Status of Women Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2017

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Last November, we got a report from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. I'm noting that indigenous women have poor access to employment and continue to live in poverty. The United Nations also expressed concern over the lack of a coherent plan or strategy by this federal government to improve the economic security of indigenous women.

Can you tell us what are the government's plans to implement the recommendations of the United Nations to create a specific plan to address the injustices facing indigenous women, including low employment rates and low income?

[Justine Akman]

The government is working across all federal departments together—that would include the Departments of Indigenous Affairs, Employment, Social Development Canada, Health Canada, etc.—to work on the response to the recommendations of CEDAW, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Under the rubric of the reconciliation agenda, a number of different federal initiatives address poverty in indigenous communities .

For Status of Women itself, I don't know if you wanted to jump in, Lucie, in regard to some of our programming to address the economic challenges for indigenous women.

[Lucie Desforges, Director General, Women's Program and Regional Operations Directorate, Status of Women Canada]

Sure. I can speak to an initiative the women's program recently launched. We had a call for proposals in 2016 to very specifically invite indigenous people to put forward proposals to advance the empowerment of women in their communities. That was the first time the agency had a very distinct call that was tailored to indigenous women. Our evaluations recently concluded and the announcements will be done shortly. Minister Monsef will be able to do that shortly.

Under this call for proposals, we'll be funding several organizations that will be working with their partners in the communities on different issues—economic issues, violence, and leadership per se—so that indigenous women can have full participation in their communities. You'll be able to hear more about this soon.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

If the department is able to update the committee on the result of that work, that would be helpful.

I want to switch to Stats Canada. We've been hearing that a lack of child care programs keeps women out of the workforce. Affordable, accessible, high-quality child care is essential to women's being able to get out into the workforce and, therefore, their participation in the economy; but in order to be valuable, it has to be priced so that families can afford it. We're hearing that child care costs today have reached unacceptable levels, increasing almost 10% in the last two years. We had a report that was in the news last year from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It was saying that $7-a-day child care in Quebec had increased women's participation in the labour force by 8% to 12%.

Is StatsCan gathering any data? Can it provide this committee with data from across the country about how the availability of child care increases women's participation in the labour market?

[Anne Milan, Chief, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada]

I don't have an answer to that question specifically, but in one of our Women in Canada chapters on paid work, we have done some analysis by geography, by province, and by CMA, looking at the employment rate for women and men and the median monthly child care fees in those areas. That does provide some information on that topic.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Would you be able to commit to providing that to the committee? It would be helpful for our work.

[Anne Milan]

It will be published March 8, so probably after that we could provide it.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

That fits our timeline. Thank you. It's will be good to start to see that.

I have another question for Stats Canada. We have been hearing from workers that when they don't have the assurance of stable, well-paying employment, then the economic prosperity of women is put further at risk. We've been hearing that a $15 federal minimum wage could help address this threat to women's economic security. Do you have data available that would help us understand the benefits that a set federal minimum wage would provide for women's economic security?

[Andrew Heisz]

I think it would be a difficult question for me to answer. Of course, we collect statistics on people's wages, and often people will work for minimum wage. We see that in our statistics. To look at the impact of a set federal minimum wage, I think, would be an analytic step beyond that. I don't think Statistics Canada has done that particular analysis.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

If you find they have, would you be able to update us?

[Andrew Heisz]

I would, but again, I'm not aware of any.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's your time. Before we go to our next witness, I just want to give some information to the committee members. There was an excellent piece of work done on pay equity, a recent study led by Ms. Vandenbeld. There's a lot of data in there that will help you on both the wage gap, pay inequity, and a lot of different things. I would encourage you to read that as your homework.

We go to Ms. Damoff for seven minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to the witnesses for your testimony.

One of the things I want to talk about is the wage gap and attaining senior management. I worked in investment banking before I was a member of Parliament. I can remember comments made where I worked that if it came down to it between a man and a woman, a woman of childbearing age would not be hired because they were worried about the training costs and the costs of their being off on maternity leave. It happens in the real world, as disturbing as it is.

When I look at your chart—I see you've got extra charts in your presentation—there's one about the voluntary reasons for leaving work. Caring for children is the reason given by 25% women, 4.7% men, and then there is caring of another person or family responsibilities, which I suspect is probably caring for seniors, parents. Again, the rate of women doing that is almost double that of men. Obviously child care is a huge issue for women attaining those senior management positions. Does Status of Women do any programs to help with that?

Also, having men take paternity leave would probably help, but a lot of men don't take it, either because they're worried about their job advancement possibilities or the stigma attached.

Those are my two questions.

[Lucie Desforges]

Thank you.

Over the past few years at Status of Women we have funded several projects, I think it's 130, for close to $50 million. We had different calls for proposals tailoring different sectors regarding women's economic prosperity and security. I can give you an example, but the projects last over 36 months, so many of them have just concluded or are going to be concluded in the next year.

One example I could give you is that we had a call for proposals for women in technology. The organizations were also working with a Canadian organization called the Information and Communications Technology Council. Through this work, all of the partners engaged in this, especially in the private sector, looked at their policies, their talent management plans, etc., and, a big revelation, they applied a gender-based lens. Many of those partners who engaged in this are now realizing that they had implicit biases, etc.. Therefore, as this work is concluding, our next step will be to reap the fruit from these projects and share the information and the lessons learned. Several of these projects will be unfolding in the next few years, and we'll be able to see their results. But definitely, recruitment, retention, and talent management were areas that many of the organizations dealt with, identified barriers, and the ways to address them.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

What about men taking paternity leave? Have you done any work on that at all?

[Lucie Desforges]

Nothing specific on that. I'm not able to say at this time. I don't think it was done, largely speaking, but maybe my colleague has more on that.

[Justine Akman]

I'd suggest to you it would probably be better to take the question to our colleagues from ESDC who will be appearing soon, but it is certainly part of their mandate commitments and platforms to be working on flexible work arrangements and altering EI benefits.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

It's not just about offering it either; it's about making it such that a stigma isn't attached to it and that men don't also suffer what women have been experiencing for years, that when you take maternity leave you aren't advancing at the same level as you would have been. It's the reason I've heard most often that men don't take paternity leave.

To our friends at StatsCan, you've looked at what our current study is focusing on. Are there any areas in your research that you think are lacking that would be beneficial to what we're doing? I've heard you say a few times that you don't have any data on that, so is there anything you could be focusing on that would help with what we're doing here to get data?

[Andrew Heisz]

I can't really think of a way to answer that question because it pertains to data gaps and I wasn't really prepared to speak to data gaps.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Could you think about it a bit and let us know?

[Andrew Heisz]

Certainly. I'll bring that back to Statistics Canada.

[Justine Akman]

If you like, I can try.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Yes.

[Justine Akman]

As you're aware from our other appearances in front of the committee, we at Status of Women are doing a lot of work on gender-based analysis plus with other federal departments. That includes the economic departments. The discussion is in the context of departments where there is a data gap in doing gender-based analysis. You'll be hearing from my colleague Neil Bouwer from NRCan and ESDC. We've spoken to them about getting together with other economic departments—resource-based departments, science-based departments—and making sure that the data they need to do proper gender-based analysis does exist. That in turn, of course, will hopefully ensure that programming is developed in a way that will benefit women.