Proceedings of the Subcommittee on Cities
Issue 3 - Evidence, June 4, 2008
OTTAWA, Wednesday, June 4, 2008
The Subcommittee on Cities of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met today at 4:06 p.m. to study current social issues affecting Canada's large cities today.
Senator Art Eggleton (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Welcome to the Subcommittee on Cities of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. Today we are going to continue to examine and report on current social issues pertaining to Canada's largest cities, women and poverty.
[English]
Our subcommittee is building upon much previous work done in the Senate on the question of poverty. For example, in 1971, we had Senator David Croll's report. Then Senator Cohen put out a report in 1997 entitled Sounding the Alarm: Poverty in Canada.
At the same time our study is going on, it is complemented by work done at the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, which is looking at the question of rural poverty. Also, our very own Senator Keon chairs the Subcommittee on Population Health, which is looking at the social determinants of health, and that again brings in the question of poverty. There are a number of things we hope to bring together in dealing with these issues.
As we have had several hearings so far, we anticipate putting out an options paper within weeks and having it examined over the summer. We will be holding hearings in different places across Canada, including Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Halifax, St. John's, Winnipeg; I cannot remember them all.
We have four witnesses present today who have been asked to make opening statements of five to seven minutes. I will introduce them to you now.
[Translation]
Nancy Burrows is the coordinator of the Fédération des femmes du Québec, an independent women's organization. The federation is actively involved in the struggle against violence and discrimination towards women and against the poverty of which they are victims.
[English]
Next is Fran Klodawsky, Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University. She has researched and published in the area of housing needs of single-parent families. More recently, Ms. Klodawsky has pursued two streams of research interests: first, women's municipal initiatives to promote equality and inclusiveness, especially with regard to safety and municipal services; and second, community interurban national and international efforts to examine the significance of affordable housing and the dilemmas that arise, including homelessness, when such housing is not available.
We have Marika Morris from the School of Canadian Studies, a research and strategic communications consultant who has published extensively in the areas of women, poverty, health and social policy. She also teaches two Canadian studies courses at Carleton University. She was research coordinator for the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women for five years, during which she was principal researcher and author of two national research studies: one integrating the voices of low-income women into policy discussions on the Canada Social Transfer, First Nations women in Vancouver and immigrant and refugee women in Calgary; and a second study on women with disabilities. That was done with respect to Winnipeg.
Next is Claire Young, Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia. Ms. Young has authored several books and numerous articles on tax law and policy. Her recent research has focused on gender and tax law, with a special emphasis on the use of tax expenditure theory as a critical tool of analysis. Ms. Young has studied how tax expenditures are used to fund social programs and how such measures are applied to women. In her research work, she has examined tax provisions that are related to children, dependants, retirement savings and for those individuals with disabilities and their caregivers, and a gender responsive budget project.
Welcome to all four of you. You have terrific knowledge in this whole subject area.
[Translation]
Nancy Burrows, Coordinator, Fédération des femmes du Québec: Mr. Chair, thank you for your invitation. It is a pleasure to be here. I am going to provide an overview of the major issues concerning women and poverty overall. In conclusion, I will talk about some of the demands respecting women and poverty.
Poverty has a gender. Girls and women own less than 1 per cent of the planet's wealth; they work 70 per cent of hours worked and receive only 10 per cent of the income. Women are poorer than men because of the types of jobs they have. They hold 70 per cent of part-time jobs and the majority of non-standard jobs, and are less unionized than men.
Women are poorer than men because they do more unpaid work. Too often the concept of work continues to refer only to salaried work and to exclude housework or care for children or dependent relatives, as well as all other voluntary community service activity. So the work is unrecognized and unpaid. For example, women make up 80 per cent of so-called "natural'' helpers.
Women are poorer than men because of the sectors where they work. For instance, because of the socialization and sexist education that we get, women tend to choose their career based on service rendered to others.
That is why women are mainly to be found in health, social services and retail, which are areas in which women are less well paid and also areas that are the most likely to be affected by privatization.
Among the ten jobs with the largest number of women, secretaries rank first, followed by retail salespersons and cashiers, just for an example of female employment.
Women become poorer when they have children and the low income rate for single-parent families headed by a woman was 52.1 per cent compared with 11.6 per cent for two-parent families.
There are also many elderly women living in poverty and many of them live below the low income cut-off. They are less able to contribute to the Régie de rentes du Québec because leave the labour market at some point to take care of their children. They have fewer years on the labour market and they have lower salaries. All this means that they have lower incomes when they are older.
We are experiencing a housing crisis in Quebec and many other places in Canada, and this is felt by women in particular. Among women who are single parents, 19.6 per cent spend over half of their income on rent. In Quebec, over half of 58,250 families spend over 80 per cent of their income on housing.
Obviously there is the whole issue of homelessness among women. Some of my colleagues will talk about that in greater detail.
Women in general experience multiple discrimination, but some women face more than others. This is particularly the case for women from ostracized ethnocultural groups, including migrant and immigrant women. For instance, talking about women and immigration, in the area of job entry, the facts are clear. The unemployment rate is much higher for immigrant women than it is for immigrant men, and the unemployment rate is higher for immigrants than for the non-immigrant population.
The impacts of non-recognition of degrees and credentials acquired abroad on the economic independence of women immigrants are disastrous. The situation is very difficult for Aboriginal women. They are single parents more often than non-Aboriginal women and they are twice as likely to become mothers before the age of 25.
Some recent studies have shown that urban homelessness has been rising particularly in recent years among Aboriginal women.
There is also the problem of taxation and the distribution of wealth in Canada. Wealth is poorly defined and its production is poorly calculated. According to Statistics Canada, in 1999, the more well-off half of the Canadian population, or 50 per cent, held 94 per cent of personal wealth, while the other half had to be satisfied with the remaining 6 per cent. These numbers are provided by Statistics Canada. The effect of the current system is to increase the gaps between rich and poor, and between men and women.
It is unacceptable that human development in a country as rich as Canada should be in decline. The Canadian government has been criticized in recent years by the UNPD and by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for its failure to respect numerous economic and social rights: the right to an adequate standard of living, to housing, to education, to fair and favourable working conditions, to access to justice and to union rights. This was the UN committee report.
The UN Programme report indicates that social exclusion, chronic unemployment, deterioration of living conditions and functional illiteracy are more of a factor in Canada than in most industrialized countries. It must be remembered that poverty is not just an economic issue. Fundamentally, it is a denial of rights.
To conclude, I will give you a few examples of solutions to the issue of poverty. The women's movement has been working for years on various campaigns and demands. At present, in Quebec, we have a campaign called: emerging from poverty: a societal choice. This campaign is led by the World March of Women, which is part of a worldwide network. Actually we demonstrated in Quebec City on the weekend around Parliament.
The priority demand of this campaign is the minimum wage. It is inexcusable for someone to work 40 hours a week and live below the low income cut-off determined by Statistics Canada. In Quebec the minimum wage should be increased to $10.43 an hour from the current $8.50 an hour for the annual income to be equal to the low income cut- off. I recently met an Afghan woman who has been in Quebec for 12 years, who is a single parent of six children and who works for $8.50 an hour. She has a family to house and feed. This is one example of an unacceptable situation in Canada.
Another demand is for the indexation of social assistance benefits, free medication for all persons with an income under $12,000 a year, and for all child support to no longer be deducted from social assistance benefits, and loans and bursaries. Other matters are also being put forward, such as the need to develop a policy on the reconciliation of work, family and educational responsibilities, the development of social housing and public transit services, and the introduction of a progressive tax system that allows for the redistribution of wealth.
I think that another avenue to be explored is the importance of promoting gender-disaggregated analysis in the various government policies so that we can see the impact of the various policies on men and women.
Poverty and the lack of economic independence among women are the consequences of political and economic decisions. The elimination of female poverty is not a matter of charity, but a matter of rights — women's rights and human rights.
[English]
Fran Klodawsky, Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University: Since 2001, I have been the principal co-investigator, along with Dr. Tim Aubry of the University of Ottawa, in a longitudinal study following diverse persons in the city of Ottawa who were homeless when we first spoke to them in 2002. Our central goal was to learn more about what caused people with different characteristics to become homeless and what factors either helped or hindered them to exit homelessness. Thus, our emphasis was not on learning generally about the homeless population in Ottawa but rather on finding out how homelessness and leaving homelessness happens to diverse individuals.
I hope you have these tables.
The Chair: Yes, we do.
Ms. Klodawsky: They capture both the time frame and the type of persons to whom we spoke.
Overall, we found the experiences of women being homeless and their reasons for becoming homeless were quite different than those of men. When we distinguished women and men on the basis of Aboriginal identity and country of origin, we learned about other important differences as well.
I want to mention briefly three examples of what we learned, which are captured in the three tables I have provided. The first one is particularly disturbing. It is about male and female youth experiences of childhood trauma, including physical and sexual abuse and witnessing abuse within the family. You will see that it was girls, and most particularly Aboriginal girls, who experienced sexual abuse in far greater proportion than was true for male youth.
The second table summarizes the statistical results of trying to sort out the characteristics of our respondents not so much in terms of male, female and so on, but rather in terms of the kinds of health problems that contributed to their homelessness. The three clusters that we identified were, first, a group that appeared relatively free of health problems and whose homelessness seemed largely the result of economic difficulties; second, a group whose substance use problems were most prominent; and, third, a group who reported the presence of chronic physical health problems as well as mental health issues. As you can see from the table, single women and single men were distinct from one another, and adults with children were distinct from homeless single people. About 90 per cent of the adults with children, of whom the majority were women with children, were homeless primarily for economic reasons. In contrast, over half of the adult women alone had complex chronic mental and physical health needs, and that was in comparison to about one quarter of the men. Among youth, the same sort of distinction occurs, although less dramatically. Finally, a larger proportion of male youth and single men found themselves in the group with substance use problems.
The third table of this set captures some of the differences we found when we compared those who were born in Canada to those who were not. There were proportionally more women and more female adults with children among the foreign-born respondents than among the Canadian-born respondents.
I present these findings to illustrate a vital point that needs emphasis. It is not enough to recognize that, broadly, some groups are more affected by poverty than are others. In order to understand what causes people to become homeless and what help they require, it is important to fully incorporate an intersectional lens. By intersectional, I mean an approach that recognizes that a person's life experience is shaped by multiple characteristics, including gender, ethnicity, ability, class, sexual orientation and so on. These factors intersect with one another in complex ways, with poverty too often being the outcome. Until it is recognized that poverty is actually a broad umbrella term for a range of deprivations and indignities and that solutions need to be tailored to individuals' circumstances, effective policy prescriptions will continue to be elusive.
At the same time, though, it is important to thoroughly examine assumptions about what counts when it comes to someone who has been homeless being successful in finding stable housing. In our study, we tested assumptions about what would explain why someone who was homeless in 2002 would or would not be homeless in 2004, because our research was longitudinal. The model that we used — that is, the assumptions that we tested — is captured in the final slide.
For example, we identified substance use problems as likely to be an explanatory factor in explaining why someone who was homeless in 2002 would be homeless or would not be homeless in 2004. However, it was not a significant factor. The only factors that were significant were sense of personal empowerment, level of income support, and access to subsidized housing. Thus, despite the diversity of the population, poverty and lack of access to affordable housing appears to trump health problems in terms of contributing to homelessness and exits from homelessness. Moreover, we found that over the study period, individuals' mental health did not improve simply because they were in stable housing but only when they perceived that their housing was of good quality — that it actually was a home space rather than just bricks and mortar.
Based on these findings, there are important lessons to be drawn when it comes to thinking about federal government actions. The first is the significance of an intersectional approach to problems of poverty and marginalization in terms of research, policy, planning and service delivery at all levels of government. The second is the absolutely central role of affordable, secure and good quality housing in solving homelessness. Canada desperately needs a national housing strategy that is capable of providing good quality shelter to all of those who need it. Homelessness is very unlikely to be solved without this critical policy element in place.
The Chair: We did have your slides and were able to follow them when you were speaking.
[Translation]
Marika Morris, School of Canadian Studies, Carleton University: Mr. Chair, thank you for inviting me today to appear before your committee. Most of my comments will be based on some research of which I am the principal author and that was published by the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women last year.
The research was conducted on low-income women, notably Aboriginal women in Vancouver, immigrant and refugee women in Calgary and women with disabilities in Winnipeg. I have brought a few information leaflets in English and French, which will give you a more detailed idea. I am going to begin by talking about the experience of poverty for women in Canada.
I will then say a few words about the consequences of women's poverty for Canada and I will conclude with the importance of investing in human beings so as to benefit not only women but also the whole of society. For investing in human beings is the very foundation of a healthy, safe and prosperous society.
[English]
The women in our study poured their hearts out to us. Despite the different circumstances in provinces that they were living in, certain themes emerged. I will be echoing some of the other presenters here when I say that they had little choice about where they had to live. They had to live where they could afford the rent. For some, it was a rooming house with doors that did not close properly and where they were sexually harassed, or worse; for some, it was living in dilapidated high-rise buildings owned by slumlords, surrounded by drug dealers and dealing with cockroaches; for some, it was living in a low-rise apartment building with a landlord who tried to make them pay rent in other ways; for some, it was returning to an abusive relationship because they had no housing option. Once they had stayed at the shelter, they could not afford any other place to live so they had to go back to the abuse.
Many of the women were afraid to walk in their own neighbourhoods day or night, and they were afraid to let their kids play outside. Many felt unsafe in their own home, and one lived with another person in an abandoned dog house.
They had little choice about what to eat. When you need to stretch your funds, you buy cheap, filling foods like pasta. If you qualify, you can go to the food bank maybe once a month and get spaghetti and tomato soup. One woman with a disability had to take prescription medication for a protein deficiency because her disability cheque was not sufficient to buy protein foods that she was not allergic to. Basically — and this was Manitoba — the provincial government paid for the prescription but not for the food that would have prevented the condition in the first place. This was one of many examples of how our participants felt that government policies, at both the federal and the provincial levels, made no sense. They also contradicted or sometimes cancelled each other out.
Another theme was that they had little choice about how to earn money. In Alberta, women on social assistance must find full-time, paid work when their child turns one year old. In Alberta, it is difficult to find any kind of child care let alone adequate child care. We found women with post-secondary education on social assistance in Alberta because their credentials were not recognized. They were even turned down when they tried to get low-paid jobs, because of racism.
Most of the Aboriginal women in our Vancouver sample had to resort to prostitution at one point or another. In particular with that sample, if the woman herself was on social assistance, she was usually supporting many other family members who did not qualify for any social program. For example, one woman was supporting her son who had fetal alcohol syndrome. He did not qualify for social assistance because he was considered to be employable when no one would employ him.
Though most people living in poverty in Canada are not on social assistance, they make very low wages. People talk about how businesses cannot afford a higher minimum wage. People cannot afford to live on the minimum wage the way it is.
Some of these people were unable to find work. It is very difficult to try to find work when people are afraid of you because of how you look: you have teeth missing, and there is nothing you can do about it; you look like you are poor; you look like you have not had a good meal in a long time. No one will hire you. Child care, housing, transportation and income were the major issues for our participants.
Almost none of the women in our sample were able to take advantage of EI maternity, parental or sickness benefits. Even if they did qualify, their wages were way too low to be able to afford to live on 55 per cent of their wages. They could not live on their full wage, let alone half of their wage.
Regardless of whether or not they were on social assistance or had some kind of housing or other subsidy, the research participants were inundated with expenses for items that used to be free. In many provinces now, free public education is not free anymore. There are many school fees that need to be paid, sometimes for supplies, sometimes for classes and certainly for any kind of activity. Many of the women in our study were ashamed and embarrassed and felt like bad mothers because they could not afford to give their child the money to participate in pizza day or whatever it was at school.
There were many different stories about how the women came to be living in poverty in the first place. One woman was disabled through an accident, so she was suddenly catapulted into a situation of no income or relying on a disability cheque.
Quite a few women were abused in foster homes and now were self-medicating with drugs, with alcohol. Some women had recently immigrated to Canada and found it very difficult to find work, while others had to quit working to care for family members for free and had no income.
I am sure Ms. Young will speak more about federal tax credits. In our sample, none of the women knew about any of the federal tax credits that might apply to them, like the caregiver tax credit, for example.
Living in poverty took a toll on the women's physical and mental health. They experienced health problems caused by stress, lack of adequate nutrition, physical and sexual attacks, and overcrowded and inadequate housing. Many of the women in our study reported depression and feelings of helplessness from trying to get out of poverty and being continually shoved back. These are not cracks the women are falling through; these are huge, gaping holes formed by shrinking social policy.
Since I do not have much time, I hope that one of your questions to me will be about why women are more vulnerable to poverty, although Ms. Burrows talked about that a little bit, and why economic inequality between men and women still exists in a country like Canada.
The impact of women's poverty affects the whole country. Children are poor because their parents are poor, primarily because their mothers are poor. Poor maternal nutrition leads to low birth rates. Poverty is associated with greater problems at school, greater mental and physical health problems, earlier mortality and higher crime.
In fact, most female offenders who are currently incarcerated are women with low levels of education, few job skills, no economic resources, living alone in extremely poor conditions. Why should people have to go to jail to get housing and nutrition, food, medical care and to learn how to read?
I must talk about investing in kids, because Canada has the worst record in terms of investment in children from the ages of zero to six in industrialized countries according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD — worse than the U.S.
Most of the mothers in our sample living on low incomes were more concerned about their kids than they were about themselves. Many of the women were afraid that they were bad mothers; people looked down on them, and some could not afford to meet their children's basic needs. Especially for Aboriginal women, there was a very real threat of children's services taking their kids away.
For example, B.C. will pay foster parents more to look after your child than they will give you if you are a single mom to raise your own child.
In Norway, 4 per cent of single mothers live in poverty; in Canada, 36 per cent do. Poverty is not a personal choice; it is a social policy choice. A healthy, educated workforce and attractive low-crime cities are major attractions to private investment, but first you have to invest in the population to reap the rewards. I would like you to imagine a Canada without poverty, and I hope that we can talk more in the question and answer period about how that can be achieved. Thank you.
The Chair: We will indeed talk more about it. Thank you for that. That is a wealth of information. There are some very stark realities, pitiful and disgraceful statistics that you and the others have cited. We will get into that.
Claire Young, Senior Associate Dean, Academic Affairs and Professor, Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia: My remarks today will focus on tax policy as a tool to shape and deliver social policy. In particular, I will discuss the negative impact on women of using tax expenditures to deliver social and economic policies, an impact that often contributes to women's economic inequality and poverty.
My starting point is to locate the analysis and the socio-economic realities of women's lives. We know and we have heard some of this already, but women tend to earn less than men and have considerably less wealth than men. Furthermore, more women than men are the primary caregivers for children, and single elderly women over age 65 are far more likely to live in poverty than are elderly men.
We also know that women are not a monolithic group and that, for example, Aboriginal women and women with disabilities have incomes well below those of other women.
Why is the tax system so relevant? It is not simply a revenue-raising instrument. In fact, we use it to deliver all manner of subsidies to Canadians. Let me give just one example to make my point about how we use our tax system as a spending program. I am not talking about collecting tax revenue and then allocating it to various programs. Rather, I am talking about how tax breaks that result in foregone revenue by the government are simply taking the place of a direct spending program.
In 2007 we spent $780 million on the child care expense deduction, a tax deduction designed to help families where both parents work outside the home and need child care for children. To put it another way, Canadians paid $780 million less in taxes than they would otherwise have paid because they were given a tax deduction for their child care expenses; $780 million in tax revenue was foregone by the government.
The tax system in this instance is being used to deliver a subsidy intended to partially defray the cost of child care. The government could have taken that $780 million and built more child care facilities; it could have subsidized existing child care facilities; it could have given every Canadian with a child in child care a grant to help cover off some of the costs. However, the decision was made to deliver this social program through the tax system. I am not saying the government should have taken any of those steps in particular. Those are decisions for politicians; but when you look at tax breaks, such as the child care expense deduction, the first question should be whether the tax system is the best tool we have to accomplish this particular policy.
That is the background to my main point. Over the years we have relied more and more on the tax system to deliver sophisticated social and economic programs.
When you look at the current tax rules through the lens of gender, all kinds of questions are raised. Let me give you some examples. Again, all I am trying to do is to demonstrate how the lens of gender applied to some of our current tax rules might give us some insights into how the intended policy is not actually resulting in fair treatment for all Canadians and, indeed, in some instances I would say is contributing directly to women's economic inequality.
Take the current rules with respect to registered retirement savings plans, RRSPs. Basically, the government is saying we want to help people save for their retirement so we will encourage them to do that by subsidizing that saving. In fact, the tax expenditure for RRSPs is one of the largest annual personal tax expenditures, with a 2008 projection value of that tax break being over $16 billion.
In fact, the RRSP was designed with women in mind. The idea was that because fewer women had access to workplace pension plans, the RRSP would allow them to build up their own personal pensions. When you look at the RRSP from the perspective of women, women are clearly not getting their fair share of that $16 billion tax break, and this contributes to their poverty in retirement. One problem is that because women earn less than men, they have less discretionary income than men to contribute to an RRSP.
Another issue is that the tax break for contributions to RRSPs is a tax deduction, and a tax deduction is worth more to those with high incomes who pay tax at a high rate. For example, you and I both contribute $10,000 to an RRSP. I have a low income and pay tax at an average rate of 10 per cent; you have a higher income and pay tax at an average rate of 40 per cent. I save $1,000 in taxes owing, and you save $4,000. Put another way, we both make the same contribution, but you, the higher income earner, get four times the subsidy that I do, the low income earner. Frankly, you may need that subsidy less than I do because you have the higher income.
I will not go into all the statistics, but when you look at the tax statistics, you can see that while more women than ever are contributing to RRSPs, they are getting significantly less of that $16 billion subsidy than men, in part because of their lower incomes. One result is that, as we know, single women over age 65 constitute one of the lowest-income groups in Canada.
The average income for women over age 65 is just about $16,500, which is over $2,000 below the poverty line for an individual. For men, the average income is almost $10,000 more, at approximately $26,000. Single women over age 65 are the poorest of the poor.
Let me give you one more example that raises questions about the fairness of our current tax rules and how they may not be the right tool by which to achieve certain social policies. I am talking about what we call the spouse or common-law partner tax credit. Taxpayers who support a spouse are entitled to a tax credit of just over $1,000 a year, although the credit is reduced once the spouse's income exceeds approximately $700 and is eventually phased out as the spouse's income increases. Far more men than women claim the credit, and they tend to be men with high incomes supporting their spouses. When you look at this measure from the perspective of the spouse, usually the woman, several issues arise.
First, the measure is designed to promote economic dependency in the relationship, and this has led women's groups to argue for its repeal, given the adverse effect on women's autonomy. There is also a tax cost, that is, the loss of the credit, associated with working outside the home, a real disincentive to women who may wish to work in the paid labour force, along with the other extra costs of that.
Second, the measure is justified on the basis that the ability to pay of the taxpayer is reduced because they have to support their spouse and they should be entitled to some relief. However, others would argue that, in fact, the taxpayer is better off because the spouse is providing work for free in the home, be it child care or other household chores, and it would cost the taxpayer considerably more than $1,000 to replace that household labour.
Finally, some argue that if we are to have such a subsidy, it should not go to the economically dominant person in the relationship but rather the woman who needs it and has no other income.
As long ago as 1970, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada, the Bird commission, recommended the repeal of this provision. Similar provisions have been repealed in most countries, including the U.K., where the revenue arising from the repeal was used to fund a new children's tax credit.
Other issues I do not have time to talk about now but that you may have questions about include the fact that 38 per cent of women tax filers pay no tax, so any subsidy delivered through the tax system is not available to them, and there are many of those. Most recently, we are hearing suggestions that spouses may be permitted to split their income for tax purposes. I suggest we need to be very cautious, because such a policy effectively raises the tax rate for the spouse with the lower income, primarily women, and discourages their participation in the paid labour force.
To conclude, my basic point is that before we rush to use the tax system to deal with socio-economic problems, we must ensure it is the appropriate tool. It certainly is convenient administratively, but when one looks at the actual impact, it is fraught with problems, especially for those with low incomes, and women are disproportionately represented in that group. I would argue that, in fact, our current tax rules directly contribute to women's economic inequality.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We will now have some dialogue with the members of the committee, and I will start it off. Given the size of the committee today, we can take about 15 minutes each in questions and dialogue.
Ms. Morris, I will put your question not only to you but to everybody. Why are women more vulnerable? Ms. Young has given us some response to that in terms of tax law, zeroing in on the RRSP provisions or the spousal credit provisions. I am sure you have other things to say about that. You may also want to touch on the pay equity laws. We used to hear a lot about those, but we do not hear so much about them anymore. One would like to think that is because they are all being implemented, but I am not sure that is the case. Maybe you can tell me whether you think that is the case.
Ms. Morris: Thank you for that question. Ms. Burrows actually covered what I am going to say, which is women's caregiving role. Traditionally, women took care of all the things women did for free in the home, such as nursing, caring for children, teaching their children, cooking, managing the household, and all sorts of things like that. Those things are similar to what women do in the paid workforce, and that is why women's work is given no value in the home and is undervalued in the paid workforce.
Pay equity was designed to try to overcome that by comparing occupations primarily dominated by men with occupations primarily dominated by women and looking at them in terms of what skills and education and level of responsibility are necessary for these jobs. At the time, one famous example was a woman who was a child care worker was making less than a man who was a parking lot attendant, because child care work was considered to be easy. Having a child myself, I can tell you it is not easy.
What is happening now with pay equity? On September 18, 2006, the federal government decided not to implement any of the suggestions of the Pay Equity Task Force. The task force made many recommendations. Now, if you have a pay equity complaint, you have to go to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and it could take eight to ten years for the commission to finally look into it. The task force was proposing a more systematic way of looking at it.
A Statistics Canada time-use survey was done in 1995. Among other things, the Statistics Canada analysts looked at why there was a wage gap between women and men. They compared women, men and their time use and looked at age. They controlled for age, marital status and level of education. They found that the only significant factor that predicted the wage gap was the presence of children. When women had children, their wages or income dropped. When men had children, their income stayed the same or was even raised a little higher.
This has a permanent effect on women's economic equality. It is not that you just take some time out of the paid workforce to have a child and to look after a small child at home, but it has an impact on how your employer views you. Your employer can view you as not really serious about your work. You might have to be the one to take time off work to care for a sick child. You might be the one responding to crises at the school or at the daycare. You might be the one to limit your hours so that you can get home and make dinner. You might be the one to refuse promotions because your life cannot handle the extra responsibility. This is how our society repays women for doing one of the most important jobs there is in the world, reproducing the next generation of citizens and workers. Women are economically penalized for that.
In contrast, in Norway, women's work is recognized, and women are given an income for doing that work. Regardless of whether or not they are doing paid work, every woman gets an income for being a mother and it is taxed back if the woman's income is higher.
The other thing about women's different kinds of occupations is that there is no occupation, not teaching, not nursing, not retail sales, where women earn on average higher than men. In each of those occupations men earn more than women. The wage gap is still present.
I have a fact sheet with me called Women in Poverty, which I can give to the clerk or researcher to distribute.
Ms. Klodawsky: I want to speak from the position of those deciding on social policy, those deciding on tax policy. I agree with everything that my colleagues have said.
I want to emphasize that we will not be able to overcome these problems until, as policy-makers, as decision makers, we begin to appreciate the diversity of men's and women's lives in this country — the different circumstances and different challenges they face — and take those into account fully in shaping the policies for the goals that are stated as being national, provincial and municipal goals. Until we truly recognize that to achieve those goals, different people need different kinds of supports, and there are different circumstances to be brought into the picture fully, we will not get very far.
Part of the reason we are where we are is that there have been too many assumptions about what is normal, what is average and, therefore, what policy should stem and be drawn from those average Canadians, who I do not think exist.
[Translation]
Ms. Burrows: With regard to pay equity, to use the example of Quebec, we have a provincial law on pay equity. It is a gain and it was important for the women of Quebec. However, it does not cover all sectors. It covers the public sector, and big businesses, but not small businesses. There is the problem of resources for its implementation. It is a matter of priorities.
There is a Quebec commission on pay equity and sometimes we hear that it is endangered. We cannot be sure that this commission will continue to ensure implementation.
There is also the matter of priorization. We are in a larger context on the federal and provincial political scene, where there is the myth that equality between men and women has been gained and that, since we have certain tools, we do not need to work to defend the rights of women. The issue of pay equity is a perfect example. Yes, we have a law but that is not everything. It has to be enforced. These are always fragile gains. We see that the government does not always make follow-up a priority to make sure that the law is implemented as intended when it was passed.
[English]
The Chair: Ms. Young, you commented that 30 per cent of women — this is a staggering figure — do not pay taxes. They do not benefit from many of these tax expenditure programs if they are not paying taxes. Many of these tax deductions are not helpful.
What would you suggest is the proper way of dealing with this? Should we be looking at a guaranteed annual income or guaranteed annual income techniques in terms of applications and refundable tax credits and the like? Could you comment on that?
Ms. Young: It is actually 38 per cent, not 30 per cent. That is women tax filers. It is interesting that those women are actually filing tax returns but not paying tax.
The major reason they are filing tax returns is that you are not entitled to the child tax credit or the goods and services tax credit unless you file a tax return. In terms of thinking about our tax system, the first thing that we should be doing is an analysis of the impact of all the social programs that we are delivering through the tax system by reference to gender, class, ability, race and so on. Once you extrapolate that information, you are in a better position to determine whether the tax system is an appropriate tool at all and, if it is, what technical tax measures should be used.
I have talked about the tax deductions and how they are often described as an upside-down subsidy: to the extent that you do get a tax deduction, its value is worth more to you the higher your income. That does not seem appropriate in terms of dealing with women's economic inequality or poverty.
The next measure that is often used is a tax credit, which means that if you pay tax you will get a credit against the taxes you owe, but again, while that is fairer because the value to you does not depend on your income level, you have to be a taxpayer to benefit.
The next measure is the refundable tax credit, which is the one that many women rely on tremendously, through both the GST tax credit and the Canada Child Tax Benefit. Again, you have to file a tax return to get those amounts. We do not have data on this, but I speculate that women who are homeless and do not have fixed addresses are not filing tax returns.
I have been involved in a project actually working in the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver trying to persuade people and filling in tax returns for them so that they are entitled to those credits.
The first question is whether the actual measure is being used appropriately. Is it delivering the program in the appropriate way? If not, is there a better tax measure? If the answer to that is no, then perhaps we need to be looking at delivering the program in a completely different way. It might be a guaranteed annual income, it might be direct grants to mothers, and it might be reverting to the old family allowance, which was a direct grant given to women who cared for children as opposed to the current Child Tax Benefit.
The key is that policy-makers understand the limitations of the tax system. That is my point today.
The Chair: That is very interesting. Even if it is made refundable, that does not mean they get the money if they do not apply for it.
Ms. Young: You have to file the tax return.
The Chair: If a person is spending a lot of time on the street, it is very difficult to do that.
I will try to slip in two questions to Ms. Burrows and Dr. Klodawsky.
Ms. Burrows, in Quebec there is a legislated poverty reduction program. We have talked about it a few times here. It has an advisory committee. Is your organization a part of that? Are this advisory committee and the legislation addressing these issues, the unique circumstances confronting women?
Dr. Klodawsky, a lot of the homeless people we see on the streets are men. There are women on the streets. I am honorary director of 416 Drop-In Centre in Toronto, which is where a lot of women go for shelter and for daytime gathering. These are people on the street, but I think most people see the men on the street. I would think there are a lot more hidden women in this category. How do you deal with the fact that there are a lot more hidden women? How significant is it, really?
[Translation]
Ms. Burrows: Yes, there is a law to eliminate poverty that was passed by the Quebec government. It is a perfect example of what I was saying earlier. A law is one thing, but it is another to have concrete measures and policies to follow through.
Almost systematically the Government of Quebec rejects claims of poverty.
The Fédération des femmes du Québec is working on the issues of poverty, violence, discrimination, racism, homophobia and globalization.
For instance, when we talk about violence against women, people pay a lot more attention even if their responses are incomplete with regard to the struggle against violence against women and the struggle against poverty. But nearly always our claims are dismissed. This is an example of a law that was passed — it sounds good — but that never manages to find expression in concrete measures.
I gave you some examples of demands made of the government, for example, increasing the minimum wage. This is a priority demand so that women can live above the low-income cut-off set by Statistics Canada, not by some radical women's organization. It is really a simple measure to understand. There was actually a slight increase recently, but no substantive measures have been provided for in the law. It is the same thing for social assistance. Social assistance benefits are not indexed and the rates are extremely low. It is impossible to house and feed oneself on social assistance money in Quebec.
[English]
The Chair: I would like your comments on women and homelessness, in particular hidden homelessness.
Ms. Klodawsky: You are absolutely right that when we look at homelessness as a problem that we see, we see primarily men on the street. There is a certain understanding of homelessness that is drawn from that picture. Even homelessness insofar as people using emergency shelters is concerned is a much more diverse population than what is understood as a result of the visible impressions.
If we look at the numbers of those in emergency shelters, there are many more men. There is lots of evidence to suggest that more women are among the hidden homeless. When one looks at the statistics about who is paying over 60 per cent or 70 per cent of their income on rent, women are certainly, as you have heard, very prominently among those groups. It is quite logical to expect that many of those women are vulnerably housed — for example, surfing from one couch to another. The true extent of the hidden homelessness problem is not known. It is difficult to trace. There is some research going on now that is beginning to do that.
It comes down to some economic indicators, as a variety of research is indicating. If women have enough money so that they are able to pay for their housing as well as for food and other matters, they are very much further ahead. To link back to Ms. Young's point about the tax system only being part of the puzzle, it is very important that we think more and more about assets like housing as social infrastructure investments that, in the non-profit sector, for example, pay off again and again. The front-end costs of building housing are very expensive. When one looks at a short time frame, it seems like an expense that is beyond what government can handle. However, if one thinks about investments of housing over a 25- or 30- or even 50-year time frame, it is a fabulous investment. The stock that we have from past investments in public and social housing is helping a great deal to keep people, especially women these days, from being homeless.
Some of that housing desperately needs new investments to bring it up to good standards. There are lots of issues related to that, but thinking much more about investment in social infrastructure would be a valuable complement to thinking about the tax system.
The Chair: I agree.
Thank you, panel. Let me now turn to Senator Wilbert Keon, a senator from Ontario, in fact right here in Ottawa. As I mentioned, he is chairing the Subcommittee on Population Health. Much of what happens here and happens there will work together.
Senator Keon: This is fascinating stuff and frustrating stuff for those of you in the trenches.
I will approach my questions from two dimensions. The first is top-down, that is, the government coming at you from 30,000 feet with these programs that are so impersonal, that take years to get to the ground and that are an exercise in self-control, trying to find your way through a federal dollar down through to the provincial coffers and then into a city and into a community. I will ask a question on that later.
First, this committee is looking at poverty in cities. It seems to me that the big cities we are studying have lost their personality. They are just huge cities where no one knows anyone and nothing is related. They have lost their sense of community. Until they can be divided into communities where the people who are affected can organize themselves to help get out of this conundrum, no matter how much money is poured in — and there will never be enough money poured in — and no matter what programs are instituted and no matter how grandiose they sound at election time, they will not solve the problem until organization occurs at the community level. I think that cities must be broken down into communities where the people of the communities control their own destiny. The kind of thing you were describing, Ms. Morris, could never occur in a small town no matter how poor the people were; they would not stand for it. It certainly could never occur in a village. It could not occur in a small town; it must occur in a city, where no one knows anyone else and no one cares about anyone else.
Tell Senator Eggleton, since he was Mayor of Toronto for a long time, how he should have organized Toronto into communities.
The Chair: Do you want to respond to Senator Keon's comments, aside from my time as Mayor of Toronto?
Ms. Klodawsky: Regarding cities being anonymous and not caring, I have to disagree with you. I have lived in the city of Ottawa now for about 25 years and have been part of many organizations that are working very hard to create good communities and good housing, against sometimes very difficult odds.
I want to connect to what Ms. Burrows is saying about the international economy and the direction in which that is moving in terms of the kinds of jobs that are available. We are having a loss of those middle-income jobs. Some people are earning very high incomes, but more and more people are being pushed down. They start out with very little. Many organizations, both faith communities and secular communities, are organizing themselves in a multitude of ways to try to help a situation that is way beyond their control.
There needs to be recognition of the different levels of pressures. Cities in Canada also face the difficulty of not receiving sufficient funding for all the obligations they have and are asked to have by their constituents, who do want their fellow citizens to live decently.
I am sorry, but I must disagree with you. Numerous cities and towns in Canada are trying to put together what resources they have around community initiatives. There is more and more effort in that direction. The Vibrant Communities initiative is spawning interesting developments across Canada. Those efforts are under way, but municipalities are tremendously stressed by the lack of recognition of what they are trying to do and the gap between what they are trying to do and what they need to do, since they are the last player in terms of government, and the resources available to them.
There is evidence — and I am sure Ms. Morris could speak to this as well — that even in small towns women experience domestic violence and sometimes do not have a place to turn to because there is a lot of pressure to maintain face, or there may be disbelief if an upstanding citizen is accused of such things.
There are many challenges ahead. Certainly, community efforts are part of those, but I think that those efforts are under way in many different places.
The Chair: Ms. Morris wanted to respond. There are two people from the same city disagreeing.
Ms. Morris: I was interested by what you just said, Senator Keon, because one of my current areas of research is social capital — social networks between people and the helping relationships between people. Sense of community is part of that as well.
One element of social capital is trust. We found with our research participants that they had no trust whatsoever in government because government had no trust in them, especially the women who had been through social assistance. It was very punitive. They were assumed to be criminals. There were so many limitations on their lives that they did not feel as if anyone wanted to help them. The only help they got was from their social networks, if they had them. We found some women with disabilities in particular who were able to access that kind of thing, such as having someone buy them a winter coat, and that made them able to cope in some ways with what they were experiencing.
The Aboriginal women, however, were the social network for others. They were relying on a tiny income and trying to take care of many other people. They felt that their community did not care about them at all. They are marginalized from their communities. People make assumptions about them; they just look at them, at what they are wearing and at who they are, and think, "You are just some deadbeat.'' There are people who can help, but they just do not want to help.
There has been a shift towards thinking that people are poor because they deserve to be poor, they choose to be poor, and they have made bad choices, without taking into consideration that some people only have the choice between bad and worse. In fact, they are to be congratulated for making the bad choice under those circumstances. People are less willing to help others if they think that they are in that situation because they have done it to themselves.
Senator Keon: Let me take a different approach now. Someone mentioned the Scandinavian countries. I think it was you, Ms. Morris. You mentioned Norway. I find it to be fascinating. As Senator Eggleton mentioned, I am doing a study on population health, a fascinating study on the social safety net. I wonder if some of it comes from the act fact that Norway has so much oil now and a very small population, easy to organize. They certainly are doing everything right; there is no question about that.
One thing the Scandinavian countries are doing fundamentally is their approach to poverty, which is to pay the money out and tax it back. There is nothing complicated about that. They do not need 100 different programs. They simply put the money on the table for the people who need it, and if the people who need it are getting too much, they tax it back. It seems pretty simple to me. If that is an oversimplification, please correct me, and Ms. Young may want to address that.
As the chair can tell you, to the despair of the rest of the committee, I keep raising this question with regard to Canada. Why do we need hundreds of programs when all we have to do is provide every citizen and every family with a basic income? That would simplify things.
The financial people all shoot that down. In all the hearings we have had, only one witness has said, "You can do that.'' Everyone else has said, "No, you cannot do that.''
Let me ask you to address this concept of paying the money out and taxing it back. What about that?
Ms. Young: Of course, you can do it. The resistance is that we actually are using our tax system for three distinct purposes: one, to raise revenue; second, in a redistributive function, collecting and redistributing the income; third, to deliver social and economic programs. If you strip out the social and economic programs part, you have a much simpler and in many ways fairer tax system.
The one small thing we do in this regard now is Old Age Security. It is taxed back. It is an example of a flat amount paid out. If your income is above a certain level, it is taxed back. It is pretty straightforward and simple. The difficulty, probably, if you talk to the Department of Finance or the Canada Revenue Agency, is that it is so different from our current system. We have no real history of this.
Other jurisdictions, such as Hong Kong or New Zealand as well as the Scandinavian countries, have income tax acts that are not large. I did not bring mine with me because it might have been excess baggage on the plane, but our Income Tax Act is huge, because it is replete with these various expenditures. It is my view that it can be done.
Ms. Morris: People are afraid. No political party wants to campaign on raising taxes to pay for social programs. Everyone wants to do better with what we have, to stimulate the economy with tax cuts and so on. However, it is not a matter of whether or not you pay; it is when you pay, how much you pay and whom you pay. You can either pay for a health care system up front or you can pay private health clinics later, and you will end up paying more.
With the various programs, you are correct. We had one Aboriginal woman who needed some medical devices. British Columbia social assistance said, "Go to your band.'' She went to her band and three years later they said, "No, we will not pay for it. British Columbia should pay for it.'' In the meantime, she had nothing.
A current issue is the Guaranteed Income Supplement. Many people out there qualify for the GIS. They are seniors living in poverty who are not getting it because they have to know about the forms to fill out and then fill out the forms. There are a number of criteria. Why not give them the money and, as you said, tax it back later? My caveat is that we also need to invest in child care facilities, a strong health care system and affordable housing. Income will not replace those areas of social programming, but it can complement them.
The Chair: I will move along to another physician we have on the committee, Senator Trenholme Counsell from New Brunswick. She is also helping to spearhead another report that we are doing from this committee on early learning and child care, addressing in particular one of the issues you mentioned, Ms. Morris: the OECD report. In fact, we just had a conversation on that before we came to this meeting.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: We usually say this has been a wonderful presentation, but it has made me sad to hear the reality of what you have just said and have enlarged our knowledge about. It is all terrible to hear.
I saw a lot of this as a family doctor for 27 years. I saw it so bare and naked and so real. Going into government, I then saw it through different eyes.
I say this all the time in speeches, and perhaps you might want to comment on this. I believe the only long-term answer is education of women. Not just academic education, but education around violence against women, around being smart about how to break the glass ceiling, and all of these things — the basic, on-the-ground education at ever greater levels. Obviously, I went to school for a long while. I was very lucky, but it was not easy; it was a struggle.
Would you like to speak about that? We can have short-term solutions, but the only long-term solution is not only academic education but empowerment, mentoring and being there for each other as women.
I should like to zero in on what you said, Ms. Burrows, that women become poorer if they have children. I believe those were your words. Again, that is very sad, because children are such a precious gift. I think you said that 52 per cent of women who are single parents are in poverty, which is very high.
You mentioned single women in Norway at 4 per cent, versus 36 per cent in Canada. Perhaps you will elaborate on that.
Also, Ms. Morris, you raised the issue of child care. Again, there is the news that it is a crisis in Alberta, where there is a lot of money. There are some signs in the recent budget that this is starting is improve, however.
I would appreciate your talking about education of women and education in the broadest sense. You talked a lot about abuse and its impact. I would like to know how we can do a better job of attacking that.
Senator Eggleton introduced the issue of child care and universally available quality child care, which would help this situation. We were told earlier this year by the Canadian Association of Food Banks that the lack of child care was contributing to the increasing use of food banks. I would like to hear your comments also on the child care issue.
[Translation]
Ms. Burrows: As for having children, in 2004, according to Statistics Canada, 52.1 per cent of single-parent families headed by a woman fall within the low-income category, compared to 11.6 per cent of two-parent families. Yes, it is very alarming for women who are single parents. There is a lot of talk about this and it is important for us, when we talk about the struggle against poverty, to say that it is not a question of charity, but a right. Often people talk about child poverty and there are campaigns against child poverty, but behind the children, obviously there are families and most of the time they are headed by women. In Quebec, 18 per cent of children are poor. But many of these poor children are from single-parent families headed by a woman. This is a very sad reality.
In Quebec, we are lucky because we have a good system, which is the envy of many other provinces; public daycare for seven dollars a day. This too is a fragile gain. The government recently tried to increase the rates, but thanks to social movements and pressure, we managed to maintain them.
Obviously there are not enough daycare spaces and the government has promised to invest in 20,000 new spaces. We are still waiting; this is another watchdog job to make sure that pressure is brought to bear so that the promises become a reality.
As far as education is concerned, clearly, as a women's group, we do a lot of popular education, we believe in women's power. This is an important approach or solution. I also think that there are other long-term solutions. The education of women is just one piece of the puzzle. We can change one woman at a time, we can do group projects to improve our living conditions, but there are really some systemic changes needed in our society — for example the issue of unpaid work by women. We can educate women about the importance of sharing duties with their spouses, but the reality in Canada is that women are doing twice as much housework as men in 2008. It is not just a matter of women becoming aware of their experience, but also of their being players in social changes in their lives. We are focusing a lot on that. It cannot be the only thing because there are also changes that men, society and other social players such as the government and other institutions have to bring about.
We are trying to change women's mentalities, and also the mentality of society as a whole. That is why our present situation, which blames feminists for social problems, is alarming. In Quebec, the men's movement is making increasing gains. These are men who say they are victimized. Actually today marks the beginning of a trial against a feminist and a progressive magazine that published an article about the rise of masculism in Quebec, and a man with an anti-feminist discourse is taking them to court for defamatory libel. More and more in the media and society we hear a discourse that discredits feminism and blames it for every social ill from boys' suicides to school dropouts.
This is part of a situation in which increasingly conservative governments want to get women back in the home.
In Quebec, for example, the official opposition largely based its last election campaign on the place of women by sending out a message more or less encouraging women to stay at home.
There is a growing rise in sexist messages and we also have to deal with that. It is not just about educating women; we have to continue the struggle against the antifeminist backlash in order to make some structural changes.
[English]
Ms. Klodawsky: I would like to respond in a couple of ways. First, education is certainly central. I think feminism has actually contributed wonderfully in terms of urging that disaggregated research take place that looks at differences among individuals and how those differences play into success or adversity. That is very significant and I think an important contribution.
With regard to children, there is a certain irony in the panel study in that families with children were much more successful in finding housing than were the other respondents. Ninety-seven per cent of those we interviewed who were parents with children were able to establish stable housing. About half of them actually had access to subsidized housing. At the bottom, there is some recognition, some differentiation and particular favour given to families with children.
Unfortunately, we have, even among adults with children, families becoming homeless more than once because of the high cost of housing, the challenge of having to pay for school fees and all the other kinds of user fees that are cascading down on the shoulders of the poor.
I agree with Ms. Burrows that it cannot be piecemeal. We have to look at the whole ball of wax and think about how to create more inclusive kinds of policies so that we do not wait until children and women get to the bottom in order to be helped but rather take a more preventive kind of stance.
Another issue that is important to mention here is that, unfortunately, Canada is part of a group of liberal welfare perspectives that distinguishes between deserving and undeserving when it comes to poverty and the treatment of poverty. As long as that is the case, we have a major problem, especially because we have a shrinking social security net.
Who is to blame if people are born with fetal alcohol syndrome? Their capacity is very limited. There is nothing in evidence yet to suggest we can turn around that kind of disability, yet those individuals look "normal.'' They may look employable, but as Ms. Morris's example indicated, someone who has fetal alcohol syndrome may not last very long even if that person is given a chance in the work place. Then what happens?
What about the girls who are abused as children and who suffer trauma for years afterwards? There is much evidence that that experience in childhood has impacts for years to come. What happens then? Again, that woman who has experienced trauma may look and act "normal.'' She may seem employable, but if she has these challenges, is she deserving or undeserving, and how do we treat that?
Those are critical things to think about in relation to the issues that are important to you, which I certainly agree with.
Ms. Morris: With respect to education, currently women are more than 50 per cent of undergraduate enrolment in post-secondary institutions in Canada. It is about half and half now in law schools and medical schools. However, once these women have kids, the wage gap remains the same. There is a 30 per cent wage gap because, regardless of whether women are lawyers or doctors, if they want to have kids, they have to take that break. As lawyers, they will not be logging those billable hours.
Not everyone is cut out for a post-secondary education. I am sure those of us who teach see kids who are forced to go to university by their parents because other occupations that do not require university are undervalued and underpaid. In contrast, in Germany there is much more respect for trades. Here we have a trade shortage because people of a certain class do not want their kids to become plumbers and electricians. Formal education is obviously one avenue, but it is not the individual solutions that will prevent poverty like this.
I am actually more concerned about the other end of things, which is early learning. You also mentioned child care. It was very disappointing when the government cancelled the early learning and child care agreements with the provinces. That was more than $1 billion in investment gone. It was replaced by the Universal Child Care Benefit, which is $100 a month given to people with kids under the age of 6. I receive $100 a month as the mother of a 3-year- old. My daughter's daycare is over $1,000 a month. Unfortunately, $100 a month does not replace my wages, either. It does not give me choice in child care at all. In fact, I would have more choice if there was good quality child care that was affordable and available.
Unfortunately, because child care is just seen as babysitting, there is not enough of an investment towards it. Early learning is one of the most important things in child development. Currently, there is a disproportionate number of children in Canada who are Aboriginal, who are the daughters and sons of immigrants or who are immigrants themselves. We are talking about a racialization of this population that is becoming more disadvantaged.
Ms. Young: I will respond very quickly on the child care issue because I tend to relate everything to the income tax system.
Earlier, I mentioned the $780 million we spend. We have to realize that, basically, single women with children are the poorest of the poor in Canada. Most of those women, those living below the poverty line, are not getting any of that $780 million. The men and women benefiting from it are those with higher incomes.
The cap is $7,000. Ms. Morris mentioned the cost of child care. It is $7,000 a year, and it is a tax deduction. If you pay tax at 20 per cent, your subsidy is $1,400. That is an average 20 per cent rate, which is actually quite high. It is just inadequately and wrongly directed.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: If I gave you the impression that I was talking about university education for all, I certainly was not. I am a great believer in community college education and all the other educational courses that lead one into a slightly improved level of employment and empowerment, if you will.
The Chair: I got the impression you were talking about more than formal education.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I was talking about societal education as well.
Senator Munson: Most of my questions have been asked, but there are a few things I would like to pick up on.
I have noticed in some of the presentations the word "disability.'' I would like to explore that, people being left behind, those with disabilities, and what must be done. I know this is a general question, which is difficult, but what more must be done for women with disabilities who have incomes well below those of other women? Could you provide a very brief summation of what more must be done in law, from a federal government perspective, in dealing with women with disabilities or anyone with a disability?
Ms. Young: As a tax lawyer, I think the disability tax credit is woefully inadequate, both in amount and in the way it is structured. If you talk to any group representing people with disabilities, that will be top of their list; there is no question.
In terms of other things that could be done, you mentioned law. As a lawyer, I always have to point out that we think that law can solve everything and that it is a wonderful tool, but there are limitations to what law itself can do. Certainly, social programs could make a huge difference, and I would defer to my colleagues with more expertise in those areas.
Ms. Morris: In our study, we found that there were a number of women with both recognized and unrecognized disabilities. The unrecognized disabilities were impediments to finding paid work, but sometimes they were given the lower social assistance rate or they were unable to find work because of those disabilities.
The definition of "disability'' is arbitrary. We had one deaf woman in Manitoba who was considered disabled by the federal government but not by the provincial government. She was getting the regular social assistance rate, not with a disability cheque, and it was minimal. She could not afford a TTY phone, for example, to call out; she could not afford a special fire alarm that would light up instead of ring, to let her know if she was in danger; and she did not qualify for the special assistance to help her find work.
The reality is that we live in the context of decentralized federalism, where across the country we have different definitions and different programs. I am not sure what to suggest to you about that.
In terms of a law, we do have the Canada Health Act, which has some basic standards that all provinces must meet. Perhaps there should be something of that kind for child care and disability, where some basic standards must be met across the country. That might be impossible to negotiate in the current climate.
Senator Munson: I was thinking along another line, that of mental health issues. This committee recommended a Canadian Mental Health Commission, and we now have one. I am talking about the sensitivity of employers to recognize this issue, which is not behind the scenes anymore — it is out of the shadows, as has been said. We need an approach to deal with that sort of situation, so that when a person has a personal breakdown and then is not in the workforce and goes away for health treatment, like you would for cancer, for example, the person is not penalized.
Do you think there should be something built in, perhaps not in law, to encourage employers to continue to pay that person's wage at some kind of rate, not just the unemployment insurance rate, so that the person can get back into Canadian society again?
Ms. Klodawsky: There needs to be a link with the idea of intersectionality. We need to build that into all of our assessments of social policies. We need to be asking how particular policies affect a woman with a mental illness or a physical disability. In all our decision making, we need to recognize that people's disparate situations have tremendous impacts on the ways in which law and social policy affect them, whether to the good or to their detriment.
We need to build that into our conversations centrally, not as an add-on, and to begin to recognize that the diversity of the ways people experience the world — the challenges they have, their abilities, and the strengths they bring to a situation —has everything to do with how a certain benefit will have an impact.
As Ms. Burrows was saying, it cannot be piecemeal. There needs to be a reassessment. Thinking of the goals we want to achieve, if we are interested in inclusion, in having a society where people feel they can participate and where they feel valued, where they feel that their abilities are recognized and need to be nurtured, we need to begin to rethink our approach. I know that is very broad and general. It ties into taking a human rights perspective. There are some wonderful tools for assessing these kinds of diversities and to begin to put them into place.
The other related point that I want to mention is that Canada is great at encouraging pilot projects, which can be very successful, but somehow we do not learn from them. We do not take them up and generalize them, and yet there is a wealth of knowledge there that could be of great benefit.
Senator Munson: At the beginning of our discussion this afternoon, Ms. Burrows mentioned sexist education. You walk into one of these crazy box stores and you see young women working in retail; in seniors' residences, you see women caregivers and not too many male caregivers. The women do not get paid very much money in all of these areas.
I would like to explore briefly with you how you change that, if it is a sexist education. Someone must do this work: young men or young women or older men or older women. I would like to know how to get around the terminology of "sexist education.''
Are you saying that is how we got here, because young women are encouraged to go off and work in a store, make some money and not worry about it, or people from other countries, and new Canadians, seem to end up caring for our mothers and fathers, with minimal pay?
[Translation]
Ms. Burrows: I do not know whether I used the words "sexist education.'' There is a part of my written text that was twice as long. In it I talk about patriarchy. I decided to leave out that part and to give some more concrete examples or ones easier to understand. When we talk about differentiated socialization, when we are born women, as girls we are told that we are supposed to be naturally gentler, more loving, more helpful, et cetera. It is all about socialization, and it affects us. Men are told to be more dynamic and competitive. This is one of the reasons why distinctions are made between roles, that is, that naturally or biologically we are supposed to be different and then a hierarchy is created.
When Ms. Morris talked about jobs, we generally talk about jobs that are traditionally men's being valued more than those of women. This is the natural extension of what we learned when we were young, namely to become social workers, nurses or teachers because we are taught as girls, from a very early age, to help others and respond to their needs. We become good mothers and good wives and only in last place are we entitled to think about our own needs as women.
I worked for five years in a women's centre doing popular education and counselling. It was unbelievable to see, regardless of their age, the extent to which women could become aware and realize just how much they denied their own needs and how unprepared they felt to respond to their own needs.
That is part of any sexist socialization. I mention this to explain further the concept I was talking about. But how to change it? I spoke earlier about the importance of working more generally and more systematically. The patriarchal system is not about to fall, but we can do all sorts of things, both as individuals and as groups, to bring about change.
[English]
Senator Munson: I can tell you about traditional ideas that have been there. My mother is in a seniors' home. A male nurse came in not so long ago, and she would not trust him at all, unless he had been trained at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. She said, "What are you doing here? I trust a woman being my nurse.'' There are some attitudinal changes that must happen, I guess, in dealing with that.
We value what you say. We have had reports for example on autism: Pay Now or Pay Later: Autism Families in Crisis. Those witnesses' recommendations became our report.
You do not have to be too long about this, but if there is one thing a government can do to eliminate poverty among women, one specific concrete thing that you believe should be front and centre in this report dealing with cities and population health, I would like to hear that in clear, clean language.
The Chair: That will require some quick responses, but we are looking for what would be the one thing, if there were one thing.
[Translation]
Ms. Burrows: There is not just one thing. Also, we are more focused on the struggle against poverty at the provincial level. In the recent World March of Women campaign in Quebec, the most urgent and highest-priority demand was for an increase in the minimum wage. I know that this is not up to the federal government, but I mention it as one of the issues acknowledged by feminists in Quebec as being a top priority — an increase in the minimum wage so that it is above the low-income cut-off. This means a substantial increase.
[English]
Ms. Klodawsky: Having secure, affordable, safe housing would do a tremendous amount to alleviate poverty. It would avoid the fact that food prices can go up, that the cost of living can go up. If one has secure housing, a great deal of other challenges are manageable; but without that central element, everything becomes quite chaotic and much more difficult.
Ms. Morris: This is so hard because I think it is more than one thing.
Senator Munson: One thing from you now, so we will get four, hopefully.
Ms. Morris: If I had to boil it down to one thing, I would say consult with low-income women themselves about what they want and need, and then you will hear the rest of it, which is child care, public transportation, housing, decent income.
Ms. Young: I absolutely agree with those three. Of course, I have to relate it to my area of expertise; and there is no question, if you are going to have excellence, you need excellent social programs. My colleagues have talked about what those should be. If you use the tax system to deliver them, you need to think very carefully about it. You need to review the impact on all women by reference to race, class, gender and so on. Be very careful about using the tax system, is what I would say. I think it has been flawed to this point in time and needs reviewing.
Senator Munson: Thank you very much.
The Chair: We have five more minutes. I have one more question for you. I will need some quick responses.
We will have a round table discussion in about ten days on guaranteed annual income, a negative income tax concept. Some people think that is a good way of dealing with the issues of income, but others say that income is not everything when it comes to poverty and that many services and things need to be provided.
How do you feel about a guaranteed annual income? Is that the solution or part of the solution, or is it time to move on and talk about something else?
Ms. Young: Negative income tax has been debated for a long time. Alone, it is not the solution. It could be part of a solution, but as you alluded to, many other issues come into play, and other things cannot drop off the table. It is a partial solution in concert with other things.
Ms. Morris: I support an annual guaranteed income, although I have also heard it called "annual guaranteed poverty,'' because it would really depend on the rate. It would also pose political problems, because you would have to raise taxes in order to generate that money to give out to everyone. Also, we would probably hear all sorts of poor- bashing stereotypes again, about why so and so who has an addiction should be getting this money and so on. We need to deal with those stereotypes about people living in poverty as well.
I support what Ms. Young was saying. In terms of tax preparation, for example, women in B.C. who are on social assistance must file their income tax, so they go to a tax preparer, like H&R Block, which takes a cut. Therefore, Canadian taxpayers are giving money directly to H&R Block and other tax preparers. I am also very wary of using the tax system.
Ms. Klodawsky: For me the question is what will that income provide. How far does that guaranteed annual income go? Are there any necessary kinds of outcomes?
Income alone is not the answer. It is really about what that income will get you. If housing prices keep rising but the income does not rise at the same rate, people are worse off. Again, there is also the question of trade-offs, which is critical to the discussion. If we put a lot of money into a guaranteed annual income, does that mean less for investments in social housing, schools and health care?
It is important to think through the impacts, not only generally, but on different groups, different groups of women and men in different circumstances.
Related to this is the question of over what time frame. It may be a very pretty solution at one point in time. When we think about it over a 10-year period, what kinds of outcomes can we expect over the long term?
[Translation]
Ms. Burrows: A guaranteed annual income is indeed something that has been explored or put forward by many social movements. This could be part of the solution. It depends on the level of indexation. Clearly. As I was saying, concerning social assistance, I cannot get over the fact that, besides not being enough to survive on, this minimum is not at least indexed to the cost of living. So we need a guaranteed income with a reasonable starting level, which is then indexed to the cost of living. But clearly this is only part of the answer.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you all for your presentations and answer to the questions. You have provided a wealth of information that is most helpful to us.
Colleagues, we will continue at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow with affordable housing. We will deal particularly with affordable home ownership.
The committee adjourned.