:
Thank you very much, Joy. I would also like to say thanks to members of the committee for granting us the opportunity to be here with you.
I am here representing the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. This is an agency that is province-wide and is located in Toronto. I am here today to share our views regarding economic security for older immigrant and refugee women in Canada. But before I do that, I will tell you just briefly about OCASI.
OCASI came into existence in 1978 when there was a realization that immigrants were coming to this country and needed services, and so a couple of agencies got together and formed what is known today as OCASI.
OCASI has a membership of over 180 autonomous organizations across Ontario. Its mission is to ensure equal opportunities, to ensure that immigrants can achieve equality, access, and full participation in this Canadian society. The membership of OCASI provides a variety of services to immigrants and refugees who come into Ontario.
We have been asked, as you know, to speak to you about the economic security of immigrant and refugee seniors. But before we can get into that, I need to give you a broad portrait of the situation of older immigrant and refugee women in Canada. I need to do that in order to build a context regarding economic security.
First, I'll touch briefly on the immigration policy and the constraints of that particular policy.
I think all of us know that in Canada we have an aging population. It includes not only “Canadians”, but also the immigrant population, and particularly immigrant women. In 2004 we were told that more than half of the population in Canada 65 years and over were women. Of that group, 19% are foreign-born women included in the number. We know that in Canada women make up more than 50% of the population. Immigration has helped to strengthen the growth of population in Canada over the last little while.
Statistics Canada reported that one-third of immigrant women are between 45 and 65 years of age. Women who were born outside of the country are more likely than other women to be seniors. In 2001, 20% of all immigrant women were 65 years and over, compared with 12% of Canadian-born women.
Therefore, we have a growing and an aging population among immigrant women in this country. I will give you a bit more statistics. Figures show 14% of the female population are from racialized communities and live largely in Toronto and Vancouver, and I think that is no surprise to you. Most racialized women in Canada are foreign-born, and the largest share is of recent arrivals to Canada. What we have observed is that 55% of all seniors are racialized women.
Two per cent of foreign-born women cannot speak either English or French, and this is disproportionate to our men. They are mostly seniors, of whom 18% of those born outside the country cannot speak English or French. Most of these women came to Canada as sponsored immigrants or were dependants sponsored by their husbands. This, we know, is the experience of about 72% of immigrant women.
What we are seeing in our country today is that the current immigration legislation and policy, specifically the point system as applied to independent immigrants, privileges immigrants with post-secondary education and work experience in their fields. Given global conditions of inequality, many women have limited access to post-secondary education and the opportunity to work in their fields.
Because of this inequality, these individuals are very dependent upon their spouses, and because of this we have had situations where women, when problems occur in the family, cannot do anything for themselves because they have always been dependent on their partners.
I can cite just quickly an example of one woman who had lived with her husband for the last 25 or 30 years and who then, when she was asked to leave the home, did not even know how to go to the bank. She did not know how to write a cheque because she had never done that at all throughout her life.
The Canadian Council for Refugees, of which OCASI is a member, has on several occasions asked the Department of Citizenship and Immigration to address this inequality, but what we've seen is that nothing has changed. What we have is a growing population of immigrant women and racialized women who are experiencing poverty. Hence we call it the racialization of poverty.
We know when we look at immigration trends that a number of immigrants are arriving from areas like Asia, the Middle East, African countries, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. This has meant an increase in the number of racialized immigrants coming into Canada, with most of these coming from China. Over the last 10 years, that number has grown significantly. About half the female Canadian population, or approximately 49% of all immigrant women, are from racialized communities.
According to the 2001 census, the average income in Ontario was $35,185, the median being $28,027, indicating that the majority of Ontario residents were receiving less than the average income for the province. In contrast, the average income for immigrants who had arrived in Canada between 1995 and 1999 was $29,398, while the median was $20,006. The average income for Ontario residents from racialized communities was $28,978 and the median was $23,990. This shows you what is happening to racialized immigrant women in this country. What we see is that women are living in poverty, and this is of great concern to us as an organization.
We ask ourselves what has changed. A number of reports have been written on this particular subject matter. I cite two of them. One is Canada's Economic Apartheid: the Social Exclusion of Racialized Groups in the New Century, which was written by Grace-Edward Galabuzi. Another one came from the Canadian Council on Social Development: Nowhere to Turn?, written by Dr. Ekuwa Smith. These reports have looked at the racialization of poverty of immigrant women in Canada.
We know that systemic racism, discrimination, and inequality, especially in the labour market, continue be contributing factors to poverty among immigrant women in this country. Therefore, we think something needs to be done. It is true that there's not much out there on the issue surrounding senior immigrant women, and therefore we think some piece of research needs to be targeted specifically at that particular group. What we know is that recent immigrants to Canada are more likely to be employed in contingent types of work or non-standard types of work, or piece work, or temporary work, or contract work, or seasonal work. What we also know is that women from racialized communities are relatively well educated compared to others, yet we find them in low-paid jobs in our community.
Women from racialized communities earn less and have comparatively low incomes. This is consistent with the experience of all racialized residents in Canada. Four per cent of women over 65 had paying jobs. Many have never been employed, but we believe that this will change because we have a growing population and at the same time, an aging population and some--the young women--are finding employment. Therefore, we're hoping that later on their situation will not be as bad as it is for the current seniors.
When we look at what is happening in our labour market, more and more immigrant women, as I said earlier, are becoming poorer. The National Advisory Council on Aging, in its report Aging in Poverty in Canada, written in October 2005, reports that almost half of all immigrants aged 45 to 59 who arrived in Canada after 1980 said they feel they're ill-prepared for retirement. Forty-seven per cent of those do not know when they will be able to retire or do not intend to retire at all.
Generally, recently arrived old immigrants find it more difficult to enter the labour market compared to previous immigrants.
:
First of all, I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to attend.
As my sister Lucya mentioned, the face of poverty in this country is racialized. It's also ruralized. I'm an elected official with the National Farmers Union, and I'm representing only 2% of the current Canadian population; I work on my farm and I work off my farm full time in the summer to support the farm business. I also work to support our five children, three of whom are in university. They will graduate with huge debt loads nonetheless, because the farm that my husband and I operate....
Ours is a fifth-generation family farm--as I said to Joy, the house was built in 1829--but I'm afraid we'll probably be the last to farm this land, based on the current economic conditions and the current political climate.
I don't always speak only for farm women, I speak for rural women as well. Farming occurs in rural Canada, and we work on such issues as the economic viability of Canadian farm families and also the strengthening and nurturing of rural Canada.
I was very impressed with the Senate standing committee going across the country and soliciting input and advice as to what is happening in rural Canada right now and why rural Canadians are feeling like, and being treated like, second-class citizens in a nation that we helped build. Had it not been for rural and farm women and for the socially progressive policies we came up with, particularly our sisters in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, where would this country be? I'll leave you to answer that question. It would not be a very pretty picture.
Farm women see a strong central role for governments and their various departments. That includes the Farm Women's Bureau, with which I did many years of work. This is my second time around as an elected official with the National Farmers Union. I was the women's president in the early 1990s to the mid-1990s. That was a paid position. Now, as the women's vice-president, I am in a strictly volunteer position. I have been on the road for the last week. My farm business at home is being managed by my husband and by our two children at home. I do this vice-president's position on a volunteer basis because I am so connected to the farm community, and to the rural women, men, and youth who make up our country.
To backtrack a little bit, as I said, farm women see a strong central and progressive role for governments and their various departments, be it the Status of Women, be it the Farm Women's Bureau, or be it HRDC--or be it supporting the collective marketing agencies that farm families have built up in this country.
I will admit to you today that the attacks this government has put on the Canadian Wheat Board are scandalous. The attacks and the undermining of the supply management system in this country--two institutions that were built by farmers, controlled by farmers, for the enrichment and betterment of the farm community--are absolutely disgraceful.
We favour a two-pronged approach to government involvement--first, in reorienting government approaches toward gender inclusion, and second, in supporting farm organizations to become more gender inclusive.
I don't know how many of you good folks here actually come from a farming background. I know that Joy does, and I know that the honourable member there does. We are in a catastrophic state in the farm community right now. We have many issues that we have to deal with, not only farm issues but rural issues. That is our context. That's where we live. That's our culture and our identity.
To even start to address the financial crisis that farm communities are dealing with would take an entire day's workshop. So I'm going to assume you understand the financial crisis we're facing and get into some of the more social and cultural crises we're facing as well.
One of them is certainly that there are older women living and working on these farms. Fortunately I'm not quite as old as my mother-in-law. She has lived and worked on that farm all her life, but because she's never worked off the farm, she has no pensionable earnings. She will die in poverty, as I probably will--except I work off the farm in the summer, solely to make sure I have contributions to the Canada Pension Plan.
Income splitting for farm families will not work, because there's not enough money coming into those families to even have income splitting as a viable option.
I believe my brief will be circulated, Joy.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's own statistics have proven that over the last 20 years, return from the marketplace to farmers has been zero or less than zero. The money farm families are surviving on comes from off-farm employment or government support programs. That is not how farm families want to make their living. It does not give credence and ownership to what we do when 2% of this entire country's population feeds the other 98%, and we have enough to export.
I told the senators at the Senate committee looking at rural poverty that we do not have an agricultural policy; we have a trade policy. Neo-liberalized trade policies move you to the lowest common denominator in the trading game, whereas my product must be sold in the marketplace at the lowest possible price. If I see any income from that at all, I'm certainly never paid for my labour or my return on investment.
Having said that, I don't want to leave you with the understanding that nothing can be done. Part of the work of the National Farmers Union is to always offer solutions. We say yes, it's a huge, complex, overwhelming mess that we're in right now, but there are solutions.
Farm women generate wealth, nurture the next generation, and nurture the environment. So one of those solutions is for farm women to have their own private pension plan, very similar to nurses, teachers, lawyers, and anyone else who is deemed a professional.
Part of my job as a spokesperson for farm and rural women is to get across to people such as you--but also to groups we work with--that we are professionals by choice. We have a vested interest in agriculture. We have gone to agricultural colleges. We are in a lifelong learning mode. We respond to trends in the marketplace. We're professionals. We're not just sitting at home baking cookies, although we certainly do that.
I understand if you're feeling a little overwhelmed by the issues we're facing. We too are overwhelmed by the issues we're facing, and the lack of clearly defined and articulated government support policies and programs.
There's a wide range of issues. Income is one, and pension is another. There's the fact that training and education programs are very closely linked to employment insurance, for which many farm women would never qualify because they don't work off the farm. That is something that should be addressed as well.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Tittley, for allowing us to come before this committee. It's been a while since we've been here. I want to thank Ms. Minna and Mr. Stanton, who separately made sure that we appeared.
[Translation]
Today we've been asked to talk more about the income security of immigrant women. That's a broad subject in itself. Accordingly, we will focus our observations on newcomers, that is to say women who have been living in Canada for 10 years or less.
At the risk of seeming irritating, the National Organization of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women of Canada maintains that newcomers and their families have a problem of income security and impoverishment. They suffer from having to enter a flexible labour market and from getting only unconventional jobs. A disproportionate number of immigrant women suffer the consequences of this state of affairs.
Immigrants are an urban phenomenon in Canada, Toronto being the destination of choice for most of them, followed by Vancouver, then Montreal. Newcomers are swelling the ranks of poor workers.
[English]
What does income insecurity look like to newcomers? From where we sit at the National Organization of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women of Canada, of which I am the executive director, immigrant women and their spouses arrive with higher qualifications than their Canadian counterparts but are consigned to something we like to call “McJobs”, jobs that are low-wage, dead-end, and unskilled.
Immigrant families arrive here as middle-class professionals with their life savings clutched in their hot little hands, which are soon eaten up in subsidizing their basic needs, with little chance of requalification and upgrading. Shortly after landing, they join the ranks of the working poor, with little hope of escape within a decade.
If, within a family, one person has to requalify, it is usually the man, who generally holds the visa for the family. And even then, they hesitate to take on that level of debt, knowing that some day their children will have to assume debts of their own for their education.
Some immigrant women are fortunate enough to find employment in a variety of small or medium-sized immigrant-serving agencies, and they lurch from contract to contract. Much of the settlement work in Canada is carried out by poorly remunerated workers, often working part-time, often without any benefits.
Men usually will not consider such jobs, preferring to drive cabs. At least they escape from the home that way.
In a family I know, of immigrant origin, the university-aged children jokingly refer to their engineer father as “that subsidizer”, not only for them but also for their mother who works in settlement services.
Chen, Ng, and Wilkins, in 1996, studied the effect of immigration on immigrants' health. Immigrants arrive here healthy but lose that advantage compared to native-born Canadians over time. It is our contention that much of this can be attributed to the erosion of their standard of living and the quality of their lives. Working-poor immigrants are underemployed while being overqualified, stuck in McJobs that are seasonal and part-time, that carry no benefits, no employer-sponsored health and life insurance, dental plans, or drug plans. Immigrant families live in constant dread of workplace-related or other accidents, of illness brought on by the stresses and strains of making ends meet, and of worrying about their children's future.
Income insecurity means no money to put into RESPs for their children's education, so they cannot benefit from the changes to RESP contributions as put forward in the last federal budget. It also means that parents will deny themselves and take on two or three other jobs in order to ensure that their children get an education and get ahead.
[Translation]
For these people, income instability means very few or no opportunities to save for their old age by investing in RRSPs for their eventual retirement. In the medium and long terms, this segment of the population will eventually constitute a heavy burden for Canadian society.
Sector workers expect that the frustration caused by under-employment and the stress of holding more than one job and of shift work will put enormous pressure on family life, causing conflicts between spouses and between parents and children often leading to marital violence and the break-up of relationships.
We also wish to emphasize that violence against women and children, particularly girls, is unacceptable in any circumstance and that such acts cannot in any case be justified on the basis of culture and tradition.
[English]
Employment insurance, as it is structured presently, does not allow the majority of immigrants to access EI benefits. Employment insurance does not recognize the exigencies of a flexible labour market. It hearkens back to an era of stable jobs for life.
A CLC undated study shows that 20% of immigrant men who experience at least two weeks of unemployment received EI benefits in 2000, compared to 32% of non-immigrant men. In the same period, only 19% of immigrant women collected EI benefits, compared to 30% of women of non-immigrant origin.
It is likely that immigrant women are ineligible because of the work they do and because child rearing and caregiving responsibilities cause them to detach from the workforce for extended periods. Newcomer women usually do not have the bonding capital or network that can support their nurturing roles. Isolation is the newcomer woman's curse.
Income splitting is not a solution for the newcomer population. NOIVM believes that the social costs of income insecurity of immigrant women and their families has never really been computed. Such a study, NOIVM believes, belongs to the domain of a joint meeting of the standing committees on the status of women and citizenship and immigration. They need to commission a study of the social costs of income security on immigrant families.
I thank you for your indulgence.
:
Thank you. I wasn't chatting. My colleague and I were sharing different pieces of information here, so I didn't mean to insult the presenters.
In any case, I have a lot of questions, and a lot of the information I do understand with respect to the immigrant and visible minority women's.... Both organizations have been very familiar to me, of course, for many years.
Let me start with Ms. Lucya.
There are a lot of aspects I want to get at, but one of them, in particular. You earlier mentioned the average and the median incomes, and you were talking about immigrant families. I think you said $28,000 was the median, but then it was much lower, at $23,000, for certain immigrant families. This brings me to a question of how we try to help families.
Under the most recent child credit, for instance, if you're making $35,000 and up, you get the $310, but below that you don't. It's peanuts, and then it goes down lower, so you actually miss out. So are you telling me today that in essence the majority of immigrant families, a very large number anyway, are not going to benefit from that?
:
I'm talking about the child credit, for starters, which doesn't apply to them at all, actually. So they're losing out on the jobs, and now they're losing out on the benefits, which is a huge problem. I just wanted to highlight that, because it is very important to look at.
One of the things I have tried to push for a long time is to use the gender lens when we do policy, and also the gender-racial lens or immigrant lens. Call it the multicultural lens, or whatever you want to call it. Without using that, we really miss out on a whole lot of things. Obviously this is one good example of how we're missing out on those families.
The other question is about income splitting, and that was mentioned by you, Ms. Bose, and actually also by Ms. Fyfe. With respect to farmers, it's the same thing, actually. Income splitting doesn't really help, because there isn't a lot of money. Income splitting for the purpose of income tax is pension splitting. According to the analysis I've looked at, which the Caledon Institute did, if you have pensionable earnings of $100,000, you save $7,000. Then when you're down to $30,000 pensionable earnings, you are at a lower rate, and then you start to really peter out until you have none.
Most of the families that are arriving, actually because of their number of years here, have very little of that.
In farming, again you mentioned, Ms. Fyfe, the need for a homemaker's pension or a pension for farm women. Actually, many European countries do in fact have that for women, which they can pay into.
My question to all three of you, though, when we are talking about women's economic security, is whether you have--whatever you call it--a homemaker's pension or strictly a pension for women.
In your case, you're working on the farm. How would you structure that? That's my first question.
Ms. Bose and Ms. Spencer, could you include in your answer how you would deal with the fact that most immigrant women come here at a certain age, an adult age, so that they actually don't have a full work lifetime to contribute to this kind of scheme?
:
I'll have to admit that this is a relatively new tack for the National Farmers Union to take, looking at pensions for farm women.
Because we're so few and spread across a large country, we do a lot of networking and a lot of coalition work. The B.C. Farm Women's Network has taken it under their wing to look at exactly how pensions for farm women would look. They are the group of women who are analyzing this and are coming up with some very workable solutions.
As I said, this is my second round of being an elected official with the National Farmers Union. Back in the early to mid-1990s, I worked with women like Linde Cherry from the interior of British Columbia, as well as Carolyn Van Dine in New Brunswick. We pushed, first of all, for a recognition of farm women as professionals equal to any other women in professions out there in which women are working, and we deserve our own pension plan.
Many of us are working three jobs. We are working at raising a family, so we're stay-at-home moms; we are working at our jobs on the farm; and we are working off the farm. Then we are volunteering to keep what's left of our little rural communities alive.
So if there is some way of having all of that valued in terms of the monetary or financial contribution, and then looking at how to set up a pension that captures all of that economic activity we've generated and all of that wealth we've produced, that's the type of stuff the British Columbia women are working on, and it is certainly a project that I'm willing to undertake.
:
The position of chair suits you well, madam.
Mesdames, thank you for being here today. Thank you very much for the courage you continue to show in believing that you can really change the way policies are developed for women. Thank you for believing in us, thank you for believing that your presentation is important for us.
Ms. Spencer, I have a question for you that can also be put to Ms. Bose and Ms. Fyfe. Ms. Spencer, you told us about immigrant women of all ages, but we know that, as we age, it's even more difficult because we have fewer means, fewer pensions and so on. One bill currently under study, Bill , limits access to the Guaranteed Income Supplement for immigrant women who are still being sponsored. To date, the act enabled those women to access the Guaranteed Income Supplement.
Do you believe this change is positive? Do you believe it can help immigrant women, if a bill further limits their access? Personally, I find it contradictory, but we're told this is better for immigrant women. I'd like to have your opinion on the subject.
Ms. Fyfe, I acknowledge your courage all the more. I know how it is: my father was raised in Saskatchewan, on a farm in Shaunavon, and today there are no more farms or villages in the entire region. It's very small, virtually no one is left, older people are still there, and that's all.
You told us a lot about the advances you've made. You told us about a pension fund which you, women farmers, and farmers' wives, can access. It's true that it's thanks to you that we eat every day. I like eating, so I want you to continue existing; that's important for me.
But you told us some things I don't understand. Last week, when the Wheat Board was transformed, 62% of farmers voted in favour of that transformation. You're telling us that's not a good thing, that it's not right that it was transformed. So I don't understand. Yesterday there were questions on the subject in the House, and we were told that no farmers were talking about it. Last night, I listened to a Liberal Party debate on the subject. They said that the Liberal Party wasn't putting farmers...
You're a farmer. Can you tell us how that changes your situation? How does the fact that the Wheat Board has been changed make the situation tougher?
:
Thank you very much for the question.
I won't use language that's too complicated or try to be too critical, but I think sometimes being critical might be a good thing. This is an issue that will lead to more rural poverty in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and the higher grain growing areas of Alberta where those grain farmers are removed enough from the Canadian-American border that their transportation costs are higher.
There is a saying that no matter what set of figures you're looking at, you can interpret them to suit your own agenda. If it would please you, Ms. Demers, I could leave you with an article that our president, Stewart Wells, has written to Mr. Strahl about the smoke-and-mirrors campaign on the Canadian Wheat Board.
There were three valid questions on the ballot that were put to the grain farmers.
One, do you want the Canadian Wheat Board to continue being the buyer and seller of Canadian-grown barley? That means all barley except feed barley would continue going through the board.
Two, Do you want to be your own buyer and seller? Instead of having the board doing it, you'd have all the individual farmers out west finding their market and then selling.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Perhaps we could pick it up there.
We need to link these responses to specifics around the economic security of women,and we were starting to get a little far apart.
I come from a background in small business and echo the same kind of sentiments, Ms. Fyfe, that you expressed with respect to pensions and the kinds of things that inhibit people who are essentially self-employed and don't have the same access to those things. Typically farm families, or families who have built small businesses of their own, ultimately end up having to use the equity they build up in their own properties.
I'm wondering if there's been any response from NFU with respect to some of the positives we saw come out of budget 2007, especially with respect to the increase in the lifetime capital gains exemption, which went from $500 to $750. It essentially allows farm families to keep more of their money upon a rollover, and that will help in their retirement years, I hope.
Has there been any response to that?
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you all for coming before the committee today. For me, this is a return to a familiar place, as a former member of this standing committee.
I want to start with Ms. Fyfe.
We're talking about economic security. My riding in Nanaimo—Cowichan is one of those odd mixes of rural-urban ridings. We have a substantial number of farms, although they're much smaller in scale than prairie farms.
One of the things the women in my community talk to me about is the fact that, particularly if there's a marital breakdown, they have trouble around access to housing. If they need additional services, it's very difficult in rural communities. Most of our rural communities aren't served by public transportation. They often can't get easy access to health care clinics and what not.
I noticed in this very good report that was put together, called “Farm Women and Canadian Agricultural Policy”, there are some very good recommendations. Could you specifically comment on some of the other issues, child care for example, facing rural women and farm women?
:
Bear with me for a second.
Jean, this is the executive summary of a much bigger document.
We see there are four pillars to maintaining a viable farm and a viable rural Canada. We see financial stability as being a foundation pillar; a domestic food policy, a made-in-Canada food policy for Canadian farm families that is a true agricultural policy, not a trade policy; healthy food and the environment are of the utmost importance to us, because it's where we live; and then there's strengthening the social and community infrastructure.
You're absolutely right, Jean, when you talk about the public infrastructures that we assume would certainly be there in the urban setting. Whether or not you can access them is another matter. They're not available in rural Canada.
In fact, my home province of Prince Edward Island has changed significantly over the last 20 years. When I was first having children, we had two day care centres in a little village of 100 people. They were seasonally run because of the farming, fishing, and resource-based industries we had. But they were there, we could access them, and we were subsidized because of our low economic status on the totem pole. They're no longer there.
To say you can access child care in a vacuum is really ludicrous. If the child care spaces are not there, you can't access them, whether you need them in July or whether you need them in January.
As for public transportation in Prince Edward Island, the only city that has public transportation is Charlottetown. If you live outside the greater Charlottetown centre, there is no public transportation. You're almost held hostage by your friends and neighbours. If you want to escape an abusive situation, you have to get on the phone in the strictest confidence and ask to be picked up and taken to the women's shelter or to the hospital.
Access to services, the public infrastructure that most of you around the table would assume exists, does not exist.
I want to thank all three of you for excellent presentations.
I know very much about farm women and the issues they face. I was Secretary of State for the Status of Women in 1996 and spent a lot of time speaking to farm women. As a result, this came about: the ability for farm women to be able to talk about their economic reality, their social reality, and the isolation that they face and what happens when they become seniors.
I think it's a pity that this, which was an extraordinarily important document to help us to understand the complexity of immigrant women's lives, of farm women's lives, or rural women's lives, is now cancelled. This will no longer be available, this policy research fund. I think that is an extraordinarily devastating thing for women in this country, because it brought together academic research and real-life research for the first time. The two collaborated to be able to come up with some good solutions and some real answers.
I was going to ask you about your ability to have access to quality child care and to early childhood education, but I think Jean already asked you that question. But I do want to talk about the issue of access itself.
In Prince Edward Island you had two child care centres that are no longer there, and it was a small community. In places like Saskatchewan and in certain farms in the Prairies where there are huge distances, I think there needs to be a very innovative way to have access to early childhood education and to child care.
I know the problem with farm women is that you are neither fish nor fowl; you tend to fall between the cracks, and always have. You're not considered to be women in the paid workforce. You're considered to be stay-at-home moms, when you're not really. You're not staying at home. Somebody has to look after your kids while you are out there on your acreage doing work. This is a real problem that I would like to see us address.
The issue of seniors' pensions is one that has always concerned me, not only for farm women but also for senior immigrant women, who have often come to this country--as Lucya knows very well--and who have been babysitting their families, doing that unpaid work that they have had to do within the home, for which they get no recognition.
I would really like to hear you tell me how each one of you feels about the concept of having some sort of pensionable benefit that values the unpaid work that women in Canada do--farm women, immigrant women who take care of their children. And I would like to find out how we can structure that. Part of it may address some of the pensionable benefits for farm women. So I would like to hear about that.
The second thing I would like to ask a question about is the Wheat Board.
I note, Karen, that you've been trying to speak to that. I'd like to hear you finish it, please, because it hugely impacts on your economic viability.
Thank you.
First I'd like to welcome you and thank you for being here today.
In view of the fact that I represent a quite rural riding, I'm very sensitive to your testimony, Ms. Fyfe. In recent years, we've seen a lot of farms and small farms disappear, particularly in our regions. What I appreciated or what I thought was remarkable was when you told us that the rural world is where you think we find our identity. That really moves me very much.
You also said you have five children.
A little earlier, you showed us a report. Perhaps I wasn't paying attention. Is that the report on Canadian agricultural policy that you showed us earlier and that you have in your possession?
The National Farmers Union, I believe, has carried out a research project on Canadian agricultural policy entitled “Farm Women and Canadian Agricultural Policy”. Does that report contain any recommendations to promote agricultural succession? When I say promote, I mean finding incentives to make youths want to take over the farm.
You have five children. Will one of your five children take over the farm?
:
Thank you, Ms. Deschamps.
Yes, of the five children, I have a 20-year-old living at home and a 10-year-old. The 20-year-old, a daughter, is the one who would like to take over.
Of the five children, I'd have to admit she's the last one I would have thought would return to the farm and want to take it over, but she knows the financial realities and she knows that she has to continue with her education, and she knows that she will have to work off of the farm.
Right now, she works seasonally with me, in the summer and the fall, and she saves that money. When we can't pay the light bill, that's where some of her earnings go.
We are cow-calf operators. The BSE crisis basically wiped us out, along with the rest of the beef industry.
I wish I could say something good about the next generation of farm people, but all of our analysis and all of our research has led us to the conclusion that if there's not a public dialogue, if there's not an engagement between those of us who produce the food and those who eat the food in terms of getting a public food policy going in this country and a domestic food security policy in this country....
I'm very concerned about the next generation of farmers and where that food comes from. It's not good news.
All right, you've all handed them back, then? Great. Thank you so much.
I'm taking a look at Ms. Mathyssen's motion. Amendments to the motion can be moved. Are there any amendments to this motion that's in front of us?
You should have two things in front of you: the original motion as of March 20 and then the amendments of March 27.
Today Ms. Mathyssen is not here. I have to ask the committee, would you like to set this motion aside for the first meeting back, when Ms. Mathyssen can speak to her motion, or would you like to continue to deal with it today?
Could I have a show of hands? Who would like to wait till Ms. Mathyssen is back here to speak to the motion? Do we all agree that we'll deal with it today? Great.
Ms. Mathyssen isn't here, so I will read it into the record, with the amendments. The motion is:
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), That the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women recommend that the Government publish the three research reports funded through the Status of Women Canada’s Independent Policy Research Fund, as follows:
Monica Townson and Kevin Hayes, “Women and Employment Insurance Program: the Gender Impact on Current Rules on Eligibility and Earnings Replacement”;
Shelagh Day and Gwen Brodsky, “Women and the CST: Securing the Social Union”;
Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, “Integrating Marginalized Women's Voices into Policy Discussions and Debates Linked to the CST”;
and that the chair report the—
I'm sorry?
:
So it's moved. Okay. That's one part of my question.
Now, I've proposed an amendment, and I've suggested that those first two items really be left out.
I would take the committee back to our discussions on this. Ms. Mathyssen brought an original motion because of the correspondence that she had received. Having not received anything back from the minister, she brought this motion to compel the committee to go through the motion process, to bring a report, to compel these reports to be produced.
There was a discussion on that. To my recollection, we undertook to get some answers to those very questions. And voilà, we have the answers. What we have here is a report from the department that outlines the specific status of the reports that were in question, the list. In fact, two of the reports that were in question, that Ms. Mathyssen has clarified through her motion, were here.
I would simply say...and I take it full well that the one report on here is in the category of not planning to be published. Fine, let's put it on there. But we have, in good faith, the report from the department that these things are in process. I see no need...and this is why I bring the amendment.
I would suggest, Madam Chair, that you put the question to the committee if we want to get on with this. I put the amendment on the floor. Let's vote on it.
Madam Chair, this is probably one of the single most important and historic programs that has ever occurred in Canada. Practically every single piece of case law that pertains to gender has actually come out of this program. It has usually tended to defend the rights of those who are vulnerable and disadvantaged and who have absolutely no money to be able to defend themselves.
It's a minority rights program that has defended aboriginal women, immigrant women, lesbian women, and women who have actually been at the margins of our society and who have suffered from poverty and discrimination. These women have no voice. They have no money, generally speaking, to hire a lawyer to take discriminatory cases to court.
The court challenges program was put in by a Liberal government to support the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and gender equality therein. Therefore, to cancel the only tool by which minority women and women in terms of gender equality can have access to the courts and can have access to human rights is in fact nullifying what the charter intends to do.
To do this is destructive, to say the least. It's discriminatory, and I think it must be returned if women are to have rights acknowledged in this country and access to justice. Without access to justice, these women have been denied justice.
:
Ms. Fry says that this is the most important program in the country, and yet in the year 2000 it was impossible to tell who actually got money from the court challenges program. So if it's such an important program and it's so important to Canadian women, why does it actually exclude some women, on the one hand, and why in fact is it that--and I know you were in government at the time, Ms. Fry, so maybe you can explain to me--there was no accountability whatsoever for this program? No one in this country had a clue who was actually getting money from the court challenges program.
It didn't, after 2000, publish the names of the groups that it funded. Files are no longer available under access to information, and individuals and companies caught up in litigation had no way to find out what was happening with that money.
We can question the merits of whether or not you liked the program or didn't like the program or whatever the case may be. The fact is that there was absolutely no accountability in the program, none whatsoever.
You can be proud, I suppose, of a program put forward by a Liberal government that has no accountability, that answers to no one, and that excludes women from being included in it, and now you want it back again. Well, I'm glad you're proud of something that actually didn't work, doesn't work, never has worked, and is on the cutting edge of excluding women from being involved in it. Great. Why don't we just vote on it?
:
Number one, the characterization of this program as being in pursuit of special interests is a mischaracterization of the program, both as a matter of law and as a matter of fact. Its intention and its application were with respect to the promotion of equality and the protection of equality, which is not a special interest but is in the interest of all Canadians and in the interest of a just society.
It was intended to promote and protect minority rights, particularly minority language rights. There is no vested interest in that if we care about minority rights, which, as was set forth in the secession reference case, is one of the fundamental constitutional principles of our overall Constitution. So the promotion and protection of equality and the promotion and protection of minority rights are what this country stands for. If we're now going to go and convert this into special interests, that's a mischaracterization and a misrepresentation of the Constitution of this country.
Number two, it's intended to promote access to justice for those most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society who would not otherwise have had the standing and the capacity to even come before the courts to begin with. So this was intended to equalize access to justice in the pursuit of equality of justice.
Finally, determinations with respect to grants were made by an independent panel. They were not made by the government. They were not by special interest or in the service of special interests. I think to make that kind of statement is to reflect a lack of understanding of this program, how it worked, what its principles were, and what its purposes were.
To say that this has not been discussed.... It has been before the House of Commons. It has been before the justice and human rights committee. I dealt with it as the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.
I don't care where people want to come down on an issue, but at least they should be informed of the facts and the principles and the purposes of a program before they make such misleading statements before a parliamentary committee.