Evidence of meeting #46 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 system.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
—received from pension sources, from the top income earner.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Okay. Fantastic.
Kathleen, I have one other question for you. Thanks very much for the information you've provided. Under “education”, we're looking at men versus women. Just so we have a balance when we're looking at it, if you're comparing women's education from 1995 to now, women are actually not making as much money as they once did with a lower education. It's not growing as it should. Do we see the same ratio for men?
Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
Those figures are all the percentages of women's incomes compared to the same men they graduated with in the same programs. That is not affected by changes in the gross number of dollars achieved; these are percentage figures. Women's income earnings relative to those of the men they graduated from their training courses with, whether it was from the grade school—
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
I'm looking for the less-educated, because that was the figure you provided us.
Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
Yes. Now women who have not even finished high school earn less than 50% of what men do—
Conservative
Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
—who did not finish that same level of education. The great tragedy of this is that women with that level of education did much better even 15 years ago.
Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
It's going so far backwards for the least educated women in the country that it probably has set a new highly developed country record, but I haven't checked.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
No, that's perfect. I wanted to get confirmation of that.
Donna, I want to turn to you, because many times we hear about the Quebec child care system, and some of the concerns are about the quality of child care and the child ratio as well. When you're looking across Canada, spanning all the programs, what program has been effective across the provinces? Can you can sit there and say there's one that has some merit to it and that we should build upon that success?
Professor Emerita, Centre for Families, Work & Well-Being, University of Guelph, As an Individual
I don't think I could say that any one province has uniquely met all the criteria we might like. I think there are elements in some of the provinces.
Ontario has moved to have full-day junior kindergarten for children, which on the one hand has enabled universal free child care, publicly funded child care, for four- and five-year-olds, but has had destabilizing impacts on programs for children younger than four and five, on the other hand.
Manitoba has always had a maximum fee that is charged to parents. They have subsidies for low-income families, but it also has a maximum fee and has had that for decades. That has helped to bring middle-class families into the child care system and has been a real support for that. They've also done a lot in terms of quality in Manitoba, including recognition of and training for differential levels of education and qualifications for early childhood educators.
The reality is that this is a complex system. You have to pay attention to parent fees or affordability, access, and quality, all at the same time. It's labour intensive. It's not cheap for anyone. Right now what's happening is that early childhood educators are subsidizing the costs of child care, and market-based systems around the world just do not work for providing universal access or inclusion of children with special needs.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Thank you, Donna.
I was fortunate enough to be travelling with the human resources committee for the last two weeks. One of the stops we made was in Saint John, New Brunswick.
I hope you heard that I said “Saint John”. That was good, eh?
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Thank you. That's for my New Brunswick friends.
I saw some really good models that they are using there. They're working on a poverty reduction strategy, which we recognize as going hand in hand, but they're really focusing on and targeting the low-income families. When we're looking at child care, do you believe that it should be universal to all families or targeted to those families who do not have access in terms of the affordability or the income?
Professor Emerita, Centre for Families, Work & Well-Being, University of Guelph, As an Individual
I think it's a false choice, frankly.
I will tell you that my first job was as a teacher in Project Head Start in the United States, a program that's targeted to low-income children. Generally what we see is that programs targeted for poor families and poor children tend over time to become poor themselves; they don't have the integrated approach that a mixed socio-economic program has. There's no reason in this day and age why we can't have universal programs that have the capacity to meet the needs of children from low-income families, those who come from different language groups, and those with different abilities.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Should we have a different fee chart available for a family that is making $100,000 compared to a family that's making $30,000, because I want to look at it as a family as a whole. Why should this family who is making so much more money be subsidized and be paid exactly the same amount as this family that does not have the same income? What are your thoughts on that?
Professor Emerita, Centre for Families, Work & Well-Being, University of Guelph, As an Individual
If you're thinking about health care or about public education, we wouldn't say “have a sliding scale”. Right?
Professor Emerita, Centre for Families, Work & Well-Being, University of Guelph, As an Individual
We see it as a public service. It's what you see the program as. If it's a consumable good, then you might have a sliding scale to help offset the cost. But if it's a publicly funded program that benefits all children and all families, then you would not do that.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Thanks very much, Donna.
Laurell, in a lot of what we've talked about and stats that we've seen—and I'm sure Parliamentary Secretary Terry Duguid has seen them as well—we're seeing that many men do not take parental leave. Given that we're talking about women's equality here, and if the opportunities are available for men to take parental leave, what can we do when we see fewer than 2% of them taking parental leave? Both parents need to be involved with the child—that's how I'd like to see it best. It doesn't always happen, but what can we do to get more men taking parental leave, which would open the door for women's equality as well?
Conservative
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Thanks to all three witnesses for your work. This is extremely rich, and we're going to draw on a lot of it.
Ms. Ritchie, we're seeing the work world changing tremendously, especially for women and young people who are overrepresented in the service sectors and in precarious part-time employment. You talked a little about the 35/30-hour workweek change. What could the government do to make sure that EI remains accessible to women who have been forced into part-time work by discrimination and the demands of child care and elder care, and how would using a 30-hour workweek model for EI help those women?
Co-Chair, EI Sub Committee of the Good Jobs for All Coalition, Inter-Provincial EI Working Group
We attended a presentation a few weeks ago sponsored by the EI commissioner for workers, where there were a number of government staff there who deal with EI. One of the things they noted is that they see some troubling signs on the horizon for them from some of the most recent numbers regarding individuals who are in jobs that tend to be lower paying and with fewer hours.
They're finding that their numbers of people who have exhausted EI benefits in the past 12 months are popping. That's because even if these people qualify, they have nowhere nearly enough benefit weeks. The chart looks like this. The EI hours grid is very complicated, but essentially both the entry rules and the duration rules are in 35-hour increments.
I was just taking a look at the numbers for Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg. They have the same unemployment rate of 6.1% to 7%. I took the case of a cashier at a grocery store. They have some of the worst standards as far as hours are concerned—25 hours a week is the average in that sector. Right now in Toronto, Montreal, or Winnipeg, if that woman works for six months straight for 25 hours a week and then gets laid off, she does not qualify for a single cent of EI benefits. Her co-worker who might have enough to get over the initial hurdle will get a lot fewer weeks than she would have in the previous incarnations of EI.
It's increasing. We knew it was a problem. We predicted it would be a problem. The department's staff are saying it's starting to crop up in their numbers.
NDP
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
So, I guess, overall, we're seeing a trend towards more precarious, part-time work, but the bottom line is that our unemployment insurance system doesn't reflect that changed nature of work, and women—
Co-Chair, EI Sub Committee of the Good Jobs for All Coalition, Inter-Provincial EI Working Group
Absolutely not.
