Status of Women Committee on Nov. 17th, 2020

[Philippe Poirier-Monette, Collective Rights Advisor, Provincial Secretariat, Réseau FADOQ]

Thank you, Ms. Tassé-Goodman.

The data from the Conference Board of Canada, which we constantly use, shows that federal health transfers will fall below 20% of health care funding by 2026 given the way they have evolved in the past three years. There has been a similar debate in Quebec on the issue of nationalizing residential and long-term care centres, the CHSLDs, both private and otherwise. Nationalization is one step, but it's often said that there's also a shortage of resources. We need more resources in the system. Consequently, we're asking the federal government to invest in this area.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

All right.

We will now turn the floor over to Ms. Larouche for six minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thanks to both panels of witnesses; all of you are very interesting. My first questions are for Ms. Tassé-Goodman or Mr. Poirier-Monette.

Ms. Tassé-Goodman, you mentioned that the financial situation of seniors had already been eroding for a very long time even before the crisis and that it was already precarious. There's also the matter of indexing, which has caused the economic weight of seniors to decline. Please tell me a little more about the precarious situation seniors were in immediately before the pandemic.

[Gisèle Tassé-Goodman]

Yes, as you well know, older women have total incomes of less than $20,000 a year and that 52% of them work for minimum wage. As a result, it's hard for them to contribute to an RRSP, and we know they can't join an employer pension plan.

That said, as you'll remember, in September 2019, the government committed to increasing the guaranteed income supplement by 10% for seniors 75 and over. That increase was to come into effect in July 2020, but it didn't happen.

However, in the throne speech this past September, the Prime Minister announced once again that he would be moving ahead on that commitment. Fourteen months have elapsed since the initial announcement, and Canadians 75 and over are getting older. The years count and they're ticking by. We're asking the government to keep its promise and to grant the guaranteed income supplement not only to seniors 75 and over, but also to those 65 and over.

We appeared before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women in February 2019 and made the same demands as we're making today for women and seniors. We also asked that the guaranteed income supplement be increased by $50 a month. As you know, people who live solely on the guaranteed income supplement and the old age pension have incomes of less than $19,000 a year.

That being the case, it's very difficult for seniors to access oral care because they can't afford to pay the consultation fees. The same is true of eye care. After consulting an eye specialist, they can't afford a prescribed pair of glasses and choose instead to buy a pair of discount glasses at a pharmacy.

Some seniors decide not to buy their medication because they have to pay their rent at the end of the month, or they find it hard to pay for groceries to feed themselves. The same is true of hearing aids. Seniors in Quebec are offered only one type of hearing aid, and it's the basic one. Specialists feel that's not enough to restore good hearing.

I could go on and tell you about auxiliary aids. Seniors are deprived of many things, which is why we're appearing before the committee once again today to ask the government to be sensitive to the situation of seniors who find it hard to make ends meet.

We're pointing out that, in 2065, seniors' pension incomes, which are currently indexed to the consumer price index, will be cut. We ask instead that they be calculated based on wage growth. In 2065, you and I may no longer be active in the labour market; we may not even be here.

We represent our seniors, and what we're asking is that the government take action and focus seriously on this issue. We recommend that it increase the guaranteed income supplement by $50 a month and that it make good on its commitment to raise the old age security benefit by 10%.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Ms. Tassé-Goodman, if I understand you correctly, the situation was the same before the pandemic.

Seniors were asked to self-isolate as a result of the pandemic and suffered greatly from loneliness and isolation. However, that didn't protect them from rising prices, and it made their tenuous financial situation worse. Everyone was ultimately affected.

[Gisèle Tassé-Goodman]

As you know, seniors were isolated and deprived of the help of informal caregivers in the first wave of the pandemic. They were deprived of their families and their neighbourhoods, and they were isolated in their houses and apartments. They were deprived of services and had to pay out of their own pocket for grocery and drug delivery services. They had to pay for taxis to get around and to get to their hospital appointments. The pandemic caused an increase in all those expenses.

Informal caregivers obviously had to help seniors during the second wave, but all that had an impact on seniors' finances, especially those of older women.

That's why we're asking committee members to do more on this issue and to make recommendations to the government so that these women, who found themselves alone during the pandemic, are not penalized.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Mathyssen, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I apologize. I just discovered that I have a very bad Internet connection, so I hope that this works out. Unfortunately, I have missed some of the testimony, but I hope we all stay online.

I certainly heard Pink Attitude talking about a lot of the highly educated members of your community having to unfortunately take jobs that are lower paying and don't meet their qualifications. I know that within health care, this is a particular issue, so I would like to hear what you've heard from your community about what they're suffering in terms of health care and what you think the government can do.

I'm thinking specifically of the Colour of Poverty. It's an organization that's been asking for a strengthening of the federal Employment Equity Act, attaching equity measures through community benefits agreements and providing for federal investment to those recovery programs, ensuring that racialized groups and other under-represented groups have equitable access to the jobs that they are trained for. I was wondering if you could address that.

[Jaspreet Sandhu]

I think that's an excellent example of tangible action that we can then leverage in the community and promote within the community so that women actually know, with the strengthening of the equity act, that there is some sort of safety or action or a tangible step towards helping them get back into their designated fields. I think it also comes to recruitment, acceleration within organizations and performance review-based, merit-driven acceleration within organizations.

One of the partnerships that we're looking to include as part of the study is corporate entities and other not-for-profits, so that when corporations sign on to the study, they are committing to also having internal policies on how they approach the South Asian women whom they may already have and whose potential they may not be tapping into right now, and creating succession plans for them in specific fields and careers.

They may already be in the organization in some cases, but just not on the right career trajectory within the organization. Then, as you mentioned, there are women who are taking part-time or other work who need to be recruited back into those fields, which is a different set of programs altogether.

I hope that addresses your question.

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

Yes, absolutely.

You're obviously wanting to undertake quite a large project in terms of that data collection. We know that disaggregated data is really key to better understanding the measures that we need to take going forward, and we've heard some—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Ms. Mathyssen, could I ask you to raise your microphone a little bit? The interpreters are wondering.

Thank you.

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

Is that better?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I think so.

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

It could be because I speak fast. I apologize. I'll slow it down.

In terms of the project that you wanted to undertake, you talked about the collection of data disaggregated by race. We certainly heard about all of the different socio-demographic identities that need to occur within that collection. It's about using it to create these better systems and frameworks. What kind of reporting mechanisms do you see the government using to better improve the collection of data and to improve any outcomes for racialized communities and members of your community?

[Jaspreet Sandhu]

I think it starts, as you've mentioned, with disaggregated data to look at what populations are being affected and where. Again, we started our study based on a ton of anecdotal information from women saying “I haven't been promoted” or “I've been laid off” or “I had to shut my business”, and we had to aggregate it and look at that.

We first went to whatever information is out there. The statistics were there within the July federal report on labour as well as in the 2016 census, but nobody was doing anything related to it. I don't know if an organization like ours has to step in to say that we need to do something with this information and that it needs to be targeted. I don't know if it's related to having the analysts look at the information in a different way to say that when we're talking about women overall, we can't talk about women overall. We need to look community by community to see if there is something specific that needs to happen.

When we're talking about 20.4%, it's such a high number within the unemployment rate. It's so jarring. That's the reason we said we need something specific. I know everyone is asking about the tangibles—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry; that's your time.

[Jaspreet Sandhu]

Oh, I'm so sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

No problem.

We're going now to Ms. Wong for five minutes.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, thank you very much to all our witnesses for presenting your wonderful ideas and your reports.

My questions are focusing more on labour force participation and workplace consideration, and also on the caregiving roles.

We have done a lot of studies on long-term care. I'm not going to specifically talk about formal caregiving. Right now, studies show that even before the pandemic, there were a lot of outbreaks of other diseases. Primarily, many of the people who are caring are unpaid. For example, you have parents looking after sick kids and adult children looking after grandparents and parents, and their jobs are not paid.

During these challenging times, one of the presenters mentioned that a female worker would have to drop off her kids to their grandma or her parents to be looked after. Of course, grandparents may not be in the workforce, but for those who are in the workforce and have to do additional unpaid jobs, what should we do to find out exactly where they are and how we should support them?

[Jaspreet Sandhu]

What we're talking about here is a child care plan that is effective for working women. Right now, what we have are very competitive day cares. I'm going to tell you that personally, I am a working mom. I have a one-year-old, and my husband is working from home right now. I have nowhere to send my son in terms of a day care, because it's highly competitive in the neighbourhood where I live. Even the facilities and options that exist are not tangible. Again, to your point, we're relying on our network of family to step in, and I am fortunate enough to have a network of family who can step in.

With COVID, we've restricted households. We've sort of separated those pieces, and what it has meant, quite frankly, is questioning what I am. I am the perfect case study of “pink attitude”. What will I do with my career next? We can't keep going like this. Does that mean that I'm able to access somebody who is able to come into my home? Does it mean increased day care or child support, or is it paying me for that labour that I have offset with my wage? I'm deciding essentially whether I give a good chunk of my salary over or whether I forfeit that payment and do it myself. Being within COVID just restricts it all the more, so you have more women forced into making that decision.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

This is exactly the other concern about productivity. A lot of capable women, as you've just mentioned, have to give up their own paying jobs in order to look after their sick kids, and not only kids but maybe their own parents. With the long-term care situation and the challenges there, some adults don't want their parents to stay in long-term care anymore.

In other words, you have a sandwich generation that has to bear all these responsibilities. What should the government do in order to support this very special group of unpaid family caregivers?

[Jaspreet Sandhu]

I think there should be either a type of subsidy or a type of virtual learning or a type of commitment here, but again, we are very reluctant to tell you, “Here is the x, y and z tangible result.” What we want to look at is whether these are women who are working in manufacturing, say, in the suburbs, or are, like me, office workers in a high-level part of their career in order to know what the right fit is here. Do they have grandparents in the picture, or do they not have grandparents in the picture?

Anecdotally, the South Asian community does not have a high rate of grandparents in long-term care facilities. They live at home, and it's family members who are taking care of them. These are extended families who are in the same household or who are in the same neighbourhood and are going from house to house.

Again, this is anecdotal. I wish I could tell you that 60% of the South Asian population operate this way so that I could say that a grandparent subsidy makes sense and would apply to the Chinese community as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

All right. Now we're going to Ms. Sidhu for five minutes.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses.

I'd like to highlight the work Ruby and Jaspreet are doing with the Pink Attitude Evolution team. Thank you for the work you are doing.

Ms. Dhillon, as a Bramptonian you're aware of how deeply businesses have been affected in our city. As I talk to my residents, particularly those running their businesses, I see how hard they work and how difficult it is for them right now. Many female business owners have to balance running their businesses and supporting families.

At the same time, we see more businesses relying on federal programs such as CEBA and the wage subsidy. It is important to see that these programs are evolving as we receive feedback from constituents. For example, business owners with personal bank accounts are now able to apply for CEBA.

Would you be able to share with us some examples of women who have been able to adapt to the pandemic challenges affecting their businesses?

[Ruby Dhillon]

Anecdotally, within our network we can say we're hearing that they have support, because they are of that intergenerational generation or sandwich generation that was alluded to earlier. They have relied on their networks.

With these recent restrictions, however, whereby the households are put within one household, it has become increasingly difficult for them if the parents don't live in the same household, which could be the case.

As Jaspreet commented earlier, we're very early on in this research study. We heard a lot of noise from our network and wanted to take charge and look at this at a national level. We've come to a point of saying that 20.4% is the unemployment rate right now and we're here to say that we need to pay attention to this number. We need to do some research and be able to come back to you guys once this is done to say, “Here are the x, y, z resolutions that we have.”