Status of Women Committee on March 23rd, 2017

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you, Pam.

We know that 60% of those living with disabilities are vulnerable to gender-based violence. We know from our own personal and professional experiences that people with disabilities and exceptionalities bring gifts and talents to organizations and communities, gifts and talents that aren't always utilized, and as a result, we're not as strong as a nation as we could be.

We also know that my colleague Carla Qualtrough, the minister responsible for persons with disabilities and sports, has been actively connecting with Canadians across the country in her consultations to develop Canada's disability act. I believe this legal framework will make a significant impact in the lives of Canadians whose talents and contributions have not had their full platform in Canadian society.

I also want to let you know that in the GBA+ lens that we put on every policy, legislation, and program that the government reviews, that plus includes persons with disabilities and exceptionalities, because we know that our programs and our decisions affect different people differently and that there's going to be a different impact on persons with disabilities and exceptionalities.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

Very quickly, I wonder if you could expand on how we've improved our GBA+ analysis within the government.

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Over 60 measures in this very feminist budget are a direct result of a thorough gender-based analysis with that plus sign on it. It's no accident that housing is such a focus in this budget. It's no accident that caregiving is such a focus in this budget. It's no accident that chapter 5 is focused entirely on a gender statement and an analysis of how women and girls in Canada are faring right now. That has a lot to do with the work that this committee has done.

I know that the GBA+ focus was on the books since 1995 and your work has allowed us to move it forward further. You will be receiving, Madam Chair, an interim report on how our monitoring and evaluation of these efforts are going so far.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent.

The last three minutes with the minister go to Sheila Malcolmson.

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

What a gift to have extra time.

Minister, we've had a number of witnesses come before us on the matter of pay equity. To use the words of Vicky Smallman from the Canadian Labour Congress, “Let's get this done in 2017.”

Diana Sarosi from Oxfam, when asked whether she could explain any rationale for why pay equity legislation is being delayed beyond what the committee or anybody asked for, said, “No, we have not heard what the...barriers are.” Jennifer Howard from the Public Service Alliance of Canada pointed out that there's no reason to delay until 2018, because the road map for the new law was provided in the 2004 pay equity task force report of the previous Liberal government.

This new budget had no specific benchmarks for narrowing the wage gap at all. I'm sure that you're concerned, as I am, that women get equal pay for work of equal value. Why delay pay equity legislation until 2018, until the very end of your mandate?

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I agree that the wage gap is an issue that needs to be addressed. Part of it is pay equity and the Ministers for Labour and the Treasury Board are focused on this commitment, as I am. You're right. We believe in equal pay for equal work, and that legislation alone—when it comes to pay equity—will not address this issue. We need cultural changes in the workplace, as well as the supports for women.

We're committed, Sheila, to moving beyond the complaint-based approach to pay equity and to introducing pay equity legislation by late 2018. We also know that other aspects of the wage gap need to be addressed through things like parental and maternal leave, through opportunities to take leave to care for elderly parents, for example, and through making sure that women and girls find themselves dreaming of and succeeding in growth where they have traditionally not been seeing themselves, including STEM fields.

Collectively, I believe these efforts will be steps in the right direction towards closing that wage gap, which I believe is unacceptable. To do it right, the federal government is going to be leading the provinces and territories, which means we have a greater responsibility to ensure that we get it right. The time we need to do this is going to allow us to do just that.

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

Women have been waiting a very long time, so we certainly want this to move faster.

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I agree.

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

Nothing in the budget referred to the national inquiry on murdered and missing indigenous women. Can you tell me how those tragedies can be addressed now concurrently, as your government has committed, without any budget allocation for them in this year?

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

There are significant budget allocations in this budget. As you know, for the inquiry, as we heard from families of survivors of those women and girls who have gone missing, it was really important for the federal government to trust that process with an independent group of commissioners, which is exactly what has happened. They've begun to set up and they're going to be doing their work. They'll be providing us with a report later this fall, which we look forward to seeing and reviewing.

In the meantime, we're investing in infrastructure in indigenous communities, both off reserve and on reserve, across the country. Eighteen boil water advisories have ended, with more work to do, but work that we're committed to.

There's a focus on education. There's a focus on indigenous leadership, which Status of Women has played a part in. I look forward to coming back to this committee and talking about that.

The work we need to do around reconciliation has begun, but it's going to require generational, intergenerational, cross-sectoral, multicultural work. I know that the young leaders in this room and the young leaders I've heard from across the country and at the UN certainly prioritize a stronger relationship with indigenous peoples. This generational work is in good hands with the people here, but also with the people who are waiting to take their seats.

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

Would the minister be willing to provide for the committee an accounting of where the money is going?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry, Sheila, you're out of time. We have to wrap it up.

Thanks so much, Minister. We appreciate the work that you're doing. You're definitely headed in a good direction. Many of us want to see more, but I know that's coming. Thank you for joining us today.

We will suspend briefly to give the minister an opportunity to depart before we continue with our witnesses on the main estimates.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're ready to commence the second half, where we're going to continue talking about the main estimates. We are extremely lucky to have, I would say, very strong women from the Status of Women department: Meena Ballantyne, Justine Akman, Lucie Desforges, Anik Lapointe.

Welcome. We so appreciate all the work you ladies have done. You must be very pleased to see the front-and-centre gender analysis in the budget, and we look forward to doing our rounds of questions.

We will start right away with my friend, Ms. Nassif. You have seven minutes.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Like other colleagues, I am very happy to have participated in the UN Commission on the Status of Women last week.

I will begin with a question on gender-based analysis plus, or GBA+, which our committee has already studied. My question is for Ms. Akman.

According to the 2017-18 Main Estimates, Status of Women Canada should receive additional funding of $6.2 million for the 2017-18 fiscal year to increase the research and evaluation function, expand regional presence, increase the gender-based analysis function and increase capacity at Status of Women Canada.

How will the amount of $6.2 million be divided among those four elements?

[Justine Akman, Director General, Policy and External Relations, Office of the Co-ordinator, Status of Women]

I would leave any precise financial questions to my colleague, the chief financial officer, Anik Lapointe. We have hired up fully in our gender-based analysis unit. We have tackled our action plan, which has been shared with the committee, I believe, with full force, and been able to support other federal departments in our gender-based analysis efforts because of the money that we received in 2016.

It has been a true leap forward for gender-based analysis in the federal government, as was demonstrated and, as the minister pointed out, came out in the federal budget last night.

[Anik Lapointe, Chief Financial Officer and Director, Corporate Services, Office of the Co-ordinator, Status of Women]

Here is the breakdown of the amount: about $1 million for regional presence; $2.2 million for research and evaluation; about $1 million for gender-based analysis; and another $2 million for internal services to increase capacity at Status of Women Canada.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

I have another question.

According to Status of Women Canada's 2017-18 departmental plan, one of the key risks associated with the agency's work is the difficulty of measuring social change.

To mitigate that risk, Status of Women Canada intends to develop staff capacity, frameworks, tools and systems to collect data, undertake research, and monitor, analyze and report on performance.

What measures is Status of Women Canada taking to develop staff capacity, frameworks, tools and systems to collect data? Can we know more about that?

[Meena Ballantyne, Head of Agency, Office of the Co-ordinator, Status of Women]

What we have put in our departmental plan is that Status of Women has the lead for gender equality but all the levers are in other departments, so we work with them to advance gender equality, as you know. That is one of the things I think you're referring to in the departmental plan, which is where we talk about the fact that we're coming up with research and evaluation and performance indicators. How will we know that we are making advances in gender equality? How will we know that the rates of violence are going down?

That's through surveys that we're coming up with, through different tools, like the GBA+ tools, and the training that we're doing with different departments. Then the different departments are tracking their indicators. We all need to collectively get better at this work, and we're just starting that process now with the money for the research and evaluation unit that we established since the last budget.

I'm not sure if I understood your question properly.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Yes, thank you.

I have another question.

Status of Women Canada also intends to mitigate that risk by engaging in regular formal consultations with Canadians.

What form will those consultations take?

[Meena Ballantyne]

Last summer we carried out the consultations with Minister Hajdu on the gender-based violence strategy, where we went across the country and heard from experts and stakeholders and survivors, which is informing our federal strategy on gender-based violence. We also participated in the pre-inquiry on the murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. The pre-inquiry consultations with the three ministers who went across the country—Ministers Bennett, Hajdu, and Wilson-Raybould— are examples of some consultations.

We consult with, for example, experts and stakeholders on the data-gathering part that we're working on as part of the federal strategy. Last September we had a two-day consultation with some of the leading experts and stakeholders. For the gender statement that was in the budget, we held initial pre-budget consultations, and there's a plan moving forward in terms of improving the gender-based statement for the next budget. We also have the women's program evaluation, where every program is evaluated every five years, so we've consulted with over 700 people on the women's program in terms of what's working and what's not working from the stakeholders' perspective. Those are the kinds of consultations that Status of Women Canada does.

We also do international consultations. For example, at the UNCSW, we're meeting with groups; we're meeting with other countries. The minister referred to the American states. We had a consultation with other countries from the American states, which was a first. There are all these various ways that we consult.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

I attended one of the consultations held by the minister in Montreal last summer. We heard from many witnesses, representing various organizations. There is definitely a lot of work to be done.

Similarly....

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Your time is up, Mrs. Nassif.

We will go now for seven minutes to Ms. Harder, who is splitting her time with Ms. Vecchio.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you very much.

My question for you is with regard to internal services. This budget line has increased by about $2 million. I'm wondering if you can just help me understand why that increased and where that money is going to be spent.

[Anik Lapointe]

There's an increase to our internal services to support the additional staff that we're getting for the research and evaluation, so the 38 new full-time equivalents. There's $0.4 million that goes toward communication to increase that capacity, and there's an increase to the minister's budget also because there's a difference between a full minister's budget and a minister of state as we had before, or a minister who was in charge of other portfolios as well. There's an increase there, and all of that goes under internal services.

[Meena Ballantyne]

If I may, I'll elaborate on that. Internal services as defined by Treasury Board are all the usual things you might think of, such as HR, IT, financing, and communications. The ministers' office budgets also are under that. When we increased our size from last year's budget investment, we needed those people.

Because we're a separate, small agency, we need the people in HR, IM, and IT to do that. We need the communications function. In terms of our social media, we never had—before the last year or two—social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and now LinkedIn, and also the website to transmit information to everybody. These are the internal services that we've increased in the past year.

As my colleague said, having a full minister and supporting a full minister, which we've never had before.... It used to be part of other portfolios. For example, the minister previous to the last one had both the labour and the status of women portfolios. It was a bigger portfolio, the ESDC portfolio, that supported that function. Now it's within our agency, so we were given more money to do that.