Status of Women Committee on March 14th, 2012

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Okay. I won't start a debate on that.

[The Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Okay, thank you.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Excellent, thank you.

Madam Minister, on the one hand, I hear the people from Status of Women Canada talk about the status of women. On the other hand, I hear a different story when I am on the ground, in Canada or even in New York. I would actually like to thank you for allowing me to join you and the Canadian delegation at the UN conference on the status of women. But I feel I am hearing two completely different things. I am saying this in all innocence and naiveté, given that it is my first time as the official oppositions critic for the status of women. There are two completely different messages. I hear what you are saying. I am able to do the math and see that, financially, Status of Women Canada does make investments, even more than it did under the Liberals on occasion, I am not embarrassed to say that.

Having said that, there are major shortcomings in various areas. Many organizations that work for the status of women in Canada say that the pay equity issue has still not been resolved. We are also talking about violence against women and Sisters in Spirit. First Nations delegations often come to meet with me.

How do you explain the fact that we have two messages that are so different? It might all look good from where you are standing, but it does not look so good from where they are standing.

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Edmonton—Spruce Grove, AB]

I think there are always improvements that can be made in any government departments and programs, but I think, you know, kudos to the status of women program for responding very well to some of the concerns that women's organizations had about flexibility. And we did this with the blueprint projects, and Suzanne might want to speak more to that, and also with our targeted call for proposals. We are making it much easier for groups to apply, in terms of the paperwork burden, because a lot of women's organizations, as you know, have many volunteers, few paid employees, and usually are on shoestring budgets.

We're making it easier for them to apply. We also have a continuous intake process so that if organizations do not have a project that is ready for funding, we can work with them to try to improve that because they don't always have the capacity within their organization, but we do in our regional offices and at Status of Women Canada here in Ottawa.

We are trying very hard to be very flexible, because we do understand. The majority of organizations we work with are working on shoestring budgets. Even so, in the last four to five years we've been able to fund 500 projects from many different parts of the country. As I said in my opening remarks, these projects really do respond to those who are most in need, whether it's in our aboriginal women's community or in our immigrant community.

Projects have been groundbreaking, working with cultural communities on issues like honour crimes, working in other areas on human trafficking. All of these are very worthy projects, and I think Status of Women Canada has done an excellent job making the application process more accessible, more flexible, and giving us the opportunity to reach out to groups we've never been able to access before.

I think the record is a good one.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

I am sure you will agree with me that the poverty rate for women has not really improved in Canada, and there is still a lot of violence against women. I sometimes wonder if we are using the right approach.

My time is limited, but I would still like to briefly talk about the gender-based analysis. The model is there and everyone agrees with it.

Everybody talks about gender-based analysis, but nobody really evaluates if it's doing anything. Nobody is really going to the departments. Even the finance department--with the budget coming down, is it going to be done based on gender-based analysis? Will we be able to evaluate it? Do we have the tools through Status of Women Canada to really take them to task and say no, they didn't do it? Don't just put a little box down—done the analysis—but show if we have a tool to evaluate if they do it.

[The Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Please be quick, Minister.

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Edmonton—Spruce Grove, AB]

As Suzanne mentioned, all the central agencies are making efforts to do gender-based analysis when they're bringing forward any programs, memorandums to cabinet, and of course one of the things we can do at Status of Women Canada is that we've worked with 18 different organizations across government to compile with Statistics Canada useful information regarding the position of women across the country.

This is also something we can do as a resource for government departments, municipalities, and NGOs—use this as a policy tool. We're doing our best to provide the information and the support Suzanne was speaking so enthusiastically about, but she ran out of time to work with the departments to make this happen.

[The Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you, Minister.

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Edmonton—Spruce Grove, AB]

So there's a lot of effort being made.

[The Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you.

Ms. Ambler, for seven minutes, please.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for coming to speak to us today, and also the officials.

I want to ask you about involving boys in our fight to eliminate violence against women. Perhaps it seems unorthodox to be talking about boys in the status of women committee, but I've heard you talk about the importance of getting boys involved in this conversation. As the mother of a boy who will be 13 years old next month, I think it's important to involve boys in talking about how we can make life better for everyone, how being fair and understanding about equality at a young age is eventually going to help us all as a society. I remember hearing what you said about that, and I'd like you to talk to us a bit about that this afternoon.

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Edmonton—Spruce Grove, AB]

Sure.

I think it is a very healthy dialogue that Status of Women Canada has begun with organizations and groups across the country over the last year or so. We worked with the White Ribbon Campaign and the Public Health Agency of Canada, and funded a brief that the White Ribbon Campaign put out for us, because we asked them about this. They do work all over the world now, on ending violence against women by including men in the dialogue.

Their brief is really interesting, and I encourage people to read it. Basically, they say we can't move forward without including men and boys, because they are the perpetrators of violence against women and girls and they have to be part of the solution. We believe this is key to the next step in the conversation. I think this was fairly well received. There are a lot of organizations that want to do more work to include men and boys. I think education is a big part of it. We've seen the school system really embrace issues of anti-bullying and harassment, and some of those go hand-in-hand with these kinds of issues of respect and dignity and equality. I think that's just the next step: talking to young people about healthy relationships and equality and respect.

One project we funded this year was called “Be More Than a Bystander”, with the B.C. Lions and EVA B.C., which is Ending Violence Association of British Columbia. It's a groundbreaking idea: they have men as role models—of course they're iconic football players—doing public awareness campaigns, TV ads, YouTube videos, and speaking to young boys in school, in front of the girls, of course, because they're in schools, about respecting girls and women.

The idea is that we find men—and there are many, many men who are great role models—to speak about this issue and talk to boys about respect for women and healthy relationships. Their message about “Be More Than a Bystander” is that if you see something like this happen, speak up, and that it's not uncool to talk about this kind of stuff when you're a young boy or young man. We think that's a great project, and we'd like to see more of them. We put the message out there to organizations that we'd like to see greater participation and a healthier dialogue with men and boys.

A lot of men I talk to want to get involved. In Alberta, we have the mayors of both Calgary and Edmonton throw breakfasts called “Breakfast With the Boys”. All the top business leaders and political leaders in the community get together and have a breakfast. It's just the boys, and all the money goes toward the women's shelters. It's a huge fundraiser. They've been doing this for years. They just applaud this kind of idea and say that we need to do more of this, that many need to get more involved and step up.

I think it's a great initiative, and I think more schools are interested in doing this kind of programming. Of course the provinces are starting to talk about this too, so I think it's all positive.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Wonderful. Thank you.

I'm sure you're aware that we're studying the economic participation of women and leadership, and that's what we're working on. I'm very excited about this study, which we just began. We're hearing from a cross-section of witnesses, including women CEOs and a few in non-traditional fields. I was wondering about your thoughts. You mentioned that we have three priorities for funding programs in Status of Women Canada—violence, leadership, and economic prosperity. Our study speaks to two of those. How can our study complement what your ministry is doing?

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Edmonton—Spruce Grove, AB]

Well, I think your topic is a great one, and I'm sure it will complement the work we've done. The work we've done to date shows that physical safety goes hand in hand with economic security, so tackling both those things in parallel is very important, because women who are living in poverty are more apt to experience violence because they just don't have access to the same kinds of options.

We have a number of projects across the country dealing with economic security, and a lot of these are helping women, whether it's financial literacy programs or programs to help them learn to start a new business. Those have been very successful.

We just announced one recently with l'Union culturelle des Franco-Ontariennes , and they have thousands of members in rural Ontario. They thought it would be a success if they had one new business that they helped created. I think there were at 23 at that point, and they were overwhelmed, because women don't feel they need $1 million to start a business, as some men do. I'm just saying that women are happy to sort of scrape together what they have and they'll start a business right out of their own kitchen; they're more apt to do that than men. We know that two-thirds of new small businesses are started by women, and that's why, because it's just the nature of women.

We find that these projects have been very successful. Especially in rural and remote areas, where women don't have the same economic opportunities, if women can start a home business or start a business over the Internet, we want to help them with that. It's been a good success.

[The Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you very much, Minister.

Now to Madam Sgro, for seven minutes.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Minister Ambrose, it's great to see you here, and I applaud the work you did at the UN recently. I would like to have been there with you. I heard only positive things, so congratulations on the work you're doing there.

I have a couple of questions. On the women's partnership fund, that funding has now run out of the period of time that it was operating. There will be a decrease of $400,000 in departmental funding. How are you going to decide what is going to be cut to meet the cut in your budget, as far as priorities?

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Edmonton—Spruce Grove, AB]

I'll ask Suzanne to comment on the partnership.

[Suzanne Clément]

There has been no change on the partnership fund. There is still a community fund and a partnership fund.

I would need more clarification on the reduction in budgets, because there has not been a reduction in the budget.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Tentatively, a $400,000 reduction in departmental spending is coming, I understand.

[Suzanne Clément]

No.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Since all departments will have to make some degree of cuts, given the austerity budget we're expecting, how do you decide what are your priorities when it comes to program spending, and where those kinds of cuts will be? What are your priorities?

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Edmonton—Spruce Grove, AB]

We have engaged to review our programs to see where we can streamline and find efficiencies, but our actual programming for the women's program is not going to be impacted.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Good. Well, again, we know where your priorities are.

Some of the programs you have invested in, like the “Be More Than a Bystander” and some of those other programs, were excellent investments. Clearly we need to engage the men as part of trying to solve the problem of violence against women.

I have a question for you. When legislation is coming forward, is it being subject to gender-based analysis?

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Edmonton—Spruce Grove, AB]

Yes.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Was the gun registry subjected to gender-based analysis?