Evidence of meeting #28 for Status of Women in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
The Clerk of the Committee Mrs. Marie-France Renaud
Distinguished members of the committee, I see a quorum.
We can now proceed to the election of the chair. I am ready to receive motions to that effect.
I must inform members that the clerk of the committee can only receive motions for the election of the chair. The clerk cannot receive other types of motions and cannot entertain points of order or participate in debate.
Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the chair shall be a member of the official opposition.
I am now ready to receive motions.
Liberal
Anita Neville Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
I realize that she's not here, but in her absence, I will nominate Dr. Fry.
The Clerk
It has been moved by Ms. Neville that Dr. Fry be elected chair of the committee.
Are there any further motions?
Is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?
(Motion agreed to)
I declare the motion carried and Ms. Hedy Fry duly elected chair of the committee.
Before inviting Dr. Fry to come to the chair, if the committee wishes we can proceed to the election of vice-chairs.
I am now ready to receive motions for the position of first vice-chair.
Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the first vice-chair must be a member of the government party.
Go ahead, Madame Boucher.
Conservative
The Clerk
Moved by Mrs. Boucher that Mrs. McLeod be elected first vice-chair of the committee.
Are there any further motions?
(Motion agreed to)
I declare the motion carried and Ms. McLeod duly elected first vice-chair of the committee.
I am now ready to receive motions for the position of second vice-chair.
Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the second vice-chair must be a member of an opposition party other than the official opposition.
The Clerk
Moved by Ms. Demers that Irene Mathyssen be elected second vice-chair of the committee.
Are there any further motions?
(Motion agreed to)
I declare the motion carried and Ms. Irene Mathyssen duly elected second vice-chair of the committee.
I now invite Dr. Fry to take the chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Good morning, everyone.
I just want to apologize again. The pick-up cab did not turn up, and I had to call and wait for another one. I'm sorry about that.
To begin with the agenda, you all have the orders of the day.
I'd like to call this meeting to order. We will deal first and foremost with the motions. Pursuant to Standing Order 106(1), we've done the election of the chair, etc. Good. That's finished.
We have a couple of things outstanding. We have a travel budget, as Cathy will well remember, that we're trying to get for the second half of our study on violence against aboriginal women. Cathy very kindly took this budget.... We didn't get it and we were told to bring it back after the summer. So here it is, back to you. I have no idea how the clerk, the analysts, and that team managed to slice this further, but they did. We now have a budget that has been pared down even more.
You will see that we have the first one, which is the west, of course, and we now have some changes. It's going to be Vancouver, Williams Lake, B.C., Yellowknife, and the Northwest Territories. We have cut out the Yukon. We feel that we can get people to come to Yellowknife from the Yukon, etc. We're also going to Edmonton, Alberta. That is the chunk of that little piece of travel.
We're going to be asking a lot of people to come to meet with us, to come to the place where we are, so we're looking for an easy place for them to get to. We're going to be taking this when the committee meets and hope that we get--
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Oh, you're still working on the second part. All right.
They're still working on finessing the cuts for other places in which we can meet. We were going to meet in Meadow Lake, and Alberta, etc. We're told now that it might be better to meet in other places that, again, are cheaper and easier for everybody to have access to us, etc. We're really working on that.
So if you would leave it with the clerk, they will be able to finesse that even more. When we come back, I think there's a meeting of the committee following the break, so we will need to deal with that.
Do you want to adopt this as it is? All right.
Can I have a motion to adopt this part of the budget you have?
Do you have the piece that tells you what that will cost?
Liberal
Bloc
Nicole Demers Bloc Laval, QC
I don't think so, Madam Chair. In my opinion, it is very reasonable, given everything that we want to do. This is the last part of our task. This committee has never traveled before. We have been very reasonable. It is clear that this study is more and more urgent. We have been able to see that once more in the last few days. I think this should be easy to defend before the committee; at least, I hope it is.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Merci.
You all have the motion. Those in favour of adopting this part of the budget as written? Those opposed?
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
That part passes. Thank you.
Now we have to deal with a couple of things on the agenda that were left over from last time. We have the report on non-traditional work that we must finish. Many of you have been sent that report. I'm just saying that this is one of the things we have to finish.
We also have Bill C-471 on pay equity. We will have to deal with that as a bill. We can amend that bill. We can call witnesses. You can make a decision on how we do that and how many witnesses we call. Given that we've just finished a report on pay equity not too long ago, the bottom line is that we need to look at this bill for amendments if necessary or if wished for. That's the second part.
The third one is a study on violence against women, which we are now in the midst of doing. So we now have three pieces held over from last year that we're finishing up.
As for the ministers we had asked to come to meet with us on various issues, we have still had no answers as of today. They were the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Health, and the Minister for Status of Women. Given that the House has just begun sitting, I think maybe everyone is getting their act together. Hopefully by the next meeting or after the break we should get some answers back so we can decide how we do that.
Now we have three notices of motions that we have to deal with.
Bloc
Nicole Demers Bloc Laval, QC
I think that it is even more important that the Minister of Justice, Mr. Nicholson, come to meet with us to talk about the $10 million that has been set aside to deal with violence against Aboriginal women. If we do this study... He says that plans are underway to decide what to do with the money that has been set aside. So it would be interesting to hear what he can tell us about that. I think that the meeting will be very enlightening for us all. Perhaps it could also bring us a little reassurance. He has probably spent all these months thinking about what is going to be done with the money. Surely, he should be able to give us a good idea about his plans for the $10 million set aside in order to combat violence against Aboriginal women.
Perhaps it will tie in with the requests that we have already made.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Yes, it is in keeping with a request that's already been made, so we have to wait to hear from that. That is something we can't answer until we hear from the ministers.
Now, I would like to deal with a notice of motion. We have one from Madame Demers that was sent to the committee on June 15, 2010. We have a new one, sent October 1, from Ms. Neville. And we have one from Ms. Mathyssen that was sent October 1. They've all given their 48 hours' notice.
I thought we could start by dealing with the very first one that was sent to you, and that is the motion from Madame Demers.
The motion reads:
That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee undertake a study of the feasibility of an agreement between the two levels of government enabling all women workers in Quebec the option of precautionary cessation of work with compensation from the Commission de la santé et sécurité au travail and that the committee report its observations and recommendations to the House.
Before I open it up for debate, I would like to ask Madame Demers if she wishes to explain it a bit to everyone.
Bloc
Nicole Demers Bloc Laval, QC
With pleasure, Madam Chair.
As you know, about 250,000 workers in Quebec, men and women, work in areas under federal jurisdiction. The pregnant women in that number are not eligible for precautionary cessation of work, which is available in Quebec through the CSST and allows them to receive 90% of their salary for the entire time they are away from work. Currently, if they have to leave work because of a danger to their health or the health of their child, women working in areas under federal jurisdiction may claim employment insurance, which provides only 55% of their salary, and only for 15 weeks.Those women therefore fall into a crack in the Labour Code that can be easily addressed, because people working in areas under federal jurisdiction already pay premiums to the CSST for accidents that may occur at work.
They therefore already pay an amount of money that makes them eligible to receive 90% of their salary if they are injured at work. But that is not the case if they are pregnant. This is only a matter of the two levels of government coming to an arrangement. The minister of Labour recently told us that the government of Quebec needs to rectify the situation. It is ready to do so. The National Assembly unanimously passed a resolution to regularize the situation that the women are in. So Quebec is ready to make the arrangements with the Government of Canada to make sure that all women have the right to precautionary cessation of work on the same basis.
It is just a matter of an understanding between governments. It is not very complicated to bring about and the government will pay nothing for it. The workers will actually pay a minimal difference of about 3¢, I believe, to become eligible for CSST benefits in the case of precautionary cessation of work.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
As a more general comment, I notice that some of these motions are actually compelling the committee in terms of studies. I'm wondering if at the very start we can really lay out our calendar and lay out our priorities again in a full basket, throwing in the motions. One thing I've wanted to do for a long time--and I haven't put it into a motion so that it gets into our work basket--is the new technology media. You look at that incident in Pitt Meadows and it's just a stunningly sickening issue that I think we need to be looking at.
What I would really like to see between now and the Christmas break is having a calendar, putting these all into one pot, and sticking to the calendar instead of having motions that keep sort of sending us on a sidetrack. I wonder if we could take everything and create a calendar until Christmas.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
That is what I was going to do, but we need to deal with the motions on the table. Passing the motion doesn't mean that you say when you're going to do the study; it just means that you agree it would happen and then we put it in the lineup.
I do have the lineup here and I thought we could deal with that afterwards.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
But as a matter of process, I guess, do we need to be putting anything we want to study in the form of a motion? Other times, we have really sat down as a group and created our priorities, rather than motions and moving forward....
So I guess I'd just ask the committee: if we want to study something, do we have to do it in the form of a motion?
