Status of Women Committee on May 12th, 2015

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

I will answer your question in two parts.

With respect to the Government of Canada in general, this has been a recognized need. More than 500,000 Canadians have taken part in apprenticeship loans through our investment in that loan program in Economic Action Plan 2014. There is also the Canada job grant to create opportunities for Canadians to have skills for jobs that are available today. These are two signature programs that address the skilled professional trades issues.

With respect to Status of Women Canada, I completely agree with you: these are fabulous jobs. Our agency two years ago would have called these non-traditional jobs for women. My dad just says, these are good jobs. Having grown up in Fort McMurray, Alberta, where there were only a few skilled professional tradespeople, I can recognize how that six-figure income is easily attainable.

Status of Women Canada over the last number of years has undertaken a number of initiatives. One is that we've had a call for proposals in this area and have funded just over 45 ongoing projects to support women in skilled trades and technical professions. These projects focus on construction, some on shipbuilding, manufacturing, some on agriculture.

Our focus, then, is not only to recruit women into these roles, but also to retain them; that has been a substantive focal point for us. As the minister, though, I also have had a high-level round table, and we're moving forward on a number of initiatives to encourage young women to enter these professional fields.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you, Madam Minister and Mr. Barlow.

Ms. Freeman, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

To pick up on where we just were, we were talking about women on boards, about women in STEM, about creating an environment where women can take on jobs in which they're higher paid and have more leadership. According to our latest numbers—although they're five years old, as we don't have any more recent data—women spend an average of 50 hours a week on unpaid child care, which is double that of men.

Why are we not taking the time to address this issue of unpaid work, the fact that women still bear a disproportionate amount of the burden when it comes to child care, and the fact that we're not giving them the option of being able to use public child care to be able to access child care throughout the country?

We do know, for instance, that in Ottawa one child in child care can cost as much as $1,500 or $2,000 a month.

Certainly, programs such as income splitting that aren't accessible for 85% of women are not directly giving them options, and the child benefit goes nowhere near to being able to make the difference for many women trying to afford child care every month.

Why are we not addressing this important difference in unpaid work?

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

I would say that we are very much addressing it on a few fronts.

First, as I outlined before—and I'm happy to go through it again—the universal child care benefit focuses on allowing parents, mom and dad, to make the choices about their child care. We have augmented that for children under the age of six, as well as expanded it to provide parents that have children aged six to seventeen a full new benefit.

Those together, as well as the remaining family tax cut and the children's fitness tax credit augmentation, provide for most families, on average for a family of four, $6,600 more in their pockets this year, in order to allow mom and dad to make the choices about their child care as they deem fit.

We know, and as Minister of Status of Women I hear this all over the country, that not every mom works nine to five; many moms work outside that time frame and want to be able to have a choice in their child care. That goes hand in glove, though, with what Status of Women Canada is doing to support projects to make sure that we allow women to get great jobs. So by way of example, in STEM, or in skilled professional trades, there's a fabulous program called women building futures. It's based in Edmonton—

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

I'm sorry to interrupt you. I'm sure that's a fabulous program, but I do want to go back to the fact that we hear all over the country that women often will stay home to raise their children, because the reality is that child care costs more than many women in this country make. Programs like income splitting, in fact, encourage that.

Is that the kind of option that the Conservative government, your government, is encouraging?

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

Well, as I just said, the universal child care benefit actually benefits every single parent. Every mother in this country will receive that. So that's one.

As I was going to mention, Status of Women Canada also augments and looks to programs that support making sure women can get great jobs. In this example of skilled professional trades, the women building futures project is supporting the family dynamic and allowing women—many of whom are actually single moms and aboriginal single moms—to receive the skills training that they want and support their child while doing so.

Status of Women Canada is very involved in that program. JudyLynn Archer is an outstanding executive director doing wonderful work in a program that we hope will spread across western Canada, if not into eastern Canada.

So the universal child care benefit is something that every Canadian parent receives. They will be provided—

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

I'd like to move on to another issue.

At CSW this year there was not any mention at all of the issue of violence against aboriginal women, and that was very disappointing to me, because—

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Please address your question.

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

—CEDAW has been ongoing in raising that issue with Canada. Why was that not talked about—

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Ms. Freeman.

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

—and why is the government not calling an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women in this country?

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

We've been very clear on this, having met with aboriginal families. They have asked for action. We don't need another study. We've had over 30. What we do need is to make sure that these families are protected, supported, and that we prevent these actions from ever happening again.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you.

Mrs. Crockatt, you have five minutes.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you very much.

Minister, I'm very interested in the comments you are making on skilled trades and STEM studies, because I think this is an absolutely phenomenal message that our young girls and women need to hear to move themselves up in the wage scale. Not any job makes a difference, but you have been making great strides in letting women know the areas that are going to help them to get into fields where they can make more money.

I'd like you to expand a little further on my colleague's question: What initiatives are in place through the Status of Women so we can advance women in skilled trades and technical professions, and to what degree does mentorship play a role here?

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

Thank you for the question.

As I said, Status of Women Canada is focused on providing opportunities for women to take on these great jobs. In addition to the support we will have for programming, which I'll come back to, we've developed a plan to address this. First and foremost, we have a group of leaders who are advising Status of Women Canada, including me and Meena Ballantyne, my agency head, on what we should be focused on. This is a group of individuals who represent everyone who would be in this field, whether it be Bob Blakely of the Building Trades, or Jerry Dias from Unifor, or Lorraine Mitchelmore, the president of Shell Canada. It is a group of individuals who cover the span so they can provide us great advice.

From their advice what have we done? We've moved forward on a number of initiatives. First, we're developing a business case. What is the business case for making sure that women should be part of your workforce? We know on the Women On Boards initiative and Women Entrepreneurs that it is only good for business. We believe this is the case with regard to women in skilled professional trades, but we're going to make sure we have that business case, and launch it to make the case.

We're supporting an invitation or call for proposals not only to encourage women to enter skilled professional trades, but also to retain them, because we know that so many of them enter into this or into apprenticeships and then don't complete them or don't stay in their trade. We want to know the answer to that so we can address it.

Finally, I've made this a priority at our federal-provincial-territorial meeting that we'll be having in June. We need to make sure this is on the national stage, that as a group of leaders at the provincial, territorial, and federal levels we take this very seriously and that we know we need to move the numbers to provide those opportunities to women.

We've taken a comprehensive approach to this, and Meena and her team are doing an outstanding job of implementing it. Our goal is similar to Women on Boards and Women Entrepreneurs, where we've moved the numbers, to do the same in this area as well.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you.

There's more I could ask there, but I want to move on because I think the issue of child, early, and forced marriages is really important. This is a basic violation of human rights. I even had someone call my office this week who is being forced to go to another country to get married. You are taking action on this. I would love you to speak to the committee about Bill S-7, and why it's important to address this issue, please. Thank you, Minister.

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

This has been a focal point for the Government of Canada and, quite frankly, for me personally. As a pediatric surgeon, the concept that any human right of a child would be violated is abhorrent. Canada itself has strongly condemned child, early, and forced marriages as a violation of basic human rights, and as a form of violence against girls in particular. Obviously, some boys are impacted by this as well, but it's primarily girls. As a foreign policy initiative this has been a priority area, and Canada is playing a leadership role on the international stage. We are the sponsor of the UN's International Day of the Girl Child on October 11, where we focus significantly on priority issues of girls' rights, and, obviously, the elimination and eradication of child, early, and forced marriages is at the top of that list. We also have had program funding support through the Minister of Foreign Affairs recently announcing $20 million to UNICEF for programming to end child, early, and forced marriages, and with Zambia we put forward the first-ever stand-alone resolution on child, early, and forced marriage at the UN General Assembly to move forward in eradicating this practice.

So the legislation that we're moving forward with, Bill S-7, is to go hand in glove in support of our international position on this that there should be a zero-tolerance policy with regard to these practices.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Ms. Crockatt.

Madam Minister, the time has gone very quickly. That's already it for now. I would like to thank you very much for speaking to us about the government's programs.

Before you go, would you have time to answer one quick question from Mrs. Perkins?

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

Okay.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Can you ask one question?

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Absolutely, I'd love to ask a question. I'll make it a short one.

Thank you, Minister, for being here. I really appreciate the work that you're doing on behalf of these young women and girls. It's so important, and the fact that you're highlighting it the way you do is just remarkable. I'm commending you for the work that you do.

Concerning the TrustLaw poll that ranks G-20 countries on where it's best to a woman, Canada was number one in 2012. This was the best country to be a woman in. Our government has always prided itself on a society where women and men are equal participants in all aspects of life.

Minister, are there any special projects within that framework that you would like to highlight that brings us to this point?

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

I think what we're trying to do at Status of Women in Canada is move the bar to provide excellent opportunities for women across the country. Part of that is economic advancement, and part of that is making sure that women's rights are respected and, therefore, we are focused on eliminating violence against women and girls. We have a number of projects, some of which are focused, as we talked about, on women's economic empowerment, particularly our new action plan for women entrepreneurs and the focus that we've had through our expert panel on women entrepreneurs. As Mrs. Crockatt was mentioning before, our focus is also now on skilled professional trades for women and their opportunities to have great jobs.

We're trying to cover, I guess, a bit of the economic waterfront, creating great jobs for women, providing them opportunities, and then also being a focal point on our elimination of violence against women and girls as a hallmark of what Status of Women in Canada has been involved in for decades.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Madam Minister.

We will suspend the meeting for a few minutes to give us time to welcome the other witnesses.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

The meeting is suspended