Thank you. Good morning.
In the interests of time and with all protocol observed, I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to address the topic of women's economic empowerment.
I have been a member of the business and professional women's organization for more than 20 years. I served as the provincial president for Ontario from 2012 to 2014, and as mentioned, I am currently the first vice-president for BPW Canada. From April 2015 to May 2016, I was appointed by an order in council to the Ontario minister of labour's steering committee tasked with studying the causes of and recommending ways to close Ontario's gender wage gap. I recently attended the CSW 61 meeting at the UN and was a delegate for BPW International. It's these experiences that I draw on today for my comments.
I will start by saying that the imbalance of power between men and women is not a women's issue. This is a societal issue based in human rights. Although those of us who have been working in this for some time understand that, the general public does not, and that was borne out in the consultation process.
Most young women don't know that there's inequality in the workplace and usually don't come to that realization until mid-career. We desperately need a national awareness campaign before any real change can happen. We must ensure that, during the awareness process, we do not create a women versus men attitude, and that again was borne out in the consultation process.
This issue is a societal issue, as already noted, and it will take men and women working together to eliminate the bias and the inequality.
Men have had privilege in our society since the beginning of recorded time. We cannot risk dividing our society and creating a Donald Trump phenomenon here in Canada. The intent must be clear that men are asked to share the responsibilities of family, to create welcoming work environments, and to open themselves to change.
Women also must bear the burden of sharing their domain, and work with men to create this change. Employers must change their attitudes to accept men as parents and allow the flexibility for them to meet their family responsibilities. In the past, that meant bringing home a good paycheque. Today, that means sharing the care, sharing the work, sharing the decision-making, and sharing the rewards.
Once the public is aware of the issue, the causes, and the solutions, legislative changes will be more easily adopted and implemented.
Key areas for change are, of course, child care, which has been already mentioned, employment insurance leaves, education, and pay equity legislation, and that's just to name a few.
We need a high-quality affordable, accessible, publicly funded, and geared-to-income child care system with sufficient spaces to meet the needs of Canadians. We also need a better system for elder care. However, assistance to the family care alone will not solve the problem. This must be accompanied with changes to the employment insurance system.
We need a “use it or lose it” father care leave to encourage men to share the care. Both parents must have access to some kind of top-up. Studies show that men are more likely to take those leaves when they have sufficient benefits. The top-up could be an optional opt-in program to deduct higher premiums, or a separate government-supported savings plan like the educational savings plan.
Flexible EI leave plans must also allow both parents to move in and out of the workplace for predetermined periods of time to accommodate their career activities and their advancements while offering continuous care to the child. This flexible leave should continue beyond the parental leave to accommodate short time-off leaves for sick children so parents can be compensated if they're even only off for a day, and that's if they don't have paid sick days from work.
Our educational system—and I know this is not necessarily specifically to the federal government—must strive for a bias-free curriculum and delivery, and we heard information at the consultations that delivery is not bias-free.
I believe that gender balance in the classroom plays a big role and must be involved in all aspects of organized classroom activities, whether it's during playtime or whether it's shared experience. As boys and girls learn from each other and share their knowledge and their experience, we will see less segregation into stereotypical roles as they progress through school.
Pay equity legislation should include gender-based analysis of workplaces and reporting of that analysis. Workplace education, transparency of wages, reporting of workplace data, policies, and strategies to government related to gender equality are a must. Some of the reporting could be incorporated into employment tax data already gathered by Revenue Canada.
Data is another topic that requires that we ensure we are collecting data so we can show progress. We have found that many employment programs and different programs that were happening were actually gathering data, but the data was not being gathered by gender. When we asked why they didn't have that data by gender, they said they'd never been asked for it. Simply rearranging the programs that are happening, asking for data to be gathered by gender, by race, and by religion, could very much help the lack of data we have in this situation.
Thank you for the opportunity. I have many more ideas, but of course, in seven minutes it's hard to get it all in.