Status of Women Committee on March 7th, 2017

[Angella MacEwen]

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.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Next one.

[Vicky Smallman]

I would say it's the lack of decent work.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Lack of decent work, okay.

Next, Michèle.

[Michèle Biss]

I would say it's political will towards a rights-based approach that recognizes women's economic and social rights.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Okay.

Megan.

[Megan Hooft]

It's implementation of policies and programs that don't consider a gendered lens.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Okay, so that's discrimination.

[Megan Hooft]

It's implementation.

[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?”

[Dr. Kate McInturff]

It's violence against women.

[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?

[Angella MacEwen]

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—

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Right now, there are totally 35 parental leave weeks, so—

[Angella MacEwen]

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”.

[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—

[Angella MacEwen]

What it does is rebalance the unpaid care workload at home.

[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?

[Dr. Kate McInturff]

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—

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Okay, I'm just trying to be really brief here.

[Vicky Smallman]

I would also add employment equity legislation and pay equity legislation.

[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?

[Angella MacEwen]

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.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Okay, I want a specific issue.

[Angella MacEwen]

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?