:
Good morning, and thank you for the invitation to speak today.
Marilyn, it's especially good to see you.
My role this morning is simply to set the stage and give you the context for the family experiences that Jennifer will share with you.
Situated in the city of Sarnia in southwest Ontario, Pathways is a provider of children's rehab and other educational services and supports to about 2,400 children and their families. We've been helping families in our community for over 40 years. Our families are a mix of urban and rural, and from all socio-economic groupings. We have an indigenous urban population in Sarnia, and three first nations within Lambton County. Sarnia is gradually becoming more ethnically diverse, although it still lags behind major urban areas. The major wave of immigrants who stayed and prospered in the area came from Europe. Lambton College brings in students of all nationalities, but we find that for the most part they do not stay in the area once their studies are done. They tend to move to the larger urban areas, where jobs are more plentiful and there are larger populations with similar ethnic and cultural backgrounds for them to blend into.
We are aware of Pathways families from all of these various groupings who live in poverty and must miss scheduled assessments and therapy sessions because they need to get from one side of town to the other using our limited public transportation to access the social welfare they and their families must rely on. We are aware that indigenous families living in first nation communities lack the transportation to come to locations where we offer service. We're trying to address this within our limited resources, because we understand that we will be able to reach out to those families more easily in locations where they feel culturally safe. More than anything, we are aware that having a child with a disability takes its toll on the family unit and that the burden of care may fall on a single parent, very often the mother.
Sarnia-Lambton has been hard hit economically over a number of years, most especially recently with the slump in oil prices. Despite ongoing initiatives to diversify our economy, the big companies in what is known as “chemical valley” are still among our mainstay employers. Fast facts from the Sarnia-Lambton workforce development board tell us that in March 2017, Sarnia-Lambton had the highest unemployment rate, at 8%, in the Erie-St. Clair region, higher even than Windsor, at 6.5%. Board reports over the years have documented the low education of the Sarnia-Lambton population. Most jobs with good chances of employment require trades, college, or university training or education. Sarnia-Lambton needs more people with post-secondary education in diverse fields. The lack of up-to-date qualification and recent work experience presents a significant barrier for women who have taken time out of the workforce, often many years, to care for their children, youth, or adult children with disabilities. We would like to ask whether such women have ever been the focus of research as to their experience when they must try to re-enter the workforce.
Well, as I said at the beginning, my role is to set the stage for you to understand more about the experiences of a few local women and the impact of their situation on their economic status.
Over to you, Jen.
:
When asked to help with this topic, I looked back at my own life and the economic security of my own career.
When my husband and I were faced with the life-altering news that our son had autism, the demands were overwhelming from our appointments with developmental pediatricians, occupational therapists, speech therapists, physiotherapists, social workers, Autism Ontario, audiologists, and day care and school meetings. Phone calls from the day care and school requesting that I pick my child up were using up my sick days and vacation time. The demands and barriers of having a child with a disability fell heavily on my lap, as my husband's job had a higher salary.
I walked away from my career, benefits, and a pension. The financial burden quickly surfaced, as additional private support comes at a cost. Private speech and occupational therapy can cost anywhere from $100 to $150 per hour. Slowly we were going into debt.
When the position as parent adviser became available, I was able to make it work with its flexibility and decreased hours so I could still support my son. To have a job, a loving husband, and the support of my family makes me a minority in this situation.
I've also reached out to a parent who is a crisis caseworker at the Ontario Works department. She informed me of some barriers that she commonly sees for women who have a child with a disability. There are constant phone calls from the day care and school, demanding that the mother come to pick up her child. This creates overwhelming stress on the woman's job, and the end result is either that the mother is fired or needs to leave because the demands are too great.
If a mother seeks other employment, the job is lower paying with no benefits. The family is now living in poverty and the cycle begins. For example, transportation is a major barrier for a lot of these women as they may not have a vehicle, so taking public transportation is their only means. A child's appointment that would take one hour will now take three to four, which again adds the stress if the mother is working. Living conditions also dramatically change, as a mother and her family will need to reside in low-income housing. This presents new challenges and stresses on an already depleted mother.
For a woman to qualify for Ontario Works, her assets need to be below $2,500. A single parent with one child will receive under $1,000 a month to live on. Once a woman lives in poverty she is faced with additional barriers, which create new struggles that keep her in poverty. A lot of these women are not receiving the funding resources that could help them, or they do not have the strength or the energy to pursue them. Their focus is just to survive.
I've had the honour of hearing two client stories that I will share with you. The people's names have been changed to protect their privacy. Sara, the first mom, is a single mom with five children. One child was diagnosed with autism, and sensory processing and selective mutism disorder. Sara is divorced and receives no financial support from the father and no financial or emotional support from her family. Appointments and calls from the school demanding that her child be picked up put her in a stressful position with her employer. She lived in fear of being fired. Sara then took a pay cut and resorted to working straight midnights so she would be available for her child and the school. This took a toll on Sara and she ended up getting hurt on the job and receiving WSIB. Sara also had to drain her investments, like her RRSPs, as the financial needs were too great. She was receiving some financial support for her disabled son through special services at home, but the rest of her children were doing without. She is lost to what the future holds for her and her family.
Lori, the second mother, is a single mom with two children. Her one child was born legally blind and has cerebral palsy. Lori does not receive any financial support from the child's father and no financial or emotional support from her family. She truly feels alone. Lori was bombarded with doctors' appointments and had to take extended maternal leave to care for her son. When she returned to work, she was faced with the following barriers: her work hours, the demands of her child's needs, and the lack of flexibility at her job. Not wanting to resort to Ontario Works, Lori looked for employment elsewhere. Lori is presently employed as a PSW and works long hours to make ends meet. Her present job does give some flexibility, but her hours are unpredictable; and health care benefits, which are assessed every six months, rely on the amount of hours worked.
Lori shared with me that there have been times when she has worked 127 hours in two weeks, and other weeks less than 30. If her hours are less than 30, Lori and her family will not receive health care benefits for six months until they are reassessed again. No matter what the socio-economic status is of women with a child who has a disability, they all share a common theme, and that is that the security of their career is jeopardized. We live in a two-income based society. Without the proper financial and emotional support, these women fall through the cracks.
Thank you for your time.
:
Tanisi. Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
The information that I'm providing and my statement are based on my own research, on research that others have conducted, on my observations of the experiences of friends, family, and community members, and on my own experiences as a two-spirit-identified Cree woman.
I'm from the Opaskwayak Cree nation, and that's where I'm talking to you from today. We're a community of about 5,700 people 500 kilometres north of Winnipeg. Of our membership, approximately one-third do not live on reserve but mostly in cities across Canada, but also elsewhere in the world.
I began by telling you where I'm from because it is important to note that Cree people have lived in this area for a long time. In fact, like all other indigenous communities in North America, we have lived continuously on our land longer than any other people on the planet, with the exception maybe of indigenous Australians. With that long connection to the land, we have an intimate and important understanding of and connection to the land that extends back tens of thousands of years.
For all those thousands of years, our community has not only survived, but thrived. Every person had importance within the community and familial life. Within a very, very short period of time, the last 200 years or so, all that changed. Of course, what I'm referring to is the process of colonization, or what others call the “founding” of Canada.
There are two stories, the story that I and other indigenous women know and the story that is presented to Canadians, or the story of Canada. We were asked to make a statement about poverty and the impacts on indigenous women. However, we cannot talk about poverty without acknowledging that poverty is a symptom or a result of an intersection of a host of factors such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and other forms of systemic oppression.
The lives of indigenous women have been regulated by policy since the founding of Canada. Every aspect of our lives has been regulated, such as what we eat, whom we are allowed to marry, where we live, what we are allowed to own, what we wear, and even who gets to use the term “Indian”, who gets to call themselves Indian. We know the effect of this regulation and of the intersections of multiple forms of oppression. The effect is evident in the many statistics that most of you already know or probably have some familiarity with, just like I know, when I take a taxi in Winnipeg, I will most likely have to pay up front, just like I continually have to worry about the safety of my nieces.
The effect of colonization is asymmetrical. Certain bodies are impacted in ways that others aren't, and those are the bodies of indigenous women, two-spirit, and trans indigenous people. The effect is institutionalized, and the effect has meant a disconnection from meaningful relationships, including to the land and water, which leads to destruction of land and water, to violence, the effect of the normalization of violence, and the internalization of violence.
It's meant that language has been lost or changed. It's meant that binary gender roles have been entrenched. It's meant that spirituality has now become a religion and institutionalized by schools, prisons, CFS, and the health care system. It's meant that certain world views have been privileged while others have been dismissed, in particular, the world views of indigenous women. This is the reality that we live with.
As all of you know, there are over 1,200 missing or murdered indigenous women in Canada. Seven out of 10 aboriginal girls will experience sexual abuse or violence in their lives. Aboriginal women are 3.5 times more likely to experience intimate partner violence. For indigenous queer youth, the suicide rates are unimaginable—10 times higher than any other group. For indigenous trans-identified youth, suicide rates are around 56%, which means that if you know any indigenous trans-identified youths, the chances are that they will have either thought about suicide or attempted suicide. We see trans-identified indigenous youth leaving school as early as the third grade. Think about that. Why would a third grader not feel safe in school?
We have states of emergency around suicide. Homelessness rates are increasing. These are all the effects of colonization. These are the facts of life for indigenous women in Canada. Whether we are Cree, Inuit, Anishinabe, Métis, Coast Salish, or from whatever nation, the effect is the same across the country. But there is nothing inherently wrong with indigenous women. If we just looked at the statistics, if we just looked at the way Canada presents indigenous women, people would think there is something inherently wrong with us, and it's quite amazing that we are still here today despite the intersection of all of these multiple forms of oppression.
I would say that there is nothing inherently wrong with indigenous women. There is something inherently wrong with Canada.
In conclusion, I urge you, as representatives of Canada, to seriously consider how poverty fits into the bigger picture of the story of Canada.
Thank you.
:
Thank you for that question.
What I can provide from my level in the organization is that navigating the health care and social system is hard for anyone. I can tell you that in all seriousness.
We are currently rolling out a couple of initiatives within the province of Ontario, one to coordinate service planning for families with children with complex special needs and another to integrate rehab services. Throughout the engagement with families prior to and during the implementation of those initiatives, we have heard from families how confusing it is, how they don't know where to go, and my colleague Jenny referred to the Ontario Works caseworker, who was also using her own research to try to find out where to go.
If professionals don't know where to go, just think how much harder it is for the family. They land somewhere but they are always second-guessing if they got to the right place, was there someone else they could have accessed, was there something they could have done better for their child?
I think that's probably what I can share with you about what I know of the impacts. Maybe Jenny can contribute.
:
When it comes to the funding for families, number one is trying to have everybody on the same page so that information can be delivered. But even in some situations, it's too much for a parent. I've had some families that just can't manage.
When they do receive funding, there are a lot of barriers and stipulations around it, and then there's the paperwork. I'll give you a scenario for the latter. A portion of the form for a disability tax credit, for instance, needs to be filled out by a doctor. You have a family that's already strapped for income; they go to get this filled out and it can cost them anywhere from $50 to $100. I've had families walk away because they cannot afford it. Furthermore, with a lot of these funding papers, a family also needs to provide documentation from their doctor, from their developmental pediatrician, or a psychologist, and there's also a price tag attached to that, which is a barrier. I've had some families that can't afford the doctor's note, or for the doctor to fill it out. Then they come back and we have to look at third-party funding. That's a whole new step and a lot of families don't have the energy and give up, meaning they have no access to that funding.
There's the time consumed with appointments. A lot of the treatment will happen as a block, and the demands will be such that maybe a couple of times a week, or weekly, a mother or caregiver will need to devote that time to the child. If they are trying to balance their work and caring for their disabled child, something has to give.
:
To begin with, there has to be some kind of acknowledgement of the history that's happened. I know that sounds basic, but as an educator who teaches incoming first-year students and graduate students, you'd be surprised at how many 18- and 19-year-olds have no clue about the history of Canada in relation to indigenous peoples. They don't know about the residential school era. They don't know about the sixties scoop. They're continually getting fed stereotypes that they find on social media or even that they're taught in school.
Education, I think, is a foundational piece for awareness. Whether that's formal education through the K to 12 and the post-secondary system, or informal education through social movements or community organizations, I think there really needs to be a focus on that. That's the beginning, I would say.
The other thing is an acknowledgement that there is an imbalance in power. This is the committee on the status of women, where most of us are aware of the dynamics of domestic violence, for example, and that domestic violence is a gendered phenomenon whereby women are impacted in a different way from men. It's predominantly women who are the victims of domestic violence.
If you think of a violent relationship, there are two parties in it. Imagine saying to a couple, after a woman has experienced domestic violence, that they should get back together, get along, and move forward. A similar thing has happened with the relationship between indigenous peoples and Canada, the result of an unequal balance of power and the violence enacted on indigenous people, with indigenous women mostly feeling the effect of that.
So there has to be another acknowledgement that this unequal power relationship means that great care has to taken when making reparations around this relationship. I say so because telling two people just to get back together and start moving forward really undermines the self-worth of that person—or in this case of an entire group of people. They can be viewed as less than human, and that's certainly how we have been treated.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Professor Wilson, I was ashamed to learn on Friday at a KAIROS blanket exercise for reconciliation on the Hill that indigenous people who earned a degree—to be a teacher, engineer, doctor, or whatever—were forced to give up their Indian status.
Everybody around the room is looking surprised by that, too. I had no idea. What a total calamity for the economy and discrimination. I'm embarrassed on behalf of the country, but I am embarrassed that as a legislator I didn't know that before. I'd like to hear your thoughts on that terrible story.
I have also been hearing from my colleague Romeo Saganash that this is still built into the Indian Act. Addressing that is part of the changes proposed in to end gender-based discrimination, but we hear that the Liberal government is proposing to oppose the amendment regarding paragraph 6(1)(a), which would end that discrimination around employment and getting degrees, on the basis that more consultation is needed. Can you fill the committee in on that history, in your view?
:
The Indian Act dictates who can be Indian and who is not Indian. One of the criteria was that if you were enfranchised as a Canadian, you were no longer Indian. There were different ways of enfranchisement. One was that if you enlisted in the armed forces, and another was if you were a woman and you married a non-status person, then you would not become Indian.
So that's where a lot of the focus is in court right now—on women and their descendants who lost their status because of marrying out. I believe that as we speak, there's a committee meeting right now on this topic.
Moreover, if you received an education you were enfranchised or assimilated as a Canadian. I haven't seen anybody who actually lost their status because they got a bachelor's degree or a mainstream education, so I don't know of any cases in which that actually happened, even though that was written into the Indian Act.
One thing that did impact people, though, is funding. If you were a first nations person and went to university, by the treaties you were supposed to be provided with financial support for education. That was challenged in the 1960s. In fact, my dad was one of the first people to challenge it when he went to the University of Saskatchewan, because the rationale was given that, for people of the time, the average education would be a grade 8, so he had already exceeded the expectations for an Indian. They were able to successfully challenge that.
Post-secondary funding is still unequal and still not up to par with what it should be. In fact, there hadn't been a change in the funding structure since 1992. That creates an unequal dynamic around access to education.
:
That then has attendant economic consequences.
Thank you, thank you for your work.
I'm going to turn to the witnesses from Pathways Health Centre for Children.
In committee last week, we heard from women who bravely came to testify about some of the very same effects you have described. They are parents just caught in a never-ending cycle of having to care for children who are very ill or are living with disabilities, and having to leave their work and falling into poverty.
This particular group, Parents jusqu'au bout, described providing 24-7 care. We also heard that in addition to the challenge of navigating the complex benefits system that you've described, that their children may become ineligible as they pass the age of 18. They also said that the women themselves don't make enough money to pay income tax, and so the federal tax rebates that were set up to support their families are actually irrelevant to them. The rebate is a non-offer.
Can you describe any recommendations you have the federal government to make changes so that we could better support parents caring for children with disabilities by their having access to stable benefits?
:
Yes. For instance, speaking about the registered disability savings plan, to access that, first of all, a family needs to have the disability tax credit. Now we're faced with the first barrier, which I mentioned earlier: the form needs to be filled out by a doctor, so there's a fee. For those families that can't afford that fee, then they're not eligible for the registered disability savings plan.
Then, if they do have it, one, a lot of the banks don't have the proper information about how to run a registered disability plan, and two, a lot of these families don't have the money to put in. One thing I do try to tell the families is that they might only be eligible for three years, because with the disability tax credit now, depending on the disability, they're strict with autism now. That family has to now reapply and pay another doctor to fill out that form.
Families have been told that you have to put money into the registered disability savings plan, but in fact you don't have to right away if you don't have the funds. But once they get that disability tax credit, they should try to connect, and I've tried to supply resources for them to get the accurate information. They should open the account, have it available, because three years from now, if their child does not qualify for the disability tax credit, no on can take away their registered disability savings plan. Again, that key piece is that families don't know, or financially they can't support.
:
I'll just echo Grace-Edward by saying that we're very happy to be talking to you about this.
We're apologetic that, when we're looking at the national data, we are actually talking to you about data that is, in fact, 12 years old. We'll explain some of the reasons why that is the case.
In the study that will be the focus of most of what we will be talking about today, we used 2006 census data to really paint a picture of the labour market experience of racialized Canadians. We looked at a number of measures there to describe that.
What we found was that racialized Canadians are very willing to work. Both racialized men and women had higher labour force participation rates. If people are participating in the labour market, it either means they are employed or are actively looking for employment. Despite this willingness and eagerness to work, racialized Canadians had higher unemployment rates. In particular, racialized women had the highest unemployment rate of the four groups that we were looking at: 9.3%. We have to remember back to 2005. At that point, we were really in the midst of a boom in Canada. Still, racialized women had that higher unemployment rate.
We first looked at those broad aggregate numbers. What was the participation rate? What was the employment rate? What was the unemployment rate? Then we went in. We wanted to take a look at where racialized Canadians were working and how that differed from non-racialized Canadians. We were at a pretty high level of aggregation, but what it showed us was that there were some insights, even from this limited data. The first—which is very important, particularly 11 years later—was that there was an overrepresentation of racialized workers in private services. They were working as security guards, in janitorial services, in call services, etc.
That's the kind of work that is precarious. It is more likely to be at minimum wage, to have turnover and contracts, and to not have the kinds of supports and benefits found in what we describe as a more standard employment relationship. That is also the kind of work that has really expanded over the last ten years as we see more low-wage work and more precarious work.
We also saw at that time a concentration of both racialized men and women in manufacturing. We also know that industry has had a very tough time.
Something that I think is really important to note, particularly with regard to this group, is that there was an under-representation of racialized people in public administration. Public administration doesn't include health care or education. It really includes the people who are making policy and administering government programs. The lack of that perspective and voice in public administration is a concern for us.
With more direct regard to what I understand your committee is looking at, I will say that we also saw that the construction of gender differs between racialized and non-racialized women. You might ask what that means or how that plays itself out. What that really means is that racialized women are concentrated in different jobs and have different experiences, different concentrations of work. For example, racialized women were more likely to work in manufacturing and processing jobs than non-racialized women. Although both racialized and non-racialized women were under-represented in natural and applied sciences, racialized women were more likely to work in that field. Similarly, non-racialized women were more likely to work in education.
What this points out to us is the importance of really looking at women's experiences across the broad spectrum and not just looking at those averages. We have to disaggregate those experiences across a number of factors. We have to look at the experiences of indigenous women and racialized women. We also have to break apart those groupings of racialized women because we know that women from different racialized backgrounds have different experiences and different labour market experiences.
We looked at who is working and who isn't working, access to employment, and where people are working. At the bottom line, we indicate average employment incomes. What that showed us is that racialized women earned 55.6¢ for every dollar that non-racialized men made. When you do that comparison, you can also say that racialized women earned 88¢ for every dollar that non-racialized women earned and 71¢ for every dollar that racialized men earned. We see that the combination of gender and racialization really has complex and disadvantageous impacts on racialized women in the labour market.
We're uncomfortable talking about labour market racism or perhaps any racism in Canada. Therefore, when we look at that labour market experience, there is a temptation for us to say that for all non-indigenous Canadians, for everybody who immigrates to this country, they struggle a bit—either the first generation, or they struggle the first few years—and then it's a level playing field.
What we wanted to look at with this data was immigrants who were racialized or non racialized. We controlled for age. We had only 25- to 44-year-olds, the people in their peak earning years, and people with a university degree or certificate. What we found was that the immigration experience is very different if you're racialized or if you're non-racialized. That difference continues between racialized and non-racialized immigrants, through to the second generation and continues to the third generation. This is not a problem of recent immigrants. This is really a problem of racism in the labour market.
Having already looked at the labour market experience and the income experience, then we're really looking at the next issue. What is the impact of this labour market discrimination on families? We found that racialized Canadians had three times the poverty rate of non-racialized families. Again, this was during the boom years, and as opposed to a 6.4% poverty rate, it's a 20% poverty rate.
That data for the national picture was from 2005 and we wanted to update it and the analysis using the national household survey data. We set out to write a paper that would update that data to see what the experience was post-recession, what the impact was, and whether things were better or worse. Instead, we wound up writing a paper about the problems with the national household survey data because there were just too many problems with it reliability for us to draw conclusions. We were very happy and relieved that the census had been reinstated and that we can go back to that analysis.
Just to give you something that's a little more up to date, we are looking at some analysis using another Stats Canada source, which is the “Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics”, and that data is from 2011. If you have 12-year-old data, the data are only six years out of date. It reinforces that racialized women are concentrated in low-wage work and that a higher share of racialized workers are working for minimum wage. When you break it down by gender and by racialization, the highest share of workers at minimum-wage jobs are racialized women.
On on page 12 we looked at the share of employees who were 25 years of age and over and low-wage workers, those within $4 of making the minimum wage. We found, once again, that racialized women were the most likely to be working for those low-wage jobs and that racialized men were also very likely to be doing this.
We're going to move to what we want to leave you.
One of the things we want to say is that the availability of data is very crucial, because if you don't have the data you can't understand the problem and therefore give appropriate policy solutions. For example, we have a 10-year gap resulting from the national household survey, but until very recently we used to have annual data that had a variable describing racialization, so we could understand the labour market experience from year to year. I know you all have a lot of information. That was the “Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics”. When they switched to the “Canadian Income Survey”, they dropped the racialization variable. That is of extreme concern to us because it means that we are limited to an analysis every five years. As we and others have been urging StatsCan, we urge you to recommend that that survey be reinstated so that we can really understand what's happening in the labour market on a year-to-year basis.
While all three groups experience labour market discrimination, racialized women's experience differs from that of racialized men and non-racialized women. We really need to understand that through the data and really need policies that will address all of that complexity.
Now I'm going to pass to Professor Galabuzi.
:
I think essentially the argument we're making is that we've established through the analysis that all three groups experience significant vulnerabilities, but in particular racialized women. These vulnerabilities arise from both their racialized and gendered identities. It is essential for the federal government to regulate the labour market in such a way that it addresses the precarious nature of the work that is available to them.
In terms of that regulation, we're thinking about some changes in labour law or women's standards that would address the experience of those who are under federal jurisdiction, but also provide leadership for the jurisdictions of the provinces so they can address that experience too.
We recognize that there is employment equity legislation at the federal level. There have been ongoing discussions about making changes to the legislation that might strengthen the associated regulation and ensure greater access to employment and equitable employment for all three groups, but in particular racialized women. I should not only say racialized women, but also indigenous women.
Pay equity is another area where we believe that there is some scope for making the experience of racialized women much more equitable than it is today.
We believe that other dimensions of policy that relate to the experience of access to employment, like child care for instance, also represent an opportunity to address that disproportionate experience. We also believe that one of the challenges in the labour market today is the extent to which employers have disproportionate power in their relationship with their employees.
Part of that has to do with the level of unionization. Unionization is significant lower that it has been in the past, especially in some of the areas of jurisdiction outside the public service. We believe, both from the point of view of access to unionization for those workers who have the vulnerabilities, but also dealing with the responsibility of the federal government to meet its obligations under international treaty, that it is essential for us to look at how we can regularize unionization to make it easier for under-represented groups to unionize. The three groups that we're talking about are likely to be less unionized than other groups.
I want to echo what Sheila just said about the question of data collection. Precisely because of this vulnerability arising from intersectional impacts, how we collect data is really important to our having a better understanding of that experience. I think it's essential for us to disaggregate the data so that we have data that explains the experience of particular groups in the labour market. In this case, without this disaggregated data, there is no way we can understand the challenges that particular groups face in the labour market. That is last point I want to make, to really emphasize the question of data collection and this disaggregated data collection.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses for their presentation.
I would like to begin by talking about my own experience as a first-generation immigrant who arrived in Canada with a nursing degree. After my triplets started school, I decided to go back to school. When I was getting my bachelor's degree, most of my colleagues were visible—or racial, as you say—minority women. I completed my bachelor's degree and then took a master's. Most of my classmates—about 75% of them—were visible minority women. In my first PhD course, we were four or five women, and all of us belonged to a visible minority.
So it is not a matter of language barriers or a lack of degrees. I was shocked to learn that, in 2011, 16.2% of Ontario's minimum wage employees were members of a visible minority. The situation does not only affect women; you said that both women and men were affected. As for the labour market, you mentioned that the unemployment rate in 2006 was really high, and that 9.3% of unemployed women belonged to a visible minority. So the unemployment rate is high, and the employment rate is too low.
Here is my question. According to you, what obstacles are visible minority Canadians, especially women, facing while trying to achieve greater economic security by entering the workforce? I am not talking only about women who have more of an opportunity to earn a degree, but also about those who are overqualified. Why do those obstacles exist?