Status of Women Committee on March 26th, 2015

[John Barlow, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

I know it's difficult when we ask opinion questions of a statistician, and I appreciate you're doing the best you can. I'll try to ask you as many non-opinion questions as I can, but you can by all means try to steer me in a different direction.

The first question I want to ask is about page 8 of your submission, where you had the skill mismatch rate for young women with a university degree as pretty much even. Can you explain that a little bit? I was really surprised to see that and I want to make sure that I'm right. Maybe you can explain this to me a little bit.

That means if she has a university degree, say in sociology, but she's working at Starbucks. Is that what you mean?

[Alison Hale]

It basically is working in an occupation that doesn't require a university degree; it requires high school or less. It's the same for whether it's STEM or non-STEM.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

What were the questions? Do you know how you got that?

[Alison Hale]

It's just based on the occupation they're in versus their level of education, so it's a straight....

[John Barlow, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

The other question I wanted to ask was regarding...and whether this had a difference. I was just looking at the first couple of pages, for example, and you kind of touched on it a little bit.

It's on page 4. You were talking about young workers in skilled trades. You said that there is not a category specifically called “skilled trades”. It was called “mechanic and construction trades”. Is that how the questions were asked? Were you asking the young women, “Are you in the mechanic or construction trades”?

The reason I ask is that we are trying to be a little bit more modern and I'm just wondering how that question was asked, because I think “mechanic and construction trades” is much too narrow.

[Alison Hale]

No. We asked, “What were you doing?” They described their job, and then their job was classified into an occupational standard. For instance, someone would say, “I'm a bricklayer” or might say, “I lay bricks for a living”, and then there's a standard occupation description that is bricklayer, and everybody who says something that's related to laying bricks gets the same code. They'll describe however they've determined how they describe their work, and then it gets a code, and that code has a standard skill level applied to it.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Okay.

The other one I was interested in was on page 5 of your submission. You have some of the differences from 1991 to 2011. I have two questions there.

The first one deals with the high increase in agriculture and fish products inspectors. I'm wondering if you can be a bit more specific. Being from an Alberta riding, the feedback I'm getting from people in the agriculture sector is that they're having a really difficult time keeping young people involved in that industry, whether it's actually on the farm or in some of the subsidiary businesses that are part of that. Is there any way for you to be more specific on what those jobs are or what would entail agriculture?

[Alison Hale]

No, I don't have that with me.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Okay.

That brings me to my second question. It is a 10-year gap between these two studies. Is there any way of finding out what the trend is? I ask that—and I think all of us in this room could agree—because of the opportunities in the skilled trades, in the actual jobs that weren't there 10 years ago that have come in the last few years. I'm thinking of oilfield technology, agribusiness, and agri-innovation. Is there any way to see the trend? Did it kind of go like this for five or six years, and then we're seeing...? Are we on a good trend that way? Is there any way to find that out?

[Alison Hale]

No. For this particular comparison, it was basically just doing two points in time. As you pointed out, occupations have evolved over time. We used a method that had been done in a previous study where we took the occupations of 1991 and did some work to basically make them comparable with 2011. It's really just two points in time. It would be interesting to map them through, but some of them go one to many and some of them go many to one.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

I just want say it's nice to have Mr. Kellway and Mr. Zimmer here. I don't feel so alone today. Thanks, guys.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

There we go.

Actually, if I may add, you talked about agriculture, which is one of my passions. I'm wondering, Ms. Hale, if you've seen a trend. A lot of agriculture has also moved towards environmental protection, and there's a lot of related environmental fields that are related to agriculture, or even when we look at biology and everything. I don't know if there's a trend of having more women, such as myself, who want to study agriculture and environment.

Anyway, let's move on to Mrs. Freeman.

You have five minutes.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

I, too, will try not to ask your opinion. I'm really bad at not doing that, though.

Can you tell us what sectors have seen the most growth since 1991? Can you talk about the most growth in terms of women's participation, that is, specifically?

[Alison Hale]

Sorry, not off the top of my head. We definitely have that information, but....

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

If you do have that information, you could submit it to the committee through the chair.

[Alison Hale]

When you say sectors, are you interested in occupations—

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

I would like to see—

[Alison Hale]

—or industries or...? We do the labour force survey every month and we have all of that information.

This is just a plug for one work we are doing. The women in Canada publication, which I know this committee is quite interested in, is in the midst of being updated. This committee probably would love to see it all come out next week, but the first chapter is coming out next week, and over the next few years, every few months a new chapter will be coming out. We are updating that. I know you'll be quite anxious to see that and look forward to that coming out. As you can appreciate, it's quite a substantial work, but it's time well spent.

I just wanted to let this committee know that was happening.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

That's good. We'll look forward to getting that at the committee, I'm sure.

I would like to see the comparison with the increase, specifically in university and skills—I see you've disaggregated it by university and by college education—and to see also the proportional increase in non-higher educated trades and things like that. If we could break it down into larger categories, but not too specifically either, just to see where—

[Alison Hale]

In the labour force survey we put out data every month by employment/unemployment by educational attainment. I could send it.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Is it disaggregated by gender?

[Alison Hale]

Yes. I could send the link to the researcher.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

That would be helpful.

Do we also know the proportion of part-time work and whether the part-time work is being filled by women or men? If we could also have that data, it would be really useful, I think.

Do we know if the rate of education to employment is affected by the type of work conditions, if it's flexible shift work, or part-time, or a unionized environment, or if it's sending people into more rural, remote areas? Do we have data around that type of work?

[Alison Hale]

Some of it's about flexibility, part-time versus....