Status of Women Committee on March 7th, 2017

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

Good morning, colleagues.

We are returning to our study of the economic security of women in Canada. It's an extra special day today because the Daughters of the Vote will be joining us throughout the committee meeting today. There may be more commotion than we normally expect.

However, we are pleased to be able to welcome with us today, from Oxfam Canada, Diana Sarosi. From the Public Service Alliance of Canada, we have Jennifer Howard and Heather Finn. From Unifor, we have Lisa Kelly.

We are happy to have you all here. Each of your organizations has seven minutes to present, and we'll begin with Diana. You have seven minutes.

[Diana Sarosi, Senior Policy Advisor, Oxfam Canada]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present Oxfam's recommendations on women's economic security.

Just yesterday we launched our feminist scorecard tracking government action to advance women's rights and gender equality. While the government has taken some significant steps in realizing its feminist agenda, the area that is most lagging behind is women's economic security. As you can see, this study is timely and important.

In January, Oxfam revealed that two billionaires own more wealth than the bottom 30% of the Canadian population. Growing inequality undermines progress in tackling inequality and is particularly negative for women, who continue to make up the majority of the world's poor. Around the world, as in Canada, women are the lowest-paid workers, with minimal security and physical safety.

Our current economic model relies on women's cheap labour to maximize shareholders' profits, which explains why economic growth does not necessarily reduce inequality or even provide hope of escaping poverty. While economic growth increases when men and women participate equally in the economy, growth on its own is not efficient to move the needle on gender equality.

We therefore call for progress in the following five areas in order for growth to be truly inclusive. Number one, the government should ensure that workers make living wages. Women make up 60% of the minimum-wage earners in Canada. Women are often forced into low-paid and insecure jobs because they have less of a safety net, in part because of difficulties accessing employment insurance; and if they receive benefits, these are too low for them to make ends meet. But nowhere in Canada does the minimum wage constitute a living wage. Without a living wage, women do not stand a chance of working their way out of poverty or achieving economic equality.

Women's rights to organize must be protected. Many sectors dominated by women are not unionized, which contributes to low wages. In Malawi, Oxfam has worked with partners to bring together a broad coalition to raise wages for women working in the tea sector. Through collective organizing and action, the coalition was able to raise minimum wages.

We are calling on the government to commit to being a living wage employer and to ensure that federal government contracts are only given to living wage employers. The provinces and private sector must follow suit. We also ask the government to support women's organizing here at home by increasing the budget of Status of Women Canada to $100 million a year; and abroad, by allocating $100 million a year to women's rights organizations, networks, and movements.

Number two, the government should make pay equity a priority. Women in Ontario would need to work until the age of 79 to reach the life-long earnings of men who retire at the age of 65. That's 14 more years of work. Women are paid less than men in 469 out of 500 occupations monitored by Statistics Canada. The wage gap is even more accentuated for racialized, indigenous, and immigrant women. Also, as women face the added challenge of moving in and out of employment to take on care responsibilities for children, elderly, and the sick, often without employment insurance, their earning potential is much reduced.

Senior single women are among Canada's poorest. We are calling on the government to speed up the introduction of pay equity legislation. The government should use every tool available to ensure that all provinces enact pay equity legislation. In addition, the government should lower the threshold of employment insurance and tie it to need rather than earnings, and improve the Canada pension plan and guaranteed income supplement benefits.

Number three, the government must comprehensively address violence against women. The rates of domestic and sexual violence remain persistently high in Canada. On any given night, 3,491 women and their 2,724 children sleep in shelters to escape abuse. Indigenous women are three times more likely to be violently victimized than non-indigenous women. Gender-based violence has a significant impact on women's security, and women's economic insecurity can make them more vulnerable to violence. Also, absenteeism and poor work performance as a result of violence can leave victims vulnerable to discipline and job loss.

We are calling on the government to develop and implement a national action plan on violence against women. While the federal strategy on gender-based violence is a good first step, a comprehensive national action plan is needed to ensure women everywhere have the same levels of services and protection. We are also calling for legislation that gives victims of violence the right to time away from work without losing their job, as enacted in Manitoba.

Number four, the government must invest in the care economy. In rich and poor countries alike, the responsibility for unpaid care work falls disproportionately to women. In Canada, women undertake 3.9 hours of unpaid care work every day, compared to 2.4 hours undertaken by men. Part of the challenge of shifting care responsibility between men and women is social norms.

Oxfam runs a program called We-Care in 12 countries, which aims to shift attitudes toward domestic work by raising awareness and engaging communities in dialogue and training. As a result of the program, women were able to make better choices on how they spend their time, but also saw a decrease in violence as a result of the shift in attitude toward women's status in the family. This kind of shift in attitude also needs to happen in the gender bias of work here in Canada. We cannot continue to see investments in male-dominated sectors such as construction at the expense of the care economy.

We are calling on the government to sustain and increase funding for child care so that quality care is accessible to all by 2020. This needs to be complemented by initiatives to ensure living wages and pay equity for child care workers, and supplemented with equitable family leave support and flexible work arrangements. We are also calling for an increase in services for first nations and seniors.

Number five, addressing women's economic insecurity requires domestic and global leadership. In a globalized world, women's economic insecurity in Canada is caused by the same factors driving economic insecurity for women around the world. The global economy is built on the backs of women as corporations engage in a race to the bottom in wages and labour standards. No matter in which country, the government has to take responsibility and hold Canadian corporations to account for their footprint in the world.

We are calling on the government to seriously consider corporate accountability as part of its feminist agenda and to commission a study to look at specific ways in which it can move forward in this area. We are also calling on the Government of Canada to gradually increase its international assistance—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry, but that's your time.

[Diana Sarosi]

—to meet the UN target of 0.7%.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're going to go now to the Public Service Alliance of Canada, and you have seven minutes.

[Jennifer Howard, Executive Director, Public Service Alliance of Canada]

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for inviting us to speak today.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada is the largest federal public sector union. We represent more than 180,000 members from coast to coast to coast. Of these, roughly 100,000 are women.

In our union's 50-year history, we've worked hard to advance the economic equality and security of women in Canada, but women still face significant barriers to achieving economic security, including a gender wage gap; a rise in precarious employment; a lack of access to quality, affordable child care; and domestic violence. Each of these issues is a priority for us.

We've all heard the statistics on the gender wage gap in Canada. Women earn just over 70% compared to what men earn. Even more concerning is the lack of progress to close this gap. In fact, the data shows that the gap is actually increasing. We know that this gap is wider for indigenous, racialized, immigrant, and transgendered women, and women with disabilities, who, on average, have much lower salaries and more difficulty accessing decent work.

We must address the wage gap if women's economic security is to be improved. Adopting proactive pay equity legislation is critical to closing that gap. Proactive legislation would compel employers to review their compensation practices and provide a process to ensure that women receive equal pay for work of equal value.

We are proud of our history of pursuing pay equity. We filed our first pay equity complaint in 1979, but we know that the current complaints-based system is not working. It can take up to 30 years to resolve a complaint and for women to receive economic justice.

Proactive pay equity legislation is a front-end solution. It's one that doesn't force women to spend years fighting each separate case of pay inequity.

This government has committed to introducing proactive pay equity legislation in 2018, but why wait? The road map for a new law was provided in the 2004 federal pay equity task force report.

It's important to note that the wage gap narrows when we look at women in unionized jobs. Defending freedom of association and trade union rights is one of the best ways of reducing the gender wage gap. However, access to quality jobs is difficult, given the dramatic increase in precarious work in Canada.

Women are more likely than men to be employed in involuntary part-time work or temporary contracts. As with the wage gap, this is even more likely for racialized, indigenous, and immigrant women, and women living with a disability.

The cuts carried out by the former Conservative government resulted in the loss of 24,000 federal public service jobs. The current government has made some progress in restoring the balance, though much more is still required. It is concerning that the number of full-time employees in the federal public service is decreasing. At the same time, term and casual employment has increased.

There's a growing use of contract employees who are hired through temporary staffing agencies. Because public sector employment has played a critical role in improving employment equity, a rise of precarious work in this sector disproportionately affects members of equity seeking groups, including women.

As it continues to rebuild federal public services, this government must encourage the creation of permanent employment opportunities; otherwise, the trend of precarious work, which negatively impacts the economic security of women, will continue.

The lack of affordable child care is also a significant barrier to women's economic security. If, in the absence of child care or paid parental leave, one parent must stay home to look after the children, it is almost always the lower-paid parent because families can't forego the higher earnings. In many families this means that women are left out of the paid labour force.

Also, while women's participation in the paid labour market has increased over time, men's participation in caregiving has not increased proportionally. Consequently, women are the ones most often left to balance paid work with parental care of their children and, increasingly, care of their elderly parents.

This means that child care policy has a direct and disproportionate impact on women. When governments act to make child care accessible, our participation rates in the labour force rise dramatically. This improves women's economic status and the overall economy. We need look no further than the province of Quebec for evidence of the positive impact of accessible child care.

Since 2014, the fees parents are paying to access child care have risen by an average of three times faster than inflation. Getting child care in Canada is almost always a matter of luck or personal wealth and, therefore, it is out of reach for many.

Inadequate government support for licensed child care puts downward pressure on the wages and benefits of child care staff. Poor compensation and difficult working conditions are barriers to recruiting and retaining qualified childhood educators and, since most child care employees are women, the poor compensation contributes to the overall gender wage gap.

This federal government promised that it would take action to develop affordable, accessible, inclusive, high-quality early learning and child care for every child. Federal, provincial, and territorial representatives are now negotiating the framework that will serve as the basis for funding agreements. However, we're deeply concerned that the agreements will reinforce the status quo.

Currently, parents are forced to turn to the free market for child care services. This is the foundational cause of the current child care crisis. We need a federal, provincial, and territorial framework that will transform child care into a publicly managed service.

Finally, domestic violence has a significant impact on the economic security of women. For those enduring this violence, the effects are pervasive in every aspect of their lives. Over one third of domestic violence victims say that it affects their work performance, and it sometimes results in disciplinary measures taken against victims, including job loss.

In order to prevent punishing women who are victims of domestic violence, it's necessary to establish workplace strategies surrounding domestic violence, such as paid leave to help women take the necessary steps to re-establish their lives and protection at work from abusive partners.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Now we are going to Unifor. Lisa Kelly, you have seven minutes.

[Lisa Kelly, Director, Women's Department, Unifor]

Thank you.

Good morning, and thank you as well for this opportunity to speak to this very important study.

Unifor is Canada's largest private sector union, or as we often say, “union in the private sector”, as we do have a few public sector members. We have 310,000 members from coast to coast to coast across Canada, and about 100,000 of those are women. The members we represent, including the female members, work in a range of occupations from air traffic controller to retail sales clerk. We have a lot of women who work in the health care sector, which won't be a surprise, in the service sector, in food services, and as customer service representatives. We also have female skilled tradespeople.

You've heard from lots of people. I listened to these statistics. You've heard a lot of these statistics over your weeks of study. I came here this morning feeling a bit like I'm taking a test. I hope that we're not actually disputing that there is economic insecurity for women.

I heard something recently that really struck me. Women aren't born vulnerable. They're made vulnerable by laws and policies, and that's what we all here can do to address the barriers that are there, which are not inherent in the inequality of women themselves but are in the system they face.

I want to focus on a couple of sets of challenges that face working-class women. The two ends of the continuum often get a lot of the focus: the very vulnerable, and the search for the C-suite. Both of those merit attention, but in doing so, I want to make sure we're not missing out on the majority of working women and the impact of policies on them.

Unifor believes in social unionism, which means we think that whole human beings come to work, and our work is to look at the impacts of policies outside of the workplace, as well as inside the workplace. Most often, those things are intertwined. We look at the indicators of women's equality. By and large, many of the issues that we're speaking of, such as violence against women, etc., affect working women, so when we focus on the workplace we can also find really concrete and very targeted solutions that will address these very large issues that feel insurmountable.

I certainly don't want to leave you with the impression that I'm conflating all working-class women together, or all working women together. As a lesbian, and a lesbian mom, I know that many policies impact me differently than they do my colleagues who don't share that identity. I know that I am not impacted in the same way that indigenous, racialized, and trans women are affected, but we still can find solutions that cut across these differences.

I support the government's desire to close the gender wage gap, to reduce occupational segregation, and to address and eliminate sexual harassment and violence. I'm going to talk to you about some concrete measures that I think will address these, and ways in which I think the federal government can take some steps.

The two main areas I'm going to focus on are access to good jobs and equity at work, and supports for women exiting the world of work. We believe that everyone has a right to access a good job, and we believe that with the right regulations and business practices, every job can be a good job, a job with dignity, and a job with equality. Addressing these will require concrete steps and mechanisms of enforcement and accountability.

What are some of the positive steps the federal government can take? I'll give you a bit of a list and then I'm going to focus on two things I think Unifor has that are fairly unique.

You need to strengthen employment equity legislation to ensure that more women have access to areas that have traditionally been held by men, but without leaving the areas traditionally held by women behind. I don't want to open up a door to say, “Go over there for a good job, and we'll leave where the majority of women work behind.”

Access is key, as you've heard from everyone here this morning. That means investing in a universal, affordable, high-quality, public, and non-profit system of early childhood education and care. Again, the Quebec stats show that women in Quebec went from having the lowest workforce participation in Canada to the highest in just a few short years, really challenging the notion that we're at home with our children because that's the totality of our choice, rather than the least bad of the choices we've been given.

You heard from Statistics Canada at the beginning of your hearings. I was flipping through their remarks, and when they asked who works part-time, the answer was that women work part-time. Why do they work part-time? They choose that. One of the statistics was that 25% of women chose part-time work to take care of their children.

I challenge you to ask, “If I had an opportunity to put my children into early learning and quality child care and not spend my entire paycheque doing so, is that really the choice, or is the choice an economic one”, as you've heard from my colleagues?

There are also things such as setting a $15-an-hour minimum wage; moving to a living wage; addressing sexual harassment and violence in the workplace, including addressing the power disparities that make that much more likely to happen. Dr. Sandy Welsh, at the University of Toronto, shows that where you have precarious and part-time work and where you have programs like the temporary foreign worker program, you're going to increase the existence of sexual harassment and violence in the workplace.

As well, there is the need to enact proactive pay equity legislation; to require pay transparency; to address the barriers to accessing leave, such as maternity and parental leave; and, finally, to increase access to unionization. Really, that is a key equalizer for women, and it is incredibly necessary to make paper rights real.

I'm not going to go through all of those in depth, but I just want to raise two areas in which I think we have something to share. Our large employers, including many federal employers, have a joint investigation program into allegations of harassment. We have found that, particularly with sexual harassment, the joint investigation program, with both employer and union, has really reduced and addressed sexual harassment in the workplace.

The second is our women's advocate program. We have 350 women's advocates across the country in many workplaces. Their main role is to assist and support women who are facing domestic violence. As you likely know, a woman is killed every six days in Canada by her current or former domestic partner—and those are mostly working women. This is a program that can address risk assessment and safety planning, as well as incorporating paid domestic violence leave.

Joint investigation, women's advocates, and paid domestic violence leave are areas that I think the federal government can move on.

I'll just leave with the CPP expansion. You've heard about women being in poverty as they move into retirement. I commend the government for moving on the CPP expansion, but I really have to say that the loss of the drop-out ability in that expansion is really clearly discriminatory against women. I hope that you can close that, because it acts against women who have taken time out to do child care.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good. Thanks very much.

We're happy to welcome MP Wayne Long to our committee today.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're going to start our regular round of questioning with, I believe, Ms. Vandenbeld, for seven minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thanks to all of you for coming here this morning and making some very compelling presentations.

My first question is for Ms. Howard.

I was the chair of the pay equity committee, which went into great depth. Our final recommendation was that we enact proactive pay equity legislation, recognizing pay equity as a human right that can't be bargained away, and part of that would involve repealing PSECA.

When the Public Service Alliance testified before our committee, one of the things we heard—and this is one of the reasons we wanted to make sure we had the right amount of time to do this—was that it is a very technical area. At the moment in the public service there are areas in which the job classification system has not been updated since before the personal computer. Considering the amount of time it will take to develop those processes, this time we have to get it right. Pretty much every witness roundly said that the PSECA legislation was not the right way to go, and that this time we needed to make sure it was correct.

I'm just wondering about your testimony on hurrying the pay equity legislation. I've talked to a number of public servants. I represent an Ottawa riding, so I have a lot of public servants in my riding, and they have said this isn't something that can be rushed. It has to be right this time. Otherwise we may lose another decade trying to reverse it.

Do you have any comment on that?

[Jennifer Howard]

Certainly, you're right that we want to see the repeal of the previous legislation, PSECA. We thought that did nothing to advance pay equity and in fact harmed the cause of pay equity. We certainly want it to be done right, but we also want to know that it's a priority. I have some experience in government. I was formerly a member of the legislature in Manitoba and a cabinet minister there, so I also know that when something is a priority for a government, it can get done. I would agree that classification within the public service is sometimes out of date and there needs to be more resources and more effort put into also getting that right. We want to see action sooner rather than later, and our concern—and my concern—always is that when you start to get closer to the next election date, things like pay equity can fall off the agenda. We would hate to see that happen with this bill.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I think you will find that it's a priority for this committee as well.

My next question is for Ms. Kelly. You raised a number of things I'd like to delve into a little bit further, including some terms we haven't heard here before. One of them is “occupational segregation”. You talked a little bit about women moving into non-traditional areas, but also not leaving the traditional areas. There are statistics that show that as women enter a particular profession and as that profession becomes feminized, the wages go down. Could you comment a little bit? First of all, clarify what you mean by occupational segregation, then how we can avoid what seems to a very troubling trend, which is that it isn't so much the occupation that is underpaid; it is the actual fact that it's women doing the work.

[Lisa Kelly]

I wholeheartedly agree. Someone explained it once in the reverse, that it's not women moving into a profession, but men leaving it, so the value goes with the men seeking other places. Men used to be bank clerks. There are many examples of how that switches.

On occupational segregation, when you look at some of the background work done by the Ontario government in closing the gender wage gap and striking their committee that did consultations, they talked about the silos that are both horizontal and vertical. If you look at it horizontally, you are looking at who is in what occupation. So, just to use a different term to explain what you've just said, if you look at teachers, nurses, administrative assistants, and electricians, there is a gender skew in many occupations in that horizontal way.

Then when you go into different sectors in the vertical way and look at the pay grades.... I don't ascribe to pink and blue, and I actually believe in a gender continuum, but for simplicity's sake, if you just took that and put pink and blue stickers on things, you would see where people are concentrated by their gender. Again, I dispute whether or not that's by choice. I think employment equity deals with that somewhat. Even in terms of employers, when we've done employment equity, employers are actually surprised. I don't think it's a case of, “Nyah, nyah, nyah, we're going to stick all the women over here.” I don't think that's what the majority of employers think, but they are shocked at what happens. Women themselves are sometimes shocked. So, where we have opportunities.... The systems review, I think, takes on that element of it. You get a much larger diversity of where people are. You can go to other cultures to see that.

On the other hand, you can see that there's a commonality across the world in this day and age where women are concentrated. I think that's where pay equity comes in—work of equal value. Let's look at the value of the work that is contributed.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

In terms of transparency, and certainly on pay equity, one of our recommendations was the need for reporting requirements and having committees in the workplace that would be able to part of that. For employment equity and other aspects, you would say that transparency in reporting would be something that would be important.

[Lisa Kelly]

Absolutely. We see organized workplaces that have almost as many pay grades as they do people. Again, you put them on a little map, and the people who are more related to the employer, who look more like the employer or are the same gender, are those who have skewed wages. When we unionize them, we ask what that work is worth, and ascribe that. Everybody then knows what everybody else makes. Sometimes people say, “We can't have pay transparency, because people get nowhere.”

We're so freaked out about money in our society. Pick up any of our collective agreements and flip to the back. Schedule A will have the schedule of what people are paid, including me in my own collective agreement. Then you will know that. It actually illuminates things that are often the result of unconscious bias.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

So, in terms of intersectionality, it's easy to know who's a man or woman. Well, there are non-binary people as well, but in general you can find that in the workforce and you can plot that. It's much more difficult to start asking people about other gender identities and then having a transparent reporting process around that. Do you think it's doable?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Hold that thought. You're out of time.

We're going now to my colleague, Ms. Vecchio, for seven minutes.

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

Jennifer, I want to start with you. You mentioned that the lower-paid parent is the one who usually stays home. The fact that I, a mother of five, chose to stay home.... What kind of stats do you have that show the difference between people who chose to stay home because they were lower paid and those who just wanted to be a mom? Do you have stats on that?

[Jennifer Howard]

I don't have the stats on that with me. I completely respect the fact that some women make those choices. My wife and I have two children. My wife decided to stay home for an extra six months. We were economically privileged for her to be able to do that. We could live on my salary. Many families don't have that privilege. I respect that choice, but I know that for many women, when the choice is paying $1,500 a month to put their kid in child care and they make less money than their partner in the household, they stay home.

That means their pensions are lower.

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

Thank you very much.

I hear what you're saying but I think a lot of times when we're having these conversations, we have to recognize that some women just want to be moms and stay home. I came from an event today at 7:30 where they were talking about the unpaid work of parents worrying. I worry about everything, so I probably could be a billionaire by now. But let's be honest, how do we put a dollar value on worrying? We're going to all this unpaid care work.

I stayed home to take care of my mother after she had a triple bypass. I was the breadwinner in my family, but I chose to stay home because I knew I could take care of her and that she wanted me there to care for her, because having my brother doing some of the care things he would have had to do would have been very inappropriate and very difficult for him.

I think sometimes we take away the value of our maternal instincts. I think it's really important that when we're looking at these things that we do take into consideration maternal instincts, because, to be honest, I'm fortunate enough to be a member of Parliament but I'm also fortunate enough to have a solid marriage and five children. We can be both. Sometimes I think we're aiming so far, but we can be both. Those are some concerns that I have when we talk about needing a hand up. Sometimes we do need a hand up. But some of us can do both and wish to do both. I think sometimes by making it sound as if we're being stomped down, that's not the case, because I know I can go through those barriers.

[Jennifer Howard]

What I want for you, what I want for me, what I want for all women is to have that support.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Would you ask a question, please?

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

Lisa, I want to go on to you because I have a question regarding the Quebec child care system.

As the critic for families, children, and social development, I've been studying this. One of the biggest things is that they have extremely long wait lists; it takes two to three years to get into the child care system. Moreover, the quality of their child care is among the lowest in Canada, yet their format is the one you are asking us to use.

I recognize that it's universal, but the fact is, if parents want to go to work and they have a two- to three-year waiting list, what are they supposed to do?

Maybe there's a key here. You mentioned the public and not-for-profit sectors. Can you share with me what you think a child care system would look like in Canada, whether it would be universal or a more targeted program?