Status of Women Committee on March 22nd, 2010

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

Yes. What would they look like? I'd be very interested.

[Denise Thomas]

I'll have to give you a copy of this on affirmative action for the United States. I guess I could get you a copy of what the indicators would look like. Sure, I'll get you a copy of that.

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

That would be wonderful. I appreciate it. It's very clear that if it is indeed achieving the purpose of getting women into non-traditional roles, then we should certainly have some sense of it here.

I want to come back quickly to something Ms. Bailey said. You talked about the biggest difference in terms of income: $45,000-plus among males in the general population, and Métis women at $23,253, 48% less than males. And you mentioned that even in Alberta, where wages and income were quite significant during the boom, that gap was still present. I wondered about that and about the reasons for it.

[Monell Bailey]

I don't know if it's pay equity issues. A lot of times, it's women still remaining in those traditional roles, the low-paid positions—the waitress thing, cashier jobs, that sort of thing. It's still the fact that they're not getting the skills required, perhaps. Or perhaps we have women out there with the skills who just aren't getting the positions.

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

Do we need pay equity?

[Monell Bailey]

Oh, definitely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Mathyssen, can you hold that question for the third round? We're now over on your time.

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

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Ms. Wong.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Good afternoon, and thank you very much for coming to give us a wonderful presentation.

In capturing what your presentation is about, I can see that there are quite a few challenges related not just to the job itself but also to skills. In other words, the challenges aboriginal women are facing going into non-traditional trades might even be the same as for any women in Canada or elsewhere in the world going into those non-traditional jobs.

My question is related to pre-assessment. You especially, Lorraine, mentioned that you cannot keep the women long enough, because they seem to be interested, but once they get into it they lose interest. Are there any pre-assessment tools to decide whether they actually are suitable for the job? Sometimes, if we push someone into something they really are not capable of doing or are not really interested in, these women may start jumping from one professional or trade training to another, but at the end of the day will not go into these and will go back into the traditional ones. Can you share some light on that, please?

[Lorraine Phaneuf]

Do you want to know how we assess?

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Yes. It's a question about pre-assessment.

[Lorraine Phaneuf]

What we did for assessment was go to communities in the Northwest Territories and do an information session on what their training would look like. From there, women applied. Once they applied, they would speak to the staff of that project team, and they also filled out an assessment...I don't want to call it a test, but it was done by a psychologist to determine whether they had the skills for trades-related work.

So they were assessed lightly, but there are some training programs across Canada that actually do three- to four-day assessments. In the Northwest Territories, we just do not have the capacity or the areas to send women to do that. Women Building Futures for youth in Edmonton has a tremendous assessment program, but they have a volume of people applying; they have hundreds of women wanting to get in, whereas in the Northwest Territories we are faced with very small populations and also populations of women who would have to leave their homes and move to the city. We were challenged by that.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

I am glad you mentioned the Alberta-based Women Building Futures, because they have actually successfully helped Canadian women bridge into traditional male bastions. And they focus on some of the things you mentioned: community outreach, skills development, and peer mentorship. In other words, Women Building Futures complements all of the three pillars that Status of Women Canada maintains as its platform, such as increasing women's security and prosperity, preventing violence against women, and enhancing women's leadership.

In your programming, is it possible that those—community outreach, skills development, and peer mentorship—could also be built in, on a smaller scale, ideally?

[Lorraine Phaneuf]

We had partnership with WBF. Their assessment is fantastic for the program that they do. When they came to the Northwest Territories, there didn't seem to be as much of a fit with us, because of the low literacy rates and because our project was actually looking to help the most marginalized. They assess a little bit differently. This is not to say it is not an excellent program, because it is; it just didn't quite fit.

When the partners looked at it, they felt that it was too onerous and that we would have a very hard time filling our courses. There are not the resources. Some of the resources are to go to different companies to do things or to go to the employment centre. We don't have full resources.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

What about other provinces? In the Métis situation, have you been able to utilize some of the programs that have already been developed under community outreach, skills development, and also peer mentorship?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

There is only one minute in which to answer that.

[Denise Thomas]

In Manitoba, yes, we do the peer mentorship. Our Standing Tall program is one in which we do that in other areas. It works for the women.

What we started off with was life skills courses in our northern communities. That really helped women to come out of themselves, I guess you would say. It's very much needed in some of the communities for training.

What has also hurt the women we were trying to help was losing our Aboriginal Healing Foundation dollars, when we were trying to help the women who had gone to the residential schools and have not dealt with all that healing. We have to find other ways to help those women now, to bring them out of the communities to get an education.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to a third round. It's a five-minute round. I'm going to cut everybody off, if you go overtime, because we have exactly 25 minutes to finish up.

We will start with Ms. Simson and Madam Zarac. You will split your time, you told me.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Absolutely. I have only two quick questions.

To follow up on my colleague from the NDP with respect to the request you made, Ms. Phaneuf, to Status of Women for funding, I know you haven't heard yet, but you said you'd let us know, because we'd all be interested. Are you able to share the amount of funding you requested, and over what term?

[Lorraine Phaneuf]

It was $175,000 for two years.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you. And you're anticipating a response in what kind of timeframe?

[Lorraine Phaneuf]

Soon; very soon.

[Michelle Simson, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Meaning within weeks, days, months?

[Lorraine Phaneuf]

Probably days.