Status of Women Committee on Dec. 10th, 2020

[Tina Chui]

Madam Chair, thank you for the questions.

You are correct. The last time we conducted the time use survey, which is part of the general social survey program, was in 2015. This survey is conducted every five years. Actually, at the moment we are developing the content of the survey. The next one that we are planning to collect is in early 2022.

At this point, I cannot answer your question directly. What I can offer you is that through the last time use survey, we are able to conduct some analysis looking at the changes in terms of previous results of the time use survey.

The time use survey was first conducted in.... I think we did the comparison between 1986 and 2015. Based on that analysis, we did find that, between 1986 and 2015, fathers are spending more time on preparing meals and mothers are providing nearly two-thirds of the total hours spent helping and caring for children. Fathers are more likely to engage in household chores, like housework and whatnot. Between that period, from 1986 to 2015, there is an increase in fathers participating in the unpaid work.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you for that. Once we have the latest survey, I would like to see how the shared parental leave has made a difference.

As a mother, I also spent four years, from 2000 to 2004, raising my two young kids. I started work in Canada in 2004.

My next question is in regard to the ethnic lens. We know that a number of factors can influence the proportion of unpaid work performed in a household between men and women, such as cultural expectations, upbringing, the levels of paid work performed and so on. We also know that these influences can vary by ethnicity. For example, some visible minority populations are more likely to live in intergenerational households, with three generations under one roof. I see many in my own riding of Scarborough Centre.

Has your research looked at differences across ethnic lines? Did you find significant differences? Do you have any data that you can provide to the committee? If not today, maybe you can send in a written submission to provide that data.

[Tina Chui]

Definitely there are variations when you look at it from the diversity lens. We know that in certain communities there is a higher likelihood of a multi-generational household and that would increase the demand on the caregiver to either the children or a senior in the household.

I cannot provide the data today because there is a challenge with the general social survey. For that type of detailed analysis, we do need the dataset, the sample, to be able to provide robust statistics. At Statistics Canada, we are looking into a way to improve that so that we can provide more on the disaggregated data in a diversity lens.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Do I have time, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thirty seconds.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

No. It's okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Okay. Very good.

Ms. Larouche now has the floor for six minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I'd like to thank the Statistics Canada representatives for being here today.

Your organization has proved that when you can gather data and numbers about matters like women's invisible work, it makes it possible to suggest measures that can mitigate any related problems.

For example, you said that the statistics had shown the effects of the pandemic on invisible work. The figures established that there were differences between men and women, as well as other comparisons, during the pandemic.

We are still in the midst of the pandemic, but economic recovery is a major issue. I would like to know how we can study the numbers to see how the situation is doing over time. We know that jobs in sectors that will do well during the economic recovery, like infrastructures and construction, are filled by a much higher percentage of men. On the contrary, for sectors in which jobs have a much higher percentage of women, like restaurants and the cultural industry, the recovery will be much slower.

How does Statistics Canada expect the impact of the pandemic on invisible work for women to play out, compared to the situation for men?

[Josée Bégin]

Thank you for your question.

I'm going to give a two-part answer.

First of all, in my statement, I referred to some statistics from a voluntary data collection survey that was carried out in April. More detailed results will be published next week by Statistics Canada. We'll give you information about this new study, and it could provide you with more details.

More generally speaking, the Labour Force Survey conducted every month gives data about the labour force participation of women. It contains much more detail about industries, occupations and jobs, age groups, and people who are members of visible minorities. We can also provide you with the most recent Labour Force Survey report, if you wish.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Very good.

You discussed this a short while ago, but could you tell me the dollar value of invisible work in Canada. You said that the most recent figures were from 2012, which is quite a while ago. How can this value be measured?

I think that once we become aware of the dollar value of invisible work, we start to realize just how important it is to provide support to the various aspects of this form of work.

I'm also thinking of the mental stress, on top of everything else. We are living in times when women are having children much later. They are said to represent the sandwich generation: on the one hand, they need to do all the household tasks and care for the children, and on the other, they need to care for their aging parents.

We'd appreciate the additional details you mentioned on how to calculate the dollar value of invisible work. I would also appreciate it if you could explain how this might have an impact on people's awareness of this kind of work.

[Josée Bégin]

I'd like to clarify something. The last time we determined the dollar value of invisible work was 1992.

I don't have the information with me that I would need to explain how we calculate this value in terms of gross domestic product, or how unpaid work constitutes a production factor in Canada. However, after the meeting, Statistics Canada will certainly be able to give you additional information.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

It's from the standpoint of how the numbers make us more aware of the magnitude of invisible work. The numbers are huge. You spoke about 1992 data. According to my figures, that would represent between $235 billion and $374 billion, when volunteer work is included. If we had to pay all these people, it would have an impact on our economy. That's the perspective from which I wanted to address the issue and underscore the importance of updating these figures.

The 1992 data are certainly becoming outdated. We might be impressed to see how far we have come, what percentage of the GDP is represented in 2020 by invisible work, and how many billions of dollars that would amount to.

Do I have any time left, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

You have one minute.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Okay, good.

In that case, I'll ask another question.

In order to do something about the inequality between men and women with respect to invisible work, will we have to know more about the causes? How come in 2020 there's still just as much inequality between men and women? How could understanding the causes help?

[Josée Bégin]

I'm going to ask my colleague, Ms. Chui, to give you some details about the context in which questions about unpaid work are asked in the general social survey.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Unfortunately, you're out of time on that one.

Now we'll go to Ms. Mathyssen for six minutes.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Can someone tell me why unpaid work has not been re-evaluated since 1992?

[Josée Bégin]

I can make a start.

It's really a matter of definitions pertaining to production and consumption. There are several schools of thought about how to measure, quantify, and assign a dollar value to, unpaid work.

But on the subject of measurements used to understand the relative context of unpaid work and the repercussions on people who do this unpaid work, we have a collection tool at Statistics Canada which, approximately every five years, measures this important phenomenon, as my colleague Ms. Chui explained.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

You have the ability to do it; you just haven't been told to do it since 1992.

[Josée Bégin]

I can't answer that question because it's not in my field of expertise.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

You spoke about the general social survey. It was last done in 2015. You said it is done every five years, but you also said 2022 will be the next one. How are you going to compensate for the significant changes that COVID will have on people's responses? How will those be indicated? How will they impact...? I guess you can't determine the impact, but how will you deal with the impact of COVID?

[Tina Chui]

For the general social survey program, yes, we want to do more frequent surveys. In the program itself, we have seven themes, and we cycle the themes. In certain years, we have the themes overlap within a five-year cycle. This is only for the purpose of the competing demands for the different content of each cycle.

For the unpaid worker segment, that theme, a lot of the estimates come from the time you survey, but we also have another cycle called caregiving and receiving that will give us a little more about the dynamics of caregiving and receiving. We have a cycle called family dynamics that looks at the relationship within the family, fertility, intentions and whatnot. We also have a survey called giving, volunteering and participation that also measures another aspect of unpaid work. We combine to holistically look at the unpaid economy. We need to look at the relevant cycles of that aspect.

I agree with you that time use, and we use time use a lot to measure the unpaid work, is not an easy survey, because it's diary based and it imposes a lot of response burden on our respondents. For us, can we do it? I think we can, but at the same time, we also need to balance response burden and how much we ask our Canadians to respond to in our survey.

To answer your questions about the impact of COVID, do we have information about the impact of COVID? The general social survey is a regular program at Statistics Canada, but during the initial stage of the lockdown, StatsCan really mobilized to put in other alternate collection mechanisms and platforms like the crowd-sourced survey and the web panel, so we measured the direct impact of COVID. We have more targets in terms of the questions on the impact of COVID whereas, for the general social survey, because we want to measure how social conditions change over time, we have to maintain certain consistency in terms of the content from the previous cycle.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Now we'll go to Ms. Shin for five minutes.

[Nelly Shin, Conservative, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, all, so much for being here and sharing very fascinating data with us.

My question has to do with the overlap of different things you were looking for when you did the survey. For example, regarding unpaid care work, is there an overlap in your survey with any socio-economic groups or ethnic groups or concerning marital status, age, province or rural versus urban areas? Were there any patterns or any predominant overlaps that you noticed?

[Tina Chui]

Yes, indeed, we have different cycles of the GSS that can measure a certain aspect of the unpaid work. In each of the cycles, we also have a series of socio-economic characteristics that measure for the respondents. I think immigrant status, visible minorities and population group questions that we use derive the visible minority populations, generations or residence of the respondents, from which we derive the rural, urban and whatnot.

The biggest challenge is the sample size, whether we are able to drill down in that level of detail in our analysis so the data is robust and statistically significant. In each cycle, the response rate varied somewhat, so when people ask us those types of questions, we cannot answer for sure, but have to go to the data to extract the data and look at the level of significance to see whether the estimate is significant.