Status of Women Committee on May 12th, 2015

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Good morning and welcome to the 59th meeting of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. Today, the committee is continuing its study of the Main Estimates 2015-16.

Today we have the pleasure of welcoming the Honourable Minister of the Status of Women, Dr. K. Kellie Leitch. We also have with us Meena Ballantyne, head of agency, and Anik Lapointe, chief financial officer and director of Corporate Services, both from Status of Women Canada.

Madam Minister, you have about 10 minutes for your presentation, which will be followed by a question period. You have the floor.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Minister of Labour and Minister of Status of Women]

Merci, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the committee for inviting me to discuss the 2015-16 main estimates for Status of Women Canada.

I am joined today by Meena Ballantyne, head of agency for Status of Women Canada, and Anik Lapointe, the chief financial officer and director of Corporate Services.

I want to take a moment to commend all of you in the committee for the important studies on economic leadership and prosperity of Canadian women and on eating disorders among girls and women.

I look forward to the committee's reports on two additional areas of study: the promising practices to prevent violence against women; and women in skilled trades, science and technology, engineering, and mathematical careers. Your work on these studies is making a valuable contribution to advancing our collective knowledge of what works, what doesn't, and more importantly, how we should be moving forward.

All of these issues are also important because they reflect something I think all Canadians agree on — the need to support women, young women and girls in reaching their full potential. Our government is certainly committed to doing its part to help make this happen. As a result of my outreach with Canadians over the past year, I believe our government and Status of Women Canada are on the right track.

To continue making progress, Status of Women Canada will keep its focus on three clear priorities in 2015-16: ending violence against women and girls, promoting women in leadership and decision-making roles, and creating economic opportunities for women.

In terms of the first priority, we believe that ending all forms of gender-based violence is an important building block for helping women and girls reach their full potential. That's why I'm pleased that the implementation of the Government of Canada's action plan to address family violence and violent crimes against aboriginal women and girls began on April 1 with Status of Women Canada in the lead.

The action plan includes actions to prevent violence, support victims and their families, and protect aboriginal women and girls. Investments outlined in the action plan total approximately $200 million over five years.

Collaboration is a significant part of this action plan, and throughout its implementation federal organizations will continue to make a concerted effort to engage with aboriginal organizations, communities, and key stakeholders, as well as with provinces and territories, to ensure that our actions are meeting the needs of first nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples.

For example, in order to increase awareness about funding available under the action plan and related programs and resources, a single window website has been created through Status of Women Canada's website.

We also have a secretariat led by Status of Women Canada in which all the departments involved, including Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Justice, and Public Safety, come together to discuss funding projects to ensure that there is no duplication of efforts and that projects build upon each other.

We are also working on the steps agreed to by the participants of the round table on murdered and missing indigenous women and girls this past February. At the round table, all participants endorsed a framework for action that outlined three priorities: preventing violence, increasing community safety, and improving justice and policing measures. All of these are addressed in the government's existing plan of action. In addition, participants agreed to meet again in 2016 and to report on the progress made.

With respect to our second priority — promoting women in leadership and decision-making roles — our government continues taking action and seeing progress made.

This June will mark the one-year anniversary of the release of the report by the federal government's Advisory Council for Promoting Women on Boards.

One of its key recommendations was that the public and private sectors in Canada should aspire to seeing women hold 30% of board positions within five years, or by 2019. The feedback I have received so far from companies and CEOs has been extremely positive. I believe there is now real momentum on the issue in Canada, which will lead to more leadership opportunities for women.

We've committed to amending the Canada Business Corporations Act to promote gender diversity on public company boards using the widely recognized “comply or explain” model. Our government is also committed to giving girls a strong foundation for success so they can be the leaders of today and tomorrow. That's why we were early supporters of the United Nations declaring October 11 to be the International Day of the Girl.

I was also pleased to host the Strong Girls, Strong World event in Toronto last October, an event that brought girls together with high-profile Canadians to allow them to talk about their issues and what's important to them, their friends, and their families.

I was also pleased to launch a new project with Plan Canada, the YWCA, and the YMCA on March 8 this year in Toronto to support leadership opportunities for young women and girls in ten communities across Canada. These ten grassroots projects will support the creation of girls committees, which will help young women and girls gain skills in decision-making and leadership by leading special events, community outreach, advocacy, and media initiatives.

We've also established a girls advisory council, which will engage girls 15 to 24 years of age on their priorities and areas of interest and inform the ongoing work of the Government of Canada and of mine at Status of Women Canada.

Finally, with respect to our third priority, over the past year our government has continued to support the economic advancement of women in Canada in a number of ways. We put in place an expert panel on championing and mentorship for women entrepreneurs, which has provided us great feedback. In March we hosted a forum at which over 300 women entrepreneurs were here in Ottawa, with inspiring role models, practical workshops, and valuable networking opportunities and mentorship for those starting or growing their businesses.

In April I was proud to launch a new campaign, It Starts with One—Be her Champion. This campaign is reaching out to leaders in all fields, to men and women, asking them to make a difference by championing a woman in her career and challenging their colleagues and peers to do the same.

As we look to the next fiscal year, economic action plan 2015 builds on our government's track record of support for women's economic empowerment. lt provides for the creation of an action plan for women entrepreneurs, which will be put in place to help connect women with the tools and resources they need to grow their businesses, create jobs, and employ more Canadians. These initiatives under economic action plan 2015 reflect the strong leadership we are showing through a balanced budget and a low-tax plan for jobs, growth, and security.

Finally, as members of the committee know, our government believes in giving communities the tools to help meet the needs of women, young women, and girls through the women's program. Since 2007 this has resulted in investments in over 780 new projects that are improving the lives of women and girls across the country. We intend to continue this support for Status of Women Canada, with funding of approximately $29 million allocated in the main estimates, as you would have seen, for fiscal year 2015-16. The majority of these funds are for grants and contributions under the women's program.

Madam Chair, the actions I've described today add to our government's growing list of promising initiatives and significant accomplishments, which are creating positive and concrete change for women and girls in every region of the country.

I want to thank you and the committee members for the opportunity to appear here today, and would be pleased to answer any of your questions.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Madam Minister.

We will now move on to a question period of seven minute rounds.

Mrs. Truppe, you have the floor.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome, Minister, and your department. Thank you for coming. I know that everybody's really busy and what a busy place it is, so I appreciate your taking the time. It's certainly great to have you here. I know that you're passionate about this portfolio and also how hard you work to support women and girls with all of the different initiatives you've put in place. In regard to the initiatives we've had in the past couple of years, I don't think we've had this many in a long time, so kudos to you and your team for doing that.

I'd like to quote Isabelle Hudon, executive chair in Quebec and senior vice-president of client solutions at Sun Life Financial:

It has long been my personal commitment to support women in achieving their goals and realizing their potential. Not only is this good for women, it also makes...sense. I am pleased to see the Government of Canada working with the private sector to support the advancement of women with It Starts with One: Be her Champion.

She says as well that sponsoring and mentoring are two different important ways that we can all commit to helping women succeed.

I'm hoping you can take a few moments to speak about the campaign you launched on April 16, It Starts with One—Be her Champion. Can you highlight the enormous benefits that mentoring can have for both the mentee and the mentor? When I've done round tables, and I know that when you've done them too, mentoring always comes up. I'm really glad you launched this program. It would be great if you could explain it to us.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Thank you very much for the question.

This is a challenge that I'll put out to the entire committee. On April 16 of this year, I launched a campaign through Status of Women Canada called, It Starts with One—Be Her Champion.

I want to challenge all of you to take the pledge. This program is very different from most mentorship programs. In doing the research we have found, particularly for women entrepreneurs, but we see it in other fields, that when young women have a mentor, have a champion, they are more likely to succeed. We know for women entrepreneurs, as outlined on this card, that if a young woman is an entrepreneur and has a champion, a mentor, at the three-year mark, 88% of those businesses are thriving, but if she doesn't have a mentor almost 50% of them are failing at the three-year mark. So this program really puts mentorship on its head.

We're used to young people looking for mentors and signing up for a cup of coffee and wanting to chat, sometimes with us as parliamentarians and those who want to run for office. But what I think is very important, as my sister brought to my attention as a young professional engineer, is that she didn't need to have coffee with someone again; she needed someone to champion her career and be the advocate for her.

This program is asking prominent Canadians, including us as parliamentarians, to choose that one woman under the age of 35 whom you will invest a year of your time in and champion her in her chosen career. As I said, we launched the campaign in Toronto on April 16. We've done a series of other events to encourage Canadians across the country to step up and invest in young Canadians, but particularly young women under the age of 35.

I'd like to encourage all of you parliamentarians to take the pledge and participate in making sure that a young Canadian woman has an opportunity. We know when they are successful, when they see their career path realized, particularly those who are entrepreneurs, they may be in the legal field.... The person I am championing is a young lady named Leah Hillier, who has an undergraduate degree in business, but is now graduating from family practice and will become a physician with a brilliant career. We know they will contribute to the economy and will be able to help grow our country.

So I would like to ask all of you to step up, take the pledge—we'll give out our cards here—and also visit the website we have. It's at women.gc.ca/startwithone. I would encourage all parliamentarians from all parties to participate in this because it's only good for Canadian women. It's particularly great for these young women.

I know that I feel really good about it when I'm investing time with the young Canadian I'm working with, Leah Hillier, and I'm sure you will feel the same, but it's also good for the country.

Thanks for asking, and I encourage everyone to take the pledge.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I was going to ask if you had enough cards, and you've already answered that. It's great if everybody could get a card so they could sign up.

I'm pleased to know that action has been taken by our government to increase representation of women on boards. For instance, in economic action plan 2012 the creation of an advisory council of leaders from the private and public sectors was announced to promote participation of women on corporate boards. Further, in June 2014, the advisory council released their final report, which included 11 recommendations to both the private and public sectors, including a recommendation of a 30% goal for the representation of women in governance positions by 2019. Could you tell us a bit more about the advisory council?

The council also endorsed a comply-and-explain approach to support board gender bias. To what extent does the comply-and-explain approach benefit women? How does that work?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

In June of 2014 I launched a report called “Good For Business”. You can get a copy of it on the Status of Women website. It outlines a number of initiatives to increase the number of women that we have on boards with an aspirational goal of 30% by 2019.

That focuses on the fact that we know that having more women representatives on boards aids a firm in many ways. It could be through recruitment of better top talent, an increase in ROI, or an opportunity to expand the number of jobs they have available. We moved forward with this “nudge” to make sure that corporate Canada was moving forward but with the understanding that we have already set a leadership goal. The Government of Canada has been very focused on making sure that it is representative. Our Governor-in-Council appointments are already at 31% and growing. We know that over 30% of our judicial appointments are women. In fact, here in Canada I think we have something to be proud of. The lead at the Supreme Court of Canada and the new Clerk of the Privy Council of Canada are both women, which is unique for a G-8 country.

The comply-or-explain part of this goes hand in glove with an initiative by the Ontario Securities Commission. We know that comply or explain provides opportunities. Again, it's a nudge to make sure that corporate Canada is doing the right thing, investing in women and providing women with leadership opportunities, because they are being peer-reviewed. We have now adopted that. It was announced in economic action plan 2015 through the implementation of comply or explain in the Canada Business Corporation Act.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Minister.

We will continue with Ms. Freeman.

You have seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank the minister for taking the time to be here with us today.

Before I get more to specifics about what has been done, I want to ask a question. Yesterday, the House did vote to remove the GST on feminine hygiene products. I was very glad to see that we were able to accomplish that.

When does the government plan on implementing that measure?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

The government was pleased to support the motion. That's what it was.

We've been very clear that when you look across the board at whether these items should be taxed, they should not be. Our government has been very clear. We've reduced taxes on Canadians over 160 times since coming to office. We lowered the GST from 7% to 6% to 5%. We have a track record of either eliminating tax altogether or lowering tax, and that's where our focus is.

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

I do specifically want to speak about the GST.

Sorry to interrupt.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

As I've said, we have supported the motion. I'm delighted that we did so, and we'll continue to promote that.

I think it was the appropriate and smart thing to do, because it lowers a tax on Canadians.

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

Sorry to have interrupted you.

I do want to move on to make sure I get all the questions I want out.

The Status of Women agency does play a leading role in the capacity of federal organizations to use gender-based analysis plus, “GBA+”, as your government calls it, which is “an analytical process used to assess the potential impacts of policies, programs or initiatives on diverse groups of women and men, girls and boys.”

I would like to hear from you specifically about what progress has been made on implementing this gender-based analysis plus in government programs and policies.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

I'm delighted to say, and my agency head Meena Ballantyne will confirm, that I think over 1,500 individuals in the public service have taken the GBA+ web-based education. I'm delighted to say that I think all of us here at this table have done so, and I would encourage every parliamentarian to do exactly the same. It's a web-based analysis to walk you through the decision points you should be taking when you're analyzing policy. GBA isn't a program per se; it's a separately funded item and online training. I think it's the appropriate sensitivity training to make sure that all Canadians, particularly parliamentarians and public servants, are taking into account the appropriate decision-making tools when they are making policy decisions based on gender.

Our focus has been great. I can give you a list here. You asked for an assessment, so here's the GBA action plan.

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

I do have limited time.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Sure, no problem.

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

If you could submit it to the clerk as evidence, that would be—

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

You want an entire list of the, I guess, more than 25 or 30 departments that are involved in the GBA action plan?

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

That would be perfect.

I would like to ask specifically whether the status of women agency contributed to the analysis of Budget 2015.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Every component part of policy development for the Government of Canada has a requirement for GBA, so we do that for each piece of policy that moves forward.

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

It has a requirement for GBA. Does that need to be implemented in any way?

If there were findings that something were unequal, for instance, the GST being applied to something like tampons, is there any mechanism that kicks in to affect that, or does Status of Women simply play a leading role? Does it actually have an effect on what policy-making is?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Again, as I mentioned before, GBA isn't a program or an enforcement mechanism. GBA is a sensitization program to make sure that when individuals are making a policy decision they are taking into account gender balance.

If you're asking whether this is an enforcement mechanism, no, it's not. It's an issue to focus those who are making policy decisions—public servants, parliamentarians, members of the government—on taking gender into account.

Your question doesn't relate to this program, I guess would be the ultimate answer. GBA isn't a program and it doesn't have enforcement mechanisms like a program. It is an analytical approach.

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

I'd like to go back specifically to the 2015-16 main estimates.

There's a reduction of around $1 million under the strategic outcome of advancing equality for women. In main estimates 2014-15, just over $24.2 million was allocated to this program while around $23.2 million is indicated in the main estimates for 2015-16.

What accounts for this planned reduction?

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

You'll see—and I'll have Meena Ballantyne walk you through this—that the overall decrease of $6,000 in operating expenditures is a combination of a decrease in web renewal, a decrease in funding allocated to the Canadian School of Public Service, and a decrease for sunsetting of a program through Public Safety. However, there's also been an increase for collective bargaining agreement adjustments.

Those are the actual numbers, but I'll have Meena go through any specifics with respect to other allocations that Status of Women Canada is undergoing.

[Meena Ballantyne, Head of Agency, Status of Women Canada]

Thank you, Minister.

I think you're also asking about the $1 million.