Human Resources committee  Thank you, Minister. With me is Ms. Linda Lizotte-MacPherson, our new Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada and Senior Associate Deputy Minister of HRSDC; and Mr. Bruce Manion, Chief Financial Officer for HRSDC.

Status of Women committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. It's nice to see you again, actually. It is a pleasure for me to be with the committee today. Thank you for inviting me to speak about the status of women in the labour market. As you know, I have with me Mr. Thompson, who has appeared before this commi

Status of Women committee  As members of the committee will know, the advice we provide to ministers is not something we discuss openly. I can tell you the process, and I think that's probably the nature of your question, Ms. Neville. We look at a wide range of considerations in terms of conducting our po

Status of Women committee  It's built into our analysis. I wouldn't say I could produce the gender-based analysis for you; it is one of the many considerations we look at. In our department we don't have a special unit that just does gender-based analysis. It really is built into the work of the departmen

Status of Women committee  It's hard to give a global answer to that because the gender impacts differ across programs. For example, in the employment insurance program and the changes the government introduced as part of the economic action plan and the Budget Implementation Act, we looked at, exactly as

Status of Women committee  Again I'll refer to the monitoring and assessment report, which is a report for 2007. The report for 2008 has now been provided to the minister by the Employment Insurance Commission, and the minister will be tabling that in the House shortly. I apologize, I can't quite remembe

Status of Women committee  Under regular benefits we know that on average men used about 19.1 weeks and women used 18.8 weeks. It is true that a larger proportion of women than men exhaust their benefits: 34.4% of women used up all the weeks of benefits they were entitled to receive in 2005-06 and 26.3%

Status of Women committee  The figures in the updated monitoring and assessment report will update that. They'll have to be tabled in the House before they can be made publicly available.

Status of Women committee  You can appreciate, Ms. Neville, the thoughts I have on how government should be reacting would be advice I'd provide to the minister.

Status of Women committee  I can tell you, though, that I think adding the extra five weeks of benefits, the additional duration of employment insurance benefits that was passed with the Budget Implementation Act, is designed to get at your point around exhaustion of benefits. It will be some time—at least

Status of Women committee  I will do my best. I will ask Mr. Thompson to answer the second question, because he is more familiar with the details of the program. Maybe if I could, though.... I apologize, but I would like to continue in English, because the details are a little technical and— I don't wa

Status of Women committee  I apologize.

Status of Women committee  Okay. I will ask Mr. Thompson to answer your questions.

Status of Women committee  Yes, basically. In terms of the comparison of the total premiums paid by women compared to the benefits that are drawn, women are net beneficiaries and men are net contributors.

Status of Women committee  That's right. It's because of the nature of the benefits. Women tend to benefit disproportionately to men from some of the special benefits we see across...obviously, maternity. That's a women's benefit, but even in terms of parental, we're still seeing a very large take-up on th