Status of Women Committee on Feb. 21st, 2019

[Salma Zahid, Scarborough Centre, Lib.]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks to all the witnesses for coming today. It was good to hear your testimonies.

My questioning will be mostly about some minority groups. I know it's important that the government apply a gender lens to all its programs and decisions, and I'm very glad to hear that we are undertaking this study. It is pretty clear to me—and I suspect the evidence will bear this out—that senior women face certain unique challenges around poverty and vulnerability.

I also believe that it is important that we apply an ethnic lens, and that's something I will be focusing more on today. I represent a riding that has a big group of majority-minority communities, and we have a lot of minority senior women. I hear about their unique challenges around language, integration and cultural needs every day in my riding.

My first question is for the Department for Women and Gender Equality. How would you describe the department's undertaking of the challenges faced by minority women? How do you address them in your programming?

[Danielle Bélanger]

As I mentioned earlier, the Department for Women and Gender Equality does have two parts to its new mandate. One is to advance gender equality, and the other one is to promote the gender and diversity lens, which is GBA+. As part of that lens, we are looking at the different intersecting factors for women, including minority women, indigenous women, etc.

Part of our role is to help other government departments apply GBA+ to all of their programs, services, policies and initiatives. We do provide training. We are working with the Canada School of Public Service to provide very targeted training on GBA+, which has components that target different women populations. Those are some of the first things: training on GBA+ and capacity-building across government.

Another component is the different calls for proposals that we have through our women's program. There are women's organizations that have been receiving funding, and that's also targeted to different populations. For instance, the gender-based violence program was launched in January 2018, and it looks at violence based on different populations. It's a call for proposals, so not everyone receives funding, but certainly these are factors that are being looked at in terms of high-risk populations and vulnerable populations.

[Salma Zahid]

Many minority groups are not aware of these, so do you have any other languages included in the programs that you are doing, to create awareness so they know these are available programs?

[Danielle Bélanger]

Certainly, we have a gender-based violence knowledge centre, which has also been recently launched. Most is available in English and French, but we do know that accessibility for multilingual services is an issue in local and regional contexts. At this time, English and French are the primary languages, but of course we work within regions. Our staff on the ground do work with other organizations to be able to provide information in the language of choice.

[Salma Zahid]

Social isolation is a big challenge for many senior women, and I see it specifically more for the minority senior women, because language is a barrier for them and integration is a big barrier for them. Are there programs specifically to address social isolation for minority senior women?

[Danielle Bélanger]

There aren't currently with the Department for Women and Gender Equality. However, I may be looking to my colleague at PHAC.

Perhaps there's some programming and some interventions within your organization.

[Anna Romano]

Normally, the way I answer the social isolation question is to talk a little bit about the age-friendly communities initiative, which isn't specifically for minority communities, but it is across Canada currently in 1,200 communities. The idea with the age-friendly community initiative is that the facilities, the community, everything is built in that particular community to encourage and have an environment that's conducive to seniors getting out and being with others, with friends and family, and to reduce social isolation. While it's not specifically targeted at minority communities, I'm sure that among those 1,200 communities there would be a bit of a mix.

[Salma Zahid]

You mentioned in your remarks the issues senior women face in regard to falls.

[Anna Romano]

Yes.

[Salma Zahid]

What fall prevention strategy are you adopting, and how are you creating awareness within different communities about fall prevention?

[Anna Romano]

In my remarks, I also mentioned the very recent investment we've made with Parachute Canada to support the pan-Canadian seniors' fall prevention network project. Basically, this will be an online hub where all Canadians and health professionals would have access to fall prevention resources. There are a number of very good resources out there; sometimes people are not aware of them. The idea with this project is to create this hub where anybody can go on to get some further information on resources that are available.

We also support some evidence-building in this area, in terms of our work with Statistics Canada on.... Is it the longitudinal study I'm thinking of?

[Franca Gatto, Director, Aging, Seniors and Dementia Division, Centre for Health Promotion, Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada]

It's not Statistics Canada, but CIHR.

[Anna Romano]

Yes, it's our work with CIHR, to gather some additional information on falls, their prevalence, and why they're happening, because we need to build the evidence base before we can build further programming in this area.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent. Thank you very much.

We're now going to turn to Rachael Harder.

Rachael, you have seven minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Ms. Bélanger, in your opening remarks, you mentioned that the mandate of the department has changed. Of course, we know there was a name change that took place this fall. With that, the mandate changed.

I've been told the mandate didn't really change, that the department has stayed largely the same. Can you just clarify that? Has it changed or has it not changed?

[Danielle Bélanger]

The mandate has expanded. Earlier, when we were Status of Women Canada, the mandate was specifically focused on women. Now, in terms of the new Department for Women and Gender Equality, the mandate has expanded to sex and gender and looking at gender identity and gender expression, as well as sexual orientation.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

In your estimation, is this a significant change, or is it not so significant?

[Danielle Bélanger]

I would say it's an evolution in some ways. We had been doing work with LGBTQ communities, to a certain extent, based on some of our programming, but we've also been doing work with girls. Girls weren't part of the original mandate of Status of Women Canada, so I think it's an evolution in that respect.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Do you think that the evolution is significant enough that those around this table should have a better understanding of that? I ask this because this committee is responsible for Status of Women Canada, whose mandate, of course, has now changed. Those around this table are responsible for conducting studies that fit within Status of Women Canada or that would pertain to that department.

I'm wondering whether those around this table should then have a better understanding of the changes that have taken place, so that we can better serve the department and its goals going forward.

[Danielle Bélanger]

I think it's a great question. When the act was passed in December, there were a number of questions asked at that time, as the bill went through the House and the Senate. Certainly, the department would be happy to come back to this committee to provide more information and a better overview of the activities we're now conducting.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

My next question goes to Stats Canada and Ms. Milan. I'm looking at these slides, and there's one here that states, “Poverty quickly falls off in senior years, largely because of government programs”. It points out that after the age of about 65, we see that poverty declines quite significantly. Based on the slides, it would show that this is because OAS and GIS kick in.

This is my first question: Can you define the measure that is used for poverty? How do we define that?

[Sébastien Larochelle-Côté, Editor-in-chief, Insights on Canadian Society, Statistics Canada]

If you don't mind, I will take that question.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Sure.

[Sébastien Larochelle-Côté]

The definition of poverty in this slide is the MBM, the market basket measure. This is a basket of goods and services that you require to meet your basic needs and achieve a modest standard of living. If you are below a certain threshold, then you're considered to be under the poverty line.

This was developed recently. Essentially, the threshold varies from region to region, so it takes into consideration variations in the cost of living across the country. The basket of goods itself includes things such healthy food, appropriate shelter, home maintenance, clothing and transportation, as well as other goods and services that permit engagement in a community. As you can see, it's a number of items. It's a fairly complicated measure in terms of how it's calculated, but it's fairly simple to understand. I can give you an example: For a family of one, it's slightly above $20,000. That's the amount of money that's considered the minimum to meet the poverty line.

This measure will be reviewed in the future. The idea of the MBM is that it's not constant. It's not fixed in time, so it will be reviewed over subsequent years to see if it continues to.... Essentially, it will be changing over time. I can give you more information about it, should you require it.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Are you saying that for a family of one, approximately $20,000 or below would be considered poverty, no matter where you live in Canada?