:
Thank you very much. I am very happy and grateful for having the opportunity to address you on behalf of CEDAW. I am Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari. I'm vice-president of CEDAW, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. I participated in the most recent review of Canada by the committee.
The committee is the body of independent experts who monitor the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. CEDAW consists of 23 experts on women’s rights who are elected for a term of four years by states parties among their nationals and who serve in their personal capacity, consideration being given to equitable geographical distribution and to the representation of the different forms of civilization, as well as the principal legal systems.
Countries that have become party to the treaty are obliged to submit periodic reports to the committee on measures taken to ensure that the rights of the convention are implemented. During each of our sessions, the committee considers each of the state party's reports and addresses its concerns and recommendations to the state party in the form of concluding observations.
In accordance with the optional protocol to the convention, the committee is also mandated to receive communications from individuals, or groups of individuals, submitting claims of violations of rights protected under the convention and also to initiate inquiries into situations of grave or systematic violations of women’s rights. These procedures are optional and are only available when the state concerned has accepted them by ratifying the said optional protocol. As you know, Canada had indeed ratified the optional protocol and CEDAW has conducted an inquiry into the missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada. We issued our report in 2015.
During its 65th session, which took place in November of last year, the committee considered the eighth and ninth periodic reports of Canada and raised a number of concerns during the dialogue with the Canadian delegation, which are directly related to the work of your standing committee and its study on women’s economic security. I want to emphasize that the dialogue, the concerns we raised, and the concluding observations, are all based on information the committee received, both from the formal delegation, the formal state's report, and the replies to the list of issues and questions, as well as on information received from civil society and international NGOs.
With respect to the economic empowerment of women, the committee noted the development of a national poverty reduction strategy and a national housing strategy. Nevertheless, we expressed our concern about the fact that women continue to experience significant levels of poverty, homelessness, and hunger in Canada, especially when it relates to indigenous women, Afro-Canadian women, women of immigrant origin, women with disabilities, older women, and single mothers. We also expressed concern about the current severe housing shortage, in particular within indigenous communities, and the high cost of rent and the impact thereof on women, especially low-income women with families.
Regarding the issue of employment, we expressed our concern about persistent gender wage gaps in both the public and private sectors which adversely affect women’s career development and pension benefits, as well as the lack of effective legislation on the principle of equal pay for work of equal value at the federal level, even in the public sector, given that the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act of 2009 has delivered practically no results, and the lack of such legislation in the private sector in most provinces and territories, as repeatedly noted by the International Labour Organization.
We were also concerned about the continuing horizontal and vertical occupational segregation and the concentration of women in part-time and low-paying jobs, which is often due to their parallel traditional child raising and caretaking responsibilities, as well as the low number of child care facilities and the low usage of parental leave by fathers.
Also, we were concerned by the limited access of indigenous, Afro-Canadian, migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking women as well as women with disabilities to the labour market, and the practice of issuing employer-specific closed work permits, which makes it challenging for migrant workers, including caregivers, to leave abusive employment situations.
We also addressed the root causes of violence and discrimination against indigenous women. We expressed concern about the fact that indigenous women continue to suffer from multiple forms of discrimination, in particular with regard to their access to employment, housing, education, and health care, and continue to live in poverty in Canada as reflected by very high poverty rates, poor health, inadequate housing, lack of access to safe water, and low school completion rates. We further noted with concern the low participation of indigenous women in the labour market, in particular in senior or decision-making positions, as well as their disproportionately high unemployment rates, and their lower pay compared with that of men and non-indigenous women. There is a lack of coherent plans or strategies to improve the socio-economic conditions of indigenous communities, in particular indigenous women, in order to combat the root causes of their vulnerability to violence. The connection and the interaction between economic vulnerability and exposures to violence are, of course, self-evident.
In terms of access to justice, which is key to ensuring the protection of women's economic and social rights, the committee expressed its concern that financial support for civil legal aid programs had considerably diminished in the past 20 years and has become increasingly restricted, affecting women in particular as they are the primary users of civil legal aid.
We were also concerned that income tests for eligibility limit civil legal aid to women living well below the poverty line, consequently denying low-income women access to legal representation and services. The information is lacking on whether the newly reinstated court challenges program, which provided funding for equality test cases, will be expanded to cover claims under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms so as to include economic and social equality issues relating to poverty, and whether it will fund equality rights challenges to provincial, territorial, and federal laws and preserve its community-based structure.
With regard to marriage and family relations, the committee noted with concern that the recently adopted Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interest or Rights Act does not apply to the first nations reserves that have enacted their own first nations matrimonial real property laws under the act or under the First Nations Land Management Act of 1999.
Accordingly, the committee formulated a number of recommendations directed at Canada that could, in fact, be read as a road map to further empower women and enhance their economic security. In line with our follow-up procedures, we requested that Canada provide within two years written information on the steps taken to implement the recommendations in paragraphs 21 and 27 of the concluding observations, which are related to the strengthening of the national machinery for the advancement of women and the development of a coordinated plan for the overseeing of the implementation of the 37 recommendations we issued in the inquiry report, which I mentioned before, on the murdered and missing indigenous women.
When we continue the conversation, I can present some comparative statistics in relation to women's economic situation in Canada but, Madam Chair, I think I will stop here.
Thank you.
:
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today and support the study of economic security of women in Canada. I'm appearing on behalf of the Calgary Immigrant Women's Association, and my feedback will be aligned with the agency's mandate to support newcomer immigrant women in Canada, particularly in Calgary, and the specific challenges they face relative to the study.
We are the largest settlement agency in Canada with a gender-specific mandate. Our mission is to engage all immigrant women who come to Calgary, and support successful integration of their families. CIWA provides services for around 15,000 clients each year, who come to us from 100 different countries and cultures. We do that through holistic and customized programming and services offered at CIWA offices in 99 community locations in Calgary.
We offer over 50 programs and services in the areas of settlement integration, literacy and language training, family and individual counselling, civic engagement, legal and tax clinics, health, housing, and community development.
While many of the issues of equity and equality for women in Canada are prominent in our ongoing social discourse, the disparity for immigrant and refugee women is compounded. According to Statistics Canada, immigrant women have lower employment rates, work in more part-time positions, or are underemployed and have lower pay equity than Canadian-born women, despite having comparable levels of education and experience. They take longer to reach Canadian-born levels of labour force participation compared to immigrant men.
There is a lot of research and speculation around the causes of inequity and inequality faced by immigrant and refugee women, in particular the role of policy and corporate acknowledgement of foreign credentials and language proficiency in English and/or French.
While credentialing and language proficiency are and will continue to be powerful gatekeepers for successful integration and economic prosperity, they do not illustrate the complexity of the barriers faced by many immigrant and refugee women.
Our approach to addressing the economic security of the immigrant women we serve is based on two distinct client groups: professionally trained immigrant women and immigrant women with limited or interrupted education from their home countries. For both groups, we have customized our approaches, piloted innovative best practices, and achieved successful economic outcomes over the years with proven social return on investment, as well as successful integration and social participation. We offer equitable, fair supports in ensuring that all immigrant women who come to us have access to employment supports to achieve their goals and dreams in Canada.
There are both commonalities and differences in the barriers faced by professional immigrant women and those with limited education. From a micro, personal view, many immigrant families suffer tremendous shifts in family dynamics and increased familial responsibilities upon arrival to Canada.
Regardless of backgrounds, immigrant and refugee families have left their social networks in their home countries, and there are increased pressures on them to both create a stable environment and support the integration of their children, a condition for this being parental ability to successfully integrate into the workplace.
Another phenomenon we have seen repeatedly is what we call role reversal. This is the increasing pressure for women to economically support the family due to integration challenges experienced by their spouses, in addition to raising and caring for children, even though they may not have worked back at home.
Finally, this restructuring of the family unit upon arrival to Canada and the economic and social pressures of immigration correlate with increased instances of domestic abuse in families of newcomer and refugee women.
An issue that affects both groups of women is access to affordable child care so that they can work. While there are subsidies in place to help families in need of affordable day care, oftentimes finding day care can be a struggle. The availability of child care for evenings and weekends is particularly challenging, because some of the women we surveyed cited willingness to do any job, such as cleaning or food services, anywhere, but many of those jobs have shifts in the evenings and at irregular hours.
As we all know, many companies reduce costs significantly by offering part-time employment. On the one hand, this works for some women provided the hours offered align with their child care needs, but on the other hand, it compounds economic stresses for those who do not have access to full benefits.
For professional immigrant women in Canada, the necessity of picking up their children prior to the day care closing or caring for a sick child can influence the optics of their commitment to the company they work for.
We have 13 employment bridging programs. We work with our funders to cover child care costs and where appropriate, such as for longer-term programs, living allowances so that our clients can focus on learning and building skills for successful employment. This increases the cost of program delivery substantially, which can be a deterrent for governments and other funding bodies we approach. However, the speed of their transition to employment and job retention rates justify that investment. They serve as an example of best practice. We bring professionals to this country willing to work and expecting to work, so we should support the transition to work for both men and women. Over $2 billion annually is lost due to underutilization of immigrant skills in Canada.
Bridging employment can be cost-effective and successful not only for professionally trained immigrant women but also for those with limited education. I will share one example with you. One of the most innovative programs that we have at CIWA is child care training for low-literacy immigrant women. It's a full-time program for 11 months. It transitions immigrant women with limited education, who often are classified as not expected or not able to work in Canada due to lack of education, skills, and training.
Over the past nine years, women in this program were able to flourish and secure certification of employment as child care assistants. Some have started their own in-home day care. The employment and retention rate is 93% over the years. Their employers swear by them. Significant costs of programs like this one, for child care and living allowance for the duration of the program, are easily justified. The long-term savings as a result are even more significant. Around 180 clients over the years have secured employment and have been paying taxes. Without this program, the majority of these clients would be depending on social services.
We have been fortunate to work with funders in specific departments in government that recognize similar needs. Overall, there needs to be an acceptance and appreciation for the long-term outcomes that short-term investments in vulnerable people willing to work can produce.
Last, I'd like to reference the role of post-secondary institutions in the transition of immigrant and refugee women into employment. The typical path to employment for newcomers, and particularly professional ones, is to take the language training required for their profession, then transition to some academic upgrading that hopefully gets them to their fields of expertise.
For many professional immigrant women, there is a misconception that Canadian education will advance their careers and so they invest time and resources in retraining. Oftentimes it's at a master's level. However, the true barrier is opportunities for employment within their field; that is what they are lacking. Upon completing academic courses, many professional immigrant women take entry-level jobs, survival jobs in an entirely different field than their professional experience. They are never able to transfer into their original professions because their Canadian experience on their resumé typecasts them into survival industry instead.
It is hard to get that opportunity to get through the door for immigrant professionals, even after they achieve Canadian academic upgrading. Our bridging programs are offered in partnership with employers. We secure job placements for our clients for a period of 14 to 20 weeks. Many of our clients are hired by the employers we work with and employers continue working with us because it is a good and cheap hiring option for them.
Immigrant women with limited education have even more challenging and confusing options and experiences with educational institutions and industry hiring practices. As a society, we tend to value academic knowledge and traditional learning models and overlook the importance of competency development, which depends on learning skills and the ability to complete the task required on a particular job.
I'll go back to the previously mentioned child care training program.
I mentioned to you that we are the largest settlement organization with a gender-specific mandate in Canada. What has been done well in Calgary is investment into the needs assessment that we presented to the federal government. Certainly the majority of our funding in line with the portfolio of immigration comes from the federal government, including Status of Women.
We have managed as an organization to get through to the government officials and to explain the need for customized, and “customized” is really the word I would stress, approaches to supporting immigrant women so that they can expedite their integration.
I also mentioned that we have 13 different bridging programs, probably the largest number of programs in any settlement organization in Canada. That has been done well. We've received tremendous support from the federal government for our services.
Obviously, we need much more investment in our services on any given day, but every city and bigger centre that receives immigrants should have similar services, whether that's through organizations that serve only women or adding women-specific approaches in organizations that already provide settlement services.
There has been a lot of discussion about the role of academic institutions and how they complement the work that settlement organizations are doing. That's another thing that requires a little more vested analysis so that this collaboration can produce effective results and provide that social return on investment.
Child care issues and more investment into providing child care support for immigrant women while they are taking courses is absolutely essential, because immigrant women do not have natural supports in Canada. They don't have mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and uncles to help them. Access to child care is absolutely crucial for any integration success of immigrant women everywhere in Canada.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning everyone and distinguished members. My name is Frances McRae. I am the assistant deputy minister for small business, tourism and marketplace services at the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. The acronym I will be using is ISED.
[Translation]
In French, it is ISDE.
Last February, my predecessor, Ms. Shereen Benzvy Miller, addressed this committee and outlined how ISED is supporting the economic empowerment of women. It is my pleasure to provide an update on ISED's activities since our last appearance.
[English]
Canada is a world leader on gender equality, but we do have some challenges on the economic advancement of women, as you well know. I'll talk a bit about our sense of how the situation looks for small and medium-sized enterprises and women entrepreneurs.
I have a few facts to start. Only about 15.7% of small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, are majority owned by women in comparison to 64.6% majority owned by men. You may have seen a recent survey of more than 900 Canadian tech firms done by a new company called MoveTheDial and MaRS Discovery District, which found that women “account for just 5 per cent of CEO roles and 13 per cent of executive team positions, while more than half—53 per cent—of tech companies have no female executives. On average, women account for 8 per cent of director roles, while 73 per cent of firms have no women on their boards.”
A study in June 2017, by McKinsey Global Institute, which you're likely familiar with, found that improving women's equality in the workforce by 2026 could increase Canadian GDP by $150 billion.
[Translation]
As you know, the economic empowerment of Canadian women is a key component in Canada's economic prosperity and was highlighted in Budget 2017.
[English]
Women's entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as a key source of employment creation and advancing women's equality. We have found it helpful to think about women in entrepreneurship and women in business as a continuum. They grow and develop along their entrepreneurship journey, from young girls and women needing exposure to entrepreneurship and opportunities in STEM, science, technology, engineering, math, as you well know, through accessing financing, business supports, and mentoring in order to start and grow their businesses. At the other end of the continuum are experienced business owners and leaders who need procurement and export opportunities, leadership advancement, and access to corporate boards.
I'd like to give the committee an update on activities that ISED supports to help women along this journey.
If I go back to the idea of a continuum, the first stage is exposure to entrepreneurship and STEM. For instance, CanCode is investing $50 million over two years starting in 2017-18 to support educational opportunities for coding and digital skills development for Canadian girls and youth.
As I move along the continuum, women benefit greatly from business skills support training. For example, the regional development agencies, which are part of the ISED portfolio, fund entrepreneurship development and women-directed business training across the country.
[Translation]
Women also need financing in order to start and scale-up their businesses. For example, we indicated at our last appearance that the Business Development Bank of Canada had committed to investing $700 million by 2018 in women-owned businesses.
I am pleased to report that BDC has exceeded this commitment. As of September 30, 2017, $809 million had been authorized over 30 months. We surpassed the target of $700 million that the Bank had set. The Bank's portfolio of majority women-owned businesses is now at 4,744 clients, a 41% increase from the start of the initiative.
[English]
Announced in November 2016, BDC's women in tech fund extends $50 million in venture and growth capital to women-led tech firms, targeting early-stage and growing companies.
BDC will also deliver a new $400-million venture capital catalyst initiative, which was announced in budget 2017, to provide late-stage venture capital to Canadian entrepreneurs, obviously including women entrepreneurs.
The BDC has partnerships as well. The Women's Enterprise Centre of Manitoba provides loans of up to $150,000, and through a new co-lending agreement signed in June 2017 with the centre, BDC will provide an additional $100,000 to businesses that require more capital.
Finally, BDC has also undertaken a full review of its services to women entrepreneurs. It's expected to release its findings shortly.
As women move along the growth pathway, especially women transitioning to high growth, their needs become more complex. Like all entrepreneurs, they need access to experienced business mentors and targeted supports. I'll give you a couple of examples of how ISED supports organizations that help women-owned businesses grow.
[Translation]
There is Futurpreneur, which offered business training and mandatory mentoring to over 400 young women entrepreneurs last year.
[English]
Fierce Founders, a Waterloo-based tech accelerator that is part of an industry-led innovation centre known as Communitech and funded by FedDev Ontario, is designed to provide seed funding and mentorship to women-led businesses. Since the program's launch in 2014, Communitech has seen an increase in women engaging in its start-up services, and now sees 25.9% of its active start-ups with at least one female founder.
For women with mature businesses in the last stages of the continuum—and I'll wrap up shortly on that—we seek to help them export and provide procurement opportunities. For instance, ISED recently launched Innovative Solutions Canada, a new procurement program announced in budget 2017. To maximize inclusiveness, particular effort is going to be made to encourage procurement from under-represented groups, including women.
The government has also taken steps to advance the number of women on boards and in senior management. Bill , which is currently at second reading in the Senate, would require publicly traded companies under the Canada Business Corporations Act to disclose information on the gender diversity of their boards and senior management.
Finally, I will mention an initiative that we anticipate will provide recommendations along the continuum. You will recall that in February 2017, and U.S. President Trump announced the creation of the Canada-United States Council for Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders. The council is focusing on five areas: increasing the number of women in STEM; encouraging women to start businesses; growing women-owned businesses; increasing women's access to capital; and advancing women as leaders in the private sector. These areas align with ISED's priority areas of support for women entrepreneurs, and we anticipate seeing recommendations over the coming months.
[Translation]
To close, Canada is a world leader in gender equality. That said, there is still work to be done.
[English]
While the government supports women at various stages along the continuum, we know that we need to continue to do work in this area with other departments and with stakeholders.
Thank you for your attention today.
I just have a couple of comments, and perhaps I'll get an opportunity later.
I think this is really critical. I have a math and science background. I was a high school math and physics teacher for 34 years. The discussion has to do with the new opportunities, the coding, and everything else that has been described. These are things that.... I remember when I started, which was before Bill Gates.
There are a lot of different aspects to it, and things that are engaged in education. One of the critical parts right now is that as more and more people are finding ways of working from home, and with the disruptive technologies that are out there, those who are able to catch on to that new wave are the ones who are really going to excel.
My wife was so much smarter than I am, and I always wanted to make sure that she was uppermost in all the business decisions we made.
I know I don't have much time because I'm just filling in. Maybe I'll come back later.
I really think it's the mentorship part that we have to look at. Is there any comment on the types of mentorship issues or solutions that you have seen in the industry so far?
:
Thank you for the question.
First of all, let me say that this is something that's very much in our minds, the intersectionality of the group we are talking about. We know that women entrepreneurs are not a homogeneous group, and the needs will differ depending on, as you say, rural areas, women with disabilities, indigenous women, or visible minority women. We do know that this is not just one single homogeneous group.
At the moment, the data we have is not particularly sophisticated in terms of splitting out the needs. The Business Development Bank of Canada, as you may know, has done quite a lot of work in terms of expanding its reach and visibility, as well as its offices across the country, and of course partnering with organizations in much smaller communities.
They are well aware that in order to reach women with all their needs, we need to be much more visible, much more present, and work with communities. That also entails working with other financial institutions, for example indigenous financial institutions.
Over to Industry, we had previous testimony from Dr. Coe, from Ryerson University, about the need to support female entrepreneurs. Specifically, it was mentioned that companies often feel good about supporting girls in STEM-type programs, but then they're not there to fund the women when they're looking to start their own companies.
I want to applaud the testimony that you've given us about what BDC is doing and I recognize that it's early going. However, again, we've heard repeated testimony about the difficulty for women to receive funding or being asked what their husband's employment situation is, while a man would not be asked what their wife does when they go in for a loan. I want to really applaud you on that.
My colleague, Mr. Fraser, asked Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters if it would be helpful for the federal government to hold consultations with private sector stakeholders in the STEM and business fields to develop corporate best practices and resources to advance the promotion of women.
Do you think that's something that would be within the realm of your department? Would it be worth looking at moving forward to do a round table with an organization like that?