizations that have been around for over 30 years now, the Status of Women Canada was integral and vital in giving birth to our organization and others. In a special publication on the 20th anniversary of CRIAW, the president at that time noted that had it not been for the financial support of Status of Women Canada over the years, CRIAW undoubtedly would not exist.

So part of our question is, if Status of Women Canada was so important for the creation and establishment of this national, bilingual, unique feminist organization in Canada, why is it that Status of Women Canada is killing us now? Why did the Minister for the Status of Women this year decide to deny project funding for the first time to so many long-standing feminist organizations? As you know, for some this was a death blow. It occurred because for the past four years we have been feeling the starvation from the changes to the mandate of Status of Women and the funding criteria. I'd argue the starvation actually began even earlier. I believe it was in the mid-nineties when core funding was removed for women's organizations and feminist organizations.

The recent decisions are definitely a problem. They were the coup de grâce for some organizations. But the problems are much deeper. Minister Ambrose recently said in a television interview that Status of Women Canada chose to fund newer women's groups rather than older ones, but the significance of these decisions runs much deeper than a choice between new and old. It's part of the mounting evidence that this government does not seem interested in funding programs for women's equality or in funding feminist organizations with a track record of advocacy.

If the problem is one of needing to choose between different organizations, each with laudable projects, then there's not enough money going into the program. More money should go in if the problem is that there are far too many groups applying than money available.

We believe these decisions are more than just choosing new versus old. They're part of the Harper government's policies and actions of systematically killing the women's movement, the feminist movement, in this country and stifling some important voices, especially for the poor and marginalized women in this country. This is the effect of what is happening. Whether or not it's intended, this is the effect.

I'd like to talk a little bit about why it's important to change the funding criteria, to go back and really re-examine it. It's not simply a matter of providing funding to certain groups that were denied. That's important, but it doesn't go far enough. Research and advocacy are important for governments to fund. Research is about discovering new knowledge, new insights, and new perspectives. What feminist research has shown is that the reality for women is often different than that for men. As feminist research has deepened and expanded over the years, it also points out that the reality for different groups of women can be very different. So this nuanced research is important to provide new knowledge and new perspectives where action is needed.

Advocacy also really speaks to, often, lasting and systemic changes. Part of the problem right now with what's going on with Status of Women Canada only funding projects that provide direct services to numbers of women is that it results in band-aid solutions. It doesn't allow for projects that get at deeper, underlying, and systemic change.

Some people will ask, “Why should governments fund advocacy organizations?” They say, “Isn't that about funding groups to criticize government?” But that's missing the point of what advocacy is about. Advocacy calls for solutions to address problems and bring about changes. It just so happens that governments are really key players in that, so governments will often be the target of advocacy because they're important in bringing about change.

I'll just wrap up with a few concluding remarks.

CRIAW was very shocked that our particular project this time was turned down. This was unprecedented. We've never before had a project denied by Status of Women Canada. We certainly changed the nature of our projects to correspond with the new funding criteria. We worked closely with our project officer to try to ensure that what we were submitting would be appropriate and suitable for funding. There was never any indication that what we were doing was problematic. When we learned that other long-term feminist organizations had been denied funding, we became concerned that this was a pattern and that it required deeper investigation.

So we really urge this committee to do so. I hope you can go deeper than this discussion tonight with us. We hope you can delve into and clarify the questions about why long-standing feminist organizations were denied funding this time for the first time ever. Who was funded by Status of Women Canada? I see that they've published the list, but equally important, who was turned down? What kinds of projects are being funded by Status of Women Canada? That is maybe the most important thing to look at, to really fundamentally question and examine what the mandate of Status of Women Canada should be, because it has been so important for feminist organizations in this country. It appears that it now wishes to kill us off, certainly not to provide any stable funding that would help us grow and be strengthened.

We would like you, please, to call on the government and press this government to change its funding criteria for Status of Women Canada so that it will provide funding for research and advocacy, as it did previously and even before that, to establish core funding again for women's organizations and feminist organizations seeking to advance equality for women, especially the most marginalized. Further, we would really hope that you will call on and press this government to strengthen the mandate of Status of Women Canada so that it will establish programs to foster a vibrant and diverse feminist movement across the country. Part of this would be reopening regional Status of Women committee offices and hiring staff again so that they can work on implementing a renewed and strengthened mandate.

Those are my remarks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

That was very good.

Now I'll call on the Conseil d'intervention pour l'accès des femmes au travail. Ms. Beeman.

[Jennifer Beeman, Coordinator, Employment Equity Portfolio and Male-Dominated Occupations, Conseil d'intervention pour l'accès des femmes au travail]

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

Thank you for giving us this opportunity to discuss the funding decisions of Status of Women Canada's women's program.

The decisions on what the federal government chooses to fund or refuses to fund are highly significant. They enable groups that have been established through the volunteer efforts of committed members to carry out work judged essential by a community of people. Conversely, they can prevent a mobilized community from carrying out essential work. These decisions reflect the priorities of the government, but more than that, they put the government's priorities into practice.

There are no completely objective funding decisions. The government can support or hinder the work of women's groups across Canada. The government has a myriad of means by which it can help or hinder those groups.

The changes to the women's program since 2006 all hinder the ability of women's groups across Canada from improving the status of Canadian women. The changes are well known: the refusal to fund women's rights advocacy; the requirement to offer direct services with measurable results that are very narrowly defined to women in the community; the requirement of complementary funding from other partners; no fixed date for funding applications, whereby applications can't be planned for and prepared ahead of time; no fixed date for announcing funding decisions, so that despite the fact that the group had to line up committed partners, the group can't plan and is stymied in its ability to move forward; application forms that are written in the most abstruse technocratic jargon ever devised—I've been in research for a long time and have seen a lot of funding forms—opening the funding to all groups, women's only or mixed, private or public, so that the fund is flooded with applications; and the closing of offices, so that the agents are again overwhelmed with work.

No one can be against offering services to women. The needs are great for services of all kinds for many disadvantaged populations across Canada, but by offering only services, the essential work of creating structural changes that concretely improve the status of women is left unfunded.

Some concrete examples of women's rights advocacy that have led to structural changes include, for example, the court cases brought by Action travail des femmes, a Montreal group that was denied funding and is going to have to close. They brought groundbreaking cases against CN that established what systemic discrimination against women is. CN was ordered to hire, and 25% of new hires in blue-collar jobs had to be women. It was a landmark case.

Action travail des femmes brought the case against the STCUM, the Montreal transit corporation that was found guilty of sexual discrimination. If you now take the metro or a bus in Montreal, women and people of visible minorities are in positions at every level. It is because the doors were forced open by determined women's groups and their fight led to structural change. The diversity of the STM should be the norm in our society, but it's unfortunately not. It's far from the case. Women's groups have to continue to fight for access to good traditional male jobs.

Other examples are the Ontario and Quebec pay equity laws that led to structural changes in wages for workers in primarily female occupations.

In Quebec these improvements can be seen in the statistics on women's wages. The Quebec day care system dramatically increased. It was fought for by women's groups and unions. It dramatically increased the labour market participation of women aged 25 to 45. We now have one of the highest labour market participation rates in Canada for women aged 25 to 45 with children. This represents a major increase in women's economic autonomy and equality, as well as a profound social change.

In other fields, be it fighting violence against women, fighting women's poverty and homelessness, or groups that work to increase the participation of women in politics, all of these groups fight for structural change, in addition to empowering women individually.

In the case of our funding proposal to the women's program, the CIAFT has long received funding, but in 2003 we received funding to develop a training session for non-unionized workers on their right to pay equity. This training session has been so successful that the Quebec pay equity commission has a contract with the CIAFT to continue to offer this session to non-unionized workers. We've had this for the past five years.

In 2006 the CIAFT received funding from Status of Women to develop tools on balancing family and work. We continue to use those tools to date.

The money invested in our groups, because we do long-term work, is well invested and continues to bring changes for women.

In 2009 we submitted a proposal for one of our most important projects to date. We've been working on a province-wide strategy to improve women's access to and maintenance in male-dominated jobs and sectors. We submitted an extensive proposal to develop a training session for women entering male jobs on their rights, how best to defend themselves, and strategies if they get into difficult situations. We also propose to follow a cohort of women who integrate predominantly male workplaces, with the goal of analyzing what facilitates their integration and developing strategies for employers to better integrate women.

This proposal is essential, because while educated women have seen great improvements in their employment situations, women without university diplomas have much greater wage gaps compared to men of the same educational level. They have lower rates of unionization and are often condemned to low-wage, precarious work. Access to blue-collar jobs can represent a major change in their economic and professional status.

Ironically, this committee invited us to present the project we are undertaking--fortunately we have funding from Emploi-Québec--that the Status of Women refused to fund. So you invited us to present a project that Status of Women deemed unworthy.

We need to empower women entering these fields, but our work is much more than that. We work at every level--with women, employers, and all labour market partners--and that includes issues of policy.

What the Status of Women choose to fund is an essential question. They represent what are important to this government, and from the changes made to the women's program it would appear that women's rights are just not important.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

We will move now to the New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity.

Ms. Perron.

[Johanne Perron, Executive Director, New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity]

Madam Chair, members of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the situation of the New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity.

The coalition is a bilingual non-profit organization that promotes pay equity legislation in both public and private sectors. We are involved mainly at the provincial level, but sometimes also at the federal level. We have 81 member organizations and 700 individual members. Our organization was founded in 1998. While our history is shorter than that of our sister organizations, we have still been in existence for 12 years. We receive no core funding from any government. Status of Women Canada is our main source of funding and, according to our files, we have completed seven projects in partnership with this agency since our foundation.

We submitted our last funding request in September 2009. Our project aimed to encourage 4,000 women to participate more fully in democratic and economic life. We were particularly focusing on young women aged 16 and older, immigrant women, first nations women and women who work in a variety of environments. The project would have produced information in both official languages for distribution through working sessions, theatrical presentations, the Internet, etc. on the structure of the labour market, discrimination in the workplace, and the tools available to improve women's salary conditions.

This project would also have strengthened a network of 80 women from 8 groups across the province by providing workshops and leadership tools—education, media, networking—and facilitating the exchange of best practices in English and French. We learned on April 9, 2010 that we would not have funding for this project. The reason given was that many proposals had been submitted and there was not enough money to provide funding for all of them. We understand that resources are limited, but that does not explain why our proposal was refused. We believe that our proposal met the funding criteria. We have an excellent record of partnership with Status of Women Canada.

In fact, this year, one of our projects was selected as one of the best at the national level for a study on its long-term impact. In addition, the leadership of our organization is all female. Our expertise is recognized by various levels of government, the citizens of New Brunswick, and many stakeholders in the public arena. We also receive considerable support from the general public.

The coalition advocates for proactive pay equity legislation that would follow the recommendations put forward by the 2004 pay equity task force and continues to promote women's economic security.

We will take the opportunity today to question the mid- and long-term effects of the women's community fund funding criteria that were established about three years ago. Unlike in previous programs, advocacy for women's rights is completely excluded from funding. However, advocacy led to significant improvements for Canadian women. Take, for example, the right to vote, the right to maternity leave, or to equal pay for equal work. These rights, acquired through much work, have had a real impact on the lives of millions of Canadian women and could not have been implemented on a case-by-case basis. Who better than women's groups can defend their rights while maintaining those acquired? We deplore that Status of Women Canada's funding is directed not just to women's groups and other stakeholders that advocate for women's equality anymore, but to any non-profit group or even for-profit organizations, with the exception of cooperatives, trade unions, universities, and colleges.

Therefore, although the funds available have increased, they are less accessible to women's groups. These receive no special consideration, even if they were set up by women to meet women's needs. This year, one of the objectives of the women's community fund was “encouraging women's leadership and democratic participation”. We question the fact that under the new eligibility criteria, women's groups are not at the centre of privileged spaces for women's participation in democratic life.

In summary, we are left pondering whether our expertise, our commitment to women's equality, and our recognition by both the government and the general public, as well as our history with Status of Women Canada, have been taken into account in our project's evaluation. We are convinced that these factors confirm our dedication and our ability to continue promoting and strengthening women's rights as well as facilitating their economic participation. We appreciate this occasion to highlight the value of our work for women in Canada. We also see this as an opportunity to propose funding criteria that better meet the needs of women. This is truly the right time for a collective reflection on the ways we can effectively promote women's equality in Canada for future generations—now I'm thinking of my daughter.

Thank you for taking the time to engage in that reflection with our grassroots organizations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Perron.

Finally, the last witness, Shannon Phillips, of Womanspace Resource Centre.

[Shannon Phillips, Board Chair, Womanspace Resource Centre]

Good evening, honourable members. My name is Shannon Phillips. I'm the volunteer chair of the board of directors of Womanspace Resource Centre in Lethbridge, Alberta.

First a little background about Womanspace. Based in Lethbridge, we also serve women from Fort Macleod, Taber, and the aboriginal communities on the Kainai and Pikanii First Nations reserves.

We have been active in southern Alberta for over 25 years. We've been funded by Status of Women since 1985 and have never had an application denied. While Status of Women was our primary source of funding, we have also been funded by various provincial granting programs and enjoy a tremendous amount of support and goodwill in the community.

Depending on the size of the projects we were delivering in the past, we employed between two and five staff. In the wake of our application being denied, we have had to lay off our only long-term employee and retain only two women on part-time contract while we rebuild the organization. I am joined by one of our remaining staff members here today, whose name is Tina Shingoose Fancy.

I'd like to talk first briefly about what Womanspace was doing with Status of Women funds and what we had proposed to do when we were denied funding. The last project we delivered in 2008-09 took place in the context of the change in the ministry's mandate.

Our organization took on those new challenges with gusto and creativity. We had filed income tax returns for low-income women for over a decade and noticed a severe lack of financial information among low-income women. That lack of knowledge led to specific barriers to full participation in society for these women, who, in our community, are also frequently aboriginal.

Our 2008-09 project delivered financial information workshops that removed every possible barrier to participation, including providing a meal, bus tickets, and child care. Women took classes that gave them access to trained financial professionals on subjects such as budgeting, retirement, debt, and understanding savings and investment vehicles such as tax-free savings accounts or RRSPs. We also provided help opening bank accounts, keeping banking costs down, and accessing appropriate identification. As an aside, many very vulnerable women do not have bank accounts due to not having ID, whether it was lost, stolen or destroyed, often by an abusive partner.

The financial information for the low-income women project was successful beyond anyone's expectations. In 18 months we served 825 women. Financial literacy sessions, help with bank accounts, ID and income tax, and referrals to accessible and non-intimidating financial professionals, turned out to be services that hundreds of women needed.

There were no other services like ours in southern Alberta. We served many women who had recently come from the Kainai and Pikanii reserves. Because about two-thirds of our clients are aboriginal women, we also embarked on a formal partnership with the Opokaa'sin Early Intervention Society, an agency that works with aboriginal families.

Now I'd like to talk a little about the application that was denied. The 2008-09 project provided a great jumping-off point for our next application. The first project did not have direct client service as a funded component, but most women needed one-on-one meetings and non-judgmental advice on financial matters. Therefore, direct services were part of the phase two application. Direct services mean women get advice and help following through with the things they need to do in order to build financial and personal assets.

Phase two also proposed innovative ways to better reach our aboriginal clients. We had planned to teach self-advocacy workshops open to everyone, but keeping in mind specific aspects of aboriginal culture, recognizing that southwest Alberta is the traditional land of the Blackfoot people.

During phase one we saw time and again that our clients had difficulty moving into financial independence because of issues related to advocating for themselves. We had planned to hire an aboriginal coordinator with our phase two funds. We had also planned to help women set up community kitchens in order to address issues related to food security.

Finally, we had hoped to develop a child care manual specific to the Lethbridge community. All of these services were with an eye toward long-term attachment to the workforce and financial independence. None of them will now proceed as planned.

Our relationship with Status of Women is long-standing. We received very positive feedback about our application and were told that it fit the criteria, that the project was sound, innovative, and results oriented, and that the proposed budget was realistic. We were given no indication our application would be denied.

There are in fact consequences for all decisions in life, and political life is no different. I'd like to share with you the consequences of the decision to deny our application. First, it is not outrageous to claim that hundreds of women in southwest Alberta will be affected by this decision. If we served 825 women in 18 months, it is reasonable to assume that in three years, with a broader array of services, we would have directly affected the lives of at least 2,000 women.

The decision to deny our funding application is not without cost. The taxpayer is not saving money with this decision—quite the contrary. An investment of slightly more than $100,000 a year in Womanspace helps women get control of their lives, stay healthy and out of abusive relationships, and build a brighter long-term future for families and children.

Phase one showed us time and again that when women have even a little information about financial matters, they make better choices. Those better choices come with specific price tags: reduced income support caseloads, reduced health care costs, and reduced costs to the justice system.

Finally, I’d like to briefly turn to the justification for denying Status of Women funds to longstanding women’s organizations. I’d like to note with dismay that we, in Lethbridge, were not alone. The Alberta Network of Immigrant Women, which has been funded by Status of Women since 1986, was also denied without warning this spring.

Government has given essentially three justifications. First, government members seem to be putting a premium on funding “new” organizations. While this is not problematic on the face of it, it is clear that there are trade-offs being made, denying old gals like us in favour of “new” organizations, perhaps organizations that do not come with a history of being strong advocates for women. The government's aversion to groups that have a history of outspoken feminism is really the only explanation for this fixation on wanting to fund only new groups, because if the goal in our case is tangible results, organizations that have several decades of experience in a community are better able to deliver specific outcomes and reach target populations. If the goal is accountability, a 25-year track record of responsible use of Status of Women funds should count for something.

The goal is clearly something else. Other explanations have ranged from saying that groups should exhibit more accountability to claiming that government's emphasis is on groups that are less talk and more action. These two explanations are far removed from our reality in rural southern Alberta. It is quite confusing for our volunteers, clients, and partner agencies to hear that an organization that delivers programs that are available nowhere else and that served 825 people in 18 months on a budget of $150,000 is not taking action or acting accountably.

This is what is most important for everyone to take away from here today. Government can say whatever it likes to justify its decisions, but you must know that those kinds of messages ring hollow to the very vulnerable women we serve. When you are on the verge of homelessness or leaving an abusive relationship or digging yourself out of bankruptcy due to addictions, or whatever the case may be, you don't need a talking point. What you need is non-judgemental financial information and other services that help you build a better life, and that's what has been denied to hundreds of women in southern Alberta as a result of the decision to deny Status of Women funding to Womanspace Resource Centre in Lethbridge.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now I'm going to start with the question and answer round. It's a seven-minute round, and that seven minutes includes questions and answers. So if everyone can be succinct with both, that would be helpful and we'll get many more questions coming through.

In this seven-minute round we'll begin with Ms. Neville for the Liberals.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of you for coming, some of you from far distances. It is much appreciated. I'm listening almost with disbelief as you describe your realities.

I have just a quick question. All of you were funded from the community fund, is that correct? None were from the partnership fund. They were all community fund....

Ms. Phillips, you spoke about going through the process, working with the bureaucrats, with every expectation that your funding would be approved. I'm wondering if the others could comment. It appears to me that three of the four of you met the criteria as established by the action plan of the previous minister. It strikes me that you met the criteria. What was your experience dealing with the bureaucrats? Did you expect that your funding would be ratified? And when it wasn't, what was the excuse given to you?

[Shannon Phillips]

Our experience dealing with Status of Women was overwhelmingly positive. We were told we fit the criteria perfectly. There were no problems with our budget.

What was the last question, Ms. Neville?

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

The reason and—

[Shannon Phillips]

Oh, we were given no reason.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

No reason.

And you, Ms. Perron?

[Johanne Perron]

We were under the impression we fit the criteria. We know we fit the criteria because we write based on that. But we didn't have any indication that we wouldn't have any funding, although we were always told it's the minister's decision, not the staff's decision, and it's written in the guidelines. We knew that.

In terms of reasons...first of all, I should say that we expected to have an answer on January 27 and it took until the beginning of April before we got an answer, and the reason we were given was that there were too many applications.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Ms. Beeman.

[Jennifer Beeman]

We applied to the women’s partnership fund, and we met with the regional director afterwards to try to get some answers as to what happened. She said the delimitation between what the provincial government was funding and what the federal government was funding wasn't clear enough, in terms of the timeframe.

We were proposing a complex project. And that's one of the problems in the partnership fund. When you're offering services you're in provincial territory much of the time, and it is difficult, although it was fairly clearly delineated, in our opinion. I don't know...that's the reason we were given.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

So I misunderstood. You applied to the partnership fund.

[Jennifer Beeman]

We were with the partnership fund.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

My understanding is that the partnership fund still has dollars available.

[Jennifer Beeman]

We were told we can reapply next year.

I don't think we have much chance if we do. For some reason I don't.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Ms. Stinson, your organization does not fit the criteria, by my understanding.

[Jane Stinson]

We definitely developed proposals to fit the criteria. We did submit one previously under the new criteria--the criteria changed four years ago--and we were approved, and that happened.

We then developed a subsequent--like a phase 2--proposal from the one that was, to provide training and materials to help the staff of transition homes or shelters for women seeking refuge from violent situations, to deal with an increasingly diverse population of women. That's what our project was, and we were denied.

We were initially given the same general letter I think everyone got, which was that we couldn't be funded at this time. But we asked for more details on why we were denied and we were told it was too similar to a previous project funded in Alberta. We would argue that our project would be quite different. First, we're a bilingual organization, so we would be doing training and producing training materials in French as well as English. As well, we were going to update a national fact sheet on violence against women, again both in French and English, which had not been done in the other project. And our materials would get a very wide distribution.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Do I have time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes.