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Paulette Senior
View Paulette Senior Profile
Paulette Senior
2020-07-22 12:02
Thank you, committee, for the invitation.
My name is Paulette Senior. I'm president and CEO of the Canadian Women's Foundation, which is Canada's only national public foundation for women and girls, and one of the 10 largest women's foundations in the world. Our three decades of granting work has focused on moving women out of poverty and violence and into safety and confidence.
Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee to discuss the question of the government's pandemic response.
The mission of the Canadian Women's Foundation is transformative change in the lives of women and girls in Canada. The COVID-19 pandemic has heavily impacted women. For this reason, we would like to encourage the government to ensure that women's safety, livelihoods and well-being are central to all parts of the pandemic response. Women have been put at risk—most severely, women from communities that are marginalized by systemic discrimination.
In terms of women's work during the pandemic, the disproportionate effect of the pandemic on women at work cannot be overstated. The latest numbers from Statistics Canada show that women throughout the country have been hit harder than men when it comes to job losses. There has been a 17% drop in female employment, compared with a 14.5% drop for men. Additionally, women aged 15 to 24 are suffering the most, with a 30% fall in employment. Overall, women earning the lowest 10% of wages experienced job loss at 50 times the rate of the highest wage earners. This type of granular data, which is revealed by intersectional gender-based analysis, is needed to support decisions on next steps.
In terms of women in the recovery, under the present economic conditions, women are falling out of the workforce. They have stopped looking for work due to high unemployment in their sector and/or the pressures of children not in school or day care. With uncertainty about how long this situation will continue, there is little confidence among these workers. Given that women have lost jobs more than men and are not regaining them, the government must ensure that ongoing plans take into account this disproportional effect.
Major sectors where women are affected directly will need special attention, as they take longer to rebuild. These sectors include retail, the care economy, the non-profit and charitable sectors and the service sector in general, including travel and tourism. Given the number of people who have lost work already, plans to stimulate the reopening of any economic sector cannot go ahead without guarantees that parents will be able to depend on a reliable child care plan. The foundation supports the work of the “Child Care Now” campaign, which advocates for affordable, high-quality early learning and child care to be available to all families. We know that this is key to women's economic security and to violence prevention specifically.
In responding to gender-based violence in the pandemic, stay-at-home orders increased the risk of domestic violence and decreased women's ability to leave abusive homes for the safety of shelters. Evidence of increases in gender-based violence is now clear all across Canada. In Ontario, the York Regional Police saw domestic incidents grow by 22% since COVID-19. The Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses says that women's shelters are experiencing a 20% increase. Several provincial crisis lines have reported an increase of 30% in the number of calls they receive.
The organizations we work with are critical organizations when it comes to ending gender-based violence in Canada. From surveys and consultations with the sector, we know that since the start of the pandemic 92% of organizations of all kinds have seen an increase in gender-based violence. More than 50% have seen an increase of up to 30% in the demand for their services, and 67% have launched new services and programs to respond to the crisis, while 82% think that they will not be able to emerge from this crisis.
The government must continue to offer ongoing support to women's services. It has taken decades to build a sector that provides not only essential programming services but knowledge and advocacy that have put women's equality issues such as gender-based violence in the public eye and on the government agenda. We cannot afford to have the sector fail.
Before I finish, I would also like to bring to your attention three key recommendations for budget 2021 that we feel should be included in the response to the consultation. Any items in the recovery budget must have a GBA+ and intersectional analysis. There must be data to monitor the impact of the budget in terms of gender and intersecting identities.
Canada needs a stabilization plan for the non-profit and charitable sector, and funding to ensure thriving women's movements. Imagine Canada estimates that the cost to bring this sector into a strong recovery is $9 billion. Any stabilization fund must have an intersectional lens, with investments in diverse communities.
Finally, Canada needs to revitalize its social infrastructure through care-sector investments. This means strengthening social policies for long-term care, child care, violence against women and gender-based violence, and prioritizing investments in community and in state models.
View Maryam Monsef Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Hello, colleagues. Boozoo. Aaniin. As-salaam alaikum. I hope you're well. I hope you're safe. I wish the same for your loved ones and for your teams.
Given that this is my first time in front of a committee in our post-COVID world, let me take this opportunity to thank the public service of Canada for all the ways that you've put everything on the line. We are truly blessed to have the world's best public service moving Canada forward during this difficult time. Also, of course, it's wonderful to be here with Minister Qualtrough, who has been moving some significant pieces forward, not the least of which is the CERB program.
Madam Chair, I am very much looking forward to the response that comes from your committee as we navigate the ongoing impacts of the pandemic on the most vulnerable, on women and on the path to recovery. I want to thank you for the work there.
I'll talk about our government's response to COVID. I would like to spend a bit of time talking about the impact on women and the road to recovery, but first let me talk about this book. Those of you from Winnipeg and those of you who have been around the last little while know that Runaway Wives and Rogue Feminists is a book that tells the story of the women's shelter movement in Canada. Maybe I'll start with that.
In 1971, the Liberal government of the day introduced the local initiatives programs and the opportunities for youth program. These programs were to support those who were experiencing particular vulnerabilities during a time of severe economic downturn. The programs encouraged Canadians, particularly women and young people, to find solutions to pressing local challenges and receive a modest amount of funding from the federal government to help turn those ideas and solutions into action.
Among the many ideas that came forward was one put together by young women across the country. They came together in the early seventies and started women's shelters in Canada, the very first women's shelters in Canada. Today, there are some 600 women's shelters in Canada because a group of young women came together to ensure that battered women and their children had a place to go in their hour of need. In 1996, my family and I were able to stay at one of those shelters.
Because of a decision that was made in 1971 and because of investments made in 1971, people today are benefiting from the thoughts, the creativity and the opportunities that have been created. We are going to see young people seize opportunities to propose solutions that we haven't thought of, and the story of the shelter movement in Canada is a really good reminder of the opportunities that can be seized in times of difficulty.
When the pandemic hit, one of our immediate responses was to provide $50 million to organizations that are providing support to those experiencing increased rates of gender-based violence due to the isolation measures in Canada. Today, some one thousand organizations have been able to keep their doors open, have been able to keep their staff paid and have been able to keep their buildings clean and provide a place of refuge for women and children in really dark hours.
We started our efforts by focusing on shelters and sexual assault centres, and then we were able to flow funds in a new way, in a way that we hadn't done before, to organizations that provide gender-based violence supports but do so without having the specific mandate of being a shelter or sexual assault centre. This includes a range of organizations that, for example, are doing work in the Downtown Eastside, organizations that are working in smaller rural communities and, of course, organizations that are providing supports to victims of human trafficking.
There is more to do. There is more to come. We are moving forward with the plan to develop Canada's first national action plan on gender-based violence, and I will have more to say very soon about our efforts to support victims of human trafficking in this country.
From the very beginning, we recognized that those who were most vulnerable would be hardest hit by COVID, and every step we've taken has taken that into account. The intersectional gendered lens that the Government of Canada applies has been applied to all of our efforts. I am happy to talk more about that.
There has also been a recognition that women have been hardest hit by COVID, with jobs lost and their work on the front lines and the care responsibilities they taken on because schools and day cares have been closed and because elders have needed help—as well as the shadow pandemic of gender-based violence. Women have been hardest hit, and if we're going to get out of this “she-cession”, we're going to have to support women in their need to get back to work and to ensure that we remove barriers. Otherwise, we lose the hard-won gains that so many before us have fought for.
Our focus on the vulnerable has led to millions of Canadians being supported.
The thousand organizations that we were able to support with gender-based violence funds have an impact in supporting some three million women and children in this country.
The CERB has benefited over eight million Canadians. The CEWS, or the wage subsidy, has supported close to three million workers. The Canada child benefit top-up has supported 3.7 million families with kids. The GST credit top-up has supported 12 million low- and modest-income individuals and families. The CESB has supported some 600,000 students. The OAS and GIS top-ups have supported 6.7 million elders in our country, and they will be receiving the top-up this week. The CEBA loans have supported 688,000 businesses, and there are additional supports for those businesses being worked out.
Madam Chair, the road to recovery from this unprecedented global pandemic will be hard. We are still in the middle of the pandemic. There's still a lot that we don't know about the virus, including how it spreads. I am proud of the way that Canadians have come together in shared sacrifice to protect the most vulnerable.
I am grateful to everyone who has been on the front lines of this work, particularly the women, who have put everything on the line. Some have had to have some really difficult conversations with their loved ones about why they can't be in the same house with them because they do work on the front lines. I'm talking about front-line workers.
The road to recovery has to include supporting women and the most vulnerable. There is an opportunity here too. The pandemic has revealed strengths in our system: for example, the public service of Canada; for example, our democratic institutions; and, for example, our universal health care system. It has also exposed cracks in our system that make too many vulnerable. We have an opportunity in the path to recovery, in the reimagining of our country and these systems, to rebuild back better. It's going to take every single one of us to work together to make that happen.
I want to thank you again for giving me a space. I want to thank everybody who has worked so hard to make this different way of doing business and doing Parliament possible.
I'll hand it back over to you, Madam Chair. I look forward to the conversation we are to have.
View Andréanne Larouche Profile
BQ (QC)
Okay. I want to come back to Ms. Monsef.
Ms. Monsef, do you have a time frame for the national action plan on gender-based violence?
I also want to speak to you about projects that were set up in my region during the pandemic to work on the issue of sexual exploitation, and about the sexual assault centres, or CALACS. Yesterday, I met with the director of one centre. Your department has made investments. However, in Quebec, only three CALACS out of seven have received financial support. The other centres weren't eligible.
Wouldn't assisting these centres be a way to help more women find a way out of this sexual exploitation situation?
View Maryam Monsef Profile
Lib. (ON)
We do not, but I will say that we are working very closely with the provinces and territories. Those conversations have begun, and it is in my mandate—
Paulette Senior
View Paulette Senior Profile
Paulette Senior
2020-06-15 14:07
That was completed over a two-week period.
Then, most recently, we were able to again work with Women and Gender Equality to start distributing, as of last week, $10 million specifically to non-sexual-assault centres, non-shelter, but GVB organizations. In total, we identified, together with WAGE, about 450, and we'll be distributing funds to them over the next week or two.
View Andréanne Larouche Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I thank Ms. Bonfanti for her presentation. I am in contact with many organizations working with disabled individuals in my constituency, so I am well aware of the difficulties they are experiencing, especially during this pandemic. I, too, take issue with some parties not seeing how important this matter is. In fact, last week, we were the ones who asked that the bill be split to provide assistance faster to people with disabilities. I share that desire to help them as quickly as possible.
Having said that, my questions will be for Paulette Senior, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Women's Foundation. We know that COVID-19 has had a profound impact on the health, behaviours and activities of Canadians, particularly Canadian and Quebec women. We know that confinement has caused a lot of tension and that, for many women, it is cause for concern.
According to a Statistics Canada survey, about 1 woman in 10 fears potential violence in their families. About 8% to 10% of female respondents expressed that fear. At the end of March, the SOS violence conjugale hotline in Quebec reported a 15% increase in calls related to the confinement measures. In her mandate letter, the minister said she wanted to address gender-based violence.
In concrete terms, can you give us examples of measures you would like to see as part of such an action plan? Also, what can we expect?
Paulette Senior
View Paulette Senior Profile
Paulette Senior
2020-06-15 14:21
Well, I think the pandemic has really revealed some of the issues that were already there and exacerbated them. It's important that as we move forward, particularly as we start to think about recovery, we consider all of the various elements that have made women, particularly women in vulnerable circumstances, involving violence, poverty and other issues that are compounded by gender inequality.... We really need to think about these measures that will be necessary to support the strive toward gender equality. These are, to me, all aspects of what make up a gender-equal society. The pandemic has really widened the chasm of cracks that were already present.
A national action plan to address issues of gender-based violence needs to consider all of that, and then I think it needs to be resourced appropriately to be able to address them, so that we're not losing ground as we come out of the recovery.
If we look at issues around women who are paid minimum wage, or just above minimum wage but certainly not a living wage, we're seeing that a lot of these women have, during the pandemic, been providing quite a bit of what we have now accepted to be essential services. Whether they are women who are providing personal support assistance or working in grocery stores or other areas that we've deemed to be essential, we think it's important that we consider how we are planning the recovery and how we're thinking through all of these issues we have seen raise their ugly heads even more during the pandemic.
Paulette Senior
View Paulette Senior Profile
Paulette Senior
2020-06-04 17:29
Thanks. I appreciate that.
More than 65% of cleaners working in hospitals, schools and office buildings are women. Much cleaning work, now perceived as essential, has long been precarious: part-time, low-paid, often subcontracted work, lacking job protections, paid sick leave or extended health benefits. Pandemic outbreaks in LTC—which harm residents, staff and their families and can lead to community outbreaks—can be traced to some of these ongoing issues. Where full-time jobs are not available, PSWs may work multiple part-time positions at different locations to compensate, which increases the risk of spreading infection from one care facility to another.
With regard to the government response, the federal government needs to ensure a stable, full-time, long-term care workforce, with sufficient protections—physical and job—to provide care and maintain their well-being. That will benefit both the workforce and the residents, who are mostly women, and the community at large. This includes working with the provinces and territories to ensure that employment standards are sufficient and fully enforced, including a sufficient supply of PPE and honouring refusals of unsafe work; to ensure full-time positions at salary levels above a living wage; and to ensure a full, open-ended review of the structure, management and ownership of long-term care, keeping in focus the women who work and live in LTC facilities.
The closure of child care centres and schools placed a triple burden on many mothers doing full-time jobs from home and managing both children and household tasks. The pandemic has highlighted that child care is now integral to the community. Without it, Canada doesn't work. Child care has been revealed as an essential service that cannot be shuttered. Provinces that closed all child care centres quickly reopened some to accommodate workers considered essential during the pandemic. However, the child care sector is fragmented and underfunded, much of it not stable enough to withstand the drop in parent-fee revenue resulting from pandemic closures.
Many centres are not committed to reopening. While the need for physical distancing changes the economics of child care, it remains essential to economic reopening and to gender equality. The federal government needs to ensure that funding is in place to safely reopen the child care sector at pre-pandemic levels of service and to continue to expand until universal access to affordable child care is achieved. The bilateral process with provinces and territories needs to move to a near horizon of three or five years.
As the lockdown increased the risk of domestic violence and decreased women's ability to leave abusive homes for the safety of women's shelters, it highlighted the importance of the violence prevention sector. The Canadian Women's Foundation welcomed the federal government's announcement of $50 million to assist women's shelters and sexual assault centres with their pandemic responses. We partnered with Women and Gender Equality to distribute some of those funds to sexual assault centres and broader gender-based violence organizations. In the process, we heard once again about the extent of need.
As the executive director of one busy sexual assault centre, describing their transition to working remotely, said, “We had to invest in a phone system as ours was a donation from 1980. We didn't have funds for PPE for staff and volunteers accompanying women to hospitals, police and doctors...the funding helped us purchase PPE…a phone system, and food for some clients. As much as I'm grateful for the 25k; I must be honest with you, it's not enough. …we need to invest in a web chat system for youth asking to text… we had to do home visits as we fear for some clients' lives and despite reporting to police, nothing has been done. We are running out of PPE…Volunteers have begun to show signs of burn out and we are averaging 60-80 crisis calls a day.”
The federal government needs to develop and implement a well-funded national action plan on violence against women and gender-based violence that recognizes this work as essential to society and gender equality.
By “well-funded”, we mean commensurate with the multi-billion-dollar annual cost of violence. The federal government also needs to complete development and start implementation of a national action plan to address violence against indigenous women and girls without further delay.
To summarize, this is not the time for small asks. The pandemic has shone a very bright light on deep fault lines of inequality in Canadian society. The government's response needs to be similarly deep. The structural change outlined will respond to needs of women marginalized by systemic discrimination: black and racialized women; first nations, Métis and Inuit women; women with disabilities; and LGBTQ2S and gender non-conforming people. It will strengthen our social systems to provide sufficient care in times of stress, including for an aging population that is largely women, and continue to advance gender equality.
Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to your questions.
View Marc Miller Profile
Lib. (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Kwe. Tansi. Ulaakut. Good afternoon.
As we are learning from past experiences in responding to pandemics in Canada, and specifically in first nations, Inuit and Métis communities during H1N1, we need to recognize and understand from that experience that these communities have a higher risk of being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. That remains the case.
The first nations and Inuit health branch continues to provide effective, sustainable and culturally appropriate health programs and services that contribute to the reduction of gaps in health status between first nations and Inuit and other Canadians. I would like to remind members of the House and all Canadians that improving the health of indigenous peoples is a responsibility shared by federal, provincial and territorial, and indigenous partners. Our common goal continues to be to work together in partnership to ensure that indigenous communities receive the care they need. By working together, we can save lives.
As of May 19, we've seen 198 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in first nation communities on reserve and 16 cases in Nunavik. It is important to note for the House that of those mentioned cases, 148 first nation cases have recovered, and the entirety of the Inuit cases in Nunavik have recovered. This is due to incredible first nations and Inuit leadership in stopping the curve, aggressive screening and testing when cases manifest themselves in communities, and the amazing work in tracing contacts as quickly as possible when a case arises in a community. It is thanks to that aggressive action and the passage of time that these cases have recovered.
In addition to the direct funding of approximately $300 million that we've provided to indigenous communities and in addition to business support in excess of $300 million, to date more than $107.8 million in funding has been allocated by my department specifically toward the health response to COVID-19 to ensure the procurement of supplies and nursing services in communities, as well as preparedness measures led by the communities themselves, the leadership of which has been exemplary.
We continue to monitor closely the situation in northwestern Saskatchewan in particular, and to support communities in response to the outbreak, we've provided $2.3 million in funding that has gone towards the northwest Saskatchewan pandemic response plan. This pandemic plan is a collective effort of first nations, Métis, municipal, provincial and federal partners. Meadow Lake Tribal Council and Métis Nation Saskatchewan in particular have undertaken an exemplary collaboration in leading the response to this significant and concerning outbreak.
Indigenous Services Canada also continues to work with the northwest communities incident command centre in the area, including provincial health authorities, first nations and Métis communities to support their efforts through increased access to testing, enhanced surveillance, strong contact tracing, and infection prevention and control measures.
We are all focused on the health response that will save lives. I want to reassure first nations leadership that we are committed to supporting first nation communities in activating their pandemic plans and providing the support and collaboration with provinces that best respond to each community's needs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Urban and off-reserve first nations, Inuit and Métis communities face unique issues when it comes to preventing and fighting the spread of this virus. Since the start of the pandemic, urban and off-reserve indigenous organizations and local community organizations have been working around the clock to provide direct services to indigenous peoples.
We acknowledge that COVID-19 has placed additional pressure on the activities of these organizations and has increased their overall spending. In response to these needs, we've taken immediate steps to support these organizations through the indigenous community support fund. A total of $15 million has been allocated to regional, urban and off-reserve indigenous organizations. These organizations can also receive funding from other federal initiatives under Canada's economic response plan, such as Employment and Social Development Canada's reaching home initiative, and the additional funding allocated to shelters for women who are fleeing violence and to sexual assault centres.
Additional funding for food banks has also been made available to Canadians, including indigenous peoples and northern communities, to meet their urgent food needs. In addition to federal funding, the provinces and territories along with individuals, through charitable donations, play a role in supporting these organizations.
However, we acknowledge that more support is needed. We're actively working with communities to identify the support that they need. We're working with government partners to explore other ways to further assist urban and off-reserve indigenous organizations.
As part of our COVID-19 economic response plan, and as mentioned by Minister Monsef earlier today, Indigenous Services Canada is currently distributing $10 million to its existing network of 46 emergency shelters on first nations reserves and in the Yukon to support indigenous women and children fleeing violence. In response to the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the Government of Canada committed to working with territories, provinces, and indigenous governments and partners to develop a national action plan that will address violence against women, girls and LGBT and two-spirit people.
To that end, we are supporting national indigenous organizations in reaching out to their members to identify their priorities and best practices, and further understand how they want to be involved in the co-development and implementation work that lies ahead. That's why last week my colleague Minister Bennett attended the Yukon engagement session on violence against indigenous women and girls, co-chaired by Yukon territorial minister, Jeanie Dendys, and women and gender equality minister, Maryam Monsef. The engagement session was a great opportunity to allow Yukon to share wise and promising practices, initiatives, priorities, challenges and views regarding the systemic and disproportionate violence experienced by women and girls and LGBT and two-spirit people, with jurisdictions and other stakeholders from across the country.
In addition, we've recently concluded a proposal-based process to distribute $15 million to organizations that provide critical services to first nations off reserve and indigenous peoples living in urban centres. This funding is part of the government's indigenous community support fund. To date, over 94 proposals have been supported through the urban and off-reserve stream of the indigenous community support fund. This includes support for friendship centres as they continue their important work to serve urban indigenous communities in the face of this pandemic.
Supporting indigenous youth is another key area of our focus. Among our recent measures, we've included in the nearly $9 billion for post-secondary students and recent graduates, a one-time increase of $75.2 million in 2020-21. This is dedicated to providing support to first nations, Inuit and Métis Nation students impacted by COVID-19 so that they can continue, maintain and pursue their academic studies. To be clear, this funding is in addition to the existing distinctions-based support for first nations, Inuit and Métis Nation students pursuing post-secondary education and the Canada emergency student benefit funding, which is available to all Canadian students.
We are also working with indigenous partners, including youth organizations, to support and promote indigenous resources for youth. For example, We Matter is an indigenous-led youth organization focused on life promotion and messages of hope and resilience. They have developed important tool kits that are available for youth, teachers and support workers to help youth and those who support youth.
In closing, let me reiterate that we are committed to responding to and supporting the evolving needs of first nations, Inuit and Métis communities and individuals as we transition together through the various stages of this pandemic.
Meegwetch. Nakurmiik. Marsi. Thank you.
Nancy Gardiner
View Nancy Gardiner Profile
Nancy Gardiner
2020-02-25 11:01
Thank you, Madam Chair.
We're very happy to be here this morning to have this opportunity to present the department's overview, mandate and priorities. As the chair said, we asked for a little longer because there's a lot of information to present in the deck, so we will do that quickly. I'm sure everyone has a copy of the information.
The purpose of the presentation today is to go over the history of the department, legislation, the mandate and the vision, some of our roles and responsibilities, the resources we have within the department, and departmental programming. We are here for questions you may have afterwards.
The organization, not as it is today but in a different form, has been in place since 1976. It's been around for a long time. In 2015, the first minister responsible for the status of women was appointed. In December 2018, new legislation marked the creation of the new Department for Women and Gender Equality. That is a very important point in time for the department as well. We're transforming from an agency to a department of the Government of Canada.
Page 4 outlines the legislation in terms of the expanded mandate of the department. There are two key features, and I will read them directly from this slide:
Advancing equality, including social, economic and political equality, with respect to sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression (SSOGIE).
Promoting a greater understanding of the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors (e.g., sexual orientation, race national/ethnic origin, Indigenous origin, socioeconomic condition, place of residence, and disability).
This is a very important piece of the legislation. A couple of pieces that complement that are in the Canadian Gender Budgeting Act. The legislation also clarifies the department's role around gender-based analysis which promotes an intersectional lens as well.
Page 5 refers to the mandate. It definitely mimics the legislation we've had presented in that year. More important is the vision. The vision of the department shows a Canada where people of all genders, including women, are equal in every way and can achieve their full potential in our country.
Page 6 outlines the roles and responsibilities of the department. Within the Government of Canada, we play three key functions in terms of leadership for gender equality: convener, knowledge broker and capacity builder.
Convener is a really important role. There are many departments that are having roles and responsibilities related to policies or programs related to gender equality. We bring folks together on that. We leverage resources from all different sections as well. We look at international stakeholders and work with international partners in many of the areas related to gender equality.
Regarding knowledge broker, you'll hear a bit more from Lisa later. There's a lot of information that the department has related to research and expertise on gender equality. We also lead the Government of Canada's gender-based analysis. That's the knowledge piece.
The capacity builder is a really key area of work. It's building the capacity of equality-seeking organizations on the ground. That helps capacity work for community organizations. Members would be familiar with that in terms of the roles of members of Parliament.
Departmental resources are on page 7. We're a fairly small department, but mighty. We always say small but mighty. A program budget for us was around $66 million in the 2019-20 fiscal year, which is through grants and contributions. That's the framework we have in place around the Gs and Cs. It's a small operating budget. We have about 300 staff, not only in Ottawa but in the regions across the country to allow us to work directly with community groups focused on gender equality. As you can see, we have the regional areas in Moncton, Montreal, Edmonton and Toronto, and serve the whole country from those four bases.
I'll spend a couple of minutes on the priorities of the department that we have under way this year. Then I'll turn it over to my colleagues.
We're focusing on four main priority areas. One is strategic action, support and investment to address systemic barriers. I just spoke about that around our programning grants and contributions piece. Partnership opportunities allow us to work with the sector as well as other key partners to advance the priorities of the department.
Commemoration is a really important area this year, and we've been working on it related to MMIWG. That is a very key piece of work for us. We also work with other partners around providing expert advice and guidance.
The second priority is the gender-based analysis, which I spoke about earlier, gender-based analysis plus, working to ensure there's a comprehensive integration of gender-based analysis throughout the policy, legislative, program development and evaluation cycle within the government. Also, we support finance in terms of the Canadian Gender Budgeting Act.
The third priority is looking at preventing and addressing gender-based violence. A key area that we're working on here, which is the federal response, is supporting a gender-based violence strategy within Canada. As we mentioned, Danielle is here, and she supports that initiative within the department.
The last piece is around strategic engagement throughout all of our partners as well as the private sector.
That was a very rapid overview of the department in all of its areas.
I'll turn it over to Lisa now. I think this is an important part of the presentation that this group would appreciate. It is really focusing on research.
Lisa Smylie
View Lisa Smylie Profile
Lisa Smylie
2020-02-25 11:07
I get to answer the question everybody always has: What is the current state of gender equality in Canada?
Prior to budget 2018, we had a GBA+ action plan, but there was something missing. What was missing was a framework for guiding us in our action on gender equality, what our priorities were, where we were heading and how we would know we got there.
In budget 2018 we released the gender results framework. This framework comprises six pillars, six key areas of action, if you will. Within those areas of action, we have objectives and some indicators that we're paying attention to in terms of monitoring our progress on gender equality. It's with that framework that I'll walk you through what the current state of gender equality is in Canada.
Starting on page 12 with education and skills development, in Canada, boys are less likely than girls to complete high school. Here's why a GBA+ and an intersectional lens is important. When you drill down and take a look at indigenous peoples in Canada, you see the story is much different. Indigenous women have lower high school completion rates than non-indigenous women. When you take a look at indigenous men, you see it's even lower. When we take a look at Inuit men in Canada, we see they have the lowest high school completion rate, at 55%.
Women are under-represented in some fields of study and overrepresented in others. They're under-represented in sciences, technology, engineering and math. They're overrepresented in education, business and health.
When we take a look at economic participation and prosperity, we see we've increased labour force participation rates of women in Canada, but they're still lower than men's rates.
When we take a look at one key indicator of economic prosperity, the gender wage gap, we see that we have a gender wage gap of 12¢. We see women make 88¢ for every dollar men make, when we take a look at hourly wages.
StatsCan just released this week some new data on this. When we take a look at annual income, we see that it's even worse. It's 70¢, and so there's a 30¢ wage gap.
You also see a different wage gap when you take a look at fields, occupational segregation. We have the largest wage gap in the natural resources and agriculture sector. Women make 43¢ for every dollar men make.
Second in line is trades and transport, the male-dominated fields. We have the smallest wage gap in the women-dominated fields, health and business.
In terms of the wage gap, I note there are a lot of things driving it, such as gender norms around unpaid work and interruptions in the labour force for women in terms of maternity leave. We sometimes call that the motherhood penalty. We also know that women are more likely than men to work part time, and in temporary or lower-paying jobs.
When we take a look at leadership and democratic participation, we see that in 2018 women accounted for 48% of employment, but only 33% of those who were employed were in senior management positions. Women account for only 10% of C-suite executives at Canada's 100 largest publicly traded corporations.
When we take a look at GIC appointments, we see we're almost at parity, at 49%.
When we take a look at corporate board memberships, we see that overall in Canada, women make up 18% of director seats. That's a slight increase from 2016. When we take a look at the top 500 companies in Canada, we see that women account for a bit more, 25%, and for the first time since 2001, at least 10% of all board directors in every single sector were women.
I'll move on to gender-based violence and access to justice. Women are overrepresented as victims of police-reported intimate partner violence, accounting for 80% of victims in 2017. When we take a look at homicide by an intimate partner, again women account for 80% of victims. When we look at sexual assault, only 5% of sexual assault reports come to the attention of police. Indigenous women are three times more likely than non-indigenous women to experience sexual assault, and though they make up approximately 4% of the population, account for 11% of all missing women and 16% of homicides in Canada. Those who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual are twice as likely to experience violent victimization in Canada than those who identify as heterosexual.
With regard to poverty reduction, health and well-being, the poverty rate is similar between men and women, but again, this is why GBA+ is so important. When you look at single mothers, single fathers, recent immigrants, indigenous peoples and two-spirit and transgender youth, they're much more represented among those who are living in poverty. It's the same thing for core housing need, where those groups are overrepresented. When we look at health, men and boys are three times more likely than women to die by suicide. However, women are three times more likely to attempt suicide. This comes down to the choice of method of suicide. Men tend to choose methods that are much more certain.
On gender equality around the world, women's rights organizations are the most significant factor in influencing systemic changes and policy changes toward gender equality, but only 0.5% of the total aid earmarked for OECD gender-specific programming went to women's rights organizations in 2014. When we look at parliamentarians globally, we see an improvement between 1997 and 2019, from 12% to 24%. Women make up more than two-thirds of the world's illiterate population. In conflict zones, girls are 2.5 times more likely to be out of school than boys. When we look at gender-based violence globally, one in three women worldwide are estimated to have experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence. At least 200 million women and girls worldwide have been subjected to female genital mutilation.
Danielle Bélanger
View Danielle Bélanger Profile
Danielle Bélanger
2020-02-25 11:25
I just have one comment.
Women and girls living in rural and remote areas do face higher rates of violence. That's certainly something we are addressing under our federal gender-based violence strategy. As Nancy said, we are funding a number of projects in terms of ending and combatting violence in rural areas.
Nancy Gardiner
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Nancy Gardiner
2020-02-25 11:30
I'll add to that.
In addition to the work that Lisa talked about, the department is also looking at a gender-based violence national action plan, and looking at what that means across the country, not only within the federal government but also in working with provinces and territories.
Also, we talked earlier about the gender results framework. We need to put a strategy around that, a gender equality action plan that really puts a strategy around that framework to ensure that we're going to be meeting some of the areas that Lisa talked about, some of those pieces of work that we want to frame and put together as a building block for the overall plan for the department.
Danielle Bélanger
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Danielle Bélanger
2020-02-25 11:33
Thank you for your question.
In order to build a gender-based violence national action plan, we are certainly looking at models in other countries, including Australia and New Zealand. We are also looking to countries in Europe such as Sweden and Iceland, and we've even met with officials from other OECD countries. A lot of models are out there.
Here, in Canada, we have to keep jurisdiction in mind, so it's more complicated. Of course, we are looking at the various models through that lens. The provinces and territories have adopted many models that are proving successful, so when it comes to establishing a national action plan, it's definitely important to incorporate the perspectives of the provinces and territories.
View Lindsay Mathyssen Profile
NDP (ON)
I had an interesting meeting with a woman who had recently been up in the north in Ontario. She was working with an indigenous community. Her specialty is sex trafficking and human trafficking. She talked about the community in which she was working. They experience a rate of 80% to100% of sexual violence. That just destroyed me. I couldn't even imagine what that would mean in terms of growing up with that being normal and what you saw and experienced every day. We asked where you go with that. How do you start to break that entire cycle?
She mentioned sex education as being a key part of that. She talked about what it meant for young people to be able to figure out their own autonomy and so on. Do you have program funding for that? Is that something you're focusing on? Is that somewhere the federal government needs to grow and go? I know that a lot of it is covered provincially, so it becomes a bit complicated, but could you talk about that as it fits into your gender-based violence framework?
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