Status of Women Committee on April 30th, 2018

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

Thank you so much for being here with us, and thank you for our very feminist budget.

In my opinion, this is a very feminist budget and I thank you once again for that.

I'm going to ask my questions both in English and in French, and will be sharing my time with one of my colleagues.

We've touched on unpaid work and know that it is definitely one of the big contributors to the gender wage gap. However, another thing that contributes greatly to this gap is the fact that women and men do different types of work. Sometimes women don't have the same access to the same jobs, not necessarily because opportunity is lacking, but because of the cultures in these different work environments.

I'd like to know what our government is doing to make higher paying jobs more accessible to women in order to help shrink the gender wage gap.

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Thank you. That's a broad question. I think we could go down many paths of what we've put in this budget as examples of how we're trying to enable women to find more success in fields that perhaps they weren't as traditionally successful in.

We've put in funding for pre-apprenticeship training and apprenticeship training, both with the idea that we can help women be more successful in Red Seal trades.

We recognize, as I mentioned in my remarks, that women are not as represented in some of the STEM fields as they could be. We started with first principles with that. In our research and science funding, we put significant funding in the granting councils. In that funding, we stipulated that those granting councils consider how they can ensure that we have not only more younger researchers and more interdisciplinary work, but in particular more female researchers, because we saw that the access to those funds was not having the same impact on women as on men.

We, then, as I mentioned, are thinking about how we can also ensure more success among women who start businesses. We see women's businesses getting started at a similar pace, but not getting nearly the opportunities for success as male-led businesses.

Obviously, we're going to have to do many things at the same time to address these challenges, and these are some of the methods we put in this budget that we think will have an important impact over time.

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

Thank you very much. A lot of my constituents are quite happy with these initiatives. I'd like to relay that message.

I'd like to ask you the following questions.

According to Budget 2018, Status of Women Canada is finally going to become an official department of the Government of Canada. Could you give us more details on the measures our government is going to adopt in order to strengthen and reinforce the role of that department? What will this mean for women and girls, as well as for the organizations that work to advance women's rights?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

We know it's very important today, but also for the future, to reflect on how we can make big changes and improve the situation of women and girls. We think that in order to attain that goal, we need a system that works. That is why we decided to create a department of the Status of Women, which will be for the long term. That's very important.

At the same time, this will give us more expertise and more opportunities to carry out analyses and work with women's organizations throughout the country to advance the cause of women and girls and to open up new perspectives for them.

So it is really a decision for the long term. It's also a way of ensuring that our measures will have an important impact and that it will be easier in future to achieve results and to continue our efforts.

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

Thank you very much. I'll be passing the rest of my time to Eva Nassif.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Ms. Nassif.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for having accepted our invitation to appear before our committee to answer our questions. Thank you for everything you do for Canadian women and girls.

In Budget 2018, the government announced that as of 2018-2019, it would provide an additional $86 million over five years, as well as $20 million a year subsequently to broaden Canada's strategy to fight violence against women.

I'd like you to explain how the Budget 2018 funding for that strategy differs from that in Budget 2017. Also, how will women and girls in Canada benefit from that strategy?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

We know there are still big challenges with regard to women. They are still experiencing difficult situations because of violence. That is why we decided to adopt several methods to improve the situation. We added $50 million to fight sexual harassment in the workplace. That's very important. We also invested $25 million in a program to help the most vulnerable workers, so that they can claim their rights.

We also took other measures regarding specific problems. For instance, there are $10 million for a new investigation unit that will review the 25,000 difficult situations reported since 2015. We have thus adopted several measures to improve the situation, but we know of course, that there is still work to do.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have 40 seconds.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

There is also, in Budget 2018, an amount of $65 billion for women entrepreneurs. I don't have much time left and neither do you, but could you explain briefly how this will help more female entrepreneurs succeed in business?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Access to capital is clearly a considerable challenge for women. We decided it was necessary to support initiatives to help women. In this way, we will improve the situation and ensure that women will have better access to capital in future.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much, Minister.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

We're now going to move to Stephanie Kusie for five minutes.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being with us this afternoon.

I have two questions for you. The first concerns gender-responsive budgeting.

An article was published last March in the Toronto Star about the poor results obtained through gender-responsive budgeting elsewhere in the world, and they gave three examples.

The first one is from Australia; that country adopted this type of budgeting until 2014. They suddenly decided to drop that approach because of the impossibility of obtaining specific, positive results for women.

The second example is from Austria. There, they amended the Constitution to adopt gender-responsive budgeting and also take into account gender-based analysis plus, as Canada is doing now, but the office of the Austrian parliamentary budget officer unfortunately found that the results regarding women were inconclusive. There were no concrete results tending to demonstrate that the lives of women had improved much. In fact, they found that the objectives were not well defined and that the communication among departments was poor.

Finally, the Toronto Star quoted a third example from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD. Unfortunately, the same results were reported in 12 countries. Only half of those were able to provide specific examples of good results where political measures such as gender-based analysis and gender-responsive budgeting led to convincing positive results for women.

My question is simple. In light of these results obtained in Europe, do you think it is possible that Canada will obtain better results?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Thank you for your question.

I've had the opportunity to meet with a number of the finance ministers from a number of the countries you referred to, as well as finance ministers from other countries, to understand their experiences. I've also been able to share with them what we've been doing in Canada in thinking about ways forward that could have the biggest potential positive impact.

In any approach, you always have to think about how to best implement it. Certain countries in the world have had great success with gender-based analysis. I had extensive discussions with the Swedish finance minister, and she gave me a huge amount of understanding of how they've done it. Similarly, I had long discussions with the Spanish finance minister who explained how they had done it. There are examples of very positive outcomes.

Importantly, in Canada we're going to measure the results of every measure we put forward, results like the Canada child benefit, with more than 300,000 children being lifted out of poverty—

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Fine.

Thank you, Minister.

My second question is about direct foreign investment. Back home in Calgary, we have unfortunately lost several companies following bad results. There were a lot of issues related to policies of the Department of Foreign Affairs. I'm thinking of NAFTA in particular; up till now, Canada has not been able to secure a satisfactory agreement.

With Bill C-69, it will be almost impossible to obtain authorization for future energy projects. I'm thinking also of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project. If you think that women deserve to occupy good positions, why don't you do more to keep direct foreign investment in Canada?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have 10 seconds.

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

On the contrary, we believe it is of primordial importance that there be investment in Canada. That will help both women and men, all Canadians. It's very important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much, Minister.

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Our economy is growing now, and that is crucial for all Canadians.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm sorry, but I have to cut you off.

We're now moving on to Alaina Lockhart for five minutes.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you, Minister, for joining us today.

As you know, I'm a former small business owner. I was very happy with this budget, not only because of the decrease in the small-business tax rate but also because of the women's entrepreneurship strategy. I know that my colleagues have brought it up before, but I wanted to tell you exactly why I was excited to see it there. It meant not only that my challenges as a woman in business were real and possibly systematic but also that the government had listened to that and made a significant investment to try to support women in business.

You discussed the pillars of the strategy and the fact that there'll be more assistance to encourage women entrepreneurs to enter into procurement and export. Can you tell us what you feel the potential is of having more women-owned businesses participating in those two areas?

[Bill Morneau, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

We obviously looked at some studies that showed us the potential—the math I referred to in my remarks—growth in our overall GDP through greater and more successful outcomes for women. We obviously see that as one important reason for ensuring that we have measures that can help people be successful.

Specifically in the field of helping women be more successful in businesses, we start with the idea that we need to think about why it is there's not as much opportunity for women. That's why we started with the idea of accelerators and mentor hubs delivered regionally. We think that's critically important.

Secondly, we saw that there was not nearly as much success for women export businesses as there were for male businesses. That led us to putting funding through the Export Development Bank of Canada, with about $250 million in access to capital for export-led businesses as well as services and facilities to help them consider how they can best use those resources. Similarly, with the Business Development Bank, it's the same approach, although with more funds available that allow for access to capital. The BDC also has a facility to help people think about how to develop their business plans and actually put that capital to work.

On outcomes, we have the high-level studies that I referred to, but among the more interim measures to achieving potential positive outcomes would be to provide more capital for women-owned businesses, seeing growth rates that are more rapid for the businesses once they're started and, of course, seeing that over the long term this will actually have a broader economic impact for all Canadians.