Evidence of meeting #24 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was leadership.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Great.
Can you send us something on that too? That would be absolutely wonderful.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Hélène LeBlanc
Thank you, Ms. Young.
Ms. Ashton, you have the floor for seven minutes.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill, MB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I just want to follow up on that point and to be clear that the question on the record was clearly not about the first nations education act. In speaking of changing the subject in committee, I want to make sure that we're not trying to hoodwink witnesses.
Chief Kennedy, I'm wondering if you could speak to one of the barriers that we hear that women across the county face but that we, on our part, are aware that indigenous women face in greater numbers. That's the lack of housing, and how overcrowded housing and an insufficient housing stock may be a barrier to aboriginal women's prosperity. Could you speak to that and the situation in northern first nations like yours?
5:20 p.m.
Chief, War Lake First Nation
It's very hard for a family to receive housing, especially the young ones, because the older ones don't want to move out of their homes. We are only given a limited amount of funding for housing to be built.
As a matter of fact, in my community I'm only allowed one house every five years, and then the growth rate of the population in aboriginal communities is a lot higher than that. It hinders their education and also their life because they live in these crowded conditions and they have to live with the mould and other things. I just recently found out why mould is there. There's constantly somebody using the washroom or there is somebody usually cooking, and then there's no air, and the houses are old.
Many of us live in homes without running water, which is difficult. One of our elders was walking home carrying water. No matter what we do it's never enough. Our children are going to wind up getting very sick, in the way of more asthma and skin conditions. They're having problems with their skin. As a matter of fact, when all these problems are there, families wind up getting frustrated and angry, because money that they would like to buy food with goes elsewhere.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill, MB
Thank you for that.
Given that we're talking about supporting indigenous women and other Canadian women's prosperity, do you think that the federal government needs to step up its commitment to indigenous women in our country?
5:20 p.m.
Chief, War Lake First Nation
Yes.
There was education training available to many people, and the aboriginal women had a hard time trying to access the program because they didn't meet the criteria. We all thought it was going to be a good thing, especially for aboriginal women, because then they can have these daycares that could be paid for, but they still couldn't even go out for training. A lot of them really want to work and find and buy some things to make life better for their children. It's difficult for them, as they just don't meet the criteria.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill, MB
Thank you very much.
Speaking of the role of the federal government, in particular the status of women department, sadly we've become quite good in this committee at coming up with recommendations that leaves Status of Women off the hook. I'm wondering if, Ms. Cornish, you might be able to speak to the importance of Status of Women Canada showing leadership, whether in terms of pay equity or other measures, to achieve equality for women in Canada and prosperity.
5:20 p.m.
Chair, Equal Pay Coalition
Generally around the world in ministries such as that, there is a minister responsible and a department that are in fact the institutional mechanism by which a gender and equality strategy is implemented. That's the first part of it. They are supposed to be in charge of implementing it.
For example, if you had a national closing-the-gender-gap plan, then you would have the leadership of a Status of Women committee doing it, and in addition—and this is the important thing—a status of women branch, department, and minister should not be marginalized, in the sense that each of the other ministers has to play a role in the plan so it isn't marginalized as well. In other words, yes, they play a very important role, but the finance minister has to play a very important role and the finance minister has to make sure they are involved in it.
For example, in Ontario I met with the head finance people in the bureaucracy about trying to do a closing-the-gender-pay-gap plan in 2008 around the time of the recession. They couldn't really understand what I was talking about. “What do you mean we should be involved? What would we do?” I was saying, “Well even if you were using infrastructure money, you should be sorting out if you are employing women in that infrastructure money. Are you doing things with the infrastructure money that would help to close the gap? Are you building child care centres with it? Is the bridge you're building actually going to help women's employment in that community?”
These are the kinds of things that actually need to be embedded in government decision-making and in policy decision-making. In all ministries within government, people need to be trained how to think about that kind of gender-based analysis and to incorporate it into their thinking.
5:25 p.m.
NDP
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill, MB
Thank you.
We have just one minute left. Professor Lahey, could you respond as well on the same point?
5:25 p.m.
Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University
Yes, I'm glad you mentioned the infrastructure issue because in some of the European countries during the recession infrastructure funding was deliberately allocated toward building new facilities for care, for early childhood education, for elder care, and some infrastructure funding was allocated to pay the salaries and the long-term training programs that went along with expanding employment in that sector. That really was a tremendous boost in countering the effects of the recession for women who had been marginalized through layoffs and so on, and created new employment and helped that country pull ahead of Canada in the gender equality rankings internationally, even though it's not as rich or as far developed economically as Canada is by any means.
5:25 p.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Hélène LeBlanc
Thank you very much, Professor Lahey.
Ms. Truppe, you have the floor for the few minutes that we have left, I do not know exactly how many.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
I'm just going to pass it off to Ms. Ambler for a minute and a half, and then a minute to Ms. Young, if that's okay.
Thank you.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
Stella Ambler Conservative Mississauga South, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Beckton, I want to follow up on some of the comments you made about cultural norms, particularly as they relate to family-friendly child care policies. You feel they're usually benefiting women only, which becomes a problem, so I'd like you to expand on that if you can.
The only example I know of—and I hope you could give another problematic one—is Lisa MacLeod. Again, we discussed this member of provincial parliament earlier and the idea that because of her and her actions, question period in the Ontario Legislature was changed from mid-afternoon to morning. I always wondered how that benefited women in particular, but maybe you could explain.
5:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Centre for Women in Politics and Public Leadership, Carleton University
On your first question with family-friendly policies that are often put in corporate policies or even in government policies, if the family-friendly one is really focused on ensuring that women can take care of family obligations, what it does is tend to reinforce that women should be the primary caregivers.
The other thing that also happens is that when men do not feel that they're able to take this kind of leave themselves, it tends to discourage them from taking leave and, as a result, it's the women who take it.
We did a focus group in the mining sector where, for example, the men said that they were not prepared to step back and take time for family because they were afraid of the ramifications for their careers. In the federal government there is a top-up, whether it's a woman or a man who works, that is very encouraging for both men and women to take that time. I think we need to be thinking about those kinds of things.
Employers really need to focus on how they also encourage the aspirations of men with respect to family obligations as well as women because that will help the women at the end of the day. If men cannot freely take that time, then it discourages the women.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
It's very quick. Thank you.
Professor Lahey, I just want to finish my questions for the panel.
It's very quick, and I know that you probably don't have time to respond, but perhaps you can send something in. Certainly your response to the last question was very interesting.
We've been asking panel members not only to look at the amount of program funding within the Status of Women, because that's a very limited amount of money, but also at whether you and/or other people have studied funds that have gone to support women for economic and other successes across the federal government. In your last answer, as I said, you talked about building more infrastructure for community centres, etc. At a macro level, across the board, how have we done in moving the agenda forward with things like skilled trades training, for example?
I know that on the employment side at HRSDC, they have done a lot of targeted women's skills training and that type of thing.
So if you could send something in to us to capture that, it would be great.
5:30 p.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Hélène LeBlanc
Thank you.
I think it's a very large question and a very large endeavour.
Ms. Lahey, if you can provide any information you have on that...but I understand this is a very large endeavour, and I think one professor, although mighty, may not be able to answer the whole thing.
To all the witnesses, I would like to sincerely thank you for your testimony and for the information that you have provided for our study.
Our next meeting will take place next Wednesday, at the same time.
The meeting is adjourned.