Status of Women Committee on Oct. 26th, 2017

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Okay.

Would you see value in a universal child care program overseen by the federal government?

[Sonya Howard]

As a broad question, yes, I would. In fact, the friendship centre movement is currently working closely with Employment and Social Development Canada on the indigenous early learning child care approach.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

You would want to keep the ability, though, to make child care specific to indigenous women if you could, would you not?

[Sonya Howard]

Yes, and that's why we've been advocating that the aboriginal head start model is great. It's a half-day program, so it's not full day care, but the pillars of that work because there's flexibility. It can be responsive to local community needs and it can be responsive to culture. It incorporates culture and incorporates parents as well.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

My next question is for Ms. Armstrong.

You outlined the fact that many women within universities are there because of a contract, rather than because they've been granted permanent employment. I've heard this from others within my university, the University of Lethbridge, as well as other universities that I've engaged with in terms of a relationship or conversations with the presidents of those universities.

Why is that the case? Why do we see more women working within contracts than within permanent employment?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have 30 seconds to reply.

[Dr. Pat Armstrong]

There are many reasons. One of them is that they don't have adequate child care. Many women, because they lack alternative supports, especially in academia, get trapped in that contract work. That's one part.

The other part is that we simply don't have enough jobs in the areas where women have education, but also there are issues about hiring practices in terms of whether we recognize equity principles in hiring. It's not one factor, but many.

However, child care is important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent. Thank you very much.

We're now going to move on to Rachel Blaney for her seven minutes.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

I want to start with you, Pat.

A common and recurring theme throughout this study has been the need for a universal public child care program. It's sounds like it, but I want to make sure it's officially on the record that you support a national investment in child care.

[Dr. Pat Armstrong]

Yes.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

One of the things we've heard here on both sides of the table is concern that if there is a national child care investment, it's going to have to be one size fits all. I want you to talk about whether you think that's true or if you think there would be more flexibility in that opportunity.

[Dr. Pat Armstrong]

There's no reason to think it has to be one size fits all. We do it in health care; we set up some standards and principles. That's what we can do, and then we can let particular communities, such as indigenous communities in urban and rural areas, or such as universities, set up the kinds of services they require in order to ensure that there's equitable access to good child care.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

Now I want to follow up with you around pay equity. Your submission to the committee raised the important gap in pay equity in academia. Can you tell us why we need proactive legislation this year, in 2017, and not just sometime down the road?

[Dr. Pat Armstrong]

There has been a persistent pay gap. This is one area in which I have worked for a long time and on which I have been an expert witness in various ways to show that the gap has not narrowed very much, and that sometimes when it has narrowed, it has narrowed only because men's income has gone down, as opposed to women's income improving.

We have to work on both fronts, I think: on equal pay for equal work, and equal pay for work of equal value. We know that a voluntary plan doesn't work. We've had legislation on those two issues for a very long time, and we still don't have equitable pay for women. We have to have some enforcement mechanisms, and not only enforcement mechanisms, but mechanisms that require people to go out—as we are doing in other equity-seeking programs—and say that you have to start looking at what happens in your labour force. Then you have to develop a plan to do something about it.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Your brief also recommended looking at the intersection of racialization, indigenous status, sexual orientation, and disability status, and the impacts of those. Does CAUT have numbers to share with us about how these things have impacted women's and equity-seeking groups' earnings?

[Dr. Pat Armstrong]

Sorry—what has impacted them?

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

It's the intersection of racialization, disabilities, and people's indigenous status.

[Dr. Pat Armstrong]

My apologies. I didn't understand what the question was.

We're starting to get numbers. Statistics Canada cancelled the data collection that was useful to us in the past. It's going to start that survey again, which will help us a great deal. Some universities, like my own, have done an equity audit, which is a very useful audit. It looks at the equity-seeking groups—and now it's going to add LGBTQ groups to those—with regard to both support staff and academic staff. It looks at the eligible pool compared to the kinds of jobs that people have. I think, as we just saw this week in a study that came out, just doing that kind of work helps us move forward, because it shines a light on the inequities that result. We're just starting to get better data, I think, that helps us see more clearly where we need to move, just as we did on the CRC chairs. Those studies were also the basis for the movement on requiring CRC chairs to take other equity-seeking groups and indigenous people into account.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

Around EI, what are the tools that the government has at its disposal—things like employment insurance, for example—to lessen the detrimental impact of precarious work?

[Dr. Pat Armstrong]

As we heard from Ms. Howard as well, the 700 hours in high-employment areas like Ontario, for instance, would exclude a lot of part-time people. The other issue in the universities, related to this question of basing it on hours, is what hours get counted when you teach? If there are three lecture hours, for someone to go into that classroom for three hours takes an awful lot more hours before you go in, and the extent to which those hours are counted or not is a big issue in terms of qualifying for EI. If you're teaching a 12-week course and it is counted as only five hours or six hours per course, for instance, you're ineligible for EI as a result. We need to start developing, as was suggested by Ms. Howard, targeted EI for those kinds of precarious employment that are ineligible, even though they pay into EI.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Ms. Blaney, you have one minute left.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

I have one question for you, Sonya. One of the things you talked about was the need for stable funding and how much of an impact that would have on the organizations. You also talked about stable funding for child care. Could you talk about how stable funding would support women in the economy?

[Sonya Howard]

That's a wonderfully broad question, so I'll do my best to focus it in less than a minute.

When it comes to women accessing services in cities and towns, particularly indigenous women, I can speak to the impacts that we've heard about and seen. When a specific project or program is offered and indigenous women hear about it, like the Pidaban program or the Odabi program at the Val-d'Or Native Friendship Centre, you may get a cohort of youth or young women coming into this employment and training program and having amazing results.

Then, how things operate in friendship centres is that someone might come in to use the health clinic and find out there's a literacy program. Then they find out that there's a food bank and then they find out.... It may not be an immediate direct door into the services that the individual actually needs at that point in time. If the Pidaban program didn't exist for another round, for example, that would be the direct impact: people wouldn't be getting the services.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much. That was a great job.

We're going to now move on to you, Emmanuella Lambropoulos, and you can tell me how to properly say your name. I apologize.

You have seven minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

First, thank you to both witnesses for being here with us today. We really appreciate it. We're learning a lot of interesting things.

My first question is for Ms. Armstrong. I know that for women you are an advocate of universal child care. In what ways have you seen that there are differences between different regions? I know that in Quebec we do have a child care system for all kids in the province. Have you noticed a big difference between Quebec and the other provinces? I guess if there are differences between those, that would be a good example.