Evidence of meeting #4 for Status of Women in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was care.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Marcie Hawranik  Founder and President, Canadian Equality Consulting
Megan Walker  Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre
Ann Decter  Director, Community Initiatives, Canadian Women's Foundation
Morna Ballantyne  Executive Director, Child Care Now
Hélène Cornellier  Coordinator of Action Plan and Communications, Association féminine d'éducation et d'action sociale
Sara Wolfe  Director, Indigenous Innovation Initiatives, Grand Challenges Canada
Vicki Saunders  Founder, SheEO
Kaitlin Geiger-Bardswich  Communications and Development Manager, Women's Shelters Canada
Lorraine Whitman  President, Native Women's Association of Canada
Jill Earthy  Interim Chief Executive Officer, Women's Enterprise Centre
Linda Gavsie  Senior Vice President, Universal Learning Institute
Anita Khanna  National Director, Public Policy and Government Relations, United Way Centraide Canada
Rhonda Barnet  President and Chief Operating Officer, Avit Manufacturing
Armine Yalnizyan  Economist and Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers, As an Individual

1:10 p.m.

Bloc

Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC

Thank you very much.

The testimony from both of you was very interesting. I hope I have time to speak to both witnesses, Ms. Walker and Ms. Hawranik.

Ms. Hawranik, your group seems very helpful. For example, you provide inclusion and gender lens training.

I will give you some examples of inappropriate measures introduced during the pandemic.

According to a female doctor I spoke to recently who runs a health clinic, many women in her community who work in jobs more often occupied by women, such as hairstyling or personal support in health care facilities, do not yet qualify for the emergency business account measure. These are often small businesses that do not need a business account and use a personal account. They are therefore not eligible for the $40,000 loan. Earlier, we also talked about the rent payment loan.

These measures may not be tailored to women. What do you think?

Do you have any other quick clear examples of gender mainstreaming in policy measures in these times of crisis?

1:15 p.m.

Founder and President, Canadian Equality Consulting

Marcie Hawranik

I'll build off it a little bit in terms of the CERB program too. It's partially good because it helps women earn some money while bearing the caregiving load. However, the CERB program isn't advancing or supporting gender equality, which is the goal of GBA+, and it makes it easier for families to burden women and makes it easier for women to exit the workforce. Post COVID-19 it will be really important to pay attention to this and to help women to re-enter the workforce and not face pay barriers or discrimination for taking this time off.

I've also heard things very similar to what you've mentioned about how the CERB is inaccessible to women-owned smaller businesses, as well.

I hope that helps.

1:15 p.m.

Bloc

Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC

I also believe that education—raising awareness—is the most powerful tool for trying to eliminate major social issues like sexism, racism and all other forms of discrimination. You work on that with your group.

At training sessions or conferences you have organized, which women's public policy stereotype have you found hardest to break?

Is work-family balance still the cornerstone of women's participation in public, political and other spheres?

How can we work on the education issue?

1:15 p.m.

Founder and President, Canadian Equality Consulting

Marcie Hawranik

Thank you.

I think maybe one of the hardest prejudices to fight in order to advance gender equality and advance women is that of the movement in Canada that believes that this isn't a problem or that gender equality exists or that is misinformed as to what gender equality really means and thinks that it means the same treatment, exactly the same. That's not what the movement is about. I think part of it is to provide that level of awareness and education on what the goal is and how it benefits everyone.

Also there are subtle biases that we all have, which are sometimes referred to as unconscious biases. We're seeing them being raised a lot with the Black Lives Matter movement in terms of racism. The same exist with sexism, and those are often subtle and harder to detect. We do training that can help you become bias-aware, and there are specific processes similar to a GBA+ process that you can adopt and integrate seamlessly into your daily work in order to disrupt those biases.

1:15 p.m.

Bloc

Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC

As we know, women also have to deal with a significant mental workload. In addition to the traditional role they have to play, they take on the whole invisible workload, that is, work done voluntarily that is not recognized widely enough. We must not forget all the responsibilities and social commitments at home. When they get involved, women sometimes feel they are neglecting their family. It is hard to change this perception.

How can we facilitate women's participation? What can the government do to help them?

1:15 p.m.

Founder and President, Canadian Equality Consulting

Marcie Hawranik

Sure.

I think the government can play a role as a catalyst in achieving gender equality. I don't think government is necessarily the best vehicle for doing all of that change. The government has limited scope too.

I think the government can definitely lead by example. I like that there is a dedicated department, WAGE. Ensuring that they're adequately resourced is incredibly important. They're a very small department that's responsible for pushing out GBA+ to the entire federal government. As you can see, GBA+ isn't always being applied. That's a big problem that I think should be addressed too; they need more support and assistance.

Also, we look at regional differences across Canada and the status of women in each different province and territory and try to enact targeted solutions to support women there. One of the examples I mentioned, which I'd recommend, is also trying to disrupt those social norms and anti-equality biases through even public awareness campaigns and public education and by influencing people at a young age in early school curriculum as well.

1:20 p.m.

Liberal

The Vice-Chair Liberal Sonia Sidhu

Thank you.

1:20 p.m.

Bloc

Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC

Great.

Do I have another minute? May I ask one last question?

1:20 p.m.

Liberal

The Vice-Chair Liberal Sonia Sidhu

Your time is over.

The next speaker will be Lindsay.

1:20 p.m.

NDP

Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON

Thank you very much to the witnesses for attending. Your testimony is extremely valuable, so thank you.

I'd like to focus my time on Ms. Walker. You were very passionate and very clear in terms of the impacts on our local community due to COVID and some of the choices that have been made. The level of rhetoric that we heard I would have expected tomorrow, but we heard it today. I'd like to sort through some of that.

Obviously, we know that in London human trafficking is a significant problem. Our proximity to the 401 and that major transportation route is a huge issue. You received funding before for the duration of the MAPI program, and now the gap that you're seeing in between the delivery of new programming through the public safety department is a huge gap.

I understand; I'm so grateful to the London community for coming to our community's aid to help stop this gap. However, could you talk a little bit about whether you are successful in receiving continued funding? I'd like to hear about what problems this will cause in terms of having to stop the funding. You're all right until the end of July, but to restart a program that won't, probably, receive that funding until much later.... What are the costs of restarting that program? What gaps will you see?

In addition to that, could you start to address this? I know there were some considerations that the funding you previously received versus the funding that you could potentially in the future receive, either through Public Safety or through WAGE funding, will be significantly less. What are you looking at in terms of that programming future with those gaps and with those smaller levels of funding in place?

1:20 p.m.

Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre

Megan Walker

I first of all want to say that there are significant gaps. I really have to question the integrity of any government that pulls funding to help trafficked women and girls in the middle of the largest pandemic anybody has ever experienced on this planet at this point.

I want you to know that we are very lucky in London, Ontario. Londoners are appalled by what this government has done. In fact, we routinely and regularly receive phone calls from Londoners who are expressing their support for our program and what it does for our community and this country, and they are willing to donate their dollars to us directly instead of to the coffers of the Trudeau government.

I do want to say that there is another gap I'd like to mention here, which is that the London Abused Women's Centre has advocated strenuously since COVID started that some of the COVID funding announced each and every day go to women who are in prostitution, who are trafficked and exploited. They have no history of a job, so they do not qualify. We've proposed a number of solutions, and yet still this most vulnerable population has received no funding to allow them to exit. Again, I find that devastating.

As far as what we are going to do, the government has clearly turned its back on the women and girls we serve in London. It's betrayed those women and girls. We know London is a sex-trafficking hub because of its access to the 401, but also because of its proximity between Detroit, where prostitution is prohibited, and Toronto.

Our community is going to continue to come forward for us. In fact, we will not allow that program to close. Justin Trudeau may stand as a feminist, but he will not take down feminist organizations with his short-sighted decisions, just like the one he has just made. In the coming days we will be making a large announcement, supported by our community. I can assure every single one of the 650 trafficked women and girls who continue to access our service on a daily basis that they will not be left behind by London.

1:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Lindsay, you have about 20 seconds for a question and an answer.

1:25 p.m.

NDP

Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON

In terms of both organizations, I suppose, I've been trying to advocate for a return from short-term project funding to core, reliable, long-term sustainable funding. Really quickly, could you talk about the importance of that for both of your organizations?

1:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

If you could—

1:25 p.m.

Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre

Megan Walker

Yes. One very quick thing is that the government's proposal right now is to fund $750,000 per year for four years to three organizations across Canada, with the commitment that they sustain that in the future. That is just unrealistic and will not happen.

1:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Okay.

Marcie, could you answer in about 10 to 15 seconds?

1:25 p.m.

Founder and President, Canadian Equality Consulting

Marcie Hawranik

I did see the announcement that there's also $350 million for the country's charity sector to help them, but again, this isn't for the long term, and what was actually recommended by the YWCA to be effective for that sector is $8 billion. There's a big discrepancy there.

1:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

We're finishing up our first round of questions with our first panel today. We've all had the opportunity to go through this.

From the bottom of my heart, I would really like to thank Marcie Hawranik, the founder and president of the Canadian Equality Network, and Megan Walker, executive director of the London Abused Women's Centre.

Thank you for joining us on this extremely important study.

We are going to be suspending for half an hour and then we'll be back. Thank you very much.

2 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

I would like to reconvene this afternoon's meeting on our study on the impact of COVID-19 on women.

We're going to start our second panel today. We have three excellent people coming to this one. Ann Decter is the senior director of the Canadian Women's Foundation. Morna Ballantyne is the executive director of Child Care Now. Hélène Cornellier is the communications manager of the Association féminine d’éducation et d’action sociale.

You have 10 minutes each. I'm going to pass the floor over to Ann Decter.

You have the floor for 10 minutes.

2 p.m.

Ann Decter Director, Community Initiatives, Canadian Women's Foundation

Good afternoon. I'm Ann Decter from the Canadian Women's Foundation, Canada's only national public foundation for women and girls and one of the 10 largest foundations in the world. Through three decades, our granting work has focused on moving women out of poverty and violence and into safety and confidence.

Thank you for the invitation to appear today on this urgent question—urgent because women in Canada have been impacted by the pandemic to an extent that threatens to roll back equality gains. Women's safety, livelihoods and well-being have all been put at risk, most severely for women from communities that are marginalized by systemic discrimination. The pandemic has shone a penetrating light on gender-based violence, women's economic security, care work and the central economic role of child care.

Economic losses have fallen heavily on women, and most dramatically on women living on low incomes who experience intersecting inequalities based on race, disability, education, colonization and migration and immigration status. A historic downturn in women's employment, compounded by uncertainty over the capacity of our fragile child care sector to fully reopen, is a potential perfect storm for women's economic security. Women in diverse and marginalized communities can be expected to have the greatest difficulty in emerging from this crisis.

The scale of women's job losses is enormous. At the end of May, 1.5 million women had lost their jobs and another 1.2 million had lost the majority of their work hours, impacting more than one quarter of all women workers. The lowest wage earners have been hit the hardest. Fifty-eight per cent of women earning $14 per hour or less were laid off or lost most of their work by April. Overall, women earning the lowest 10% of wages experienced job loss at 50 times the rate of the highest wage earners. This is the type of granular data revealed by the intersectional gender-based analysis that is needed to support decisions on next steps.

Mothers are experiencing disproportionate job loss. They account for 57% of parents who had lost their jobs or most of their hours by the end of May and for only 41% of employment gains. More than one quarter of mothers with children under 12 who were working in February were unemployed or working less than half-time by April's end. Mothers parenting on their own were more likely to lose work than those in two-parent families.

Women are leaving the labour market and increasing their care responsibilities at home. The number of women in core working years outside the labour market increased 34% from February to the end of April. That includes women who stopped looking for work due to soaring unemployment or to take up care responsibilities at home. This leaves women's economic security under threat.

Access to child care underpins mothers' access to the workforce, and without government intervention child care will be scarcer and more expensive. One out of three child care centres have not confirmed that they will reopen. Physical distancing requirements are reducing spaces. Personal protective equipment and sanitization will raise costs, increasing parent fees and putting child care financially out of reach for more families. Parents of all genders need child care to work, but for women, who still shoulder a disproportionate share of family care work, it is essential. Emergency closure of child care centres and schools placed a triple burden on mothers doing full-time jobs from home and managing both children and household tasks.

Care work has been central to pandemic response. Our primary and long-term care systems are staffed largely by women. More than one in three women workers are in high-risk jobs with greater exposure to COVID-19. Women make up more than two thirds of those who clean and disinfect buildings and almost 90% of personal support workers. After two decades of austerity in health care and community services, the most poorly paid workers—a highly racialized, women-majority workforce—form the first line of defence against catastrophic illness and economic depression. Canada's care economy is fractured, and women, largely racialized, black, migrant and undocumented women, are bearing the brunt.

Government withdrawal opened the door to the proliferation of for-profit chains in care work, which reduced quality of care, staff levels, job benefits and protections, with negative consequences for care recipients, the gendered racialized workforce and Canada's pandemic response.

Care work in Canada also has an entrenched reliance on highly skilled but low-paid migrant care workers who now fill positions in private homes and in health care facilities, yet face increasingly restricted chances of securing permanent residency and rights protections. Pandemic impacts on migrant care workers include dismissal by employers now working from home or laid off, 24-7 lockdown in employers' private homes and loss of immigration status due to government processing delays.

Stay-at-home orders increase the risk of domestic violence and decrease women's abilities to leave abusive homes for the safety of shelters—highlighting the importance of the violence prevention sector—while placing additional strain on already taxed anti-violence services. Closure of physical spaces and the shift to remote services created unique access barriers to sexual assault centres.

In the best of times, gender-based violence services are underfunded and oversubscribed. Demand for access to women's shelters consistently exceeds capacity. Significant gaps persist in shelter services for women with disabilities, deaf women, women in rural and remote areas and women in need of culture-specific services. Four out of five women's shelters across the country are accessed by first nation, Métis or Inuit women, yet only one in five can frequently provide culturally appropriate programs, and 70% of Inuit communities do not have access to a shelter.

With the rise of “Me Too”, sexual assault centres experienced significant increases in calls without matching increases in funding. As the pandemic arrived, sexual assault survivors, some at high risk of suicide, were stuck on a waiting list for counselling across Canada. One sexual assault centre executive described transitioning to remote work: “We had to invest in a phone system, as ours was a donation from 1980. We didn't have funds for PPE for staff and volunteers accompanying women to hospitals, police and doctors. ... As much as I'm grateful for the 25k, I must be honest with you: It's not enough. … We are running out of PPE, volunteers have begun to show signs of burnout, and we are averaging 60 to 80 crisis calls a day.”

As you're likely aware, the women's sector refers to non-profits and charities that provide women-specific services in order to advance women's equality through policy, advocacy and public engagement. That includes shelters for women, sexual assault centres and women's centres that provide a safety net to women and their families. These are essential to a healthy welfare state system and to achieving gender equality.

The pandemic lockdown exposed and exacerbated existing flaws in the women's sector funding model. The sector is funded partially and irregularly through an unpredictable combination of individual donations, corporate gifts and foundation and government grants. This is time-consuming and inefficient, requiring constant renewal and contact. Organizations constantly seek out, apply for and renew funding that is largely project-based and temporary. Reports from the women's sector indicate an impending future crisis.

Like the best of the pandemic emergency response from public health leaders, many of whom are women, recovery planning with women and gender equality in mind requires thorough analysis, clear evidence-supported outcome targets, methodical approaches to implementation and responsible leadership with vision and heart.

Should broad emergency measures need to be reimposed for another indefinite period, the Canadian Women's Foundation recommends the following actions, with a reminder that an inclusive gender-based analysis with an intersectional lens is essential to the design of all government recovery investments, short or long term: With regard to women's economic security, reinstate the Canada emergency response benefit throughout any economic shutdown; reinstate the Canada emergency wage supplement with a simpler administrative mechanism throughout any economic shutdown: broaden access to employment insurance so all women who pay in can access benefits; work with the provinces and territories to implement 10 paid sick days, as announced; ensure funding is in place to safely reopen the child care sector at pre-pandemic service levels and to continue to expand it until universal access is achieved.

As for women and care work, work with the provinces and territories to ensure—

2:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Ann, you're right at 10 minutes now, so we'll give you about 15 more seconds just to wrap it up.

2:10 p.m.

Director, Community Initiatives, Canadian Women's Foundation

Ann Decter

—that in long-term-care facilities, staff work in a single facility in full-time jobs at a living wage with access to sick days, refusal of unsafe work and appropriate protective equipment, care and testing; grant all migrant workers currently in Canada permanent residency—

2:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Ann, hopefully we'll be able to get through there, but unfortunately we are short of time.

2:10 p.m.

Director, Community Initiatives, Canadian Women's Foundation

Ann Decter

No problem.

2:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Thank you so much.

We'll now pass it over to Morna Ballantyne with Child Care Now.

Morna, you have the floor.