Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here today as a former chair of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. As a continuous member of that committee, I have heard from many witnesses. Most recently, we heard from witnesses who urged the committee to take a life cycle approach to the economic security of women.
I want to start off by quoting one of the witnesses, Sheila Regehr of the National Council of Welfare, who said:
You can’t take one population or one moment in time. There’s a tendency to talk about “poor people” or to talk about “lone parents”, thinking that there’s this group of lone parents who are always lone parents, or that somebody living in poverty now is always going to be living in poverty. Those groups move in and out. A woman who’s a very contented middle-class woman is going to be a lone parent tomorrow. In a few years, when her children age, statistically she’s not counted as a lone parent any more, she’s an “unattached older woman” but she’s experiencing the legacy of her earlier years.
It is that legacy that we need to address.
From an early age it is imperative women have an opportunity to succeed. We have all heard that early childhood education is vital to this success.
In a recent speech in Winnipeg, Dr. Fraser Mustard spoke about the importance of investment at an early age to ensure lifelong success. According to Dr. Mustard, early development is linked to physical health and well-being, social knowledge, maturity, language development, and communication skills, all essential to the well-being of women's economic security.
The Conservative government has chosen to prevent that by cancelling the national child care program, which the previous Liberal government committed to. Low and middle income class families have no access to child care. How can the government claim that families have choice when in fact there is no choice? The taxable $100 a month is not child care.
As one of the witnesses before the committee said:
You can't put a child in day care for $100 a month. So if you use that on economics of scale, a woman goes out to work and—let's just keep it simple—she makes $12 an hour, but she puts her child in day care, and that's costing her $7 an hour. So her net return is only $5, because day care is no longer affordable.
Access to regulated affordable child care is pivotal to creating opportunities for women. Without good quality child care, thousands of women are kept from finding full time and well paying jobs.
Women face many challenges upon entering the workforce, specifically low to middle income families, access to training and often access to literacy acquisition.
While the Canadian dollar has steadily increased in value over the last five years, women are still only earning 70¢ for every dollar that ends up in the pockets of men. Unfortunately, this wage gap is alive and well, and continues to be fed by the Conservative government.
Single mothers are the most vulnerable as their earnings tend to be the most volatile. Between the ages of 30 and 34, single mothers have twice the level of earning volatility than two parent families in the same age range. That is why child care and maternity benefits become so important.
The government has spoken frequently about human rights for aboriginal women, but human rights is more than pretty words or political posturing. It is about having clean water, opportunities for education for one's children and for one's self, and adequate health care and housing. It is about adequate resources, and most important, it is about respect.
As I have said before in a press release, “pay equity is a human right and an important step toward economic equality between men and women”.
Clearly, the current Prime Minister has very mixed feelings on pay equity. We have heard earlier today that when speaking about pay equity legislation in 1998, he was quoted as saying, “For taxpayers, however, it's a rip-off. And it has nothing to do with gender”. That hardly sounds like a Prime Minister who would stand up for the women of this country.
The fact of the matter is, without pay equity, women are denied economic equality. Proactive laws are required to take action to ensure all employees receive equal pay for work of equal value.
In response to the pay equity report from the Status of Women, the previous Liberal government, under the guidance of the justice minister of the day and the minister of labour and housing in October 2005, committed to introducing a bill on pay equity by late 2006 or early 2007. We would be on our way by now.
Extensive work has also been done to address parental benefits. I encourage the government to look at the Status of Women committee's report on maternity and parental benefits which focuses on the provision of benefits to self-employed workers.
This morning the minister said that the number of independent, self-employed women has gone up 50%. We know that most small businesses are being started by women. All the more reason to extend parental and maternal benefits to self-employed women. Again, I say, all the more reason for child care spaces for their children.
One might ask, what has the government done to ensure the economic security of women? It has cut $1 billion in social spending, including cuts to national literacy programs, cuts to summer student programs, cuts to affordable housing programs, and cuts to the Canadian volunteer program. It has not honoured the Kelowna accord and it has done away with the court challenges program. These are all initiatives that have a direct impact on women and their economic prosperity.
The Conservatives have attacked Status of Women Canada by closing 12 of its 16 regional offices, gutted the research unit, removed equality seeking from the mandate, and shut down the voice of advocacy. After much outcry from women across the country, they put more dollars in to limited programs, but they cut the ability to access these programs right across the country.
During the 2006 election campaign, the Prime Minister signed a pledge and committed that a Conservative government would honour the UN CEDAW recommendations to ensure that Canada fully upholds its commitments to women in Canada, convenient comments during an election and, I submit, yet another broken promise.
Income security for senior women is an ongoing concern. The promise of a secure future for unattached senior women is often not realized. What has the government done for unattached senior women? Not much, acknowledged by one of its own members. “They seem to be just hung out there without any recourse”, said the hon. member for Kildonan—St. Paul during a March 27 committee meeting this year.
There was no action, but the Liberal government took action in budget 2005. Senior women would benefit from a $2.7 billion increase over two years in the guaranteed income supplement and more money going into the new horizons for seniors programs.
The report of the committee on economic security of women is a plan for changes. I encourage the government to act on the 21 recommendations. I particularly want to highlight recommendation 21 which says:
The Committee recommends that, in collaboration with the provinces and territories, the federal government develop a national poverty reduction strategy that incorporates gender based awareness with concrete targets and goals to address poverty and Aboriginal poverty in Canada.
The government has yet to take action. There is much talk and a great deal of misinformation. Not once has the government mentioned women's equality, women's well-being, prosperity for women or pay equity in the budgets or the throne speeches.
This is clearly not a priority for the government. It is time to take action on addressing the issues that impact on the economic security for women. That is why I support the motion today and I encourage all colleagues to do so.
