Status of Women Committee on June 13th, 2017

[Corinne Prince]

Sure.

There are two things I can provide you with off the top of my head. I'll provide one other additional piece post-committee.

We know that in 2015-16 we served approximately 400,000 newcomers. I don't have the breakdown of refugees versus immigrants. We can see if our research and evaluation team can get that to you.

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

I would greatly appreciate that.

[Corinne Prince]

Okay.

The second thing I would provide is this. The department did a rapid impact evaluation of the operation Syria and that is a very important report that really does break it down for you, and it's the clearest we have to date. It shows that 100% of Syrian children are in the education system. It shows the percentage of Syrian refugees who have been assessed for language training as opposed to the percentage of Syrian refugees who are actually taking language classes. The employment rate is in there. I actually think it's higher. You quoted a 90% unemployment rate.

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

Yes. The immigration minister stated that.

[Corinne Prince]

That may have been early on. The report shows better findings than that.

I think it would be fabulous for us to get that to the committee.

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

That would be great.

I think the date that he proposed those numbers was in March of this year. We're talking about just in the last few months.

[Corinne Prince]

Okay, thanks.

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

We can talk about women but when we're looking at the family as a whole, part of my role as a critic for family, children, and social development is seeing what's working and not working in communities. In the City of Medicine Hat, they have over 50 Syrian refugee families now using the food bank. One of their biggest issues is the language barrier because there is not the proper training for English as a second language, or even French as a second language.

What can we do better there? The bottom line is that if we know this is one of the greatest barriers, why are we not driving all of our resources into the first barrier that will then help with employment, with integration, and a variety of things.

I want to know a bit more about the language training because I think whether we're looking at men or women, it's a family issue and it's an issue for them to be able to do better in Canadian society.

Can you give me more detail on that?

[Corinne Prince]

Absolutely, Ms. Vecchio.

I want to try to unpack it a little for you, because it's a multi-layered issue in terms of certainly refugee integration, but immigrant integration overall.

Refugees coming into Canada are eligible for the full suite of services. We know that.

In terms of language, there are many Syrian women and Syrian families whose language level is at the very lowest literacy rate. The way we manage language classes, they run from literacy to Canadian language benchmarks 1 through 10. We're finding that our Syrian families are at the very lowest levels, from literacy to CLB 4.

What the department did, and my colleague Ms. Kirkland might want to comment on it, was increase the number of language places, certainly since operation Syria, to respond to the intense pressure we have encountered.

I was very honest in my opening statement. We are not able to provide every single newcomer to Canada with every service they need. They're all available, but they're limited. Even though Canada is spending more than $1 billion a year on settlement and integration services across the country, we can always do more.

In the first instance, we have looked to increase language spaces. We have also looked to address the issue that Syrians are asking for: they don't only want to learn language; they want to work. We've put in place very creative and innovative programs, such as the one in place at The Prince George Hotel in Halifax. The hotel has agreed to hire Syrian housekeepers and pay them for eight hours a day under the supervision of a bilingual manager who can speak both English and Arabic. We call it the “pod” system. The manager can take direction from the hotel staff and translate it into Arabic down to the housekeepers, and can translate any issues, questions, or concerns back up to English from the housekeepers to the hotel staff. In addition, from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., the hotel gives its boardroom for a language class. The local settlement agency sends the language teacher into the hotel and provides the housekeepers with English-language training.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

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

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question is for Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada. We heard from groups in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith that they spend a phenomenal amount of staff time applying for project-oriented funding that they might not get and live in a precarious situation from year to year, relying on project funding. They keep saying to me, “We just wish the government would admit we're delivering services that no one else will deliver, and why not give us operational funding instead of project funding?” This will mean funding that they can count on.

When Tracy O'Hearn was at the status of women committee in October, she said that was Pauktuutit's situation. It was relying on project funding from year to year, which was uncertain.

Is that still your situation? Can you describe the impacts of that?

[Amanda Deseure]

Yes. Thank you so much. It's a really important question at Pauktuutit.

By way of a little background, under the Harper government administration, Pauktuutit's core funding was reduced by 10%, from $440,000 to $396,000. Our core funding is still $396,000; however, we do receive a top-up of approximately $90,000 on an annual basis.

We are currently costing, though, what a reasonable annual operating budget would be for Pauktuutit, and it's conservatively estimated at $1.5 million. We are definitely under capacity. We do rely heavily on project funding. It definitely does affect our ability to retain staff and our ability to deliver projects consistently and sustainably.

For example, the IWBN was a three-year funded project. Then there was a break in our funding. We just regained funding for the 2015-16 year, and we're hoping again to apply for new funding.

Definitely, funding is a problem and it does sacrifice and compromise the quality of our programming.

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

Ms. Kiddell of the Canadian Federation of Students, thank you for your work.

In the brief that they submitted to our committee, the BC Federation of Students noted that many young women find themselves in precarious work while they're going to school and after they graduate and that they become trapped in cycles of precarious work, leading to lower pay and problems with economic security. Is that a pattern that the Canadian Federation of Students has observed as well?

[Charlotte Kiddell]

Yes, absolutely. I've lost the number now, but I think a disproportionate number of women are taking on precarious work and unpaid internships as well, so we see the need to invest both in making post-secondary education more accessible but also increasing the number of high-quality jobs available to women.

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

In my riding we also heard from women at Vancouver Island University that they have trouble affording the child care spaces they need when pursuing a degree. We had an announcement on child care yesterday by the federal government, which was a nice small first step, but it does look again as if it's a bit of a patchwork that will be implemented in different ways in different provinces. We heard from Lisa Kelly from Unifor that this targeted approach won't work. Universal child care is needed.

Can you talk a little about the impact of the high cost of or even lack of access to child care at all. What's the personal impact on the women students you talk with?

[Charlotte Kiddell]

Absolutely. We endorse the calls from our coalition partners in the labour movement for a universal system of child care. I don't have the best expertise in this, but it's part of our holistic vision for accessible post-secondary education, recognizing that women and trans folks experience a disproportionate number of access barriers, whether financial, sexualized violence on campus, lack of access to child care spaces, etc.. That is why we call for a robust system of investment in universal public services.

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

Pauktuutit, your organization in the past has identified housing as one of the most pressing issues facing Inuit women. Overcrowded and poor housing has been identified as having a negative impact on the ability of Inuit women to pursue employment or training.

Can you talk a little more about how those issues intersect, and what you'd like to see the federal government do?

[Amanda Deseure]

Of course.

Housing and overcrowding and lack of infrastructure is a dire crisis in the north. I can't underline that enough.

There are issues of overcrowding because there is a lack of housing. A lot of families choose to stay in the north. Then there is a lack of child care in the north, including because of a lack of infrastructure for child care spaces. Unfortunately, that means that everyone is in one space all the time. Poor housing also deters a lot of women from being able to leave violent situations if there's no place for them to go, so we do end up having a lot of communities with cycles of violence because of lack of space and independence.

Also, there's the issue of the ability to even start a business. In the business network, we have a lot of wonderful, talented Inuit businesswomen who are unable to have storefronts, one, because of the cost, and two, because there is no place for a storefront. So they're operating businesses within their homes. But if you already have your partner, two kids, and maybe an adult child with their own child in a two-bedroom house that's not even meeting standards that would be acceptable in the south, operating a business from those spaces is very difficult. A lot of them are starting their businesses in their kitchens, or perhaps in a back bedroom, and sometimes in the summer they might be outside working. They might have a shed that they're working out of, and I think that points to their extreme resiliency and wanting better for their communities and families and themselves as well.

I would definitely recommend immediate higher investments in infrastructure. Also, there are a lot of other barriers. We just had a gender-specific session on child care led by Pauktuutit, and one of the things we heard from some child care providers is that the stipulations and regulations around child care spaces are very southern. A very specific example is that when trying to build a new building, you have to have three contractors give you an appraisal, but in a community of 800 to 2,000, where are you going to find three contractors to give you those appraisals within a very specific time limit to meet regulations proposed by the government? We definitely need to review the funding regulations for infrastructure and increased investment in housing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent.

Now we'll go to Ms. Vandenbeld, for seven minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

I want to thank all of you for your interventions, but my questions are going to be specifically for Ms. Prince.

This week marks exactly 18 years since Canada took in 7,000 Kosovo refugees. In fact, we're having an event on the Hill later today to highlight the success stories. There are leaders in business, in the arts, in sports, and in the media. A number of the refugees today are running businesses that have employed hundreds of Canadians.

I'm interested in what you said about your evaluation of the operation for the Syrian refugees. In response to a question about what the minister had said previously, you implied that things had improved since then.

Are there longitudinal studies? Are there evaluations that follow refugees over the course of a number of years, or even decades, to show the economic impact they have had, their success stories, and their achievement levels in education? Can you comment on that?

[Corinne Prince]

Yes, absolutely. That is a huge success story.

The department does track refugee and immigrant cohorts over time. I'm very pleased to share that the settlement program evaluation is just being completed, and will provide data on outcomes and outputs of the program over the past five years. That evaluation is the largest one the department completes. It's coming to an end very quickly and will be published and available publicly, I believe, in August of this year.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

Does that evaluation include gender disaggregated data?

[Corinne Prince]

I believe it does.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Good. We look forward to seeing that.

I have another question for you. Right now, we have legislation before Parliament that would allow spouses to get permanent residency the moment they arrive in Canada. It's usually a female spouse who is being sponsored. Of course, one of the reasons for that is to make sure that they don't have to remain in a marriage in order to maintain their immigration status in Canada, particularly if that marriage might be violent, or if it's detrimental to the spouse to stay in the marriage.

I'm also interested, given our study, in what impact that might have on the economic security of the spouse arriving in Canada.

[Corinne Prince]

I will pass that question to my colleague, David Cashaback.