Evidence of meeting #52 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 quebec.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Pierre Fortin  Professor, Department of Economics, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
Martha Friendly  Executive Director, Childcare Resource and Research Unit (CRRU)
Andrea Doucet  Professor, Canada Research Chair in Gender, Work and Care, Brock University, As an Individual
Morna Ballantyne  Executive Director, Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada

10:40 a.m.

Prof. Andrea Doucet

Okay, thank you. That detail slipped my mind.

10:40 a.m.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

Sorry, I did this for 12 years.

10:40 a.m.

Prof. Andrea Doucet

Thank you.

I'm a qualitative researcher, so the statistics tend to fall away from me.

All I would say is that we look at the numbers and we look at how in Quebec the number of low-income mothers earning less than $30,000 a year are accessing parental leave benefits at a much higher rate than mothers in the rest of Canada.

I think the numbers tell us that a lot of women—

10:40 a.m.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

But what's holding women back from obtaining 16 weeks of full-time work in a 52-week period to make those contributions?

10:40 a.m.

Prof. Andrea Doucet

I go back to the question about very low-income women, women who have mental health issues, the populations in our country who are not able to be in full-time work over a long period of time.

I don't know the answer to the question, but I know that women are not meeting that 600 hours—

10:45 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

I'm really sorry, but we're over our time for our meeting today.

I want to thank both of our witnesses for very intelligent and very excellent input to our discussion today. If you have things that you want to send as a result of the discussion, please feel free to send those to the clerk.

Thank you to the committee, and we will see you again on Thursday.

The meeting is adjourned.