Status of Women Committee on Feb. 25th, 2020

[Nancy Gardiner]

We ensure that when there is a call for proposals, as an example, there is an effort to make sure that all of the country is represented when we have projects that are operating in every aspect of Canada. That's what we do to make sure it works.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

The reason I ask is that Manitoba, as I'm sure you know, has one of the largest indigenous populations, and we're significantly impacted by gender-based violence, It's the highest rate in the country. It also has the highest child apprehension rate in the world.

I just want to see whether you had any indication of how much funding is going towards gender-based violence and the indigenous women in Manitoba.

[Nancy Gardiner]

We'll get back to you on that level of specificity.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

That would be great.

I also want to ask about the three-year strategic plan that was announced at the FPT meeting in December. Can you shed some light on that and the outcomes you're hoping to achieve? I know it's regarding gender equality across the country, but particularly for me, being a Manitoba MP I would like to know how Manitoba will benefit from the strategic plan and whether it's going to be part of your strategy.

[Nancy Gardiner]

We work with an FPT table. The minister has colleagues who come together. At that particular meeting there was a discussion around priorities related to gender equality. One of the main priorities that came up and I think was agreed upon was focused on gender-based violence. The jurisdictions across the board felt this was an area in which there is a real, identified need.

It's a priority in every jurisdiction. There's an agreement that there's work to be done, work that we can be doing together. As we build a national action plan, this is a piece of work that we will be working on with our national colleagues.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I'll just conclude by saying, please consider Manitoba as a high priority, considering our population makeup and what we're facing, particularly with the child apprehension rate and gender-based violence.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you.

For our final round of questions, we're going to pass it over to Salma.

Salma, you have three minutes.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks a lot to all of you for coming out today and for all the work that you do on this important issue of gender equality.

In your presentation, you mentioned the six pillars that are used to measure and monitor how we are moving towards gender equality. Economic participation and prosperity is one of them. When you measure economic participation and prosperity, is there any data you get specifically in regard to minority women or new immigrants?

I represent a riding where I come across a lot of new immigrant women, minority women, and they talk about the barriers they face. Is there any effort being made to address that?

[Lisa Smylie]

I do have a bit of data in front of me. When we take a look at, for example, labour force participation, we see that women's labour force participation is slightly lower for immigrant women than for other women in Canada. It's the same for immigrant men's labour force participation.

When we take a look at other indicators of economic prosperity, when we take a look at employment, we find the same trends. I could flip, and I could find the exact same trends throughout.

To answer the question, we do have that data. We do take a look at it. What we find is that, traditionally, immigrant women fare far poorer than others in Canada.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Is there anything specific that we're doing to overcome that? Are there any considerations we can look into to make sure that we can help those women to overcome those barriers?

[Kim Gauvin]

Certainly, in terms of the grants and contributions funding, we've had a few calls focus specifically on economic security and prosperity. As I mentioned before, we always look at the GBA+ to look at some of those factors. We support organizations that are specifically geared towards supporting under-represented groups, specific groups, as well as projects that are targeted in these different areas.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I'd like to ask you one quick question before we end.

You mentioned in your presentation that the budget for the department is $66 million for this year. How has it grown? What was it four years ago, back in 2015?

[Kim Gauvin]

Traditionally, since the 1970s, the women's program was the only grants and contributions funding that the department had. That was a budget of $19 million. Over the years, it has grown. The gender-based violence program was added on with another $9 million in grants and contributions funding. Then we received additional funds over the last few years through various budgets, specific targeted funding for capacity building, for the commemoration of missing and murdered indigenous women and so forth.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

We'll be suspending for about two and a half minutes before we go in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]