Status of Women Committee on March 21st, 2017

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's your time.

Now we're going to Ms. Malcolmson for seven minutes.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm very grateful to both witnesses. You've been extremely clear on a bunch of issues that we've already heard witness testimony on, that government spending in the form of tax credits doesn't necessarily actually create more child care spaces in which to spend that money. You've been really clear on the impact of unpaid care. You've provided tons of testimony that I know we're going to be able to draw on.

Ms. Doucet, just last week I was at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. A number of us on the committee were attending for Canada. Unpaid care was a huge part of the agenda. The solution of parental leave, “use it or lose it”, for the male half of the family was one of those innovative ideas. Iceland was bragging that 70% of Iceland's men are using their “use it or lose it” male parental leave, to make sure that those men get hooked into that child care side. It was really great to hear.

I'm going to try to ask two questions in my time.

One is for Ms. Ballantyne. Can you talk a bit more about the federal role? You flagged in one of your reports, “We are concerned that these negotiations will result in a federal government hand-over of money to the provinces and territories to merely bolster the current patchwork and inadequate approach to child care.”

I'm hoping that you can expand on that a bit and again just give us your encapsulated vision of that federal leadership on bringing the provinces together to have a truly universal system.

[Morna Ballantyne]

I'm by no means an expert in federal-provincial-territorial relations, but there are a lot of examples where the federal government has used what is known constitutionally as its spending power to be able to help direct what provincial and territorial governments do in areas that actually fall in provincial and territorial jurisdictions. That's what we want to see the federal government do, actually use its spending power to attach conditions on the money that it transfers to the provinces and territories for the purposes of developing a child care system.

We also think that the federal government can play a leadership role in continuing ongoing discussions, as I said, with the provinces, territories, and stakeholders to explore best practices and to provide infrastructure support to the development of good policy at both levels of government.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thanks very much.

Ms. Doucet, I'd like to hear more about some of your work on women who are particularly subject to economic discrimination in the country. We already know that women, more than men, are subject to increased levels of poverty, unpaid work, and precarious work compared to men, but I hear particularly from my seat in British Columbia of women who face additional layers of systemic discrimination. Women with disabilities are overrepresented in low-wage positions and they earn less than other women. In British Columbia, for indigenous women, the Highway of Tears has been a particularly visible and tragic example of indigenous women not being able to get to work because of the lack of transportation in their region, and that makes them more vulnerable to sexual predators.

Can you speak more about the lack of policies for indigenous women and other communities that you've seen nationally and some suggestions on what leadership the federal government could take to make sure that those particularly vulnerable groups are respected and accommodated?

[Prof. Andrea Doucet]

Thank you. That's a great question.

The first thing I would say is that the really frustrating thing about studying parental leave is the lack of comprehensive data. When we started working with the statistics from EI we were told that the statistics were for Quebec and the rest of Canada and then somewhere along in the fine print it was that actually we don't have data on the three territories or for people living on reserves. So we don't actually have any data on indigenous Canadians who live on reserve or indigenous Canadians living in the three territories, in terms of their access to these programs. For us that was one of the most shocking revelations of working with the statistics. So my first point is that we need to learn more.

My second point is on parental leave. I'll talk about parental leave and maternity leave benefits because that's the area I've been working on for quite a while. Their being lodged in the EI program means that they are available for people who are in standardized employment. By design, they exclude all of the people you're talking about. As I said, we don't have good data. Also, the data we do have is not aggregated for indigenous Canadians living in cities.

If longer term we redesign parental leave and maternity leave policies.... European countries have zero. They have flat rates by which they give a certain amount of money to new mothers, to new parents. In Sweden there's no minimal contribution or pay that a Swede has to earn in order to qualify for parental leave benefits. I think we need to rethink this as a care policy. It's not an unemployment policy. The way it's designed it only supports people who are in standardized employment. It doesn't support all of the people you are talking about. They don't have access to child care and they don't have access to parental leave benefits. I think we need to think about a redesign and think about child benefits and family supplements in the same package.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thanks. I've got just a minute left.

I'll ask Ms. Ballantyne for a little testimony about the very poor rate of pay for child care workers.

Do you want to add a few words on the impact of that?

[Morna Ballantyne]

I don't know how much to add except that it's not just an issue of pay. There's a problem of pension coverage, for example. Also, we have a huge problem, and this is recognized everywhere, related to pay, related to benefits, related to working conditions of retention. We have a problem of attracting workers to the profession and we have a problem retaining workers in the profession.

On a day-to-day basis in operating child care, whether it's home based or centre based, it's a problem to have high turnover of staff. It has a huge impact on the quality of the care provided.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent.

Now we go to Mr. Serré for seven minutes.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Merci, Madam Chair.

I'll share my time with Ms. Vandenbeld.

Thank you to both witnesses for your dedication and your work and also for the preparation that you did to present to us today.

My first question is about parental leave. We talked about one in 10 Canadian men and nine in 10 men in Quebec. These numbers are shocking. I benefited in the late 1990s. For two of my daughters I took the maximum 10 weeks.

I want to get a sense from you about something. We heard some testimony a while back that, yes, granting more parental leave for men is good but so long as it doesn't take away from maternity leave for women. I want to get a sense of balance. If we're looking at shared responsibilities, is there a conflict with that or are there recommendations that you've made in your studies to enhance a model that is more of a shared responsibility?

[Prof. Andrea Doucet]

Thank you. That's a very good point.

Again, I'd look to Sweden. They were very clear that they didn't want to take benefits away from women because the policy could then fail. The idea is to keep maternity leave benefits in place and to have designated paternity leave. It has to be designated or men will not take it and it has to be high paid or there's no incentive for them to take it and the family takes a hit economically.

What we've seen with countries like Iceland and also Sweden is that there's a period for the mother and a period for the father and then there's a period when they could both perhaps take some of it. Sweden and Iceland have put in incentives so that there will be more sharing of it. The more sharing of the parental leave, the higher the financial payments Swedish families receive. The reason they've done that is so that it would lead to.... These are cultural shifts that take a long time.

We do have the 35 weeks that can be shared, but it tends to be women who take most of that leave. If it was higher paid and if there were incentives for them to share it, I'm sure sharing would happen.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Our witness in the previous hour, Ms. Friendly, indicated that a national workforce study framework is needed.

Mr. Fraser talked about the importance of skills development, operations, and infrastructure, when we look at day cares.

Ms. Doucet, you spoke about the EI system versus a care system. We have a maternity leave, a parental leave, and a child care.... To your knowledge—and I congratulate you on being a Canada research chair in gender—are there any studies?

I know you also had the comprehensive national framework policy in component one, but is there any national workforce framework that exists today that looks at that comprehensive care system, instead of having it in silos? Is there something that exists today?

[Prof. Andrea Doucet]

In Canada, most research has been done in those silos. It's been very interesting to see. This is where Lindsay McKay and I realized....

We participated in a book project that was all on child care and we were the only ones writing about parental leave. In the seminar that we participated in, we realized that there needs to be a more comprehensive conversation.

In Sweden, they look at this as a care policy, so they have a much more systematic framework. It is focused on children and the raising of productive citizens, so it is a care policy that has economic implications.

In Canada, people are just starting to look at this together, but I will look and see what's coming out on that.

[Morna Ballantyne]

I think Martha Friendly raised this as well in her testimony. What child care advocates have always said is that child care can only be one part of a broader support system for women's equality, for the welfare of children, and for the benefit of families.

It's interesting because you can make the argument for child care that it's good for women's equality. You can make it from the perspective of the rights of the child; children have the right to quality education and care from birth. You can also make the economic argument that it's really good for the economy, and in that respect it benefits everybody.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Great, thank you.

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

Thank you very much.

I thank all of the witnesses and extend a particular welcome to Ms. Ballantyne.

I note that your organization is based in my riding of Ottawa West—Nepean, so welcome to the committee. My question is for you, Ms. Ballantyne. I know that you have talked about a policy framework, and suggested that now is the time to be laying the foundational building blocks. I also noted that you recognize that a lot of this is a provincial jurisdiction and that it can take a decade to be able to negotiate a truly universal system.

There was a framework, the Dryden framework, which was dismantled by the previous government. It had the agreement of the provinces.

How many of these foundational blocks can we draw from that framework? What, in your opinion, are some of the lessons we might be able to learn from that? Do we need to start from scratch, or can we go back to the provinces with something based somewhat on that?

[Morna Ballantyne]

I'm glad you pointed out that we should not be starting from scratch. We've been talking about this issue for too long. Actually, I think in many ways the document that is most instructive is the Katie Cooke task force report. She was appointed by prime minister Trudeau senior in 1984. Two years of work went into developing what exactly the federal government's role could be and what a good framework agreement would be.

It stated that there had to be co-operation among the federal, provincial, and territorial governments and it laid out a path for that to happen. That was in 1984. Recommendations were actually given to the Brian Mulroney government in 1986. Then, yes, we do have the Dryden initiative under the Paul Martin government. It is something that I think can absolutely be built on.

So could the multilateral framework agreement that came before that, that was initiated by Jane Stewart, who was then the minister of whatever it was called then, because I can't remember these name changes.

We have a lot. We know what has to be done. We also have some idea of how much money it's going to cost. All I want to do quickly is point out that actually the Dryden plan, and the federal budget that supported that, offered $5 billion over five years. If we get what we think we might be getting in the budget tomorrow, which is $500 million over 10 years—we're talking about $5 billion over 10 years valued in 2017 dollars—we would actually be doing a lot worse than what we would have done under the previous initiatives.

Money is a big part of it. It has to be enough money. The other thing about the money is it has to ramp up. You can't give a billion dollars in the first year. We won't know what to do with the money. It will be too much. We need a little the first year. We've asked for $600 million; if we get $500 million, that's fine for 2017. But every year after we need that, plus more. We can't grow a system, we can't improve quality, and we can't improve access if you're giving the same flat allocation each year. It has to be more. That has to come from the federal government because the federal government has fiscal capacity that the provinces and territories don't have.

We also have to keep in mind that the provinces and the territories have really been shouldering the entire cost for the last decade. It's time for the federal government to get back into the field, as they say. It's hard to avoid sports metaphors. But they really have to get back into the game. They have to pay and show that leadership in money and also in policy development.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

We'll go to our final five minutes of questions from Ms. Vecchio.

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

Andrea, thanks very much. At the beginning you talked about your husband taking time off and being that rock star or “what's he doing here?” Our son is 14. My husband stayed home with him. When we talk about the bonds, I do see my husband.... He does have shared responsibility. Maybe it's also because I'm in this field of work, but he does have 100% shared responsibility with my son. We see that. I do know that has a great impact.

We talked about the parental leave and if there are top-ups available. Now, we have to recognize that many of the jobs, when we talk of top-ups, are from the public sector. We have to look at the economics here. When we're doing this, what we're asking then of our private sector is to take on a brand new payroll, whether it's going to be a tax or something that they're going to be paying more on.

With where our economy is now, how are our private sector businesses going to be successful if they're topping up a 35% to 40% increase when a person is not at work, and they'll have to pay somebody full time? I understand the rationale, but how does it fiscally work? How does it benefit both the employers and the employees, so the employers can stay in business as well?

[Prof. Andrea Doucet]

It's a very good question.

The first step would be if the wage replacement rates were higher, for example, if in the rest of Canada we had the same wage replacement rates as Quebec, where the wage replacement rates are 75%.

If we started with higher wage replacement rates that recognize that it's really hard for a family to sustain 55% of pay over a long period of time, and it's really hard for men to give up their pay and take 55% of their pay. If we even just look to Quebec and raise the wage replacement rate, then we would be asking for less of a burden from employers. That would be the first step for me. I think that's where the problem starts: the eligibility criteria needs to be reworked.

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

Morna, do you have any comments on that?

[Morna Ballantyne]

I would echo that.

I think it would be really helpful for governments to contribute to or put in place systems that would allow for paid parental leave without individual employees and employers necessarily shouldering the cost.

You will get that, if, as Ms. Doucet said, you see parental leave as a policy in support of families and children in care. You would get more of that than if you see it as an employment policy.

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

Okay, fantastic.

Andrea, going back to you, we talked about the 600 hours being too high a ceiling for many women to get to. Rationally, if you're looking at just the numbers, that's 37.5 hours in a 16-week period over a 52-week envelope.

You also mentioned that maybe the work is precarious for women, but at the same time how do we do this? I recognize that there are the employment insurance options for men or women, and if they're entrepreneurs they can put money aside, but what is the holdup? Are you saying that women who are working part time cannot get up to that 16 weeks of 52-week employment, or are you saying that women are working maybe on contract and that sometimes it should be the employer who should be paying into that?

What is the link here? I think if we're looking at it, many of us have said, well 16 weeks doesn't seem like a lot of time out of a 52-week period, so why are we not making those contributions when, if you're in the workforce, those are mandatory contributions in the first place?

[Prof. Andrea Doucet]

Well, it has to be with the same employer, so if you're working—

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

No, that's not correct.

You can add all your records of employment to add up to 600 hours.