Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Finance
Issue No. 84 - Evidence - December 5, 2018 (6 p.m. meeting)
OTTAWA, Wednesday, December 5, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, to which was referred Bill C-86, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018 and other measures, met this day at 6:45 p.m. to give consideration to the bill (topics: Part 4, Division 9 — Gender Budgeting; Part 4, Division 18 — Department for Women and Gender Equity).
Senator Percy Mockler (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: My name is Percy Mockler, senator from New Brunswick and chair of the committee.
I wish to welcome all of those who are with us in the room and viewers across the country who may be watching on television or online.
[Translation]
As a reminder to those watching, the committee hearings are open to the public and also available online at sencanada.ca. Now I would like to ask the senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Forest: Éric Forest from Quebec.
Senator Pratte: André Pratte from Quebec.
Senator Forest-Niesing: Good evening and welcome. Josée Forest-Niesing from Ontario.
[English]
Senator Boehm: Peter Boehm, Ontario.
Senator Klyne: Marty Klyne, Saskatchewan.
The Chair: I would also like to recognize our clerk, Gaëtane Lemay, and our two analysts, Alex Smith and Shaowei Pu, who team up to support the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance.
The mandate of this committee is to examine matters relating to the federal estimates, generally, and government finance. Today we continue our consideration of Bill C-86, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 27, 2018, and other measures, which was referred yesterday to this committee by the Senate of Canada.
This evening we want to focus on two measures introduced in Bill C-86.
[Translation]
For the first hour, we will focus more specifically on Part 4, Division 9, which deals with gender budgeting.
[English]
To discuss the matter, we welcome Kathleen Lahey, Professor and Queen’s National Scholar, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University; and from Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, Samantha Michaels, Senior Policy Advisor. Thank you very much for accepting our invitation.
I have been informed that Professor Lahey will be the first to make remarks, to be followed by Ms. Michaels, and then senators will be asking questions of our witnesses.
[Translation]
With that, Ms. Lahey, the floor is yours.
[English]
Kathleen Lahey, Professor and Queen’s National Scholar, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University, as an individual: I am pleased to be here this evening to talk about an extremely important piece of legislation. First of all, I would like to say that this proposed act relating to gender budgeting has several key features that put Canada at the forefront of this kind of emerging legislation, which remains unenacted in too many countries around the world.
It is a finance law, which is one the best practices for this kind of legislation. It takes diversity as well as intersectional and gender issues into consideration in applying the principle of gender equality to budget issues.
It mandates publication of impact assessment reports. It also brings both tax expenditures and direct expenditures into the purview of the process and requires that all expenditure items be broken down by gender and diversity impacts. In addition, it stipulates that all assessments should be based on evidence relevant to the impact of measures in question.
However, I would submit that a number of gaps and weaknesses in this legislation as currently drafted should be addressed. To explain where I am coming from in this regard, I would like to refresh your recollection of the history of Canada with respect to gender-based analysis, gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting.
In 1981, when the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women was enacted, Canada was one of the most active proponents of that important international treaty. That treaty gave rise to both the gender equality provisions in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It also led in 1995 to the enactment of what is called the Beijing Platform for Action, a very long and detailed document adopted by the United Nations and to which Canada has assented. It describes exactly how gender mainstreaming, gender-based analysis and gender budgeting are to be done.
I have applied that perspective because that is the perspective the CEDAW in Geneva applies when reviewing the compliance of countries with the CEDAW convention when sitting on appeals brought against countries under optional protocols of that treaty. The comments I am making are also relevant to the way in which we can expect this legislation to be tested in Canada.
Turning to part of the background, Canada was active in applying gender equality principles when these documents came into effect in the country. Canada was ranked number one in the world from 1995 through 1991 on both the human development indicators and the gender development indicators published in the United Nations human development reports.
When Canada’s tax-cutting programs began to come into effect in the mid-1990s, Canada quickly lost its position. At present, it sits in the low 20s in the gender equality indicators on a global basis. It also sits in the low teens when it comes to human development. This is because revenues produced by the Canadian budget are no longer sufficient to meet the kinds of requirements that would provide gender equality in a substantive way.
First, I would say that section 2 of the proposed legislation should be amended to provide explicitly that the attainment of gender equality is one of the explicit goals of this statute and, second, explicitly requires that budgets provide funding sufficient to fund programs that can increase Canada’s gender equality.
Third, I would suggest amending section 3 to make sure that full and equal participation of all women be required by statute so that they have a co-equal voice in the whole process of gender budgeting, from the point of consultations as to what should go into budgets in upcoming years, all the way through to looking at draft bills that might be brought forward as part of the budget.
I would also suggest that provisions in sections 4 and 5 be strengthened to make perfectly clear that all items on both tax and expenditure lists in effect each year should be assessed for their gender impact, and not just those the Minister of Finance thinks are appropriate to review.
Further, I would suggest that section 4 be strengthened by incorporating detailed indicators developed and applied in 1997 by Statistics Canada, working together with the federal and provincial territorial ministers responsible for the status of women, to monitor the economic gender status of women in detail with respect to three comprehensive measures: first, working hours; second, total incomes including after-tax incomes; and, third, education and incomes by levels of educational attainment.
The indicators that are used in Budget 2018 only partially intersect with parts of those three core sets of economic gender equality indicators but are, by themselves, not sufficient even though they are not currently mandated by statute to cover all of the situations at the core of the inequality that plagues women in Canada to a greater extent than is found in any other country in the richest category of countries in the world, namely the OECD.
I would further suggest that section 6 be added as a new section to the statute to increase the level of accountability that will be required under this statute, specifically that there be a requirement of accountability and the expected impact of all individual measures classified as tax expenditures and direct expenditures as well as their aggregate impact. No one provision by itself can explain the whole source, cause or impact of gender inequality, especially from economic perspectives.
Further, I would suggest that there be strict auditing requirements involved so that all provisions of the budget will be subject to auditing on a revolving basis.
Finally, I would point out that while Canada has been in the process of developing this legislation, so has the globe been looking at what it takes to monitor gender budgeting. The sustainable development goals to which Canada is also a signatory require, under sustainable development goal 5, the monitoring of gender budgeting and gender equality. Now the United Nations, under SDG 5, has adopted and is implementing indicator 5.c.1, which requires all signatory countries to the SDGs to put in place a tracking system for gender equality and gender budgeting. Three specific indicators are used in that tracking system to judge Canada’s gender budgeting efforts as against all of those in the rest of the world.
Finally, I would like to point out that CEDAW in Geneva has made it perfectly clear that not only do countries have obligations to promote gender equality for their own residents within their domestic boundaries. They also have extraterritorial obligations to the people affected by corporations, businesses, wealth holders and residents of Canada engaged in activities that affect people living in other parts of the world.
Canada has already strayed quite seriously with respect to fulfilling those kinds of gender budgeting obligations. Canada has already been the subject matter of concluding observations and optional protocol decisions that have found Canada to be failing in its obligations to promote gender equality rights of women in other countries. I would say that this is also an issue that could very constructively be added to the scope of the statute that you are considering tonight.
Those are my preliminary comments, but I have prepared draft legislation for each of the proposed changes that I am suggesting. I am happy to answer questions on those. Thank you.
Samantha Michaels, Senior Policy Advisor, Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada: In 2015, the Prime Minister committed to a renewed relationship with Indigenous peoples, one based on the recognition of rights, respect, cooperation and partnership. He also committed to gender equality. Through these commitments, a permanent bilateral mechanism was created to develop policy on shared priorities with the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, ITK, and the Métis National Council.
Pauktuutit is a non-voting member of the board of directors of ITK and Inuit Circumpolar Council Canada. As the permanent bilateral mechanism arrangement operates, it precludes Inuit women from having a seat at the table to advocate for equitable budget and resource allocations necessary to achieve equality of outcomes.
As the national voice of Inuit women in Canada, Pauktuutit has been advocating for the social, economic and political betterment of Inuit women and girls since 1984. This expertise makes it essential that Pauktuutit be included as an equal partner to federal, provincial and territorial governments in decision-making processes about Inuit women, families and communities.
We must remember that prior to the 1940s most Inuit lived in seasonal camps on the land. Beginning in the 1950s, Inuit were coerced into permanent settlements with promises of education, health care and housing.
By 1970, those born on the land had witnessed the creation of permanent settlements deprived of adequate conditions to ensure well-being. The impacts of colonization are seen in the high rates of unemployment and poverty, low educational attainment, substance abuse, and the highest rates of violence and suicide in the country.
Inuit women and girls have many pressing priorities. Inuit women’s economic participation in the Canadian economy is inseparably linked to their access to child care, adequate violence-free housing, food security and empowerment. While I do not have the time to explore all intersections, it is imperative that the committee keep them in mind while we continue.
Inuit in Canada consistently experience lower economic participation levels than the Canadian average. The 2016 study by Pauktuutit entitled Breaking Barriers, Creating Opportunities found that some of the critical barriers to Inuit women’s economic participation include the absence of available, affordable and reliable child care, low educational attainment, lack of access to appropriate training opportunities, and uneven and unreliable Internet access.
Inuit are in a food insecurity crisis with the highest rates of hunger in Canada. A long history of political, economic and social marginalization has led to considerable health inequities. The Inuit Health Survey found that in Nunavut 70 per cent of Inuit households are food insecure. This is six times higher than the Canadian national average and represents the highest documented food insecurity rate for any Indigenous population residing in a country which is part of the OECD.
The Chair: Could you please slow down a bit to permit proper translation?
Ms. Michaels: As with most issues, food insecurity in the North disproportionately affects Inuit women as they will go without food to ensure their family is fed. Severe overcrowding, substandard homes and a lack of affordable housing options have left many Inuit communities and families at risk. In 2016, over half or 51.7 per cent of Inuit lived in crowded housing, compared to 8.5 per cent of non-Indigenous Canadians. Having access to appropriate and affordable housing is critical for improving educational attainment, physical and mental health, as well as for those seeking safety from violence.
Last year, Canada committed $240 million over 10 years for housing in Nunavut. This year an additional $400 million over 10 years was committed for the other three regions of Inuit Nunangat. Given the population growth at 20.1 per cent, coupled with the high cost of materials and construction, the money Canada has allotted to address the housing crisis is grossly inadequate and may never close the housing gap.
Finally, at the rate of 14 times the national average, a rate that is higher than that experienced by any other group of women in Canada, violence is a preventable leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Inuit women. Despite this, greater than 70 per cent of the 51 Inuit communities across Inuit Nunangat do not have a safe shelter for women. The lack of access to safety has in too many cases led to the loss of lives.
How does this social and economic inequity perpetuate? It is simple: By excluding Inuit women from decision-making tables. Inuit women and girls have the right to equitable standards of education, employment, health care, housing and safety enjoyed by all Canadians. To provide for better futures for Inuit women and their families, it is essential that Inuit women be given equal primacy in all policy level discussions to engender improvement of their political, social, economic and health status.
Senator Pratte: Professor Lahey, you suggested a lot of changes to the proposed act, but I would like you to elaborate a bit more on two of the changes.
First, you mentioned, for instance, that the purpose clause or the policy statement at the beginning of the act states more clearly, if I understand, that the goal of the government is to reach gender equality. There is already a provision in the act that mentions the government is committed to promoting gender equality, but you obviously see a difference.
Second, you mentioned that women should be equal participants, if I understood correctly, throughout the whole budget preparation process.
Would you care to elaborate on both of these, please?
Ms. Lahey: Yes, I would be more than happy to.
First, I would point out that I don’t have the references with me in complete detail, but paragraph 58 of the Beijing Platform for Action spells out most of the points I am making. There are five or six other provisions in the Beijing platform that also speak to the details of how gender budgeting is to be done to augment that. Subsection 2(a) already says, “promote the principle of gender equality and greater inclusiveness in society as part of the annual federal budget.” Then we could insert these words: “in support of Canada’s commitment to funding intersectional gender equality programs, including those capable of contributing to long-term economic growth and prosperity.”
It is one thing to be committed to the principle of gender equality. It is also important to promote and to support gender equality. The whole point of the Beijing Platform for Action is that all governance functions, every single one of them — municipal, provincial, territorial, federal and international — and all private transactions should take gender equality into consideration. This would put the doing of gender budgeting into subsection 2(a).
In order to address the question of the participation of women, the preamble to clause 2 starts out by saying:
It is declared to be the policy of the Government of Canada to . . . .
And then it goes into (a), (b), (c) and (d). I would add right there the words: “to ensure the full and equal participation of women in all aspects of gender budgeting.” That would make clear there is an affirmative obligation to have women at the table with demographically appropriate representation and all of the contextualizing intersections.
I have been involved around the world in the drafting, the development, the implementation of these kinds of provisions. I know that one of the problems with gender budgeting experienced around the world is that it’s one thing to have a government say it’s in favour of gender equality, but it’s quite another thing to get it to change its spending habits.
One of the big problems in Canada is the intersecting policies that currently construct gender inequality on the economic level. Specifically, it is the great imbalance between the degree of paid versus unpaid work hours that women devote themselves to each and every day, as compared to the balance between the paid and unpaid work hours that men devote themselves to every day.
It’s not enough to say that all work should be shared equally, or even to say that all care of children or other care should be shared equally. It has to be shared socially, and the only way to share things socially is to do it through a budgetary mechanism. We no longer have indentured servitude or other means of deploying human labour in a way that would rectify these imbalances. Nor should we.
We have a mechanism called money. It flows very easily, particularly when encouraged by the government to rebalance inequities that currently exist. The paid and unpaid work imbalance is at the heart of the economic gender inequality that Canada faces. Any person that has to spend on average 60 to 70 per cent of their waking work hours in unpaid work will simply not be competitive for an equal or even a survivable wage in the paid workforce.
That is the beginning of the problem. It is one of the kinds of things that often get overlooked when we’re talking in general terms about giving numerical breakdowns as to the gender impact of specific provisions in budgets.
It is one thing to say women get X per cent of something, but it is another thing to see exactly how the whole economy works to keep women in a subordinate and underpaid role and at the same time get smaller allocations of the benefits produced by annual budgets. In fact, they are receiving smaller shares of after-tax income now than they did in 2001.
That’s a partial answer to your question.
Senator Pratte: Ms. Michaels, I listened very carefully to what you had to say about the importance of Inuit women being at the table where the decisions are taken.
I am not sure exactly how this is related to what is in the bill before us, so maybe you could elaborate on that. The part of the bill we’re examining tonight is on gender budgeting.
Ms. Michaels: Right.
Senator Pratte: Could you elaborate a bit on how gender budgeting could help attain the goals that you have stated?
Ms. Michaels: Absolutely. We could also do a more thorough analysis of the bill and submit that in writing to you. I guess for us it is just understanding that gender budgeting is supposed to improve the quality of women’s lives. If women are not at the forefront of creating this or of being where the resource or the money allocations are being made, then it will not benefit them in the right ways.
For too long Inuit women haven’t been at the table, and we have seen social and economic inequities continued and perpetuated. In 2018 we think it is no longer acceptable. I guess we’re looking at a more comprehensive way in terms of Inuit women no longer being consulted or participating in these sorts of matters but really being included at the table in their own right.
Senator Pratte: Would you say that the expenditures made over recent years in Inuit communities, especially to build new houses and so on, are unfair to Inuit women in some ways?
Ms. Michaels: Absolutely. The Minister of Status of Women Canada, Maryam Monsef, was mandated to ensure that no one fleeing domestic violence is left without a safe place to turn by growing and maintaining the shelter and transition house network.
As I mentioned, there are 15 shelters serving 51 communities. Inuit have the highest rates of violence at 14 times the national average. We have been conducting a shelter needs assessment. We have had focus groups where women are crying and asking, “Where is the government? Why does no one care?”
I am not saying shelters are the be-all and end-all solution to violence. There have to be investments in healing and housing. If a woman goes to a shelter but has nowhere to go after the shelter, it’s quite useless. However, with the lack of housing, women have to be at the forefront of deciding. Given that over a quarter of Inuit children live in single-parent families and women are heading these families, there’s an absence of child care, an absence of housing and absence of safe alternatives.
It’s affecting women disproportionately. We are now seeing 27 per cent of Inuit living outside of Inuit Nunangat. We call that migration, and for some of them it is. Some have chosen to seek employment, education, health care, and those sorts of opportunities. It is not just migration. We are seeing a lot of forced relocation, given that women are the predominant ones who are leaving to live in urban centres.
This lack of services, programs and resources is absolutely affecting women and their children disproportionately.
Senator Andreychuk: Professor Lahey, the Human Rights Committee of the Senate studied gender-based analysis over and over and over again. If Senator Nancy Ruth were here, she would have been much more eloquent in asking questions than I am.
You want more expansion to deliver the Beijing platform. We have had promises but not promises that have been kept. One of the other issues when we get to budgeting is to find out what the government has actually done. It is not even expanding. I would like to know what they’re doing now if we are to be a proper oversight.
As I understand it, they are not quite ready to share that with us. They say they have done it, but we have absolutely no idea what kind of analysis they do department by department and program by program. In essence we are just being told that it is being done, and sometimes broad principles are told to us. Would we be better off pushing to try to get that transparency so we can critique it?
It reminds me of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms where there was supposed to be an analysis to see if every piece of legislation complied. It took years to get some transparency in that area, and we seem to be having the same struggle here. Promoting is fine. You can say you are promoting but I think you need oversight.
Where would you put your emphasis now to get at least some structures in place that we can see to analyze? Are you pushing for expanding to the full rights? I am in the conundrum of not knowing which to do.
Ms. Lahey: That’s a great question. It is a conundrum but this is legislation. Unfortunately I approach this as a lawyer, and I have litigated a lot of gender equality issues in literally every forum that there is. I know that the minute a gender equality law is passed, it is immediately read as narrowly as possible by the government in question, even if it is a Liberal government or even if it is a very progressive government. This is what governments do, and I have seen no exceptions to that.
My preference would be to get a thoroughly inclusive and solid statutory instrument in place. Then it may well be that complete compliance will not be possible. If we’re still looking at a lack of significant change in another 10 years, then major lawsuits, class action suits and I don’t know what may well be involved.
If there is to be legislation, it is important that it should not simply be a statement of good intentions. It has to have teeth. One way in which it can have teeth is to do the auditing function you’re talking about. It needs to be done. It was not until the 2009 Auditor General report.
Senator Andreychuk: It was Auditor General Fraser.
Ms. Lahey: Persons who are here with us in name, if not in body, were involved in moving that forward. They went through and examined exactly how gender budgeting was done. They found documents that apparently had not ever been touched by human hands in the process of implementing gender budgeting. There was very little compliance and no evidence of any serious effort.
In the brief I will be filing with this committee I actually demonstrate the one instance in which there was a departmental regulation requiring gender budgeting. In fact the gender budget analysis was done perfectly brilliantly. It came to the conclusion that there was gender discrimination being produced by the legislation in question. It had to do with the employment rights of women under a special immigration program that needed to get skilled craftspeople into the country as quickly as possible.
At the end of that gender-based analysis and gender budget analysis, the recommendation was that they were not going to deal with the gender issue because it is too small to make any difference and it would be administratively inefficient to do so. I think it is necessary to have a strong auditing function to counter the built-in reluctance to really take seriously the myriad gender equality issues in budgets.
I believe it is now okay to talk about this. During the period of 2006 to 2008 gender budgeting was being done by somebody inside the federal government. I am not too sure who exactly. I was asked by the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women to audit a gender budget analysis that had been done on two years’ worth of budgets. Indeed, the department in question had gone through every provision in the budget and had given a good, bad or no effect diagnosis as to the gender impact of the items in question.
I will give you an example of an analysis. There was a repeal of a biofuels subsidy for a particular type of substance that goes into fuel, and the question was: “What is the gender impact?” And the answer was: “None. Both women and men are allowed to drive.”
That is not an attempt to come to grips with the economic impact of any subsidies or any fiscal instruments. There are many, many people around the world and many in Canada who can tell you everything about the gender impact of particular fiscal instruments.
When Budget 2012 was produced I did a detailed gender analysis of every provision in the budget because nobody else was doing it. It ended up being 212 pages long, which I felt was pretty funny. It is very important because there are many provisions that you would never think had any gender impact when they all do. The aggregate after-tax impact is what matters most of all.
If I may, I would like to share with you a couple of figures. As you go through the taxation process, it starts with market incomes and goes all the way through after-tax incomes: who gets what. From 2001 until 2018 women have had literally identical shares of market incomes as compared to men. That has not changed at all. Some 62 per cent of market incomes has gone to men and 38 per cent has gone to women. As you go through the tax process where you add in subsidies, you take out taxes and so on, you get down to after-tax income.
Since 2001, that particular ratio has been 58 per cent of after-tax incomes going to men and 42 per cent of after-tax incomes going to women. There’s a redistributive process that goes on in the tax transfer process, the budgeting process, which has been redistributing an additional 4 per cent of the total tax revenue to women.
Starting in 2006, that ratio in after-tax income went down to 41 per cent for women. Only in 2018, by using microsimulation estimating software, it has been determined through the work I do that the ratio for women will now go up to 42 per cent. That’s the progress. In 2001, we were already there. In 2018, it has taken us all that time to get back to 42 per cent of after-tax income for women.
Senator Andreychuk: Ms. Michaels, I have been impressed with the work of your organization. Despite all the odds, some very strong women have put forward their points of view.
Were you consulted at all on gender-based budgeting by anyone in Finance or Status of Women or anyone?
Ms. Michaels: To the best of my knowledge, no. We’re just gaining some capacity now to be able to look at these issues. We haven’t been able to put forward any pre-submission budgets or anything of that nature.
However, we recognize its great importance and are prepared to do more work in this area. Not to my knowledge specifically.
Senator Andreychuk: There seem to be a lot of ongoing consultations with Aboriginal communities. Where do your representations fit? Do you go through other leadership in the Aboriginal community? Are you going straight to the federal government, or have you thought that through on gender issues?
Ms. Michaels: In 2017, we signed a memorandum of understanding with the Government of Canada through Indigenous Services Canada. That helps us to develop a work plan with a range of departments, as well as sustain some core funding, although that is not locked in for the long term to the best of my knowledge.
We are our own national Indigenous organization. We also have a memorandum of understanding that was signed with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami in 2018. However, it is our desire to be consulted in and of our own right, even though we work fairly closely with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.
Senator M. Deacon: We move forward, we move backward, we move sideways, and we move forward. Obviously, the goal is to move forward. I listened to both of you. I was reminded that last year I met with female leaders from around the world at the UN. The conversation was called “HERstory: A celebration of leading women in the United Nations” I must say that you folk were represented there. It was looking at gender parity, law, gender equality, gender budgeting and the challenges around the world.
Listening to both of you tonight there is no difference. You have indicated five, six, seven and nine key buckets that you would love to go after, love to make better and love to make better sooner than later.
We learned in the UN experience, rightly or wrongly, that you are trying to instill the top one or two things that you think are achievable and meaningful to move your work forward. That became a very big part of this thinking and think tank, which influenced other countries as they were trying to reach UN goal 5.
From the things you have shared with us tonight and the experiences both of you have had, what is the number one or number two piece you think will help you the very best and very most in 2018?
Ms. Lahey: First, there is a really wonderful study that attempted to list the top 10 and decided, through the most carefully calibrated statistical analysis, which ones were producing the most bang for the buck. That is the goal here. Unfortunately, not one single country was able to deal with all 10 by any combination of strategies.
It is like playing whack-a-mole. When you deal with pay equity you have the child care barrier. When you deal with child care, you have the pay equity barrier. When you deal with subsidies, you have the joint allocation of subsidies that makes it economically unfeasible for women to go into paid work if there is a male in the household who can go into paid work.
When you come down to the question of whether some sort of equality rule would change the outcome, every country had fallen down on at least one. In Norway, for example, you get hugely high levels of part-time work and that just never changes.
There are structural problems built into every country. It is therefore extremely difficult to pin down the number one or the number two. However, I would put pay equity at the very top because I did a microsimulation for one of the provinces which required evidence that there could be some benefit to improving pay equity. We have the case study of Quebec, but I guess that is not enough. Everyone needs to know that it will work in their jurisdictions as well.
By going through the first few years of pay equity adjustments, the amount of revenue produced both federally and provincially was phenomenal compared to the investments in pay equity. On the simulation, the federal government got approximately 3.5 times more additional revenue than the provinces in question did because of the way in which the federal and provincial levels of taxation and benefits fit into the whole picture.
Pay equity is a crucial piece, but you can only get so far with pay equity without child care. I think child care would be the number two.
Ms. Michaels: I would have to start with housing. Without a safe place to go home to, you have nothing. Living with 20 people in a four-bedroom house is a violation of human rights. Housing would be number one: a realistic plan to end the housing crisis with a focus on women’s needs.
As for number two, it is hard because there are many pressing needs, as I mentioned. I suppose child care because even though women are engaged more in the labour market than men and typically have higher education, they are unable to pursue many things because the lack of available and affordable child care.
That would help to eliminate poverty to some extent, assuming there is meaningful work for people in communities.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: Thank you for enlightening us about extremely important and very troubling issues. Personally, I am learning a lot.
Ms. Michaels, if I understood correctly, you mentioned an agreement that prevents the participation of Inuit women in the process. Did I understand correctly?
[English]
Ms. Michaels: Could you repeat the last part?
[Translation]
Senator Forest: I understand you mentioned an agreement or a rule that prevents the participation of Inuit women in the process. Did I understand correctly?
[English]
Ms. Michaels: Are you referring to the memorandum of understanding I mentioned?
Senator Forest: Yes.
Ms. Michaels: Just in response to the question, yes, there is a memorandum of understanding which does give us in writing an ability to work with the government through the permanent bilateral mechanism or through the Inuit-Crown Partnership Committee. Inuit women, in and of their own right, do not have a seat at the table. We are an ex officio member of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami so we can’t vote. We are there but it’s not in or of our own.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: To change this rule, which I think is unjustified, who must be contacted? The federal government?
[English]
Ms. Michaels: Yes and no. We are making some headway with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, but it is up to the government to engage with Inuit women in and of their own way and not just with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami given that we don’t have a voice or a vote.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: It is quite a challenge to reach Indigenous or Inuit women, given the communities that are often remote and the problems they face. How do you go about hearing from those women whose only voice is your organization?
[English]
Ms. Michaels: That is correct. There are regional organizations. The one in Nunavut is called Saturviit Inuit Women’s Association as well as one in Nunatsiavut. However, Pauktuutit is governed by a 14-member board of directors that are all Inuit women who cover the North, with the exception of one urban member. That is one way we are plugged into the community.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: I imagine that’s 14 women? I hope so.
[English]
Ms. Michaels: Yes.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: I have one last question. If a gender-based analysis and a diversity impact analysis were conducted, how would that influence budget choices? I would like to see the positive impact of that type of analysis in practice.
[English]
Ms. Lahey: I’ll make a couple of comments. There are many studies now that break quite a few fiscal instruments down by gender, age, Aboriginal identities, visible minority status, and every other type of diversity marker. It is entirely possible to trace that out, quantify it, weight it and take a look at what it does to the budget.
Those gaps are huge compared to the average gaps as calculated. If they could be closed, I guarantee it would make a monumental difference and accelerate the implementation of gender equality.
Ms. Michaels: I would agree with that answer.
Senator Klyne: I will refer to the amendments and recommendations as closing the gaps if they were applied. My question is probably more for Professor Lahey, but, with the way I frame it, maybe both of you could answer it.
Let’s assume for the moment that the gaps are closed. From your perspective, Professor Lahey, that would be the ideal legislation. What would be the expected benefits for ensuring gender inclusivity and analysis are promoted in practice in the government’s budgetary measures?
When I ask that question I want to add a little qualification. What is the impact of not closing the gaps?
Ms. Lahey: If I understand your question correctly, are you saying, assuming all the gaps are closed that we can stop doing gender budgeting?
Senator Klyne: No, I am asking about the expected benefits of the gaps being closed as you propose in your amendment or as you identify in your recommendations. Would that ensure gender inclusivity analyses are promoted in practice?
I suppose the real question is: What happens if we don’t close those gaps? What is the impact?
Ms. Lahey: To answer the first part, because I think it would answer the second part, it is absolutely true, correctly reported and incorporated in this draft legislation that gender equality accelerates economic growth. It cannot be gender equality driven growth that doesn’t attend to the long-term and substantive needs of women who are engaging in larger shares of paid work and at higher rates.
The benefit is that it will increase the well-being of the entire economy because women will no longer face the levels of poverty, challenges and inequalities that they do. Because it will have to be done on the diversity inclusive and inequality reducing basis, it will reduce the concentrations of wealth that are in part the problem that makes it hard to get out in front of gender inequality.
What would happen if we don’t? We will continue down the road we are on. The cumulative effect of all the revenue changes over the last 2.5 decades have produced a reduction in net revenues for Canada of approximately 41 per cent as compared to 1995. That’s a lot less money. We will continue down that path if we continue to prioritize benefits that really benefit those who already are fully benefited.
Senator Klyne: If the proposed legislation went through as is, it would be seen to be closing the gaps but not closing them. You have made suggestions on closing the gaps.
I appreciated the answer that generally the nation as a whole would benefit from it. It just wouldn’t improve the lives of women, which is the most important part of that.
Ms. Lahey: I don’t think anyone thinks gender equality is for women only.
Senator Klyne: I agree, except I heard earlier that it would improve the lives of women and I wanted to hear that we all benefit.
Ms. Lahey: Hopefully. We will have to see.
Senator Boehm: Professor Lahey and Ms. Michaels, I am reflecting on what you have said. It has all been very valuable.
Before I came here, and I am fairly new, I was charged with organizing our G7 year. The government and Prime Minister decided to put a GBA+ approach on everything we did. The documents that came out of the Charlevoix summit and various ministerial meetings that took place in different parts of the country all featured that. We organized ourselves and basically did the GBA+ analysis on everything. You can see the results of the seven commitments in the communiqué, which was repudiated by one the members of the summit in a tweet, as we all know.
The difficulty I found was in the terminology. Even among G7 countries, which are fairly sophisticated, GBA+ was seen as a Canadian term. I persuaded some sherpa colleagues and others to take the online course, which was great. Minister Morneau was here earlier today. Gender-based budgeting was a bit of a challenge as well in the G7 finance context.
On intersectionality I got nowhere whatsoever, even though some other countries and governments faced the very same challenges with the diversity of their own populations. I anticipated some cultural differences, but I was a bit surprised by the difficulty of doing it. I think it pertains to Canada as well.
My question is: How can we make the definitional aspect more palatable or ensure for greater understanding? All of us around this table and other witnesses sort of get it. We understand the jargon. We understand the indicators. We understand the importance of breaking down the data and all of that, but how can the government basically put this out in a way that the average Canadian can develop a better understanding?
Ms. Lahey: The Canadian government started to do that in a very big way in the 1990s and early 2000s. The groundwork is already there but it has been taken down off the Status of Women site. It is buried in archives that have been disassembled. It is hard to put all that work back together. It is very much a challenge.
The concept of gender-based analysis plus is intended to emphasize that if you were to read the Beijing Platform for Action, you would be amazed at how you can have 20 paragraphs talking about one little point that relates to gender budgeting and gender-based analysis. It will go through a list of maybe 12 different dimensions of intersectionality specific to the subject matter.
In some contexts, poverty, disability and a number of other factors like rural location and level of education will all be highly pertinent. In other contexts, they will not be as pertinent. First there is realization that this is not a machine. This is taking governance seriously from a gender perspective and doing with governance on gender and gender-related issues the same thing that has always been done in relation to wealth interests, business interests and corporate interests. We can think of all the detail that has gone into picking through what we will do about the small business tax credit, et cetera.
That is what needs to be done. It has to be contextualized. It has to be done with a sense of what the desired outcome is and with a great sense of realizing we are dealing with people’s lives as we deal with the money involved.
I would say that it’s not an easy process and there is no way to simplify it. I would start out by protecting the process with a strong statute that requires all of us to begin governing as if women and men mattered equally.
Ms. Michaels: I would have to say I am not sure everyone gets it, given what I just addressed and give that I spent a lot of time travelling around Inuit Nunangat. Inuit women are still not included in the planning, drafting implementing and evaluating of gender budgeting. I think we still have a far way to go.
The Chair: To the witnesses, you have certainly given us food for thought. You have been very informative and educational. Ms. Michaels, thank you for the statistics you have given us from your community.
I thank the witnesses for accepting our invitation. From the Institute for Gender and Economy by videoconference from Toronto, Sarah Kaplan, Distinguished Professor and Director, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; from YWCA Canada, Maya Roy, Chief Executive Officer; from Oxfam Canada, Diana Sarosi, Senior Policy Advisor; and from the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, Jacqueline Neapole, Executive Director.
Professor Kaplan, the floor is yours.
Sarah Kaplan, Distinguished Professor and Director, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Institute for Gender and the Economy, as an individual: It is an honour to appear before this committee to comment on Bill C-86 as it relates to the creation of the department for women and gender equality. In my role as professor I promote the use of rigorous academic research to inform policy and practice, with a specific goal of supporting innovative new solutions to achieving gender equality.
There are a number of reasons that the creation of this department will yield progress on equality in Canadian society. First, it announces and anchors equality as a central value for Canadians.
The Chair: Could you please slow down a bit to permit proper translation?
Ms. Kaplan: Its name signals its focus on women and also people of diverse genders, including two spirit, gender non-binary and trans people. It further signals attention to men and masculinity. As we have learned from recent effort to improve parental leave policies, it is vital to pay attention to facilitating new norms of masculinity that can transform caregiving and paid work for men, women and people of diverse genders.
Relatedly, I would also like to call to your attention the importance of the particulars section which includes understanding:
. . . the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors that include race, national and ethnic origin, Indigenous origin or identity, age, sexual orientation, socio-economic conditions, place of residence and disability.
That the department would have this mandate to put intersectionality front and centre is essential for the pursuit of equality because we know that most barriers to full participation in all spheres of peoples’ lives come precisely at these points of intersection.
Second, appropriately funded and resourced the department can serve as a centre of excellence for capabilities in gender analysis and policy making. While some form of gender analysis has been mandated since 1995 at the federal level, we still lack essential capabilities for conducting and using these analyses. This is at the federal, provincial and local levels of government, as well as in the corporate and non-profit spheres.
Gender analysis, at its best, should be used for three interrelated sets of activities: first, qualitative and quantitative need finding; second, policy design and implementation; and third, policy evaluation. To date, most of the efforts have been placed on the third step. We formulate a policy and then see what the gender effects might be, perhaps implementing remedial steps to try to fix any adverse impacts. I worry that even this third step may not be conducted at a sufficient level of depth with the right level of research and analysis, especially including the intersections I mentioned above.
Let’s take, for example, the Innovation Superclusters Initiative which admitted, in its own program guide, that it will be investing in industries that attract more skilled workers who are men compared to women. It indicated that to address this problem applicants must “articulate how they will endeavour to increase female representation concerning both employment and leadership.” However, if we were to have started with a gender analysis we might have designed a supercluster initiative that had inclusive innovation at its base rather than as an additional consideration.
Thus, using gender analysis from the outset might have the potential to change and improve policy design. For example, in infrastructure investment we know that investments in local-stop public transportation differentially benefit women and children, while investments in highways benefit men who tend to drive or commute longer distances. A true analysis of the impacts of maternity leave would have shown that extension of such leaves to 18 months is a poor substitute for child care and can do serious damage to women’s attachment to the labour force.
Such information should shape choices about how policies, budgets and taxes are decided. Here I fully concur with Professor Lahey’s testimony that you heard in the previous session this evening.
The department has the opportunity to develop gender analysis capabilities and support other departments and agencies in meeting their mandate to do true gender budgeting. This will strengthen the national capacity to advance gender equality in all of its intersections. Capability development takes time. It requires sustained investment and an accumulation of data, research and experience over years. It requires support for an ecosystem of government bodies, grassroots organizations and business. Creating a department assures that this accumulation process cannot be interrupted or set back as it has been in the past, without the significant public debate that would come from the legislative process.
Third, the department, again with sufficient funding and resources, can also be a source of policy innovation based on the gender analysis it will conduct. Gender analysis, as I mentioned before, will be least effective if it is only used as a policy evaluation tool. Its true power comes when the insights generated lead to innovative policies that overcome many of the impasses faced by efforts to achieve gender equality to date.
For example, today we worry that not enough women enter into entrepreneurship, so we layer on special pools of funds to the Business Development Bank for female entrepreneurs. What if we used research and analysis to develop new, inclusive models for promoting entrepreneurship that might help the BDC reinvent entirely how it works? We cannot know without the careful work of a department dedicated to making the most of research and analysis on current inequalities and on key mechanisms for overcoming them.
On a personal note and speaking as an immigrant to Canada, I can say in conclusion that Canada today has the opportunity to be a global beacon of light when it comes to gender equality. The creation of a department for women and gender equality can be a powerful symbol of Canada’s commitment to these issues and, importantly, a source of innovation and insight for Canada and the world as we continue to work toward equality. Thank you very much.
Maya Roy, Chief Executive Officer, YWCA Canada: YWCA Canada is the largest women’s organization across Canada with 32 members. We have 34 shelters in nine provinces and two territories. We are the second-largest provider of not-for-profit child care in the country.
For close to 150 years, YWCA Canada has worked to improve the lives of women, girls and their families who use our services. My remarks today respond directly to their life experiences and the data that we collect regularly.
With 32 member associations across the country, we are committed to building an inclusive society that works for all self-identified women and girls. This includes taking an intersectional lens and ensuring that the unique experiences of marginalization and oppression faced by diverse, equity seeking communities are also considered, such as Indigenous communities, racialized women, young women, as well as newcomer, refugee and immigrant women.
As an organization that works with 330,000 women and their families each year, we know that gender equity happens in the details, not on the margins of legislation. It is in the implementation of this bill and the execution of regulations that will truly move gender equity and inclusion forward.
Bill C-86 marks an important milestone for Canada in the movement toward gender equity. We applaud the increased focus of the Government of Canada on gender equity, which is quite clear to see in many elements of Part 4 of the Budget Implementation Act from Division 9, which enacts the gender budgeting act, to Division 14, which enacts pay equity. We also know that the real understanding of gender must play a critical role in federal policy development within an institutional framework.
One thing my colleagues like to remind me of is that we tend to look at issues as programs. For example, we know that roads and water are programs in this country. We are frequently asked as service providers to think of women and children as projects. It would be inconceivable to educate a child over a three-month project. As women’s organizations, we are frequently called upon to address elder abuse for $40,000 within a three-month time period.
In terms of this analysis of the bill, we believe that the establishment of a department for women and gender equality will strengthen ongoing work and start to look at gender inequality as a program as opposed to a project.
The new department will hopefully ensure that the federal government will play an active role in progressive policy development and research on matters of gender equality. This is a step in the right direction, and we are pleased to see this long-time need being addressed.
The department also has an opportunity to view gender equality not just as a project, but actually as an economic investment program. Rather than viewing women’s work as one-off short-term projects, a clear gender equality framework resulting from interdepartmental coordination offers a real chance to move the needle on gender equality.
In order to improve the ability of this department to do its work, we share the following considerations.
First, in the section on powers, duties and functions of the minister, we are pleased to see an understanding that there should be an intersectional approach to addressing gender equality. Various factors here are mentioned, such as race, national and ethnic origin, and Indigenous origin or identity. In the work that we do in nine provinces and two territories we see the need to also understand the unique challenges and considerations that immigration status places on women. The experience of women who may be refugees, international students, permanent residents, living without status, as well as citizens, differs quite greatly. We need the department and the corresponding legislation to be equipped with understanding and addressing those nuances, believing that this will have an impact on our ability to advance gender equality.
As well, given the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, policies for Indigenous women and two-spirit peoples must be led, staffed and implemented by Indigenous communities. Mainstreaming self-determination throughout is paramount. The preliminary findings on the national inquiry on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls have made this clear. Elders and traditional teachings must be incorporated if the Canadian government is to fully implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The bill proposes to allow all Canadians to participate fully in the sphere of their lives. This department will need to actively confront and systematically deconstruct the hard facts around the devastating impacts of Canadian state-sponsored genocide, colonization, racism and sexism. Many Canadian institutions and leaders are reluctant to accept these hard facts.
Second, YWCA Canada is investing in strategic policy areas which focus on including the lack of universal child care, women’s housing, homelessness, ending gender-based violence and advancing women’s economic equality. We’re also working on Indigenous reconciliation as well as newcomer and immigration issues.
To truly materialize the outcomes you want to see through this bill, we have learned in our work that there has to be a robust investment in financial and human resources. There needs to be key performance indicators. We would encourage that the department be given a bold mandate and the appropriate resources to carry out this work. We would encourage an annual budgetary target of at least $100 million to ensure that this robust work makes a difference in the lives of women, girls and non-binary people.
Third, at the core of this department is the mission to advance gender equality to address the historical and continued imbalance in access to power and resources that women, girls and non-binary people have been experiencing in our society. We would encourage this committee to consider that in the push for gender equality we cannot forget about gender equity.
This would mean investing in sectors where women make up the majority of workers, such as health and social services, and pushing for decent working conditions and equal pay. From a policy perspective, it means investing in universal child care because we know that women disproportionately participate in unpaid work. As we discuss this bill on the eve of December 6, we must remember the federal government has a clear leadership role to play when it comes to ending gender-based violence.
I hear from staff and colleagues across the country regularly that gender-based violence is not just a cause or a policy issue to be addressed. It’s actually a symptom of deeper structural causes. We see this bill as an opportunity to address those causes. Thank you.
Diana Sarosi, Senior Policy Advisor, Oxfam Canada: Esteemed senators, thank you for the opportunity to present Oxfam’s views on Bill C-86.
We put women’s rights and gender justice at the heart of everything we do, both here at home and in our work in the poorest communities across the planet. Through our work we know that women everywhere face serious structural barriers that prevent them from escaping poverty, from making choices about their bodies and reproductive health, and from living a life free from violence and discrimination. Women continue to fill the bottom rank of the economy being disproportionately represented in the lowest paid and least secure jobs. They shoulder three to four times more unpaid work than men do.
This is true in Canada as well. Women make up 70 per cent of part-time, casual and temporary workers and 60 per cent of minimum wage earners. The gender wage gap persists, hovering at 32 per cent on average and as high as 45 to 55 per cent for Indigenous women, racialized women and women with disabilities. Women do two to three times more unpaid care work than men do. The labour force gap between men and women remains close to 10 percentage points.
Women’s economic security is further hampered by the prevalence of gender-based violence and sexual harassment and abuse at the workplace.
Federal Budget 2018 saw some major investments in and measures to advance gender equality. We welcome the move to enshrine these advancements in law within this bill. However, we must caution that the nature of omnibus bills is such that they make it difficult for stakeholders to review all elements in detail and provide substantive comment. This has serious potential to stifle democratic engagement. Considering the government’s desire to meaningfully engage in civil society and to increase transparency, the use of omnibus bills should be avoided.
You have asked me to speak to the proposed legislation for the department for women and gender equality. Oxfam congratulates the government for turning the status of women into a full department. This is long overdue considering Canada has a way to go to close the gender gap.
We are pleased that the department’s mandate includes a strong intersectional lens, recognizing the full range of diversity in terms of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. At the same time we must not lose sight of women’s particular challenges and barriers in fulfilling their social, political and economic rights. We hope to see the department retain the strong focus on advancing women’s rights.
It is crucial that this expansion comes with an increase in resources. Status of Women Canada has received less than 0.014 per cent of federal funding over the past decade. Direct federal funding of women’s rights organizations represents a minuscule proportion of the budget at less than 1/100th of 1 per cent of total federal program spending. Evidence from both high-income and low-income countries over decades shows that women’s rights organizations are the single most significant factor in ensuring public policy works for women. Yet, they are among the most underfunded non-profits in the world.
Despite the significant increase to the women’s program over the past two years, the women’s rights movement in Canada remains underfunded. Too many organizations are scrambling to provide services without having access to core funds to sustain their operations. The funding model of disbursing grants based on project cycles is not sustainable to deliver quality programming and leaves organizations vulnerable to financial shortages in between projects.
Considering the backlash globally and at home which is threatening hard-won gains for women’s rights, it is essential that women’s rights organizations have access to funding to support their policy and advocacy work, as well as resources to organize and mobilize for change. Collective action is critical in pushing for change, whether it is to advocate in favour of comprehensive sexual health education in Ontario or to stand behind women’s rights advocates in Saudi Arabia.
The department must prioritize the sustainability of women’s rights organizations and foster the movement. This will require innovative new funding mechanisms and financing models to ensure women’s rights organizations can do their work without continuously hustling for resources.
We encourage the new department to consider how they can learn from and help Canadian organizations to connect with the global women’s rights movement, recognizing the universality of challenges women face the world over.
At the same time the department must continue to build the capacity of all federal government departments to deliver policy and programs based on intersectional gender analysis and work to advance gender equality. It is important that gender analysis is grounded in the reality of women and particularly the most marginalized ones.
GBA cannot simply be a technical tool to assess differential impact. Rather, it requires us to examine powers, systematic oppression, gender norms and other structural barriers, and to put in place policies that remove these barriers for women. Also, women’s lives cannot simply be reduced to statistics.
To do that, the department needs to give women voice and agency to tell their stories and participate in policy making so that we can understand more deeply how various intersecting factors play out in their lives and what the solutions to these challenges are. Therefore, their participation and inclusion in policy making must be another priority for the department.
It is for these reasons that Oxfam would like to see more concrete language in the bill that clearly spells out the sustainability of the women’s movement as a priority.
To start, we want to see an increase in the department’s budget in the amount of $100 million a year. We also want to see a commitment that a significant amount of the department’s budget goes toward flexible, sustainable and long-term funding for women’s rights and feminist organizations.
Jacqueline Neapole, Executive Director, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women: As Ms. Sarosi said, it’s very difficult to address certain parts of this bill because it’s so big. I am glad you invited us to speak specifically to this legislation.
CRIAW is a not-for-profit women’s organization. We have been researching and documenting women’s social and economic positions in Canada since 1976. CRIAW’s work includes research and analysis on the diversity of women’s experiences with inequality, using a feminist intersectional lens.
CRIAW is a community-based and academic-based organization that produces plain language research and tools which can be used to advance women’s rights. We make all of our work accessible and available to the public to be used for advocacy and education.
To begin, we want to say that we are incredibly happy that Status of Women Canada will be made into a full department. We would like to commend the government for recognizing that women in all our diversity are half the population of Canada. Recognizing the historical, political, cultural, economic and social subordination of women in Canada is critical. Thus, we recognize and appreciate keeping women in the title and mandate of the new department, along with gender equality.
The National Association of Women and the Law, NAWL, appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance on this same bill. We would like to reiterate their point that the preamble is very strong, in particular, the government’s decision to highlight its international and domestic obligations to respect, protect and fulfill the rights of all women in Canada.
We are encouraged by the legislation’s attempt to address the intersecting experiences of inequality and discrimination that different women face. It is clear that the federal government is working to privilege sex and gender in its work, the advancement of which is critical. Addressing the intersections of different forms of discrimination and oppression as it is co-constructed with sexism and misogyny is very important for women’s rights. To note, we also think the phrase “advancement of equality” is important. We are happy to see it included. It had been taken out previously, so we are glad to see it put back in.
We have a few additional points we wanted to raise with regard to the department generally. I want to stress the importance of this department continuing to give priority to funding women’s organizations. Women’s organizations are chronically underfunded. The ones that didn’t permanently close their doors over the past decade are on life support. Some of us are in a position to be now working on rebuilding our organizations, but this doesn’t happen overnight. The financial situation for women’s organizations is extremely precarious. CRIAW is included in this.
Women’s organizations have not only the expertise but also the feminist analysis of the issues at stake. Many of our organizations have been tirelessly working for decades in these areas. We would like to see that women’s organizations continue to receive funding and that this is a departmental priority.
We are encouraged to see that the minister will have powers to establish advisory committees. We expect that this signals a move to have more regular engagement, including more support for us as national women’s organizations to engage meaningfully. It is hard to engage when we’re not supported in our engagement, especially since we have so little capacity.
Another point that CRIAW wanted to raise was with regard to the department’s oversight and coordination of women and gender equality policies and initiatives across the government.
It is great that the minister’s powers, duties and functions extend to and include all matters relating to women and gender equality. We hope this also includes the coordination of feedback and inputs from other departments and agencies to the department for women and gender equality.
It will be useful for the department for women and gender equality to build up its own capacity and knowledge around best practices, et cetera, so that these initiatives aren’t just happening in the abyss and being fed back into the department.
We would also like to see is a more expansive subsection 4(3) to add an assessment or auditing role for the new department. The current mandate letter to the Minister of Status of Women includes a great deal about ensuring that various departments of the federal government engage in the advancement of women, which is great. However, adding an additional section to this legislation that would identify an assessment or auditing role for this new department for all women and gender equality policies and initiatives, including GBA+ with annual or biannual reporting responsibilities to Parliament, would be an effective way to ensure that the government-wide commitments to women and gender equality across departments are upheld.
Finally, to fulfill the additional powers, responsibilities, et cetera, and for the department to truly be enabled as a full department, we would like to stress that it needs to be adequately funded and have a budget that can genuinely empower it to undertake and support, through programs, grants and funding, all the work that needs to be done to advance women’s rights and gender equality. Thank you.
Senator Andreychuk: Professor Kaplan, you made a comment that struck me, namely, that we won’t succeed until we no longer really have to talk about gender. In other words, we would look at programs and women would automatically be part of that program, so we would put it on the side. I think you’re right. That’s what I have always thought. Why do we need to keep talking about women being included? Women should be included, and that’s where we should start.
The more we highlight women as something separate, it worries me that we don’t get the message across to people that we should be talking about citizens and making it inclusive.
My difficulty with having a department, and I have lived through a department, is that it becomes a program unto itself. It diminishes other departments having the load on their shoulders. My fear is that we will create a department that is intersectional at the star. It’s going to be inter-everything, but in time it’s going to become an isolated department with others moving on.
The audit is very important to me. I don’t want to hear the words anymore. I keep hearing words. I need to know what the government is actually doing, not just a tick mark to say they have complied with gender-based analysis. What does that mean until I see what they actually do in the results?
I guess I want some reaction back. I think Parliament should be the audit. We need to know what the government is actually doing. That, to me, would be the most productive audit.
Moving to a department causes some angst in me because I lived through the years when in fact it didn’t become a government-wide responsibility. I hope we’re moving that way. We’ll see.
Ms. Kaplan: I’ll just say briefly that I agree with you that it would be the worst possible outcome to have the department become something separate. That would be somehow an abdication of responsibility by all departments within the government. However, the point I wanted to make in my testimony was that the capabilities to do the kinds of analyses that need to be done to do policy design and not just policy assessment do not really exist at a deep level within the government.
My hope is that a department could become that centre of excellence for those capabilities because there is no other place for the capabilities around policy design and innovation to occur.
To me, that is why having a department is essential. If it doesn’t include intimate interconnections with all of the other departmental work, then you’re right that would be the risk.
Ms. Sarosi: I would also stress that it is essential to have this department. When we look across the world and see success, there has always been sort of a two-track way. One is gender mainstreaming and one is stand-alone gender work. I think this applies to this situation as well.
Yes, we need to build the capacity of all federal departments to do gender mainstreaming, but at the same time there is still a lot of work to be done and we need that stand-alone piece to really get it kick-started.
Ms. Neapole: I agree.
Senator Klyne: The proposed amendments establish a new department for women, as we have discussed. It is building on specifically replacing the Office of the Coordinator, Status of Women, and then doing this with an expanded mandate.
It appears that this department would have one of the widest reaches across government that is being created to address, “all matters over which Parliament has jurisdiction, not by law assigned to any other department, board or agency of the Government of Canada, relating to women and gender equality.”
Understanding that gender relations are ubiquitous and ever present in every aspect of society, my question is as follows. Ms. Neapole, you have answered some of this but you may want to expand on it, and anyone else can jump in.
What are some of the specific projects and activities you believe should be undertaken by this new department to fulfill its mandate and achieve its goals?
Ms. Roy: The question around scope is very important. If we want to make a real impact, we have to have a clear outcome and a clear objective related to it. Some of the previous panel members talked about the importance of housing and child care. For those of us at YWCA Canada it is also the importance of the interrelation between child care and labour market access.
As you know, McKinsey & Company has done some interesting research and data analysis. If we close the labour market access gap for women, it talked about the GDP for Canada increasing by $150 billion by 2026.
Imagine being able to speak to an outcome. Yes, it’s a very ambitious outcome, but if you have the type of far-reaching department that we’re discussing today and a clear set of indicators, outcomes and scope, we can actually start to move statistics in a way that will impact us economically and socially.
Ms. Sarosi: I would like to relay an experience I had earlier this year that is very much related to Senator Boehm’s experience with the G7.
We organized W7, and I think you would be very surprised how quickly a group of 100 women can come, get together and give the top seven things that need to be done to move the needle on gender equality.
We know what the solutions are. We know what the problems are. The problem is that no one is really listening. Women are not being heard.
If we have a chance to make our voice heard, you would be very surprised at the consensus there is among women on what needs to be done.
Ms. Neapole: I would say the same. For me, the priority or the scope of this would also be looking at the work that is already being done and has been done by women for decades. I would really like to see this government with this new department not just start its own little projects and research but also recognize that we are experts. In our organizations we have shared information intergenerationally over time. Supporting women’s organizations to do the work would be key for me in terms of thinking about the scope of this. I think that is an extremely important piece.
Ms. Kaplan: To build on my prior comment, I completely agree. A lot of the capacity in Canada right now for doing the kind of gender analysis we’re talking about exists in these organizations. Part of the mandate should be about building that ecosystem because we don’t have the capability.
To me, the number one mandate of the department should be to find a way to use those capabilities, to build them within the government, and to design policies that address the priorities we’re talking about. Of course, child care will come up, as will the other types of priorities we’re talking about. We need to have that lens on all of the decisions being made because a lot of the policies being pursued, as Professor Lahey said in the earlier session, seem like they don’t have a gender aspect and so the gender impacts are not really addressed.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: Thank you for your testimony, which provides us with a lot of insight into some very important issues.
Clearly, funding is an issue for all NGOs. I think investments need to be made.
Funding may be the obvious solution. However, would you have any recommendations for the new department, which will receive a mandate letter, on how to enhance effectiveness between the new department and all NGOs committed to gender equality and parity for women?
[English]
Ms. Roy: I appreciate the question very much because you do need a very efficient and tight funding environment; but having worked both in the private sector and for public charities, I can assure you that some of the most efficient and lean organizations are charities. We are actually applying Six Sigma principles in a way that companies simply cannot because we’re able to be nimble and responsive.
If you look at the existing oversight and auditing mechanisms for charities, you will see that they are quite strict compared with publicly owned corporations or family corporations.
There are standards in place for the level of due diligence we have to do for our funders when it comes to abiding by Treasury Board funder guidelines and reporting to a board of directors while solving violence against women and child abuse at the same time. YWCA Canada has a set of standards. Organizations, I am sure you’re familiar with, such as Imagine Canada have very tough financial management standards.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: I may have not asked my question properly. Beyond funding and management standards — and I am sure that your standards are very rigorous and robust — in your experience, what actions should be taken to foster an effective partnership between the new department and all organizations working to promote women’s equality?
I’m not talking about funding. In your opinion, should we create a national council for organizations seeking equality, for example? In addition to funding, do you have any other ideas that would enable you to be more effective in fulfilling your mandate?
[English]
Ms. Neapole: Other than support funding for our organizations to do our work and being consulted, if expertise is to be taken from us maybe that should be compensated. We have little capacity even to take a day out of our jobs or away from our work. I am sure those from the Y and Oxfam feel the same way. A whole lot of work is piling up on my desk that I can’t get to. It doesn’t go away.
There has to be ways to support our meaningful engagement. That also means time and not being given 24-hour or 48-hour notice. This time it was a week. Sometimes we have been asked to meaningfully consult on things in the past and currently, but we don’t have the time to turn this stuff around. We are not one of these ginormous machines. Some of us only have two employees. It has to be recognized and understood that our capacity is limited when we are being engaged with.
Ms. Sarosi: Previously, you asked the question about making a submission to the pre-budget consultations. It would have been interesting to hear why they do not.
People quickly realize that policy processes are complex. They need to be trained and have access to these things. They can’t do this kind of work on the side of their desks while they are trying to deliver services.
As I mentioned, there is no real funding for women’s rights organizations to engage in policy processes. When they can do so, there is a dedicated policy person who can figure out how these processes work.
That’s really difficult, so it’s important for the department to provide capacity building for organizations to participate in the processes, to support them along the way and to give them access to places they don’t have access to.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: In my previous life, I worked in a smaller community, but a community nonetheless, and I saw that women are often economically and physically marginalized. As a result, they don’t go to the YWCAs or the umbrella organizations. They totally slip under the radar. In addition, between the needs they express and those expressed by several organizations, there is a world of difference. We are talking about basic needs, such as a roof or security, in relation to other needs, such as a meeting place. Do you have mechanisms in place that would allow you to meet the most vulnerable people in Canadian society?
[English]
Ms. Roy: I appreciate the question because the most marginalized cannot access our services. I have heard many women say, “I didn’t have money for a bus ticket to go to your shelter when I was being beaten up. There are no buses.”
Going back to the previous question around priorities, this department needs to ask exactly those kinds of questions and connect it back to the gender budgeting and how you are allocating resources as a government. There was a question to Pauktuutit on the earlier panel. Many Inuk girls and women use our YWCA shelters in Nunavut as housing, but I cannot get to the women and young girls who, because of the lack of housing, are being sexually exploited by older mine workers who are flying in and out of the community. They are becoming friends so they have a warm bed to sleep in because of the 20 people living in a one-bedroom apartment. It is full cycle. You are seeing the type of research Ms. Kaplan and my colleagues were talking about to map that out and do the funding.
Ms. Kaplan: I want to emphasize how important the provision around intersectionality is. To the extent gender analysis is being done today, it is almost entirely done on male-female binary. It is not doing a good job considering all the intersections with race, Indigenous status or socio-economic status. This is a capability that mainly does not exist. If the department is to be effective, it has to make good on that promise.
Senator Boehm: I thank all of you for being with us. I admire your advocacy and commitment. I have a question related to a few things that were raised. One is with respect to the consultative process. I think Ms. Neapole raised that in the new department.
In my experience in government we have consultative processes, and then consultative processes. There are those consultative processes that are frankly little more than ticking the box to say we have done it. Then there are those that go a bit deeper, become more evergreen and go further. In my experience in the international development world, we can go back to women and development in the 1980s and the old CIDA policy. Senator Andreychuk will remember that. We developed a whole series of gender experts who would work with us on projects. It takes time.
Professor Kaplan, you made a comment about capacity building. In this new department, would it make sense to look at an infusion of people with expertise who could bring a different lens to the approach rather than dealing with your core group of employees? Of course they would be there. Then that could be blended with a consultative process that is perhaps more evergreen.
There are other countries in the world that have intersectional challenges, and they have addressed them in gender equality. I am thinking particularly of the Nordic countries that also have Indigenous populations and the like. They have been at it a bit longer than we have. They are smaller countries. In the case of Norway they have their huge sovereign wealth fund and they do things with that.
My first question is on consultations on how they would look. The second one is looking at best practices from other places on the globe, recognizing we are in uncharted territory in Canada but we all want to make this work.
Ms. Roy: It would be important, as part of the coordination role, if this department was not just to do endless consultation. I am sure you have heard from your own constituents and stakeholders that there is a limit and some consultation fatigue. It is mining the data from your existing census and coordinating with other bodies such as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. If the government research agenda were aligned with this department, they could potentially start to look at more innovative solutions.
Ms. Sarosi: Senator Boehm. I really like your first point. It is important that there is further consideration of staff makeup of the department. We all know quality of intersectional analysis starts with intersectional staff and staff of different diversity with experience being able to do that analysis.
As we know, the government is not exactly the most diverse workforce. It’s very good to start at home to increase understanding of how these intersecting factors come into play. In the meantime, there needs to be help before we get there. Yes, I agree.
Ms. Neapole: I would like the consultative process to be an independent movement. As much as I would like us to be consulted and have more of a formal consultative relationship, I still think the strength in the women’s movement is as it remains independent.
There are good examples of some Nordic countries in terms of the women’s lobbies. There are big coalitions of women’s groups and different ways to engage while still remaining independent. That’s one comment I would make. Maybe we can organize on our own terms. It could be annual like NAC. We are not trying to redo NAC, but maybe we could work on something like a national group.
Ms. Kaplan: We in Canada do a lot of consultation with very little opportunity to prepare a deeper analysis. I have been consulted with many times, but often at such short notice and with no resources for me to actually do an analysis that would support my point of view.
I think it’s important for the department itself to build its capacity to do these analyses, and we need better data. If we care about the gender non-binary, we literally don’t have data on the issues. We need to build the capacity internally. I agree that the value of the other women’s organizations is their independence to be able to be critics when necessary. I think both are required.
The Chair: To the witnesses thank you very much. This concludes the consideration of Part 4, Division 18, Department for Women and Gender Equity.
Honourable senators, discussions took place earlier among Senator Jaffer, Senator Pratte and I, as the steering committee. When we finish the meeting tomorrow afternoon at 1:45 p.m. in room 160-S, there seems to be consensus to move into clause by clause on Friday morning starting at nine o’clock in this room. Is there a consensus around the table that we would do clause-by-clause consideration on Friday morning?
Senator Andreychuk: We need an attendance record of who will be here. If you say Friday, it means the committee has to be here. I have been here too long waiting for quorums.
The Chair: Senator Andreychuk, thank you for comments. We have consensus to move on to clause-by- clause consideration of Bill C-86 on Friday morning.
(The committee adjourned.)