Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to present our views this morning.
I would like to begin by saying a little bit about the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec.
The FTQ is the largest union federation in Quebec. We represent more than 600,000 members. We represent the largest number of unionized women in Quebec: over 200,000. We also represent more than 125,000 members who work in federally regulated sectors.
To advance women's economic security, the FTQ advocates acting simultaneously on several fronts; I will address six of them.
The first point is recognition of the value of women's work. The federal government needs a proactive pay equity law now. We believe this would be one way of respecting women workers' right to a fair wage for the work they do. In Quebec, a law enacted in 1997 has significantly reduced the wage gap, which has gone from 16% in 1997 to 10% in 2015. I will not dwell on this point, but it is clearly one way to advance women's economic security.
The second point is an increase in the minimum wage to $15 per hour. The FTQ fully supports that recommendation, which has also been made by the Canadian Labour Congress. We reiterate that, in an economic context where non-standard jobs and precarious employment are of growing importance, the federal government must set the tone by establishing a minimum wage of $15 per hour. We would point out that a very large number of women in Canada work for minimum wage. There are also men working for minimum wage, but women are affected more: nearly 60% of people who work for minimum wage are women. These women's work needs to be better recognized.
Another effective way of advancing women's economic security is to balance work, family and school. This is an important lever for reducing inequality between men and women while producing positive effects on the economy. In Quebec, we have a family policy that includes child care, the Quebec parental insurance plan, which covers maternity and parental leave and work-family balance measures. I would like to address those elements one by one.
First, a complete public network of high-quality reduced-contribution educational child care services is important, to support women and keep them in employment. In Quebec, this measure has markedly improved women's labour market participation rate for two decades. In the initial years of the plan, between 1997 and 2004, we saw a significant 10% increase in the presence of women in the labour market.
This measure has also resulted in the creation of thousands of jobs in the child care industry. In its 2002-03 budget speech, Quebec's government indicated that subsidized child care had already led to the creation of 12,000 jobs, and, in 2014, 30,000 full-time jobs had been created in the industry.
According to Statistics Canada, 45,000 people work in child care in Quebec. Over 90% of workers in this occupation are women. This is therefore an important issue. The industry is far from perfect in Quebec, but this measure has had a positive impact on women's employment.
The other measure relates to maternity and parental leave, which has resulted in a significant increase in women's labour market participation rate in Quebec. This measure has been in place since 2006. The Quebec parental insurance plan allows 90% of new mothers in Quebec to receive parental benefits, versus 65% of Canadian women governed by employment insurance rules.
Recently, the Quebec government did an evaluation, and the economic and social impacts were extremely positive.
In addition, there is a widening gap between Quebec and the other Canadian provinces. For example, in a household with total income of $30,000 or less, mothers are more likely to take paid leave in Quebec than in the other provinces. In 2013, 85% of low-income women in Quebec had access to paid maternity leave, as compared with 44% of Canadian women.
There is also the entire question of fathers. We can see the effects of this measure on fathers' participation when it comes to taking leave, whether paternity leave or parental leave. We see that the rate rose from 28% under the employment insurance plan in 2005 to 83% under the Quebec parental insurance plan in 2004. This is beneficial in terms of the role of parents and the division of labour in the home.
There is also the entire question of adapting workplaces. This is an important measure. In Quebec, we work with the Coalition pour la conciliation famille-travail-études. For several years, we have been calling for framework legislation on family-work-school balance. Its aim would be to require employers to initiate a labour-management process with employees and the unions that represent them to determine the needs relating to family-work-school balance in each workplace and to put measures in place, with a focus on equality.
Another element of this is the protective reassignment of pregnant or breastfeeding workers. In the last federal budget, we saw a measure referred to as protective withdrawal from work that covers up to 12 weeks before the due date rather than the eight weeks allowed at present. That does not trigger additional benefits for the claimant. In our opinion, this is not genuine protective withdrawal; it is disguised maternity leave. In Quebec, protective reassignment is not maternity leave and is not a social measure.