Evidence of meeting #106 for Status of Women in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Okay.
As I don't have the data in front of me, but you do, is there other data that we should be aware of that I'm failing to ask you about?
Chief, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
I can think of one thing.
I think you might have alluded to this in your last question, but the reason for not voting in the last federal election—and this is in our infographic—is the fact that women felt that they were less informed. One thing that interested me about the data was that I thought maybe women would be more busy to vote or men would be more busy, but actually, when we added up the number who didn't vote because they were either at work or busy with child care or other things, it actually came out about even. Those data weren't showing as anything major. Again, that is something we could provide to you after this meeting.
Also, we have another survey at Statistics Canada that recently asked about voting behaviours. We didn't include that here because we really found that women reporting that they weren't informed on the issues was a really interesting fact and that wasn't one of the response categories in the other survey. We can provide you with data from both those sources later.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Okay.
I just want to clarify. Basically, you would say that those women who said that they were too busy to vote and those women who said they didn't feel informed about the issues, would that percentage be about the same?
Chief, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
No. The percentage of women saying they were busy and men saying they were busy was about the same.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Okay. Do you have those numbers with you today or will you get those to us at another time?
Survey Manager, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
I don't think so.
Chief, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
The biggest difference that stood out was for the category about not being informed.
Again, we don't know if it is that women are more likely to admit to an interviewer that they weren't informed than men are or if there's something else going on behind that data. Again, we didn't have the time in the survey to explore that in detail.
Survey Manager, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
I have a couple of those reasons. They are not informed and we talked about that. They are not interested is the same for men and women, which is 20% for both. Some felt that voting would not make a difference and that was their reason for not voting. Men were quite a bit more likely to feel that, with 9% of men and 5% of women responding to that.
Survey Manager, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Those who felt that voting would not make a difference as a reason for not voting, where men would be 9% and women would be 5%.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
We've gone about one minute over, so I'm going to take one minute away from the CPC on round two.
Ms. Quach, it's your turn for seven minutes.
NDP
Anne Minh-Thu Quach NDP Salaberry—Suroît, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, ladies, for coming to provide us with some insight.
We just heard that some people thought voting was pointless. Was there a question related to voting systems, such as the proportional voting system? The question might have asked whether people would be more likely to vote if there was a proportional voting system, for instance.
Assistant Director, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
There were actually no questions on the voting system in the general social survey. I don't know whether that is mentioned in other surveys.
Assistant Director, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
As we were saying earlier, we are working on the content related to social identity for the next survey. If a question is of national significance, we have some flexibility.
NDP
Anne Minh-Thu Quach NDP Salaberry—Suroît, QC
Great.
Did you ask questions about systems covered in the media? It would appear that strong women's presentation in the media and in politics has some influence. Do you agree?
Assistant Director, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Again, the data unfortunately does not allow us to make that analysis.
Anne Minh-Thu Quach NDP Salaberry—Suroît, QC
Okay. Have you looked at the number of information campaigns specifically for women?
Assistant Director, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
We haven't looked at the media or at information campaigns. I'm sorry. Those are all excellent questions.
NDP
Anne Minh-Thu Quach NDP Salaberry—Suroît, QC
Okay.
There are also issues with information campaigns carried out by the chief electoral officer. It is said that women feel the least informed to vote, which is why a number of campaigns are targeting women.
Assistant Director, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
That's a very interesting question, but we don't have any data on that.
NDP
Anne Minh-Thu Quach NDP Salaberry—Suroît, QC
Okay.
We are told that women are not really interested in politics.
Are there issues that interest them more?
Assistant Director, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Anna, do we know from the general social survey what are the questions of social identity that women are more interested in? Do we have general data from that survey?
Survey Manager, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Not really, not in comparison with that.