Status of Women Committee on March 8th, 2016

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

We shall begin. I want to thank everybody. I want to wish everybody a happy International Women's Day and I'm very glad that we can begin.

The business before us today is to consider motions. I think all of you received the motions that were sent out. There were quite a number of them. I'm going to start in the order that we received them, with a motion from Ms. Damoff. I don't know if you want me to read the motion or whether you have a copy of it. Does anybody want me to read the motion? You all have copies.

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

Everybody has copies of them. The only thing I need to amend on that, as the last line there, is that the committee report to the House.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

Okay, we have a motion to amend the motion, to require the committee to report to the House.

Any other amendments?

Liberal

Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON

Actually it's not on that motion, but it's just the fact that my motion was passed around at the last meeting. Would that be considered one of the first ones?

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

No, it's the ones that were submitted to the clerk in the order that they were submitted....

Ms. Damoff.

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

Are we going to go through these motion by motion and vote yes or no? Is that the intent?

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

That is the intent. This first motion that we're talking about is the one that there was the most agreement on at the last meeting. That's the reason that we're going to start with that one as well as the fact that it came in first. Then from there, the intent was that we would go around. I know that Ms. Vandenbeld had one come in. There were five from Ms. Vecchio and five from Ms. Malcolmson. After we talk about this one, my thought was to have Ms. Vecchio prioritize and bring us her favourite, and then go to Ms. Malcolmson, who is the next one chronologically, and have her bring us her favourite, and then come to Ms. Vandenbeld and have her speak to her motion.

Ms. Damoff, you have an amendment, then, that this motion to require us to report to the House. Are there any other amendments to the motion?

Ms. Malcolmson.

NDP

Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC

Pardon me for being late. Which motion are we on?

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

This is the one that Ms. Damoff has brought.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Can I just say one thing about that motion?

In order to speed up the work of the committee, it would be good to identify the witnesses we would like to call to speak to this so that we can set that up. Our schedule is a little troubling because other than Thursday's meeting, where the first hour is estimates and the second hour we can continue talking about motions, we don't meet again until April 12 because of budget day, Easter weekend, and two break weeks in the middle.

I would ask as an action that you forward to the clerk anybody that you'd like to call as a witness to talk about this, and I would also ask the parliamentary analyst to make recommendations based on what's previously been done so that we can have the witness lists come back....

What timing did we agree on? It was by the end of business tomorrow to start putting your suggestions in. That's not the end of the road. You can always bring suggestions thereafter of witnesses we want. But we thought if we had some up front, then we could start to put them in the schedule and go from there.

All right, next would be—

Yes?

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

How many witnesses are we looking for to go through this process? Are you looking for 50, 60? What are the numbers that you're looking for?

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

I'm not going to limit it. I think there's a very broad scope to this. As we get into it and as we see the list of witnesses, I would suggest that we bring the list of witnesses back and have a discussion with this committee.

Ms. Ludwig.

Liberal

Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB

Madam Chair, do we have a number in mind as to how many we would like at each session?

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

I would say it depends on the topic because sometimes it's a deeper topic. If you think about people who have done reports, it's different from somebody who's just giving a personal testimony.

There's an opportunity as well to put them on panels and have a number of them come all at the same time. That provides an opportunity to ask questions, and then if you don't get enough time with them, you could reinvite the ones that you want to see again.

There's an opportunity as well to decide on how many meetings we want to spend on this, because as we go around and we get other motions that we want to work on, we may decide we want to spend this many meetings talking about this one and we want to spend another couple of meetings talking about another one. That can be decided.

Ms. Harder.

Conservative

Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB

Is the way this works at the committee level that we take on one study at a time? Will we study it all the way through, bring it to conclusion, report it to the House, and then move on to the next motion of study; or will we be taking on more than one at a time?

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

It is up to the will of the committee. In many cases the committees will study up to three, which would be plenty. Four gets a little bit hairy with the number of witnesses, but it's up to the will of the committee. If the committee just wanted to focus on this one and didn't want to do anything else, that would be fine. If they wanted to choose to do other motions, we would continue.

To Ms. Vecchio then, would you like to let us know which one is your favourite?

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

My number one, let's see....

Many of the motions I put forward are complementary to what Pam has put forward. I totally support a discussion of hypersexuality. I think it's very important. I also support a discussion of violence against women, of course. That's the umbrella of the entire study. I support all of that motion.

I'm trying to look for something somewhat different. One thing I find that is very important is housing for women in Canada, and domestic violence and shelter funding. The minister's mandate states:

...that no one fleeing domestic violence is left without a place to turn by growing and maintaining Canada’s network of shelters and transition houses.

This is also in the 2015 report of the status of women's committee entitled “Promising Practices to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls”.

I move:

That the committee undertake a study on housing for girls and women in Canada, including its relationship to domestic violence in the lives of women and girls, and the need for better shelter funding in order to provide for women and girls who are suffering from domestic violence; and that the committee report its findings to the House.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

Are there any amendments to the motion?

Ms. Damoff.

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

It is not an amendment. I think this is an important issue for us to study but I think we need to prioritize. Sheila brought forward a similar motion on housing

I'm not sure about us doing three studies at once. I think we're going to start with violence in the lives of young women and girls. I think my preference would be to prioritize our work so that it's that study we start with. Perhaps we could pick a second one, but to get too many in here would just muddy the.... It's going to take a while. I'll leave it at that.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

Does the committee find it acceptable if we take your favourite, Ms. Malcolmson's favourite, and Ms. Vandenbeld's favourite, and then look at those three together to figure out which ones other than that first one we do, or which ones out of the four we do?

Is that acceptable?

Liberal

Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON

Can I get some clarification on what you're...?

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

Okay. We would have four studies. Then the committee would agree on how many studies we want to do. Then we would prioritize from those first four to see where we go next.

Liberal

Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON

We were just discussing the fact that some of these studies overlap quite a lot, so the motions overlap quite a lot. Just taking one from each party might mean studying the same thing three times. It depends on what the subject is. I think we have to take it motion by motion.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

Mr. Fraser.

Liberal

Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS

Thank you.

First of all, I think housing and transition shelters is something this committee should and will deal with. I'm a little nervous as well about prioritizing and overlapping.

I think perhaps a good way to deal with it is to ensure that the first motion on violence against women incorporates a housing perspective. I think it might achieve the same end, but in a more efficient way so we're not spending time on multiple studies. Correct me if I'm wrong; I don't mean to speak for you.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

I totally agree with Sean. I'm looking at the study, and as I said, Pam, you have put through a fantastic motion.

I think what's really important, though, is that it's such a large motion, and has so many subsections and then sub-subsections.

I think that when we're looking at it, we have to prioritize your motion and how we're going to deal with it, because it's not one specific motion. It's an umbrella of different motions set together. If we want to look at your motion, let's prioritize what's important in those ones, because the housing absolutely does fit into that. If we're looking at women and violence, the transitional housing is a huge piece of that.

When we're looking at the motion, I'm in favour of it, but we need to break down that motion for study purposes, because it is an umbrella motion. Sheila may have comments on that as well since she has read into that.

NDP

Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC

The Damoff motion is passed. Is that right?

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

That's right.

NDP

Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC

The committee is now committed to this.

As I understand, the committee having committed to it, there would be a scoping exercise and some terms of reference suggested. Given the time we have today, I don't think we should do anything other than say, yes, this is something the committee is committed to.

When we get to the other motions, if they look like they overlap, the committee might decide to vote them down based on the duplication. I do feel fairly strongly that, having invited motions from the members, we look at all of them, even if it's not at this meeting, to say yes or no, we like this idea or we don't. We have four years to do the work. Of course, in time, we may well say, “This isn't as important as it was a year ago, now that we've gotten to it.”

I think that our stakeholders and constituents would want to see our ambitious agenda, even if we do modify it as time goes on. I am a little uncomfortable about saying that we are going to vote only on one motion from each party, unless the ones that remain would be saved over to a future meeting when we could give them other consideration.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

For your information, with unanimous consent, we can amend a motion that has already passed. If we decide to add Ms. Vecchio's shelters to the scope of what we already agreed, we could do it with unanimous consent.

Do we have unanimous consent for that?

Yes...?

Liberal

Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON

My comment would be that housing deserves its own study. I think there is enough involved with it that at some point we should look at housing, transitional housing, and that whole piece. Violence against young women and girls is a small part of it. I really think that if we are going to look at housing, it deserves its own study. Sean spoke very well to it at another meeting. I know he is quite passionate about it as well.

I think today we should be.... We have one study to get going on. I think maybe we could pick a second one that we could have in the wings. After that, as a committee, we could look at what we want to do after those. There is enough work even with two studies to keep us going for quite some time.

I think that will be part of the discussion anyway, but I do think that housing deserves its own separate study, focusing on it and not on everything else.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

Totally.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

There is an amendment that was on the table, unless Mr. Fraser wants to withdraw the amendment.

Liberal

Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS

Sorry, what was my amendment? I did not intend to move an amendment.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

Okay. If you did not intend to move an amendment, I'll pretend it didn't happen.

We don't have unanimous consent to do only two. Ms. Malcolmson would like us to at least hear all of the motions. I think we should just go through and decide if it is something the committee would support working on. Then I would suggest that the steering committee get together, take a look at the things, and bring back proposals of what we would work on in a prioritized fashion. If that is not to your liking, there are other methods I could recommend.

Conservative

Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB

I don't mean to complicate things further, but I just need to know for my own understanding.

Given that the motion that is on the table is quite exhaustive, which I believe is a good thing, I wonder if we could study this one topic. We could start with this and then, when we are nearing its completion, have this conversation where we bring our motions back up, discuss them, and decide whether or not they are relevant at that time, whether those are still our passions as a committee. Then we vote on the next one that we are going to put on the table, but for now just focus on the one.

One of the reasons why I would suggest this is that every single person on this committee is brand new. We are all learning this as we go. I just wonder if doing two or three studies at a time is perhaps a little too much and actually distracts or takes away from the point of this study.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

We are going to do the study that we voted the motion on. That motion went through and we will do that. The parliamentary analyst will prepare a work plan once she sees the list of witnesses that will suggest how we will go forward. That we will do for sure.

The other motions that are here are all motions that have been brought to the committee. The choice is that we can withdraw them, amend them, or vote on them.

The intent was that we have to move. I must share my frustration as your chair that we make an agreement about how we are going to proceed and then we change it at the next meeting. That certainly is not good. I want to do the will of the committee, but I think that, having put work into all of these things, we at least need to hear what people say and find out if the committee likes the idea or not. Then I certainly think there needs to be a prioritization exercise.

Ms. Sahota, go ahead.