Status of Women committee  I don't know the answer to the question.

Status of Women committee  I'll start, and then maybe Virginia wants to add. I was taking notes and may have missed some, but the first point was on employment-related measures. I would say that the proposal in Budget 2007 to put in place $500 million a year to address labour market issues for individuals

Status of Women committee  We'll get back to you on whether there have been changes.

Status of Women committee  I'm just going to make one comment. We can't give recommendations or even accept recommendations. I know you know that. You may know that my minister, Minister Solberg, is in front of HUMA right now, as we speak. I'm pretty sure that someone may well be asking that very question,

Status of Women committee  I could have more of an answer to the second question than the first. If people have more of the first than the second, they should jump.

Status of Women committee  I'll talk quickly. I haven't read the report from Kathleen Lahey, although someone has found it, and I will take a look at it. I did a description about the gender wage gap on February 15, and we did this using methodology from Stats Canada—which I think gets to numbers that were

Status of Women committee  I'm going to put one fact on the table just in terms of women who are over 65, in terms of engagement in the labour force. It's about 5%. It's quite low, but if you go back to 55- to 64-year-olds, it's about 50%. So there's quite a huge difference.

Status of Women committee  I just wanted to add one little point. The very last suggestion that was recommended was around reach-back, and I was a little unclear what that is. If reach-back means eligibility to get EI, part II, or the active labour market measure benefits, that's in place. So if people are

Status of Women committee  Are you asking about a specific program or in general?

Status of Women committee  When the targeted initiative for older workers was announced in the fall, $70 million was intended to help older workers who had been displaced. The money was in fact intended to be for areas of higher unemployment or where factories had closed down. For example, Toronto and Mont

Status of Women committee  Thank you. We did talk about this on February 15. I generally agree with your comments and with some of the witnesses' comments that an explanatory factor for the continued wage gap can be related to the level of education and ongoing training, which was the question that was r

Status of Women committee  Just factually, if they don't make that income, they are not included.

Status of Women committee  I'm just going to make one comment, which is that the intent of this is to support individuals who are working without a lot of income or who are making the decision to work or not for the various reasons that were put on the table. So the short answer is that it's not intended t

Status of Women committee  There are similar arrangements in the United States and in the U.K. If there's interest, we could pull something together on those. But both of those examples were seen to increase participation in the labour market.

Status of Women committee  What was announced in Budget 2007 was $500 million, starting in 2008-09. It's $500 million a year of funding for programs that are to be delivered by the provinces and territories. The budget made it clear the intent is for the eligibility to be very broadly determined. There's