:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I understand that today marks a significant milestone. It's the first time that a finance minister has appeared before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women and, obviously, we think that's long overdue because we recognize the important work done by this committee. We know that it makes a real difference in the lives of Canada's women and girls, so I'd like to begin by thanking all committee members for inviting me here to talk about our budget and to answer any questions you might have.
As I said, when I introduced our budget in the House back at the end of February, our economy is doing quite well. Over the last two years, hard-working Canadians have created more than 600,000 new jobs, most of them full-time. Unemployment rates are among the lowest we've seen in more than 40 years. If you compare Canada to its economic peers and other G7 nations, we've been leading the pack when it comes to economic growth since 2016.
We find ourselves in an interesting position. Our strong economic fundamentals give us the opportunity to invest in the things that will keep our economy strong and growing. At the same time, we've an obligation to take a serious look at some of the deeper challenges that continue to hold back our people and our economy. That's where this year's budget comes in.
[Translation]
Unfortunately, obstacles will continue to prevent many women and girls from achieving their full potential in Canada and elsewhere in the world. Our government is determined to eliminate those obstacles. Budget 2018 provides support to women and girls, reduces the gender wage gap and will increase the participation of women in the labour force.
[English]
The participation of women in the workforce in Canada is the highest among G7 countries, but it's still almost 10 percentage points below the rate for Canadian men, even though Canadian women are among the best educated in the world. The gender wage gap is also an issue in Canada, as it is in many other places. In 2017, for every dollar a male worker in Canada earned, a female worker earned $0.80 per hour worked. Because women tend to work fewer hours, the gap in annual earnings is even larger, with female workers earning only $0.69 for every dollar earned by a male worker.
Canadian women are also underrepresented in positions of leadership, and in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. We also know that the demands of unpaid work, caring for children, or for ill or elderly family members disproportionately fall to women, making it difficult for them to pursue opportunities, including work.
These are some of the important challenges we face. Though we know we can't solve every problem—after all, these challenges are the result of long-standing and systemic discrimination—budget 2018 does take some important steps toward providing greater equality for Canada's women and girls. From a structural perspective, it starts with the introduction of a new gender results framework. This whole-of-government tool helps define what needs to be done to achieve gender equality, and tracks our progress against stated goals.
As you know, budget 2018 also marks the first time that no budget decision was taken without being informed by gender-based analysis plus, or GBA+. To ensure that gender remains a key consideration for future governments, we'll also introduce new GBA+ legislation to make gender budgeting a permanent part of the federal budget-making process.
In terms of specific measures in budget 2018, I'd like to highlight just a few for you today.
[Translation]
In Budget 2018, the government proposes to legislate on the principle of equal pay for work of equal value in federally regulated sectors. This will mean that on average, women and men who work in federally regulated industries will receive the same salary for work of equal value. The regime will apply to approximately 1,200,000 wage earners.
[English]
As I said earlier, we know that child care duties and caregiving duties in general disproportionately fall to women, and so in budget 2018 we introduced a new “use it or lose it” employment insurance parental-sharing benefit to encourage both parents in two-parent families to share equally in the work of raising their children. With this new benefit, two-parent families who agree to share parental leave could receive an additional five weeks of leave, or an additional eight weeks for parents who choose the extended parental benefits option.
This will make it easier for women to return to work sooner, if they so choose, and it will also help to address some of the patterns of discrimination that many women experience in the hiring process. At the same time, it will give both parents an opportunity to spend time with young children, setting up patterns of more equal parenting that can last a lifetime.
To help Canada's women-led businesses grow, find new customers, and hire more Canadians, budget 2018 proposes to invest $1.65 billion in a new women entrepreneurship strategy. It also supports the advancement of women in their careers by publicly recognizing corporations that are committed to promoting women to senior management positions.
To make sure we're able to do this important work, budget 2018 also proposes to make additional investments in Status of Women, and finally, to make Status of Women a full department in the Government of Canada.
[Translation]
The budget broadens Canada's strategy to prevent and fight gender-based violence, and increases support to crisis centres for the victims of sexual assaults on university and college campuses. It contains measures aimed at mobilizing men and boys to promote gender equality.
The government is also acting to promote gender equality throughout the world. Budget 2018 will ensure that Canada welcomes more female refugees who are not only fleeing wars and persecution, but who also face greater risks because of their gender. Ensuring that all Canadians have a fair and equitable opportunity to succeed is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing.
[English]
We know that greater diversity in the workforce boosts the productivity and profitability of Canadian businesses, and, of course, the experts back us on this. RBC Economics estimates that if Canada had completely equal representation of women and men in our workforce, we could have increased the size of the economy by 4% last year. Similarly, MacKenzie Global Institute estimates that by taking steps to advance greater equality for women, such as employing more women in technology and boosting women's participation in the workforce, Canada could add $150 billion to its economy by 2026.
That's the kind of long-term growth that would benefit not just women and girls but all Canadians. It would mean more good, well-paying jobs, more money for all those Canadians who are working hard to pay their bills.
Madam Chair, as Minister of Finance, I sit around a diverse cabinet table with as many women as men, and I can tell you that the diversity of voices and perspectives around that table makes for better government, better decisions, and better outcomes. Likewise, gender equality in our economy and our society will lead to greater prosperity. It will benefit all Canadians.
Budget 2018 represents an important step toward that goal.
I'd be happy to take your questions now.
:
Maybe I can start by just acknowledging the context of your question. Our goal, of course, is to find a way to ensure greater opportunities for women and to ensure that for people who want to be in the workforce, obstacles are not presented merely on the basis of their sex.
We looked at policy measures that we could use to improve the situation. Right now, we have about 62% participation in the workforce among women and about 70% workforce participation among men. It's improved for women, but there's still a ways for us to go. We looked at the fact that Quebec introduced a parental leave “use it or lose it” benefit, this five-week benefit that they put in place. We saw that there was a much more significant uptake among the second partner, as you say, typically men, in taking parental leave—more than 80%—whereas in the rest of the country it's about 12%.
Our goal is to create a policy that enables women to get back to work if they choose to do so by allowing their spouse, if he or their partner wants to be back in the workforce, chooses to take that parental leave, sharing the burden more fairly. We also want to know that when two people go into a hiring office, a male and a female, the person hiring them looks at them more equally, realizes that both of them are relatively likely to take time off for child rearing, and, therefore, when thinking about whom to hire, recognizes their equal potential and isn't biased against one of those people versus the other. We think it can have long-term positive benefits in multiple ways.
Thank you, Minister, for coming.
Your fellow Liberal members voted down having you at this committee a year ago. I wanted to invite you to the committee so I'm really glad that we agreed as a committee to get you here now. I want to thank you also for some of the early wins that we were able to get together. Having women represented on banknotes was something that the grassroots movement and NDP had pushed to have for a long time, so thanks for saying yes to that so early in your term, and also for saying yes to the NDP motion on pay equity in our first month or so in this Parliament.
We expected that a feminist budget would have had pay equity legislation and financing for pay equity. As you say, 1.2 million women are affected by the lack of federal pay equity legislation. At the all-party committee, all three parties agreed, which doesn't happen very often, that pay equity legislation should be tabled by June 2017. Pierre Trudeau promised it, the Liberal Prime Minister, 42 years ago, so it's a great disappointment that it's not in the budget.
The labour minister says that the consultations finished last year. We haven't heard anybody who says that we need more time on this. Are you the one responsible for not funding pay equity in your feminist budget?
:
Thank you. That's a broad question. I think we could go down many paths of what we've put in this budget as examples of how we're trying to enable women to find more success in fields that perhaps they weren't as traditionally successful in.
We've put in funding for pre-apprenticeship training and apprenticeship training, both with the idea that we can help women be more successful in Red Seal trades.
We recognize, as I mentioned in my remarks, that women are not as represented in some of the STEM fields as they could be. We started with first principles with that. In our research and science funding, we put significant funding in the granting councils. In that funding, we stipulated that those granting councils consider how they can ensure that we have not only more younger researchers and more interdisciplinary work, but in particular more female researchers, because we saw that the access to those funds was not having the same impact on women as on men.
We, then, as I mentioned, are thinking about how we can also ensure more success among women who start businesses. We see women's businesses getting started at a similar pace, but not getting nearly the opportunities for success as male-led businesses.
Obviously, we're going to have to do many things at the same time to address these challenges, and these are some of the methods we put in this budget that we think will have an important impact over time.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being with us this afternoon.
I have two questions for you. The first concerns gender-responsive budgeting.
An article was published last March in the Toronto Star about the poor results obtained through gender-responsive budgeting elsewhere in the world, and they gave three examples.
The first one is from Australia; that country adopted this type of budgeting until 2014. They suddenly decided to drop that approach because of the impossibility of obtaining specific, positive results for women.
The second example is from Austria. There, they amended the Constitution to adopt gender-responsive budgeting and also take into account gender-based analysis plus, as Canada is doing now, but the office of the Austrian parliamentary budget officer unfortunately found that the results regarding women were inconclusive. There were no concrete results tending to demonstrate that the lives of women had improved much. In fact, they found that the objectives were not well defined and that the communication among departments was poor.
Finally, the Toronto Star quoted a third example from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the OECD. Unfortunately, the same results were reported in 12 countries. Only half of those were able to provide specific examples of good results where political measures such as gender-based analysis and gender-responsive budgeting led to convincing positive results for women.
My question is simple. In light of these results obtained in Europe, do you think it is possible that Canada will obtain better results?
:
We obviously looked at some studies that showed us the potential—the math I referred to in my remarks—growth in our overall GDP through greater and more successful outcomes for women. We obviously see that as one important reason for ensuring that we have measures that can help people be successful.
Specifically in the field of helping women be more successful in businesses, we start with the idea that we need to think about why it is there's not as much opportunity for women. That's why we started with the idea of accelerators and mentor hubs delivered regionally. We think that's critically important.
Secondly, we saw that there was not nearly as much success for women export businesses as there were for male businesses. That led us to putting funding through the Export Development Bank of Canada, with about $250 million in access to capital for export-led businesses as well as services and facilities to help them consider how they can best use those resources. Similarly, with the Business Development Bank, it's the same approach, although with more funds available that allow for access to capital. The BDC also has a facility to help people think about how to develop their business plans and actually put that capital to work.
On outcomes, we have the high-level studies that I referred to, but among the more interim measures to achieving potential positive outcomes would be to provide more capital for women-owned businesses, seeing growth rates that are more rapid for the businesses once they're started and, of course, seeing that over the long term this will actually have a broader economic impact for all Canadians.