Status of Women Committee on Nov. 30th, 2010

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Fine.

[Suzanne Clément]

We also ensured that we brought to the table representatives from departments that have made a financial contribution and people from Statistics Canada to make certain that the information gathered as part of the chapters will be complete and suitable. The objective is to enable the departments to work on the comparative analyses of the genders.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

If I have understood correctly, there are 12 of them. That should still provide a fairly complete sample, shouldn't it?

[Suzanne Clément]

Yes, absolutely.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

You said that you provided funding to the Newfoundland Aboriginal Women's Network. How many people and how much money does that represent?

[Suzanne Clément]

I am going to ask Linda to give us those details.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

While she is looking for the information, I would like to know why the organization Sisters in Spirit was told that it would have to change its mission and how it operates if it wanted to obtain more funding.

[Linda Savoie, Director General, Women's Program and Regional Operations, Status of Women Canada]

As for the previous question, this group receives just over $260,000. It is a two-year project that will take place in 80 communities. It should affect the living conditions of 500 women.

I hope that answers your question.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Eighty communities?

[Linda Savoie]

There will be 80 workshops in the communities, so the number could be as high as 80.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Eighty workshops and 80 communities; that's a lot.

[Linda Savoie]

What we define as a community can vary. Really, there will be 80 workshops.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

You also said that Minister Ambrose had announced that funding had been granted to some promising and innovative projects, such as the Women in the SETT Leadership Program, Women in Science, Engineering, Trades and Technology Centre. Are there other projects related to non-traditional occupations that will get a chance to be funded?

The committee prepared a report that should be submitted soon. It was a very interesting study. We hope to see a number of projects like this come about. Young women want to move toward non-traditional trades, and a number of organizations want to offer them courses and support.

[Suzanne Clément]

We certainly encourage this type of project. We now have a few that are already at the funding stage. We are in the process of working with CanNor—the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency—to develop training for aboriginal women to work in mines.

We have also asked the regional economic development agencies to work with us, to try to target work in these areas more and more. The ACOA has worked well with us on this. There are projects in place in the Atlantic provinces, such as the Hypatia project, that are working on this.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Before my time is up, what is going on with the Sisters in Spirit?

[Suzanne Clément]

Status of Women Canada did not ask Sisters in Spirit to change how it operates or its direction. One five-year project was signed by the Government of Canada in 2005. The purpose of this project was to research the issue of aboriginal women who have disappeared and been killed and to raise awareness about it. The work has been completed. The terms and conditions of the project provided an end date, which was March 31, 2010. The project ended then.

We began to speak with people from the organization long before that time, in 2009—the year I started—to see what would come after the project. The organization already had a project called "Evidence to Action" that was a follow-up to the first phase. It involved doing community work to tackle the situations that led these women to become victims of those situations. We told them that we were interested in working on these things.

We began to explain to them the terms and conditions of Status of Women Canada. We put aside the maximum amount of money each year, since we can use up to $625,000 a year to work with an organization. Then we asked them to give us their plans.

They gave us an action plan that we analyzed. We told them that we wanted to break it down to see what could be done with Status of Women Canada and that we had other federal partners that could also get involved in other areas.

This takes time. We worked with them for a long time to try to develop initiatives. I feel that the organization would really like to continue to do what it had done over five years. However, the government was very clear, in that it wants to take action and concrete measures to prevent and eliminate these vulnerability factors in the communities.

I think that we now have a project that could move forward to receive funding. If everything falls into place properly, it should move through fairly quickly.

That said, we have not asked the NWAC to disrupt the activities that they want to launch. They can do what they wish with the significant funding they are receiving from other partners or other departments.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Cathy McLeod]

Thank you.

Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Congratulations on your anniversary. One year!

[Some hon. members]

Hear, Hear!

[Suzanne Clément]

It's coming up soon. Thank you.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I just have to make a comment. It seems like you can't win. Our government is often accused of being “anti” the arts. As a musician who supports the arts on a regular basis, I find it odd that here we are supporting the arts and you get accused of not using the money properly, when you're supporting something that is an artistic endeavour--doing the ballet. It doesn't seem to matter what project you fund, it's always going to be the wrong one.

I have a couple of comments.

First of all, I was really impressed to read the portion where you talk about other federal departments being involved in reviewing applications. There seems to be a far more collaborative attitude in getting things done, and from a whole of government.... Rather than having silos, a single set of eyes on things, we're looking at how these things impact across the spectrum. I find that a very positive statement, so thank you for that.

One comment from page 4.... With all of this information on women in non-traditional jobs, I'm assuming this would have been information that would have been available to the committee, but essentially what you're telling us here is that the government has been very proactive. We've already looked at these things, we've already made an assessment of those roles, and we are acting proactively on these things to ensure that women do have equal access.

However, my question really comes from page 5 of your opening statement. You say here that “This year's World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report ranks Canada 20th out of 134 countries, compared to 25th in 2009.” I wonder if you could talk about what initiatives have specifically moved us forward. A movement of five countries--it would seem insurmountable to me that we've moved that far that quickly. I wonder if you can comment on how quickly the progress has been made in the past. Are there other countries that have done the same thing? And what specifically has Canada done to see us move forward that quickly in one year?

Hopefully, it has some reflection on the year you've just spent.

[Suzanne Clément]

I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't.

The assessment of the gender gap report is based on four key factors. There's economic participation and opportunities for women, there's educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival. The areas in which Canada has certainly made progress are in economic participation and opportunity, as well as political empowerment. So the moving forward in those two areas has positioned Canada at a higher level.

I think we need to recognize that as a great accomplishment, but at the same time we need to be careful about how much weight we place on that. If things change from one country to another, from one year to the next, we could find ourselves 22nd next year. I guess the key point is, we need to be looking at all of the subfactors and the subindicators in those evaluations to make sure that we always keep a strong focus on all of them, because having gained an achievement doesn't necessarily promise keeping it in the future years. So we need to be looking at all of the areas even if we are doing well.

To come back to your first point on non-traditional occupations for women, I would say it has certainly been a focus of the government and it has been a focus of Status of Women Canada. A lot of the work that is being done is setting the stage, if you want, for some improvements in the coming months as well. We're working with organizations that have a potential long-term impact, like the sector councils at HRSDC, which are working directly with employers. We're finding that one of the key issues of women in non-traditional occupations is not necessarily the ability for women to be doing this work; it's the ability to retain women who have gone through the training or the academic certifications they require. But once they get employed, the environment in the employment milieu is not necessarily the most attractive or the most adapted to women.

A lot of the work we want to concentrate on is helping employers understand how they can retain women in their workforce. We're working with, for example, Joanne Stanley, from CATA WIT, on that, as well as Dr. Orser at the Telfer management school, to try to find areas that we can further explore as a government organization.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

When we have our three pillars and we do an assessment of a program under the pillar of improving women's economic opportunities, all of those would be analyzed through that lens. Is that correct?

[Suzanne Clément]

Absolutely.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

You are working with HRSDC as one of the other government departments. Can you speak about any of the other departments working with you?