Evidence of meeting #3 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 list.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Could we, maybe as a committee of the whole, sit and go through all of these, or would you prefer that you just do this—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
I would prefer doing it with the steering committee. Having facilitated a number of these discussions, I know that if you have 10 people with 30 ideas, you'll never come to agreement on narrowing it down. I would suggest that we defer to the steering committee.
Go ahead, Ms. Harder.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
On a point of clarification, if it goes to the steering committee, are you asking for any further recommendations before it gets to that point?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
I wanted to make sure we have them all, so if there are any others, we were going to add them at this point.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
When it's appropriate, I do have a comment to make in that regard.
Conservative
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
When I read the list that was discussed at the last committee meeting—unfortunately I wasn't able to be here for it—I noticed that we discussed the possibility of studying violence against women and girls. Now, I understand that the minister has been asked to put together a national strategy with regard to this issue, so in one sense it would be easy just to abdicate and allow her to do that at another committee level of some sort.
However, I wonder if we could play a complementary role—not a competitive role, but a complementary role. The minister was suggesting today that perhaps cyberbullying might be an area that this committee could study. If we were to focus on the social media side of things with regard to violence against women and girls and how social media perpetuate it, I wonder if that could act as a complementary study to assist the minister with her overall national strategy. It would help to give us some focus as a committee and help us be a part of a larger picture, a national framework, which I think could be a lot of fun for us.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
I did add it to the list when we were going around with the questions.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
I really like that part of it.
If we're going to be looking at something, we could look at violence in the lives of girls and women and include cyberbullying and make it a bit broader than that.
I sit on the public safety committee as well, and sexual exploitation of children is something that has shot through the roof in terms of crime. Also, how can we apply strategies in universities and colleges to make sure that this type of violence isn't happening there?
It would be looking more generally at violence in the lives of young girls and women. We would be doing that as a component of it, an important component, but we would be making it a bit broader.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
That's fine.
We'll come out of the discussion with the steering committee. When they narrow it, we'll be able to put that out as one of the ideas that goes before the committee. We don't have to scope it ourselves. As a committee, we can then say that we want to work in a certain area, but what do we want to do in that area? What do we want to study? What tasks we will bring forward?
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
There's a lot that's tied into that. The minister mentioned the hypersexualization of girls. How is that feeding into cyberbullying in turn? There are a few things that we can be looking at under that context.
Conservative
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Before we throw out too many more ideas, was the list of all the topics circulated? It would be helpful to know what's on the list so that we aren't repetitive.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
They include sexual trafficking through online websites; female entrepreneurs; murdered and missing indigenous women, including a review of the estimates and the results, because the department is actually doing the inquiry, so we have a role to watch what they do and watch their estimates and make sure they're getting the results we want; gender-based analysis at the federal level; sexual harassment in the military or other government areas or Canada Post; women on corporate boards and in leadership positions; access to the justice system for women in Canada; female appointees to federal boards; housing for women in Canada and domestic violence shelter funding; and a gender-based violence action plan, because the federal program is going on and we have the ability to look at their estimates and their results and make sure they're covering it adequately, or we could do anything that they're not doing.
They also include gender and economic security; any pay equity issues not covered by the pay equity special committee; initiatives for young women and girls; gender-based violence issues not covered by the federal program, such as intimate partner violence or child sexual abuse; increasing the number of women in non-traditional roles, such as pipefitters and engineers; improved justice system approaches to violence against women, which is in regard to the idea that today the abuser gets to stay in the house and the women have to go to the shelters; issues impacting indigenous women and girls; female refugees and their issues; increasing the number of women entrepreneurs, which is a duplicate; and preventing Internet posting of pictures of girls, which takes us to this one.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
If I may, I would suggest that although hearing the list is useful, it is hard to wrap your head around all the different ideas that we came up with. We had a great discussion last time, but if we could get those lists, go home and think about them, and come up with our top priorities, as you were suggesting, I think that is a good idea. It will give us some time to mull it over, because it's very hard to remember that whole list. A lot of those things are overlapping at times, so I think that will help us eliminate the things that are redundant.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
I wonder if you could distribute the list. We could come back with some ideas for some studies that we might consider. As my colleague said, a number of them overlap. I've just mentioned an idea that includes a number of them.
Maybe we could take some of those issues and come back with some ideas. That would narrow it down from 20 or 30. Maybe we could come up with five or six different issues that incorporate some of the other ones and take a look at them. We could each go back and take a look at some of that.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
Yes, and I think it would be fine to add the things that we heard today as well. Human trafficking is one area that I heard about today, as well as cyberbullying and picture-sharing, the digital threat, and the hypersexualization of women and girls. On Bill C-452, it sounded as though the minister was going to address that one. I wrote down “section 300 of the Criminal Code”. I didn't know if that was something they were addressing or whether that would be something for us.
Certainly I can put together the list, and the clerk will translate it into both official languages and submit it to you. Then we could come back and take a look at the list, having prioritized it that way. Is that the preferred method?
Go ahead, Ms. Malcolmson.
NDP
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
I agree absolutely that this decision is a very big commitment. We need to see the list well in advance so that we can have a good conversation about it.
I have a process-related question that maybe the clerk can help out with. Is there a reason that we have to adopt a whole work program now? Is there any downside to putting it off? My feeling is that until we see the budget and know what it is that the Status of Women department is going to take on, it's going to be hard for me to decide which things I want to commit to for our work together.
I'm also very compelled by the suggestion at the previous meeting by MP Vandenbeld around tackling the gender-based analysis report. It's fresh. The work has been done. The idea is for us, as an early inquiry, to invite in some of the departments that have really done well. If there's a piece of work for us to take on early and sink our teeth into, it feels like there's no downside to that one, but there might be a downside to tackling some other pieces that maybe another committee's going to take on or that maybe the minister is going to take on. Then we might be spinning our wheels a little.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
On Thursday we will have the Auditor General come to our meeting on the GBA report. We could also talk about the estimates this Thursday. That could be the work for the Thursday committee.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we would send out the lists, in both official languages, for people to consider. I think the following week is break week. When we come back after the break, everyone will have had a good long time to think about it.
I also believe that International Women's Day takes place during the week we come back, so we would celebrate International Women's Day and put the focus on the social media tagging that was indicated.
In the meetings that week, we should talk about the priorities. The budget comes out on March 22, so if we want to wait until then to finalize the priorities, what we could do at the meeting, once we have the list, is to at least narrow and identify early work and some witnesses we want to bring.
Go ahead, Ms. Sahota.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
I don't think it's necessary to wait until the budget. There are tons of committees that are hard at work right now, and they're not sitting and waiting for March 22 and the budget to roll around.
Surely our committee can come up with at least a couple of priorities that we can get started on that are important to us and our committee. We should be able to choose the direction of our committee. Of course, from time to time there may be a reason to amend the direction we're taking or add some urgent matters we should look into. That can come afterward. At this point, we should set our agenda to some degree and get working, because we're wasting time otherwise.