Status of Women Committee on Feb. 28th, 2019

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Vice-Chair, Ms. Irene Mathyssen]

Everyone is in agreement. Thank you.

I believe we'll need some time to set up the video. We'll suspend for a minute and give our technicians time to set up the video.

[The Vice-Chair, Ms. Irene Mathyssen]

I would like to begin with an opening statement. Ms. Morris, you have seven minutes, please.

[Wanda Morris, Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer, West Coast, CARP]

Thank you.

My name is Wanda Morris. My colleague Laura Kadowaki and I are here to talk about women in poverty.

Our presentation is based on the document “The FACES of Canada's Seniors”, CARP's federal election platform. FACES stands for financial security, abuse prevention, caregiving and housing supports, exceptional health care and social inclusion. If you haven't seen it, you can download it at carp.ca/faces.

As well as our FACES document, we strongly endorse two reports that address these critical issues: that of the Older Women's Dialogue Project and the Centre for Elder Law, “We Are Not All the Same”; and that of Common Wealth and Ryerson University's National Institute on Ageing, “The Value of a Good Pension”.

In addressing the issue of senior women in poverty, we encourage the committee to consider strategies that address three goals; increasing retirement resources, protecting retirement resources and making retirement resources go further. All are necessary and complementary.

In terms of financial support for our poorest seniors, increase the GIS amount and, second, cut back on GIS clawbacks, particularly on the top-up. Clawbacks on the top-up are equivalent to a 75% rate of tax. This is unconscionable.

Increase the exempt amount for GIS beyond the current $3,500 and expand it to cover not just earned income but also income from contracts, pensions and interest, and create a seniors index that recognizes the inflationary costs of goods and services purchased by seniors.

For those with some resources, help them to stretch them further by removing mandatory RRIF withdrawals, or indeed consider eliminating RRIFs altogether. Current RRIF withdrawal rates do not reflect safe rates of return or expected longevities.

Support deferred annuities. These are cost-effective forms of longevity insurance that are not currently viable due to ill-considered taxation policies.

Support group pensions and group TFSA pension-like arrangements for low-income workers. A retirement dollar invested in a typical retirement scheme yields $1.70. That same dollar invested in a Canada model pension yields $5.32, three times the amount of an individual going it alone.

Expand the CPP. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is a Canadian success story. Allow for individual contributions to take advantage of its strong returns and low costs.

Regarding financial literacy, among other critical pieces of information, seniors should know that they will often be better off by deferring both their CPP and OAS, while common practice today is for many to take their OAS at 65 and their CPP at 65 or even earlier.

Protect retirement resources, and protect corporate pensions. Bring Canada in line with the U.S. and the U.K. It is not right that pensioners from Nortel and Sears, in the U.S., had their pensions—

[The Vice-Chair, Ms. Irene Mathyssen]

I'm sorry. Apparently our interpretation is not working properly.

Okay, go ahead.

[Wanda Morris]

Going back to protecting retirement resources, it's critical that pensioners be protected. It's not right that Nortel and Sears pensioners in the U.S. had their pensions virtually all protected, while Canadians, especially those outside of Ontario, lost significant parts of their retirement resources.

On the call for investor protections, Canada lags behind other OECD countries. We pay some of the highest investment costs in the world and have some of the fewest investor protections.

Finally, create a single complaints body for all financial issues, as is done in the U.K. Our fragmented system makes it incredibly difficult for seniors who have been wronged to seek and obtain financial restitution.

For more information, I refer you to CARP's submission on retirement security as part of the federal pension consultation.

Turning to abuse prevention, protect seniors by amending PIPEDA. This is the personal privacy protection legislation. Banks currently are precluded from protecting women, due to technical problems with the legislative wording. Review OAS and GIS eligibility for older immigrant women who have no financial support and are at risk of abuse by family members.

Turning to housing, make retirement resources go further by supporting innovative housing options for seniors, such as co-housing and home sharing. Address housing as a commodity. Widespread empty units should not coexist with low rental vacancy rates and high rent costs. Regulate Airbnb and other programs that take viable housing stock and rental stock out of the market and contribute to seniors homelessness.

Laura, I'll go over to you.

[Laura Kadowaki, Policy Researcher, West Coast, CARP]

For caregivers, many of whom we know are senior women, make retirement resources go further by making current non-refundable tax credits refundable, to ensure that our most financially vulnerable seniors, those without taxable income, can benefit.

Remove the requirement for employment insurance benefits that the care recipient be at significant risk of death, as physicians and family members in many cultures may be reluctant to label an individual as being close to death, which can preclude them from receiving the benefit.

Provide a caregiver allowance, a benefit paid to caregivers providing significant hours of care. Such programs are already offered by the Nova Scotia government and the governments of the U.K. and Australia.

Address the financial insecurity of low-income grandmothers caring for grandchildren, which is a particular issue in indigenous communities.

For exceptional health care, government needs to make retirement resources go further by investing in a national pharmacare program, as right now 8% of older Canadians are forgoing needed medications due to the cost.

[The Vice-Chair, Ms. Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you.

We are at the end of the seven minutes. Hopefully, you can finish your remarks during the questions.

I'd like to go to Madame Madeleine Bélanger, s'il vous plaît.

[Madeleine Bélanger, As an Individual]

Madam Chair and committee members, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak about my experience. That's what I was asked to do.

In was born in 1935 in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, in the Lower St. Lawrence. I'm the eldest of a family of 16 children. I think that the modest environment where I grew up is similar to the environment of many women across the country. Above all, I want to identify the needs of the senior women who live near me.

I obtained my first teaching certificate at the age of 16. I say “first” because I obtained other certificates along the way. I completed a bachelor's degree in education, and I worked as a teacher for 35 years. I took a three-year break to work in the Catholic action diocesan services, a one-year break for my family and a one-year break to attend university. I have a daughter. We didn't plan to have only one child, but we expanded our family by welcoming four young refugees from Southeast Asia. They arrived in 1977, 1979 and 1981. Very early in my adult life, I was drawn to outside causes, in particular the plight of working children. In 1974, I signed the federal charter incorporating an international aid organization whose mission is to help children in developing countries.

As you pointed out, age is a cruel leveller. It affects all women to varying degrees of intensity. They have essentially the same concerns and they must face the same challenges, whether they were teachers and wives at home, or professionals in a mission or on the labour market. However, the stress is different for women who live with their partners in this last season of life. It's also different for women who are financially secure. I heard the people who spoke before me talk about all the financial needs related to the situation of senior women. Obviously, it's also different for women who have a social network.

Senior women want to continue to share their wealth of life experience. They still need to be valued and consulted. They want to remain in touch with the public, social and community life around them. I'm fortunate to experience this reality. Yes, I consider myself lucky to still be active and engaged. My family and social networks don't have the overly protective attitude that involves organizing things for me. My children didn't try to “place” me in a residence when my husband died. My friends and family stepped up.

Our world moves fast. Institutions that focus on efficiency, performance and labour market demands often turn seniors into victims of their slowness and of the time it takes them to act, move around or understand the use of new technology. Just think about what's needed in order to understand how to use a bank machine.

There are the challenges faced by women who aren't financially independent, women who know nothing about managing a budget, women who are mothers of 30- or 40-year-old children with a disability or women who are exploited by their family and friends. There are also women who live in CHSLDs and who experience loneliness in the midst of a population of forgotten people such as them. I think that these are the major challenges, which are a reality for many people.

Since they must face alone a reality that seems too harsh, a number of senior women have chosen to live in establishments for seniors.

They would have preferred the assistance of a family member or friend, but who wants to leave their job to become a caregiver? It's difficult to obtain the caregiver status and it's very poorly paid. The status needs to be reviewed. On a social and human level, leaving people at home benefits everyone.

A real educational movement is needed so that the active society doesn't exclude senior women from its ranks and gives them the chance to experience everyday situations where people of all ages come together.

Right now, talking about old age security is an ideal plan, but it's only a plan. The programs and services for seniors provided by the government meet the needs of healthy and independent senior women who can freely move around and who are well supported. Senior women who are less agile also want to stay in their familiar environment. They want to be respected and they want to move around and continue to feel like full members of society. These desires are difficult to address, because they require much more money than the amount available.

Seniors who end up in establishments need—

[The Vice-Chair, Ms. Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you, Ms. Bélanger.

I am so sorry, but we are at seven minutes. Hopefully you'll be able to continue during the question period and hear from our committee.

[Madeleine Bélanger]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Ms. Irene Mathyssen]

Now, we need to go to Ms. Twinn, but before we do, we have unanimous consent for Ms. Twinn to provide two videos.

Apparently, there is also a PowerPoint presentation in English only. Do we have unanimous consent to see the PowerPoint as well, or is it the committee's preference to see only the videos? I am in your hands.

Would you like to see the PowerPoint and the videos?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Vice-Chair, Ms. Irene Mathyssen]

Everyone is okay with that. Thank you.

Ms. Twinn, could you proceed, please?

[Catherine Twinn]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

There will not be time to go through the PowerPoint presentation, but I want to get to the videos very quickly. We won't be able to watch all of them. I was unaware of the seven-minute time allocation.

Let's start with the Eric Shirt video. He's from the Saddle Lake Cree Nation.

[Video presentation]

I'm cutting that short. You have the point.

[Video presentation]

I hope you have the opportunity to watch these videos in full length.

These are voices from the first nation community. There's a cultural continuity in the sense that first nations people have always lived in community.

One of my heroes is a man by the name of Wendell Berry, who wrote a lot of essays. In the book Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, he said the following about the role and power of community—and think about this in relation to indigenous women, including women 55 years of age and older, living on reserve:

Community alone, as principle and as fact, can raise the standards of local health (ecological, economic, social, and spiritual) without which the other two interests [public and private] will destroy each other.

With regard to community, I would say that the greatest challenges facing indigenous senior women 55 years of age and older are poverty, inequality, toxic stress from unhealed historic trauma that's been transmitted intergenerationally, adverse childhood experiences—and I'm sure you've heard of the ACE study—and trauma-based behaviours when that trauma isn't healed. “You hurt me; I hurt you. You attack me; I attack you.” These are mimetic structures of violence that are very alive and very real, and frankly, they operate here in Ottawa. I was here last night, and I witnessed Jody Wilson-Raybould's testimony.

I would also say that in addition to those three—inequality, poverty, toxic stress—there's ongoing structural violence by the state, Canada's failure to ensure equal protection and equal benefit of the law for indigenous members, especially age-vulnerable women, and that includes senior women.

I'd like you to put up the slide of my stepdaughter, Deborah Serafinchon. Deborah is the daughter of my late husband, Walter Twinn, who was chief of the Sawridge First Nation and a senator. You see that she's in a wheelchair. She exemplifies “55 years of age and older”. Both her mother and her father came from Sawridge First Nation, but because of the operation of the Indian Act, Deborah—

[The Vice-Chair, Ms. Irene Mathyssen]

If you could conclude so we could have time for questions.... I would like to give the committee the opportunity to pursue this further with you.

With the indulgence of the committee, if you could end there, we'll go to our questioners and hopefully you'll be able to expand on your remarks.

[Catherine Twinn]

I'll just say this in 8 seconds: Had she been born male, her status would have been different.

[The Vice-Chair, Ms. Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you.

We are limited in time, so we'll begin round one, for five minutes—

[Sonia Sidhu]

Madam Chair, can they send the video to all of the members?

[Catherine Twinn]

Absolutely.

[The Vice-Chair, Ms. Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you. That's very kind.

We'll begin with Ms. Lambropoulos.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you. I'll be sharing my time with Salma Zahid.

I'd like to give you the opportunity to take 30 seconds to finish up, if you would like. You said that if she had been born male, things would have been different. Would you like to talk about why? What did you mean by that?

[Catherine Twinn]

Despite the decision in the Descheneaux case that came out of Montreal, despite Bill S-3, which this Parliament passed, Deborah is still on the outside looking in. Had she been born male, she would have had full Indian status and full band membership; she would belong to her community.

Her life story was that she was scooped in the early 1960s into the child welfare system, and through operation of discriminatory law—law that's been declared discriminatory, which Parliament was told to fix and has not—she still suffers from that structural inequality. That deprives her of her belonging, identity and community support.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Bélanger, I'd also like to give you the opportunity to continue what you started.

I know that this isn't the case for you, but it may be the case for your friends and for other senior women whom you know. You said that once their husbands die, senior women have even more issues. Can you elaborate on those issues?

[Madeleine Bélanger]

To whom are you speaking, Ms. Lambropoulos?