Status of Women Committee on May 7th, 2026

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you.

How many of the outstanding calls for justice is the department currently working on?

[Frances McRae]

Women and Gender Equality Canada is responsible for part of the work on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. We have very specific work that we've done, as I mentioned, on supporting commemorations. Significant money went into that—$13 million—commemorating—

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I didn't ask how much money this time. I asked how many of the calls for justice are currently being worked on. If you don't have that answer, perhaps you could table that with our committee. This is something that a lot of indigenous communities.... This week, we celebrated Red Dress Day. There were red dress walks. This is something that is real.

[Frances McRae]

Yes.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

There are missing and murdered indigenous women from my riding. There are families. There are the survivors. They want to know that there is action being taken. Saying that there is “significant” money—you can't say how much—is meaningless.

[Frances McRae]

The work that we do is not specific to only one or two calls for justice. The work we do supports calls for justice 1.3, 1.5, 1.6, 16.44 and 17.2, so—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you very much, Ms. McRae.

Mr. Ntumba, you have the floor.

[Bienvenu-Olivier Ntumba, Liberal, Mont-Saint-Bruno—L’Acadie, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. McRae, Mr. Massie and Ms. Mitchell, how are you?

Let's catch our breath for a minute, because it can be very intense here, with the limited time we are given to speak.

I would like to ask the three of you a question. You can answer one at a time.

Women in rural areas often have less access to business contacts, training and markets. How is your department adapting its programs to help Black women, in particular, gain access to rural entrepreneurship, instead of running the same programs throughout the country, in a fairly balanced manner?

[Etienne-René Massie]

I thank the member for his question.

I would be pleased to talk about the Black entrepreneurship program, which the government renewed in 2024. In general terms, we have three components that we use to help Black entrepreneurs.

The first one is the Black entrepreneurship loan fund, which is available to all Black entrepreneurs through the Federation of African Canadian Economics.

Secondly—and this may answer your question more specifically—we use the ecosystem fund to finance organizations that provide support services to women entrepreneurs. This can be mentoring, sponsorship or help in writing a business plan. We work with regional development agencies across the country to provide funding for organizations that operate in urban settings and others that work more specifically in rural settings, as well as some that work in both.

Black women can also access programs for women in entrepreneurship. Some organizations, such as PARO, which operates in northern Ontario, and Alberta Women Entrepreneurs, which works throughout that province, provide services to Black women and women entrepreneurs in rural areas.

[Bienvenu-Olivier Ntumba, Liberal, Mont-Saint-Bruno—L’Acadie, QC]

In 2020, during the pandemic, I worked with friends in my area to launch a food basket home delivery service for single mothers. We did this for at least 10 or 15 weeks, but I don't remember the data, since it was a very long time ago. I have heard people asking you for numbers, which you still didn't have, but I do understand that it's hard to get accurate numbers for the results of programs intended for certain groups. This can happen—it's not unusual. You can send us the numbers later, if you have them.

Do you have any data on participation and the success of businesses owned by Black women in rural communities? If so, how do you use these data to inform your decisions?

[Etienne-René Massie]

I thank the member for his question.

I have data today for the entire ecosystem. For example, we have granted more than 1,460 loans to women entrepreneurs and have helped more than 200,800 women entrepreneurs. For the Black community, we have granted more than 875 loans to entrepreneurs and have helped more than 24,000 entrepreneurs, as the minister indicated a little earlier today.

I don't have any data on businesses owned by Black women or women of other demographic categories, but I can check. I have to say that we want to avoid stigmatizing people who use these entrepreneurship programs. We ask them to provide demographic data on a voluntary basis, but they are not required to indicate if they come from a rural or urban area, for example, or to give us any other information.

That said, I can check this and, if we do have any data, I would be pleased to share them with the committee.

[Bienvenu-Olivier Ntumba, Liberal, Mont-Saint-Bruno—L’Acadie, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. McRae, I have 30 seconds left. Can you comment on what type of tangible support will be provided to women in the economic update?

[Frances McRae]

I thank the member for his question.

For us at Women and Gender Equality, there are three aspects to women's participation in Canadian society: Economic participation, social participation and leadership participation. There's also a link between violence against women and the economy—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you, Ms. McRae. That's all the time we have for this discussion.

I will now turn the floor over to Mrs. Roberts for five minutes.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, again, to the witnesses for being here.

I have a question that maybe I'll leave it to any of you to answer. How's the department conducting any recent analysis on how inflation and housing costs are disproportionately impacting women fleeing violence?

[Frances McRae]

Thank you very much for the question.

I would say that at Women and Gender Equality, we have significant research efforts with Statistics Canada to be able to understand how we can fill data gaps around those most affected by things like poverty, joblessness, homelessness and a number of areas. A significant amount of our resources goes to Statistics Canada for these purposes. You will know that Statistics Canada has a very significant investment in disaggregated data. Understanding how various groups of women and Canadians are affected by a whole range of social issues is part of that work.

We—

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt, Mrs. McRae.

Can you establish a specific number for us? Are we improving? Are we declining? I'm not hearing about a lot of opportunities for women trying to escape this violence—that there's a place for them to live. I speak to individuals who are running shelters. The stay in shelters is becoming longer and longer, because there is no affordable housing. Maybe we could table that. It's something I've heard that I'm concerned about.

My next question is on this: Many women in Canada continue to face disproportionate economic pressures related to housing, caregiving responsibilities and inflation. They're forgotten. I know we had an individual, James Janeiro, as a witness a few weeks ago. He mentioned that, a lot of times, caregivers are not rewarded for the time they must leave their jobs to take care of the elderly.

Is there anything your department knows regarding how many opportunities...or the number of caregivers having to leave their jobs to take care of the elderly?

[Frances McRae]

The information I could give you is through Statistics Canada. They have done quite a lot of research on informal care and how it affects various groups of Canadians. Certainly, we know it affects women much more than men. We still have women doing disproportionate amounts of child care and elder care, despite having full-time jobs.

There is a significant cultural change we need to be looking at, around gender norms.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you.

Recently, we had Elizabeth Brown as a witness. One of the things she's advocating for is tax fairness for single women. One piece of data she shared with us is this: A couple earning $50,000 will pay $1,172 in taxes. However, a single senior will pay close to $5,800 in taxes. Really, when you look at the overall expenses of individuals, the rent is the same, the utilities are the same, the gas is the same and the insurance on their car is the same.

How is that fair for an individual versus a couple? Has your department done anything to look at tax fairness for single women?

[Frances McRae]

As you can appreciate, tax matters are the domain of the Department of Finance, exclusively. I would be directing that question to colleagues at the Department of Finance, in particular.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

I've been going to different food banks. The increasing number of seniors they're seeing is pretty scary.

What are we doing to help individuals? A lot of single seniors are women. Because of the inflationary situation we are faced with, how are we assisting these women who are living below the poverty line and not able to make ends meet?

[Frances McRae]

I very much agree with the comments you're making about senior women in poverty.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you very much.

[Frances McRae]

We look forward to the committee's study.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you.

Ms. Gladu, you have the floor.