Status of Women Committee on June 1st, 2017

[Ramona Benson]

Absolutely. In my own work—and I can only state this from my experience and from that of other women I have met, in telecommunications in the the voice and messaging and data industry—I have been in the 1%. Now there are more women in our industry, but I'm still at a senior level and I'm a minority.

There are challenges. Even when I was hiring, and this is a true story, my CEO said, “Can you find out if they're going to have children?” It's that glass-ceiling effect. You study it. You think it's theoretical, but it's actually there in practice. A lot of employers do worry that if they promote a woman, is she going to have a child and pay less attention to her work?

What it comes down to is that when it gets to a senior level in management, it's all about performance. It's all about profit. It's all about growth month over month, and it's about dedication. When it comes to the private sector, you do work 10 to 12 hours a day. If it's a demanding role, you're travelling and everything else, so it does affect your personal life, and you really do have to forego certain things if you do want to be that ambitious and go to an executive-level role. Those are simply some of the opportunity costs that exist.

I'm also against affirmative action, though. Norway introduced a mandatory quota for the proportion of women on boards, increasing it from 9% in 2003 to 40% five years later. This rapid increase was a national policy. Do I agree with it? Not specifically, because there's the question of performance. You need to have people who are right for certain jobs, for the sake of performance. You cannot simply place them in certain jobs because they fit a quota. That's why I go back to education. It's so important to not just throw money at it and say there are resources available, go after it. It starts early on, to be able to match people to jobs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to my colleague, Ms. Vecchio, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

All of you have made fantastic presentations. I'd really like to thank you.

Ramona, I want to start with you because we read in your background that you had worked with people who had been incarcerated and helped them get back. By no means am I trying to say this is a parallel, but I'm trying to take some of the tactics could perhaps parallel what we do with our new immigrant population. Is there anything you can see from the work that we do with new immigrants coming to Canada, or some tactics that we can use, comparing it to the work you've done with those who have been incarcerated?

[Ramona Benson]

Yes. I graduated from Carleton University. I studied criminology and criminal justice, and I was lucky enough to do a one-year internship at Correctional Service Canada, which hired me when I finished my field placement. That's what it was called back then. I worked in a department called CORCAN, which has five lines of business: farming, services, manufacturing.... You'll have to excuse me because this was a long time ago.

There were work sites within the federal institutions, and I was lucky enough to visit Kingston Penitentiary and a few others. We put incarcerated individuals to work. If they had an education level of grade 10, they were able.... Again, the aptitude test is so important, because you want to match people to jobs. Based on their aptitude test and their educational requirement, they were put to work in the institutions. They made, back then—this is going back to 2004—$5 and some cents. It created a savings account for them when the were in the prisons.

My role was a project officer. I also worked at the community centres where, when they came out with their certification, their job experience, and money in their back account—and this was of course to prevent their re-offending—we put them into employment community centres that were funded by Correctional Service Canada, and there they were able to get jobs and go to work.

Before I left Correctional Service Canada, we were working with Service Canada to do some sort of a merger program, because the concept was, why reinvent the wheel? There were about 35 employment centres across Canada, and why not do a collaboration with Service Canada where they learn how to treat previously incarcerated offenders to be able to assimilate them into society?

Going to your question, I had to lay the groundwork, but I think it's very important that the English speaking.... They do need to speak English. For immigrants coming here, it's about aptitude tests to be able to put them in an apprenticeship or an internship, whatever you want to call it. If they can do part-time work and get paid a few hours a week, then they also shadow somebody and work. I got my start in the government because I did a year of field placement. Everything I've done has always been: go to work, show your skills, and learn, because when you do it for free, they'll teach you anything, and they'll let you do anything. That's how you learn.

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

Thanks so much, Ramona. You have awesome testimony.

I'm going to switch over to the BDC. A lot of times, we're talking about financial literacy with women. This is a two-part question looking at the financial literacy piece. Do you see this as something that we still need to tackle, even with the women you're dealing with in your own work and some of the hurdles they have to face?

When we're talking about the comparison, I applaud you for all the money that you've put out, but if we're trying to compare men and women, do you still see more of it going to men or do you see that gap beginning to decrease as well? I'm looking at financial literacy and the money that has been going out the doors in the last few since you put out the program in 2015. If you could give me a little idea on that, it would be great.

[Lesley Lawrence]

To answer the first question, yes, there's still a need to help women entrepreneurs with financial literacy.

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

Is there a big gap between men versus women? Do you see a gap there?

[Lesley Lawrence]

Potentially yes. Certainly we've been focusing more on women. We haven't really been assessing the male level of financial literacy because we recognize this is a focus area for women, so let's do that with women. That answers your first question.

In terms of access to capital and lending more to women versus men, what we're trying to focus on, quite honestly, is the fact that we're lower than where the market is in terms of our concentration of majority-owned businesses. I want to focus on majority-owned women businesses. We're trying to really move the needle on that. In terms of our lending last year, we did have increased growth organizationally. However, if we grew our lending by 22% last year, but we targeted and grew majority-owned women businesses by 27%, we have done more lending in that space.

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

That's excellent. Thank you very much.

Marilyne and Geneviève, first of all, I would like to applaud everything that you do as mothers. It's incredible. I'm looking at your statements, and I recognize that, yes, you would be very dependent on others because you're the primary caregiver. I have a couple of questions on this.

Do either of you think it's most cost-effective and beneficial for the children to be with you, or what's the best option for the children? That is kind of a hard question.

[Geneviève Dion]

Since we know our child's medical file by heart and have looked after them since birth, being with us is what is best for the child. Whether a child is disabled or not, they belong with their parents, for as long as they are able to carry out that responsibility. That is another aspect as well.

Our organization represents at least 2,000 parents, in Quebec alone, who have a severely disabled child. The vast majority of them want to look after their child and are able to do so. We work closely with our people. We have a Facebook page, people call on us, and ask us many questions. We are a resource for those families. They want to look after their child.

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

You're working in a partnership then. By no means am I trying to go after these people, but we just heard things on autism, so I'm trying to compare it to something on autism. We're working with CAPP, the Canadian Autism Partnership Project..

Do you believe these partnerships are really quite important so that you will have that support from other like-minded parents?

[Geneviève Dion]

Yes, partnerships with the government and community organizations are crucial to us. We need financial support and competent people who can offer help at home and respite services. Respite services are one of the strengths of community organizations on the ground.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent.

Now we'll go to my colleague, Ms. Malcolmson, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Picard, and Ms. Dion, Tétrault, thank you for your very powerful testimony. I can't imagine what you're living with. I also am amazed that, given the life you describe, you have time for advocacy and to come here to tell the story. That's an extra challenge, and it's very important.

This is just what our study is looking at. We're looking at the women in Canada who are having the hardest time economically, why, and what policies we can put in place to try to support them.

If I understand the way you described it in your testimony, the major federal programs that might assist you are federal tax programs, for which you have to make enough money so that you are paying taxes and can then qualify for a tax rebate. Those programs are irrelevant to your families. We hear this in other areas as well. You can get a tax rebate, but you have to be wealthy enough to qualify.

That means that you and your families now live in poverty, and when you...I want to say retire, but you might not really exactly retire in a conventional way. As the members of your organization age, you will not have the pensions to support your life, and neither will you have the savings to pass on to your children for them to have security.

We need to do something. I mean that's not tenable because this has a multi-generational impact.

Can you tell us more? The personal story is very powerful. Tell us more about the impact both on you and your members and then on your children of this economic scarcity, and what the long-term implications are of that.

[Marilyne Picard]

Let me give you a few figures about our personal situation, which is similar to that of others here.

My spouse and I both used to work and each earned a salary. Since I no longer work, our income has plummeted. Moreover, our child's needs, which entail certain costs, have increased our family expenses. We have found ourselves in a hole, with no way out.

We had to do fundraising to dig ourselves out. As we have explained, this is very difficult and hurts our pride. No one wants to pin a photo of their child on a little donations box at the grocery store.

Yet, we had the necessary motivation to create this movement. We thought about the fact that we have degrees, and that we worked hard to earn those degrees. Out of love for our children, we stay at home, and it feels like we have fallen into a deep hole.

I am still able to work though. I have a tremendous amount of energy. It makes no sense. I want to keep contributing to my retirement plan and save money. The government offers a very good program, the registered disability savings plan, or RDSP, but you have to have the money to contribute to it. When our child's therapy costs between $3,000 and $4,000 per year, that is where our money goes, and not to savings. We are constantly trimming our expenses. We do not talk about the siblings enough, yet the other children in the family are greatly affected by these financial difficulties.

Founding this movement provided an avenue for personal growth. We rolled up our sleeves. We said that it is not 1940 and it is inconceivable that, in 2017, we should end up as housewives again.

We work; our commitment at home is definitely work. We would like the Government of Canada to recognize the work we do at home for our children. When they become adults, the situation will be the same. We will still have to feed them with a spoon. We will still have to take everything with us, including their wheelchair, whether we are going to the grocery store or somewhere else. We are not recognized as family caregivers for tax purposes because our child is under 18. Yet I certainly am a family caregiver. There are all kinds of little anomalies like this and they put us at a disadvantage.

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

I have another question on a related area. A constituent in my riding, a mother in Nanaimo, has a daughter who is fed with a feeding tube. She is very concerned about the nutritional elements of what's required.... The only coverage is for a certain formula that's provided by Nestlé, or something like that. She's concerned that it isn't healthy, and there's no food labelling to say what the nutritional content is.

I don't want to put you on the spot, but I wonder whether, for your organization, I can share with you the correspondence we've had with the health minister. Maybe you have parents who have the same concern, or maybe you've already advocated in this area and might be able to give us some advice, or maybe together we could encourage the health minister. There is a commitment to food labelling and nutrition, but it doesn't seem to be applying to those who are dependent on force-feeding, as you say.

Would you be willing to look at that material with us? You might have some advice as well. It's not related to economic security, but of course it is for the benefit of the children.

[Marilyne Picard]

Yes, of course.

Labelling issues, expiry dates, and all those things are very important to us as parents. Our child has to consume a certain number of calories. Everything is weighed and calculated, so I can understand the concerns of that mother.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent.

We will now move on to Mr. Serré for seven minutes.

Excuse me, it is actually Ms. Nassif's turn.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks to all the witnesses for their presentations.

I would like in particular to thank Ms. Dion, Ms. Picard, and Ms. Tétreault. I had the honour of meeting you in Laval. I am the only committee member from Quebec. My heartfelt thanks for coming to talk to us about your experiences.

I was a nurse for eight years. After giving birth to healthy triplets, I had to give up nursing and go back to school in another field. You are full-time nurses yourselves, and will be permanently. I salute you and thank you for taking the time to come and tell us about your situation.

I have a few questions for each of you.

First, can you tell us more about the type of funding available to you in Quebec? Does it differ from the other types of funding provided to host families or is it the same?

[Marilyne Picard]

We have received compensation. We reached out to the Quebec government to point out that host families received about $15,000 in respite services. Various costs are reimbursed to those families, including the cost of medications and ambulance fees. We have calculated all of that and have concluded that a host family in Quebec receives $40,000 per year to look after a child who is not their own.

[A voice]

And that is non-taxable.

[Marilyne Picard]

That is correct. As a family, we receive $4,000 from all programs and services.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

You said $4,000?

[Marilyne Picard]

Yes, $4,000. So our salary was increased by $4,000. That includes federal financial assistance. Quebec provided $2,000 and Canada provided the same amount.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Per year?