Evidence of meeting #49 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 women.
A video is available from Parliament.
Senior Economist, Canadian Labour Congress
Being a person with disabilities, a racialized person.... If you're a woman and you're racialized, you have more discrimination than, say, I do.
National Director, Women's and Human Rights, Canadian Labour Congress
I would say it's the lack of decent work.
Conservative
Legal Education and Outreach Coordinator, Canada Without Poverty
I would say it's political will towards a rights-based approach that recognizes women's economic and social rights.
Deputy Director, Canada Without Poverty
It's implementation of policies and programs that don't consider a gendered lens.
Conservative
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Implementation? Okay.
And honestly, I want more terms. I don't want explanatory lines, because then I want to go back and say, “Then tell me, what are your solutions?”
Senior Researcher, National Office, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
It's violence against women.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Violence against women.
Okay, so what do we do now to deal with unpaid work? How do we give that a monetary value that is fair to all Canadians, whether they choose to stay at home or choose not to stay at home, whether they have eight parents, or they have two parents, or no parents? What can we do for things like that?
Senior Economist, Canadian Labour Congress
One of the really big things that we can do is to add eight weeks of parental leave for fathers under a “use it or lose it” model, and that actually improves—
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Right now, there are totally 35 parental leave weeks, so—
Senior Economist, Canadian Labour Congress
Yes, but Quebec has a model with an extra five weeks that only the second parent can take, so it's called “use it or lose it”.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Eight weeks over and above, so you're talking about a 60-week leave then. Okay, so another option—
Senior Economist, Canadian Labour Congress
What it does is rebalance the unpaid care workload at home.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Okay.
What can we do when it comes to discrimination against women, whether they're disabled or because they're female?
Senior Researcher, National Office, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
We can listen to them, and that means we need to support women's organizations to speak about women's experiences of discrimination. I think my colleagues from Canada Without Poverty can speak to this as well, but if you're a woman living in a situation of domestic violence, you maybe don't have time to come to Ottawa and talk to the committee. However, if there's a shelter organization that's empowered not only to provide them a safe place to live, but actually to talk to the leaders in their community about what those women need, then they might see—
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Okay, I'm just trying to be really brief here.
National Director, Women's and Human Rights, Canadian Labour Congress
I would also add employment equity legislation and pay equity legislation.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Okay, and I want to talk about the lack of decent work. What can we do to deal with this? Karen brought up the fact that there are apprenticeship programs. What can we do to create more work opportunities for women?
Senior Economist, Canadian Labour Congress
Lack of decent work can be addressed by proactive employment standards enforcement. Manitoba has a model. You can make a complaint, and it doesn't have to be brought forward by the worker themselves.
Conservative
Senior Economist, Canadian Labour Congress
That is a specific issue. Proactive labour standards enforcement: you can't be working at a temporary agency and being paid less than the person working next to you, and not getting the benefits, right?