Status of Women Committee on Nov. 17th, 2020

[Jaspreet Sandhu]

I will also mention that many female business owners have had to move online very quickly and move their whole model of operation to online shopping where it's relevant. This is particularly so for retail spaces or other types of.... It has meant scaling up to a different skill set very quickly.

The funds you are describing have helped shift some of those businesses, but obviously not all businesses can function that way. People in health care, as we talked about earlier—say chiropractors or other health care professionals—have been trying to follow the guidelines and restrictions to keep a base level of patient relationship still going during this time.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

On a point of order, Madam Chair, everyone is listing to the crackly voice on the line. Can we fix that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Yes, I've asked the clerk to see with the technical folks what can be done, for sure.

You have one minute and a half left.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

My next question is for Ms. Sandhu.

You said you have a one-year-old. That is why the government did the safe restart program with the provincial government. It was so that they can work with persons like you to support you.

Your organization recently announced that it was launching a research study on unlocking the potential of a growing South Asian women labour force. At the same time, the Prime Minister announced an additional $1.5-billion investment through the workforce development agreements program.

Do you have recommendations to ensure that this investment reaches Canadians in sectors that have been hardest hit by the pandemic and to ensure that those in under-represented groups get the support they need?

[Jaspreet Sandhu]

Yes. You can proportionally distribute those funds based on the unemployment rate among women. That's one of the easiest ways to know we are actually reaching the women who have been most impacted.

Thank you.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

This is my next question. I often hear from my residents, my youth councils, many Brampton organizations, about the importance of reliable mental health services being available to our youth, particularly to our women and girls.

Back in May, CMHA Peel Dufferin reported that 40% of youth said they felt their mental health had deteriorated since the pandemic began.

Can you explain what you think the impact of the pandemic is on the mental health of our youth?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Unfortunately, you are out of time.

We go now to Madame Larouche.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'd like to continue with Ms. Tassé-Goodman concerning older women and seniors in general.

Ms. Tassé-Goodman, there has been much discussion about seniors who wound up in CHSLDs during the pandemic. Can you tell us about the vast majority of seniors who live in their homes and want to stay there? Would it be a good idea to develop home care further?

I know you made a media appearance this week concerning the aid the Quebec government provides so people can stay at home and have better home support. How would health transfers help Quebec and the other provinces enable their seniors to stay at home, which is the situation of the majority of them?

[Gisèle Tassé-Goodman]

Absolutely.

Our media appearance was in response to the Quebec government's announcement Sunday morning of a $100 million transfer to support home care. That's fine, but we still need more money. There has to be a bigger effort. So we're counting on the Canada health transfer.

Most seniors live at home, in their houses, in their neighbourhoods, and are close to their families. So they're used to that, and they want to keep living that way. Consequently, it's important to provide home care services to those seniors. The Canada health transfer would definitely help people more. We know it's not normal for seniors to wind up in a CHSLD or a private seniors' residence, or PSR. Seniors have made the choice, and will continue to do so, to stay at home, under their own roof and in their own surroundings.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

To sum up, to help seniors get through a future pandemic or another potential crisis, first we should really increase their purchasing power, help them stay at home and try to correct inequalities.

For older women, we're mainly talking about their situation when they are widowed and about the fact that they may not have managed to accumulate the savings they need over their lifetime.

How should the situation of older women be improved, and how should we give more thought to their situation so we can give them more money to enable them to stay at home longer and contribute to the economic recovery?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Pardon me, but you're speaking time is up.

We will go now to Ms. Mathyssen for two and a half minutes.

Sorry about that.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

For the FADOQ group, we've talked a lot about seniors having to take on their own internal family caregiving issues or having to take on the caregiving of a loved one. They rely a lot upon family members internally and, of course, the caregiving is mainly by women.

The NDP has called for the implementation of a refundable caregiver tax credit. Is this something that your group supports?

[Gisèle Tassé-Goodman]

As you know, in many cases, these women are informal caregivers and are taking care of their parents or a family member. They may also be neighbours. These informal caregivers buy groceries, do the housecleaning, provide minor daily care and prepare meals. Some of them work part time. As I mentioned earlier, they have annual incomes of $20,000, which isn't enough to support them. They also have to limit their work schedules.

Informal caregivers who earn small incomes now pay no income tax at the end of the year. The tax credits are currently non-refundable. What we are asking the government to do is reconsider the matter and make the tax credits refundable.

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

One of the promises by the Liberal government was to increase OAS at the age of 75. However, you specifically were talking about wanting to increase senior support at the age of 65. What does that 10-year difference mean to your members?

[Gisèle Tassé-Goodman]

We want to avoid any segregation. Why should people 75 years of age and over get a 10% increase in old age security pensions when those who are 65 aren't entitled to it?

In many cases, these are women who live on lower incomes. As I said earlier, seniors have been waiting 14 months for the present government to keep the promise it made and then repeated in the throne speech this past September. Seniors find it hard to believe this government will keep its promise and increase old age security pensions by 10%. They wonder when that promise will be kept and why the government doesn't extend the measure to seniors 65 and over. In many cases, those in the latter group have very limited means and also find it hard to make ends meet. For all sorts of reasons, grocery prices are rising, and seniors find it very hard to meet their needs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

With the remaining time, what I think we'll do is have a quick question from Ms. Sahota and then a quick question from Ms. Dhillon.

Go ahead, Ms. Sahota.

[Jag Sahota, Conservative, Calgary Skyview, AB]

My question is for Pink Attitude Evolution.

You talked about South Asian women being a vital group that any recovery programs and policies post-COVID need to focus on as well. What are some of your recommendations for those post-COVID-19 recovery programs and policies?

[Jaspreet Sandhu]

Some of the things we have been thinking about, but which we want to measure against fact, include recruitment efforts, accelerator programs within the companies themselves and outreach programs for students leaving university and high school, either directing students from high school into specific programs or directing students from university into particular fields of recruitment. As well, from this discussion, we are looking at partners related to child care, senior relations and mental health networks within the community.

We're talking about what we need to do to remove barriers, essentially by finding the reasons these women are not in the workforce and taking it point by point from there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

The final comment or question will be from MP Dhillon.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

My question is for Ms. Sandhu and Ms. Dhillon. It is with regard to what you mentioned earlier: the fact that South Asian women are at a high rate of unemployment. This was pre-pandemic. For me, it's important also to get to the root causes of such statistics. What the pandemic has done is really just emphasize what's wrong in society.

Can you please explain to us why you think the rates of unemployment are so high and whether you think racism and other factors of intersectionality are contributing to this rate of unemployment?

I might not have time to finish asking questions, but can you please tell us—God forbid there might be a third wave or any other such pandemic in the future—how the Government of Canada can better prepare and help organizations such as yours?

Thank you so much.

[Jaspreet Sandhu]

Absolutely.

Our study started because so many working white-collar professional South Asian women found they were not getting promoted or were being held back in certain positions, being asked to do all the work but not getting the title or salary related to it. That is one of the most consistent stories we hear.

I'll also share that my personal experience as well has been, “Great, you can do the work. You're great, Jaspreet. Take on this portfolio.” When I ask about the title or the salary that goes along with that, quite frankly, it's “Oh, we'll talk about the title later.”

That's what started our interest in digging a bit further, and as you mentioned, the pandemic has just exacerbated it. Organizations have had to make hard decisions about layoffs, but in that layoff, has there been maybe an unconscious bias as part of it? Has there been something structural as part of it? That's why we need to partner with those companies to have their commitment, and those companies so far have been very willing and very open to saying they will support the study and they will figure it out and commit to change within their organization as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good. That's our time for this panel. Thank you to the witnesses for being excellent.

We're going to switch gears right now and start our second panel.

We are very fortunate to have with us, from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Corrine Pohlmann, who is the senior VP, national affairs and partnerships, and from Femmessor, we have Sévrine Labelle, president and chief executive officer.

We'll have them each make their five minutes of comments and then we'll begin our rounds of questions.

Corrine, we'll start with you for five minutes.

[Corinne Pohlmann, Senior Vice-President, National Affairs and Partnerships, Canadian Federation of Independent Business]

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I'll be focusing my remarks on the impacts of COVID-19 on female entrepreneurs. I'll be walking you through a slide deck that I hope you all have in front of you.

Right away, I want to talk a bit about CFIB. It's a not-for-profit member-based organization that represents the interests of independently owned Canadian companies. Our 110,000 members come from every sector of the economy and are found in every region of the country.

During COVID-19, CFIB has been very active. Our help line call volumes tripled, with small business owners looking for information to help them get through the crisis. We've also undertaken regular surveys since the beginning of the pandemic to determine how small businesses are doing and how well government programs are working, and I want to share some of that with you today.

If we move to slide three, I want to start with how small businesses are doing right now.

As of early November, 66% of small businesses were fully open, 42% were fully staffed, and only 28% were at normal sales, all of which has actually decreased since October as more jurisdictions impose further restrictions. The bottom line is that this pandemic remains a significant challenge for many small businesses.

As you can see on slide four, small businesses are not homogeneous. About 30% have been in business for 10 years or less, and 96% have fewer than 50 employees. Just under one in two small businesses are owned by men, almost one in four are owned by women, and 28% have multiple owners, which might have a combination of genders.

Slide five looks at the share of ownership by gender, with 23% of firms being either entirely or majority owned by women and another 28% owned equally by women and men. This means that around 50% of businesses have women playing some type of role in the ownership.

Female business owners are also more highly represented in certain sectors, such as social services, enterprise and administration management, retail, professional services and personal services. In addition, as you can see on slide six, women-owned businesses also tend to be newer and smaller than their male counterparts, which might also explain some of the additional challenges they have faced.

As you can see on slide seven, those challenges are substantial. Only 63% of female-owned businesses are fully open, which is 10% less than male-owned businesses. Just 35% are fully staffed, which is 13% less than their male counterparts, and only 24% are back to normal sales, which is 8% less than men-owned businesses.

As you can see on slide eight, most small businesses are worried about the uncertainty around a second wave, and about two-thirds worry about the economic repercussions. About half are worried that consumer spending will be reduced even after COVID, and a similar number are worried about their business cash flow, the physical health impacts and their growing debt.

When we dissect the data further, you will see on slide nine that female-owned businesses are much more likely to be worried about consumer spending being reduced even after COVID, about their mounting debt, about their business cash flow, and about dealing with overwhelming stress than their male counterparts. Clearly, female entrepreneurs could use some financial and emotional support.

When it comes to financial support, as you can see on slide 10, female-owned businesses are more likely to need rent relief, and getting that relief significantly increases their odds of staying open. This is why the new Canada emergency rent subsidy needs to be implemented as soon as possible.

As you can see on slide 11, the Canada emergency wage subsidy tends to be more heavily used by more established firms. As female-owned businesses are more likely to be newer and smaller, we can assume they are probably not using the wage subsidy quite as much, and they are more likely to have used the Canada emergency response benefit to help themselves get through the tougher periods of the pandemic. It was also sometimes the only financial support many very small and newer business owners could get.

Quickly, in summary, before I get to some recommendations, female-owned businesses are more likely to be smaller and newer businesses, which also tend to be the businesses that are more likely to fall through the cracks of the various emergency relief programs, so it really should be no surprise that they also tend to be more worried about their businesses, and with good reason. The data tells us that they are less likely to be fully open, have normal or better revenues, be fully staffed or be able to pay their rent.

To help these entrepreneurs weather the storm, we need to make adjustments to the various emergency relief programs. First, we need to expand all emergency support programs to include microsized and newer firms, as this will likely help more female-owned businesses and also those that are owned by visible minorities.

For example, the Canada emergency business account loan requires a smaller company with less than $20,000 in payroll to submit documents showing they have more than $40,000 in non-deferrable expenses. The problem is that the application process is complex and some of the rules make it very difficult to comply. It needs to be simplified and made more flexible.

Second, as rent tends to be a more important expense to female-owned businesses, government needs to introduce the Canada emergency rent subsidy immediately, as December 1 is not that far away.

It would also be important for government to look at providing 50% of rent retroactively to those who qualified under the old rent program but did not get relief, as their landlord did not apply. Those businesses have likely accumulated a lot of debt and deserve to be provided with some assistance to help them through.

Third, even though women entrepreneurs are less likely to use the wage subsidy, it is still the most generous program being offered to small businesses. We want to make sure it is accessible to those who really need it. For example, many small business owners pay themselves in dividends, so they're not able to include their own income in the wage subsidy, nor can they use their dividend income to get CEBA. These programs should allow at least some dividend income to be included.

We would also suggest that the new lockdown support, which allows businesses to get up to 90% of their rent covered if they are forced to shut down due to a public health order, be expanded to the wage subsidy. Businesses want to hold on to their staff, and if they must close, they may have no choice but to let them go. Increasing the wage subsidy to 90% during these periods may help many more hang on to their staff until they can open.

Finally, I just want to mention something that is starting to emerge with seasonal businesses. They're now in their low season and may no longer have the revenue losses they did during the summer, but their needs have not changed. Without having made their usual higher revenues during the high season, it will be difficult for many of them to get through to next year. Finding some alternative ways for them to illustrate their circumstances in order to get a higher wage subsidy would be welcome.

There are many more ideas, but I will leave it at that for today. Thank you for your attention. I look forward to answering any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent. Thank you.

Now we're going to Sévrine Labelle for five minutes.

[Sévrine Labelle, President and Chief Executive Officer, Femmessor]

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for inviting me.

Allow me briefly to introduce Femmessor. We are a Quebec organization that has been devoted to the development of women's entrepreneurship in Quebec for the past 25 years. We offer financing and coaching particularly to women entrepreneurs from all regions of Quebec.

To maximize the potential of the Canadian economy, we need to promote diversified and inclusive economic growth. Unfortunately, female-owned businesses are still a small minority of Canadian SMEs: only 15.5% of SMEs are majority female-owned, compared to 66.4% that are majority male-owned. According to statistics, this gap is even wider in the manufacturing, technology and all innovative sectors, where women are largely absent.

Female entrepreneurship has experienced remarkable growth in recent years. Entrepreneurship intentions among women in Quebec more than tripled between 2007 and 2017. And this rate is twice as high among immigrant women. However, the COVID-19 crisis has hit women entrepreneurs harder, which threatens to widen the gender gap.

That is one of the findings of a survey conducted by Femmessor in collaboration with the BMO Chair in Diversity and Governance at the University of Montréal and the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub. The findings in this report are worrisome and shed light on the need for additional steps to ensure that women entrepreneurs can participate fully in the economic recovery.

Highlights of the study include the fact that women entrepreneurs were hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Two-thirds of the companies surveyed were operating at less than 50% capacity during the crisis in the spring, and one in five entrepreneurs did not think they could survive the crisis. In addition, women-owned businesses have distinctive characteristics. They are in the sectors most affected by the pandemic. We are thinking, obviously, of the retail industry, personal services, the arts, culture, housing and the restaurant industry.

In many instances, women-owned businesses are also small businesses. Consequently, the financial resources that they can use to address such a crisis are limited. They also experience financing issues, as my colleague said. According to our study, 42% of the women entrepreneurs surveyed indicated that they were actively seeking funding to ensure their survival or to adapt their service or product offerings in response to the pandemic.

After exhausting the government assistance available, their funding requirements averaged $54,000. However, only 20% of respondents said that they intended to take advantage of the measures put in place by the Government of Quebec and the Government of Canada. When asked why, many said they did not qualify for the programs. The high level of debt among women entrepreneurs is also a major concern according to the study. In the spring, the most-used government measures among women entrepreneurs were definitely the Canada emergency business account and the emergency wage subsidy. New measures have since been implemented.

The crisis has also affected the women themselves. They have more family responsibilities and are experiencing more stress, which has, in some instances, made it more difficult to achieve work-life balance and to manage their businesses. We also learned from the survey that women need training and coaching to help them go digital and to support them in innovation, business development and networking.

What needs to be done? First of all, we need to step up our efforts to ensure that women are fully engaged in the economic recovery and that they do not lose the hard-won gains of the past 10 years. A gendered crisis requires a gendered response. Consequently, the economic recovery plan must include specific actions to revitalize the sectors that employ the most women. Women entrepreneurs can play a leading role in creating a resilient economy, not only because of the role they play in providing essential services to our population, but also because of their role in creating strong and diverse local economies.

Lastly, women entrepreneurs can be a driving force in creating a sustainable and green economy. According to a major Canada-wide study, Canadian women are more committed to taking action on climate change than Canadian men.

We need to increase support to women entrepreneurs, build on expertise from entrepreneurial ecosystem partners, including Femmessor, and work together to ensure that no businesses lag behind in generating the expected level of prosperity.

The various special assistance measures for women entrepreneurs naturally include financing and customized ongoing coaching to address the many needs identified. For example, at Femmessor, we place an emphasis on financing plus coaching, which has yielded a survival rate of approximately 80% for our companies after five years. There are also advisory services, codevelopment, customized training, and an emphasis on a diversity of female role models. Femmessor does all of these things.

I would like to congratulate the Canadian government for its leadership in the development of women's entrepreneurship, and for its sensitivity to the problems faced by women entrepreneurs during the crisis. Femmessor is grateful to the government for its trust in us, and for awarding us the largest grant under the federal Women Entrepreneurship Strategy to an organization that specializes in women's entrepreneurship. This support was also increased during the COVID-19 pandemic to help hundreds of women entrepreneurs transform their business model and adapt their products and services in order to become financially viable again.

Quite simply, what we are requesting is that financing for the many programs established by the government of Canada for entrepreneurs should also be extended to organizations like Femmessor, to ensure that women have full access to these forms of financial assistance and can benefit from the coaching we can give them.

From the standpoint of the Canadian economy, if women and men participated equally in entrepreneurship, it would mean a potential injection of $150 billion in gross domestic product, or GDP—a 6% rise in the current forecast GDP over the next decade. That would be equivalent to adding a new financial services sector to the economy, making it a significant step forward.

To conclude, more than ever, diversity and inclusion should be seen as ways to leverage economic growth, innovation, sustainable development and social development. All the evidence shows that Canada's sustainable development and economic development will require greater participation by entrepreneurial women and underrepresented communities, together with a contribution to help them achieve their full potential.