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.