Status of Women Committee on June 6th, 2017

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

I call the meeting to order. This is the 66th meeting of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

I'd like to welcome Stephanie Kusie to the committee. She will be with us until the end of June.

Welcome, Stephanie. We are very happy to have you here.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

Our witnesses this morning are the Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia and Catalyst Canada, both by teleconference. Welcome to both of you.

We'll start with the Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia.

You have seven minutes.

[Jennifer Watts, Director, Settlement and Integration, Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia]

Thank you.

My name is Jennifer Watts. I represent the Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia, the only multi-service settlement agency in Nova Scotia and probably the largest one in Atlantic Canada. We've been providing services to refugees and immigrants for over 38 years. We are happy to be here to address you this morning. I am going to speak rapidly, because there is a lot of information we'd like to convey to you but I also understand that there will be time for questions and answers.

We know that women's experiences are very diverse generally, and that is also true of immigrant women who are settling here in Canada. We know that many immigrant families come here in a small nucleus, which is perhaps different from the experience they've had in their home country. They are relying on family and friends, if they have them here, who may not be aware of services. Generally, there is a lack of information around settlement supports and networks that may support them during this time. Therefore, if a crisis situation happens to them, it often happens very rapidly and in isolation within the community. Particularly, women who face abusive situations do not report that, partly out of fear and partly because they have no money. If their situation changes, they see their economic security very much tied into that family relationship. It is very often a difficult situation.

We also know that immigrant women's economic needs need to be seen through the lens of social determinants, which include family status, race, education, age, sexual orientation, immigration status, and pre-arrival condition, to name a few. This will affect their ability to settle and to feel financially secure. Immigration status affects their economic security. When women become citizens, they lose their ability to access settlement resources. If during the time when they are moving toward their citizenship they are not actively engaged or connected to settlement services, once they become citizens they no longer have access to that. In terms of the transition, it may take them time. They may be at home with child care and taking care of families. They may in fact become citizens without necessarily having the full support for integration. Also, conditional family class sponsorship can be problematic, particularly if it breaks down, because women fear being deported and therefore choose to stay in relationships that are not safe for them.

We know that child care is a very large issue, since women tend to be the primary caregivers for children. If they don't have access to child care, that limits their ability for language learning and employment, increasing isolation and reliance on their spouse. As an organization, we do offer child care, but our resources are limited. Particularly for families arriving with large numbers of children within their family unit—as we experienced with the Syrian refugees who have come—it is very difficult to provide the range of child care that is needed to adequately address their needs. The lack of affordable, subsidized, and appropriate child care makes it difficult for women to break out of the cycle of poverty and have economic security.

The child tax benefit has been very positive. We'd like to thank the government for the recent changes. It has a significant impact on our folks. One of the issues we've seen is that the benefits can take several months to be given to some of our clients, particularly if there are questions around the global income, or if a refugee has filled out the form wrong or has not realized the importance of having that document in on time. Then it takes a significant amount of time to go back, work through all the details of the application, and get that form filled out. It often leaves families without access to the child tax benefit. That's a real problem with the bureaucracy around that.

We've also seen that during the first three months of coming in, refugees don't have access to the child tax benefit and there is no longer RAP funding to support people during that time. Having access to food is very difficult for people during that time. We know that income assistance rates have not risen very rapidly, if at all. There is difference across provinces, but speaking from the Nova Scotia reality, the housing shelter is woefully inadequate. It does not meet the needs of people for finding safe, accessible housing. We also know that, if you are on income assistance, it is difficult to find the opportunity to go to school or to access resources, and therefore to move out of that program and into greater economic independence.

We have recognized in our new strategic plan that if we're going to be champions of an inclusive and welcoming province, we need to be involved in looking at the systemic issues that affect affordable housing, accessible health care, and poverty. Those are real issues that are affecting women, in particular, in our community. We also recognize that women who are living with disabilities or in families that have disabilities or women from the LGBTQ community face further difficulties having a successful economic integration.

Specifically, looking for adequate and appropriate language opportunities, therefore having increased support for tutoring and child care and being able to access services after women become citizens.... Interpretation budgets are huge, particularly for agencies that are not actually immigrant-servicing. We would love for our clients to be able to access the great resources that are now in the community, but they can't, because these organizations either don't have the cultural competency or do not have budgets to support interpretation of their services. They tend to rely on us, when really, if we're trying to be a community that is broad, diverse, and inclusive, we need to change ourselves in all aspects of our society. Interpretation budgets are key to having that happen.

Access to affordable and accessible housing is a huge issue, as well as appropriate and adequate economic support during the person's time as a refugee, and also—if they have to—being able to move onto income assistance so that it actually supports them. We would certainly be interested in any discussion around a guaranteed annual income and the possibilities for supporting women.

Refugee women in particular may find employment in places where it's evenings, overnights, and weekends. Often they're entry-level jobs, and the women tend not to move out of those jobs. Also, there often isn't oversight and protection in those jobs to support women, so it can be a vicious cycle of staying in a place that's not healthy, safe, or appropriate for them, and always at a minimum or low wage.

In closing, I'd like to say that last year we did a program looking at underemployed professional immigrant women. We noticed six areas we felt were important for employers to consider. One is looking at the credential recognition—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

Sorry, that's your time.

[Jennifer Watts]

I'd be happy to answer questions about that afterwards.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

Thank you.

We're now going to turn to our friends at Catalyst Canada, from Toronto.

Ms. van Biesen.

[Tanya van Biesen, Executive Director, Catalyst Canada Inc.]

Good morning, and thank you for inviting Catalyst to be part of the discussion this morning. I've had the chance to speak with some of you before.

Catalyst is a global not-for-profit that advocates for the advancement of women in business.

I'm going to talk about three areas, specifically the gender wage gap and occupational segregation; tools to strengthen women's economic security; and ways to increase women's entry, participation, retention, and representation in leadership and in high-paying positions.

I'd like to take a minute to set the stage in Canada. As many of you will know, among some, not all, of the reporting 710 companies listed on the TSX, which represents about $2 trillion in market value, only 12% of board seats are held by women, and 45% of those companies have no women—zero women—on their boards. Further, 43% of these companies have zero women executive officers, and then another 28% have only one. Finally, fewer than 5% of CEOs of Canadian companies are women. The Canadian stage is not quite what it could be with respect to women.

Let me talk a bit about this first issue of identifying the problems that affect women's income: the gender wage gap specifically. Catalyst's research, along with that of many others, shows that wage inequality starts early in women's careers and worsens over time. In fact, studies we've done show that Canadian high-potential women earn $8,000 less than men do in their first post-M.B.A. job and are more likely to start at a lower-level position despite same levels of experience and education. Earning less over a lifetime means that women receive lower pensions when they retire and are at a greater risk of either poverty or a reduced lifestyle than are men.

In our view, the pay gap and other gender gaps exist for a number of reasons, including entrenched systemic barriers and unconscious biases, not because women are less qualified than men. I would point to a couple of things.

The majority of talent recruitment, development, management, and compensation systems are not designed to correct early inequities. They're built on the notion of meritocracy, which I think we love to latch onto in Canada. Many research projects have shown that merit contains a significant amount of unconscious bias, because merit is defined by those in power.

I would also note in the area of gender wage gap that some groups of women experience much larger wage gaps than others, notably racialized and indigenous women, newcomers, and women with disabilities. I have some facts on that.

Indigenous women earn 18% less than indigenous men, and 36% less than non-indigenous men. Women with disabilities earn 16% less than men with disabilities, and 48% less than men without disabilities. Racialized women earn 19% less than racialized men, and 34% less than non-racialized men.

This should be a real concern for Canada, as our mix continues to change and we have a government that is very pro-immigration. Not only are women being left behind, but racialized women are being even further left behind.

On the subject of occupational segregation and lack of access to key growth sectors, I would say that social norms and stereotypes continue to influence girls' and young women's educational paths, and consequently their professional careers. These stereotypes start very early in life, at home and at school.

I know that education sits with the provincial governments, but to the extent that the feds can influence what's happening provincially, this education at home and at school from a very young age is critical. Further, biases in the workplace that cause women to leave industries such as high tech—and we're seeing a lot of news around that, for instance, Uber, and Salesforce, and many other companies—have to be addressed through strong leadership, training, process, and systems changes.

Turning now to identifying possible tools to strengthen women's economic security, the following actions by both business and government will help.

One way is to adopt pay transparency policies. Government mandates requiring companies to publicly disclose salaries and/or gaps between women and men's wages, such as the U.K. government's regulations and Australia's legislation requiring companies to do so, are examples of ways to achieve pay transparency.

The second way is to re-evaluate negotiation policies. While women negotiate both promotions and compensation as much as men do, research shows that women are penalized when they do so.

The third way is to adopt a prohibition on compensation based on salary history. Several U.S. states and local governments have already proposed or passed this type of legislation—notably Massachusetts, New York City, and Philadelphia—because basing salary on previous salaries leads to a continuation of lower pay for women.

The fourth way is to conduct internal pay equity studies, analyses, and audits to eliminate and ensure you don’t have a gender wage gap. Another government policy example of this is the recent Iceland legislation requiring large companies and government agencies to undergo audits and prove that they are in compliance with equal pay rules.

Finally, as ways to increase women’s entry, participation, retention, and representation in leadership and high-paying positions, I would point to evaluating recruitment, retention, promotion, and talent development systems for gender bias. Analyze pools of candidates for both hiring and promotion decisions; are they reflective of a broad pool of candidates? Bring an unconscious bias spotter into promotion and high-potential discussions. That can apply to business and government, and not-for-profits for that matter. Challenge recruitment partners to bring forward a diverse set of candidates, and above all, monitor and track progress for compensation, promotion, and hiring decisions, because the data will give you the truth.

From a board perspective, in our view there's no one right way to accelerate progress for women on boards. What does matter is that companies set goals for a percentage of women as board directors, and that boards use at least one mechanism to facilitate board renewal, such as age or tenure limits, coupled with board evaluation processes. We believe governments should reinforce the setting of targets, renewal mechanisms, and written policies, and should track and publish progress. We do believe the government should adopt comply-or-explain legislation, such as has been proposed in Bill C-25.

Finally, we encourage government to seize on the opportunity to leverage groups, like the gender and good governance alliance, previously referred to in a prior testimony by Beatrix Dart, which is a tremendous alliance of like-minded not-for-profits that can be used as a think tank by governments across the country.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

We'll turn to questions now.

Our first set of questions is from Sean Fraser.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thanks very much.

I'll start with ISANS. Thank you for joining us remotely from Nova Scotia.

There were a few items you hit on about which I would like to get additional information.

You mentioned the Canada child benefit and the fact that newcomers sometimes struggle with the administrative burden due to tracing their global income, or potentially with the new kind of paperwork they may not be accustomed to, coming from a different background.

What can we do as a federal government to help minimize this administrative burden, to make sure the families are receiving the benefits we intend them to get?

[Jennifer Watts]

Our experience right now is that when there is a difficulty or a problem it takes an inordinate amount of time to have them reapply, fill out the forms, and prove that their children are registered in school. This is so for the families who may be suffering from trauma and trying to understand what their situation is, but also for the staff at ISANS who are trying to scramble, particularly if we have a large number of people coming in. It raises a huge amount of administrative work and leaves the families, most importantly and unfortunately, without access to that tax benefit. In turn, this means that we have to supplement with some of the donations we receive, and people end up going to food banks. They end up desperately trying to negotiate with landlords to prevent evictions, so there is a whole series of things.

I think a simpler process is, perhaps, just working out and making the link with ISANS by explaining the situation and telling them what has happened. Let's move forward. Certainly, funding can be withdrawn afterwards if something is found to be irregular. The majority of times it's a simple mistake that did not get caught soon enough that ends up causing this to occur.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Another point you raised was the fact that sometimes when a person becomes a citizen, they aren't necessarily fully integrated into the community and could still benefit from settlement services. In terms of the delivery model, I know you are deeply involved, but I'm wondering from the federal perspective how we can assist people in accessing settlement services in the provinces that they're living in after they become Canadian citizens.

[Jennifer Watts]

It is my understanding that's a question of funding. We could certainly offer the services. It's not that we don't have the services, it's that we do not receive funding to be able to do that. If there were some acknowledgement and allowance to say that they do count as clients and we understand and recognize that in terms of your service delivery, that would make a difference.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Excellent.

Shifting gears here, you mentioned, Ms. van Biesen, that you're a supporter of a comply-or-explain type of policy when it comes to promoting women to get on corporate boards. We've heard differing opinions on this issue. Some witnesses have suggested that a quota system is the right way to go. We've heard a number of things. Why is comply or explain the right way to go, in your opinion?

[Tanya van Biesen]

I would say that it's one of a number of ways to go. As I mentioned, I don't think there's any one right way to get there. I do support what's being proposed in Bill C-25 as a step in the right direction. I think comply or explain, as currently defined in the OSC, could be tightened up. As you've heard from others, there are a lot of companies explaining with weak explanations.

So I'm a proponent of Bill C-25. I think it's the right step for us to take, at least as a first step.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

You also mentioned that there's a real problem when it comes to the promotion and recruitment of women in not just high-growth sectors but also high-paying positions. I saw this repeatedly in my previous career. When we started our careers, the firm I was with was quite good to recruit young women out of law school. Within the first few years, a lot of them fell off the partnership track. I'm sure there were a hundred reasons why.

Again, from the perspective of the federal government, how can we encourage private sector companies to monitor what's happening in-house and do a better job of ensuring that women share equally in the economic benefits of those positions?

[Tanya van Biesen]

I think the first and most important thing for government is to model through your own behaviour. I think establishing targets, and demonstrating that if it can be done in government it can done elsewhere, is job one.

Second, through government, I would encourage companies to set their own targets and to reinforce that. Frankly, one of the things that I do think is missing in Canada is that while we have things like comply or explain, we are very Canadian and polite. We never want to shame any companies. There are lots of companies out there doing nothing, making no efforts, and making no strides in creating a discussion around the need for quotas. I think those companies should be named and shamed.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

With respect to the mechanisms available to the federal government, is potentially one way to do this to introduce legislation that doesn't just look at corporate boards but also looks at the promotion of women through the ranks, from the entry level right to the senior management?

[Tanya van Biesen]

Yes. I think it gets harder and harder to get all the data, but I do think this should be well beyond boards. We should look at the pipelines. At a minimum we should look at the senior executive suite and boards, and if we can go down several levels, fantastic.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Turning to ISANS now, you got cut off at the very end of your statement when you were talking about the underemployment of professional immigrant women. I was very interested in what you had to say. If you want to take my remaining time for questions, I would love to have you finish.

[Jennifer Watts]

Thank you. I really appreciate that.

This follows up from what the other speaker was saying in terms of looking at women who are in professional jobs but immigrant women are unable to move beyond a certain level. We have a study, and if anyone is interested, we have an employer tool kit to look at strategies.

One of them, as I mentioned, is credential recognition and how to go about doing that. There's helping immigrant women become prepared for navigating the application process for promotion, and looking at issues of communication and what employers can do around addressing issues of language proficiency, accents, jargon, and all of those things that may make it difficult for women to feel secure when wanting to advance but not having the opportunity to do that. It looks at promotion subjectivity and information gaps and feeling unwelcome and undervalued. Then there's the one-size-fits-all approach to recruitment and promotion. Some of the strategies that were previously mentioned would look at women in general, but another lens would look at the situation of immigrant women and how to move forward on that. This would include having diversity and inclusion committees, making sure they're staffed up and trained properly, and making sure there are cultural competency workshops in the workplace, with training and education and mentorship programs.

There are also the appropriate orientation packages so that, for women who maybe don't have the cultural work experience in Canada, it's very clear what things they need to be aware of. Providing specific English in the workplace training would allow for a step up in terms of some of the specific—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

Sorry. I hate to cut you off again—

[Jennifer Watts]

Certainly.

I have a few more, if anyone is interested.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Pam Damoff]

Actually, could you send us the tool kit you referred to? If you could provide that to the clerk, that would be great.

[Jennifer Watts]

For sure. It has quite a bit of detail in it.