HUMA Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Wednesday, November 5, 2003

¹

1535

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Ottawa—Orléans, Lib.))

Dr. Donna Lero (Centre for Families, Work and Well-being, University of Guelph)

¹

1540

¹

1545

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Ms. Nora Spinks (President, Work-Life Harmony Enterprises, Canadian Alliance for Children's Healthcare)

¹

1550

¹

1555

º

1600

º

1605

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Mr. Brian Pallister (Portage—Lisgar, Canadian Alliance)

Dr. Donna Lero

Mr. Brian Pallister

º

1610

Ms. Nora Spinks

Mr. Brian Pallister

Dr. Donna Lero

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Mr. Brian Pallister

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Dr. Donna Lero

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Dr. Donna Lero

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Dr. Donna Lero

º

1615

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.)

Dr. Donna Lero

Mr. John Finlay

Dr. Donna Lero

Mr. John Finlay

Dr. Donna Lero

Mr. John Finlay

º

1620

Ms. Nora Spinks

Dr. Donna Lero

º

1625

Mr. John Finlay

Dr. Donna Lero

Mr. John Finlay

Ms. Nora Spinks

º

1630

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Dr. Donna Lero

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Dr. Donna Lero

Ms. Nora Spinks

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Dr. Donna Lero

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Dr. Donna Lero

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Dr. Donna Lero

Mr. Eugène Bellemare

Dr. Donna Lero

Ms. Nora Spinks

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

Mr. John Finlay

º

1635

Ms. Nora Spinks

Mr. John Finlay

Ms. Nora Spinks

Mr. John Finlay

Ms. Nora Spinks

Mr. John Finlay

Dr. Donna Lero

Mr. John Finlay

Dr. Donna Lero

Mr. John Finlay

Dr. Donna Lero

Mr. John Finlay

Dr. Donna Lero

º

1640

Mr. John Finlay

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare)

---

CANADA

Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

---

NUMBER 045

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

---

EVIDENCE

Wednesday, November 5, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¹  (1535)  

[Translation]

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Ottawa—Orléans, Lib.)): I call this meeting to order.

[English]

...number 45 of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are undertaking a study on enhancing the work-life balance in the federal jurisdiction.

    Our first witness today is Donna Lero, from the University of Guelph. She's responsible for the Centre for Families, Work and Well-being. We also have, from the Canadian Alliance for Children's Healthcare, Mrs. Nora Spinks, who is the president of Work-Life Harmony Enterprises.

    We apologize for the delay. It's very exciting times these days in the House of Commons.

    For eight minutes, we'll start with Donna Lero.

    Dr. Donna Lero (Centre for Families, Work and Well-being, University of Guelph): Thank you. I'm very pleased to be here and pleased that the committee is looking at the issues relating to work-family harmonization and work-life balance, not only in the federal jurisdiction, but across Canada.

    I'm sure you have heard from other witnesses that the importance of taking steps to reduce work-life conflict and enhance the integration of employment, caregiving, and other roles is well recognized as a critical, economic, and social issue. There are a number of factors that have operated over the last two decades that have led to increased levels of work-life conflict and more difficulty for many individuals to reconcile work and family responsibilities. These trends are not unique to Canada. Countries around the world are struggling with them. We have leaders and we have laggards. We have the complications of federal and provincial jurisdiction. We have many instruments available to us to address some of these issues.

    I'm going to speak today particularly about parental leave and child care as public policy issues that have a great impact on the capacity of employees to balance work and family and the quality of parenting and child development. In doing so, as well, I'll refer to the fact that there is ongoing consideration of further changes to EI as a tool for enhancing work-life balance, including the planned development of a compassionate care benefit in the new year.

    There are a number of things to talk about. I'm deviating from my written submission, but basically, I want to identify several key things. The first is that public policies matter greatly in terms of the reconciliation of work and family life. Employer and workplace practices and policies, management practices, co-worker supports, and community supports are all important.

    Public policies affect a huge number of Canadians and their families, have long-term impacts on children's development and the quality of parenting, provide examples through leadership, and particularly construct the context that frames the daily experiences of employers and employees in negotiating appropriate ways to reconcile work and family responsibilities. The opportunity to reflect on how policies are working and where they can be improved is an opportunity that should not be missed.

    In Canada, we've had a continuing development of maternity and parental leave policies since maternity leave or maternity benefits was first introduced in 1971.

    In 2000 we saw the extension of parental benefits. We saw further changes designed to provide more flexibility to parents in the first year of a child's life or the first year following adoption.

    We have limited research so far on the impacts of those changes, but the research that is available through Statistics Canada and through a national evaluation study that is forthcoming indicates that the extended parental benefit period, the changes that occurred in the Canada Labour Code, employment standards legislation that went along with it, as well as the reduction in required hours from 700 hours to 600 hours, and other changes have had very positive and significant impacts.

    The number of parents who are taking maternity and parental leave and accessing benefits has increased considerably. The length of time that parental benefits are being accessed has more than doubled. On average, birth mothers are taking approximately 50 weeks of leave, so they're taking almost the whole time. We have seen an increase in the number of fathers who are taking parental benefits, as well.

    We should not be blind to the fact, however, that there are opportunities for improving our current policies. I want to discuss a few of them. I'll get to the federal jurisdiction in a moment.

    The key things that have been identified as issues that might be considered are the following.

    First of all, extending the range of individuals who might be able to access both unpaid leave and benefits is critical. In a continually changing economy, and with a labour force where there is more fluidity of jobs, more people are involved in contract work and non-standard work. The number of people who can potentially qualify for parental benefits at one point in time is limited. We have not necessarily acknowledged the fact that the changing structure, where we have more people outside standard work, may have an impact on who has access to both leave and benefits.

    In particular, I know this committee has heard about the issue of self-employed individuals and their lack of access to benefits. It comes down to whether or not the EI program, particularly with respect to special benefits, is seen as strictly a labour policy or as a form of social protection and work-family policy, in which case the rationale for extending it is clear.

    A second major issue has to do with the adequacy of benefits. Currently, the maximum is 55% of insurable earnings up to a maximum of $413, with a two-week waiting period. In effect, that's 52% of earnings when you factor in an unpaid two-week period. The increase in the maximum, in terms of the percentage of EI earnings that can be looked at and $39,000 as the cap, has not changed since 1996.

    There are suggestions that increasing the benefit rate would be of great assistance, particularly to low-income families, and would be able to offer some families the opportunity to extend the leave that they so richly need and deserve.

    We also should be looking at extending the timeframe for maternity and parental benefits. Suggestions from European literature certainly indicate that there are more flexible options that might benefit employees and employers. These include reduced hours and part-time work for those who have a family member with a significant illness or disability and parents of children with disabilities. An employee who has a spouse or partner who has surgery or requires ongoing cancer treatment or rehabilitation may not need an extended period of leave, but does require some opportunity for some leave or some ongoing amount of time off that might be met through flexibility in the workplace, but which might still entail income loss.

    Finally, we need to acknowledge the fact that even with the best possible maternity and parental benefits policies, we need community-based services, particularly child care and home care for older individuals, if we're going to have the kinds of supports that are essential for working parents.

    The evaluation of the current extended parental benefits plan indicates that it is affected in a number of ways, but it has not affected the difficulties parents have in finding suitable, affordable child care where they live, across the country. In some ways, the lack of attention to the services is the Achilles heel in our current policy approaches.

¹  (1540)  

    The federal jurisdiction is a leader in this area. In particular, the top-up that employees in the federal jurisdiction enjoy in maternity and parental benefits is widely seen as extremely generous but not likely to be emulated by very many private sector employers. It's 93% that bridges that two-week waiting period and the full benefit period.

    The federal jurisdiction has also engaged, over the last few years, in a number of major initiatives designed to enhance flexibility, train managers, and address a wide variety of issues in the workplace. To date, the research examining the impacts of those initiatives is not widely distributed and could be of great use to employers who might want to emulate those.

    In addition, I think it is worth noting that there are additional challenges that small businesses, and in particular non-profit organizations, face even in trying to address current needs as far as work-life balance is concerned. They have very limited budgets, and informal flexibility may be very useful but the capacity for leave and paid benefits may be more difficult.

    In short, we have some really strong initiatives in Canada that are seen as very positive internationally with respect to the length of parental benefits and the recognition of the importance of this policy instrument for supporting working parents and contributing to children's development. There is room, however, for continued improvement in the benefit rate, the coverage, and the capacity to flexibly address the needs of a wider range of employees. Those in the federal jurisdiction are showing the way for many, but we still need additional initiatives, models, and dissemination of that information.

¹  (1545)  

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): Merci beaucoup, Madame Lero.

    We'll now pass to Madame Nora Spinks.

    Ms. Nora Spinks (President, Work-Life Harmony Enterprises, Canadian Alliance for Children's Healthcare): Merci. Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here.

    In examining the ways of enhancing work-life balance in the federal jurisdiction, you've heard to date from researchers, from academics, from policy experts, and from public servants. My remarks today I'm bringing to you from the perspective of the employer community, and I'm going to talk about three things: what, so what, and now what. What's happening from an employer perspective, so what does that mean for the federal jurisdiction, and now what actions can be taken both at the government as an employer level and the government as public policy level in terms of the current legislation you're reviewing?

    What I wanted to start off with was describing a little bit about some of the challenges in the way in which we're looking at it with employers. Imagine, if you will, a three-legged stool and the employee is standing atop this three-legged stool. One leg is related to work, one leg is related to community, and one leg is related to home.

    On the work side there are two pieces to that equation: there's the organizational culture, and the supportive work environment. The culture is all the things we talk about. The best way to understand what fits within culture is what you remember about an organization when you're no longer there. So it's how did it make you feel, how were you treated, what supports were available to you, how you were able to reach your full potential.

    The other part of the work leg of the stool is related to the support of worker environments. You've already talked a lot about that in terms of the supportive manager, the role of the colleagues and co-workers, and access to programs, policies, benefits, as well as the significance of behaviours and practices.

    The second leg is about community, and that's where the public policy and the community resources come together to form that second leg. The public policies are things like what Donna just mentioned in terms of leaves and employment standards, those kinds of things, within both federal and provincial jurisdiction, but it also involves access to community resources. That's the child care, elder care, home care, health care side of the equation.

    The third leg of the stool is the home, and the first part is the personal commitment to work-life balance and the personal choices, the lifestyle choices--how well you nourish yourself, take care of yourself, manage your stress--that side of it. The second is the personal circle of support: friends, family, neighbours, mentors, relatives, extended family.

    So you have these three legs of the stool and the employee perched on top of it. When each of those three legs is solid, and stable, and even, your ability to achieve this sense of balance is fairly straightforward. Wherever there's a factor that's missing or weak, the others have to pick up the difference and people begin teetering on top.

    The significance is that wherever there's weakness the others end up picking up the slack. Where there isn't adequate family support, a personal circle of support, there's increased pressure on the employer to pick up the difference. Where the employers are not able to fulfill their obligations to help the employees fulfill their multiple responsibilities, it falls on community. But there really is no piece of that puzzle that can be left out without some negative consequences. That's the context within which we're talking.

    I want to focus on the work leg and the public policy and community leg within the short time we have together. Let me tell you what's happening with workplaces outside of this room, including those within the federal jurisdiction. We do a lot of work with the financial services sector, with transportation, and others that are within your jurisdiction.

    Basically the most significant advancement that's been made over the course of the last little while--of course I'm going to talk about those who are the vanguard, not the laggards as Donna mentioned, but those who are the leaders in this--the most significant shift is going from a tactical or programatic approach to a much more strategic, holistic, comprehensive approach, where instead of sprinkling a few policies and programs that may or may not stick, what's happening is they are looking at how these issues link to performance and potential, recruitment and retention, organizational resilience, being competitive. That shift is occurring and has occurred in some organizations.

    Having said that, there is also enormous innovation from the program perspective. In particular, we're seeing a lot more flexibility in flexible work arrangements. In the 1980s and 1990s we saw a standard work week, 9 to 5 Monday to Friday--or 8:30 to 4:30 in your case--go from being one box that you had to fit in to four or five boxes, for instance, flexible work arrangement telework, flexible work arrangement compressed work week.... You had to fit into one of the four categories based on your policy opportunity.

    What we're now seeing, particularly in financial services and in some government departments--hidden, undocumented practices going on informally--is much more flexibility in that. So if you are working, say, at telework, you could also be working in a compressed work week. Or if you're working in a job share arrangement, the job share team can be working in a compressed work week. Let me give you an example of that one in particular.

    Historically, job sharing was basically a 50-50 split in one job, two and a half days for one person, two and a half days for the other person. Now what we're seeing is maybe four days in one, three days in two, one week on, one week off. We're also seeing, if that's two and a half days each, they'll come in for two days on their own and the half day they'll overlap so they're actually only in the office two and a half days and they're not around on say Wednesday afternoon.

    We're seeing a lot more flexibility, innovation, and creativity adjustments, and we're moving from an accommodation of special circumstances through to a much more strategic way of managing human resources.

    The third thing that's really new is leadership attention. CEOs and executive units within organizations are getting the message. Now, instead of it being a separate program or policy that HR manages, it's becoming a significant CEO priority. What this means is that they're beginning to talk about it much more strategically, much more organizationally, and they're much more interested in public policies that support their ability to achieve their organizational objectives.

    For example, next week, on Wednesday, there's a meeting of CEOs. We have 34 CEOs and we have six chairmen of boards from public sector and private sector organizations to sit around and talk about leadership and how they provide leadership in the area of work-life and well-being.

¹  (1550)  

It's the first time we've ever had such a significant group of senior executive leaders and chairmen coming together to ask, “What can we do to address these issues?” So it's no longer the sideline deal that if there's a problem it requires a solution, but much more “This is the new reality, and how are we going to adapt and respond to it?”

    The top challenges that employers are facing across the country are first and foremost work-demand workload. It's the biggest pressure that's being put on individuals, to achieve whatever they define as their own personal definition of work, life, and well-being. We see two parts to that. There's the workload, or all of the things that have to be accomplished in a day, and then there's the “workload wind chill factor”, or all of those things that contribute to the workload feeling even heavier than it actually is—interruptions, technology, lack of communication, and all of those kinds of things.

    The second biggest challenge is the increasing expectations of all stakeholders. Employees are more demanding; customers are more demanding; shareholders are more demanding; and taxpayers are more demanding. The whole idea is that you have to do more with less, faster, with better quality, and with a smile. So we have to figure out how to do that when the individuals are feeling stressed, anxious, unsupported, and exhausted. How do you reconcile the two?

    The third biggest challenge they're facing is related to recruitment and retention and employee engagement. How do you attract people to the organization, what do you do with them when they're there, and how do you keep them? And when you've kept them, how do you keep them fully engaged in the organizational objectives? This is a huge issue for the federal government as an employer, with all of the changes that you're going through, with the HR modernization and the revitalization or renewal, or with all of those things taking place both across the public sector and within individual ministries.

    I said I wasn't going to talk about research, but I just want to mention two things that are coming out of employer research that are different from what's coming out of the academic research. This is where employers go in and ask their own employees about issues. There have been in public and private sector organizations a number of outcome studies around absence prevention and reduction in benefit costs. We now have solid data from the employers themselves indicating that simple interventions, like at the CIBC in downtown Toronto, where they introduced Canada's first full-time, dedicated backup child care centre a year ago.... It's been in operation for a year; it's licensed for 40 children; it's available to any employee, regardless of status or job title or earnings; and it's 100% paid for by CIBC whenever an employee uses the service.

    In the first six months, one of the things that we ask employees when they use the service is “If this service was not available, would you have missed a day of work?” In the first six months, 1,000 days of absence were saved. We were thrilled with that result. In the second six months, we increased that to 1,500. So at the end of the year, 2,528 days of absence were prevented. That's equivalent to 10 labour-years, from one simple intervention of having available emergency backup child care when the regular child care arrangement breaks down. It's a huge benefit.

    Another example is the City of Burlington, which introduced flex time almost two years ago. At the 18-month mark, we were able to document that the average annual absence rate went from 7.1 days a year down to 3.1 days a year, just by introducing the ability to have flex time. So we now have the employer data demonstrating that this is occurring.

    We've seen the same thing with benefit costs. We've got a number of clients who have begun to introduce strategies within the workplace to reduce stress there, which are reducing both the number of short-term and long-term disabilities related to that, and the duration of them. So there's been a huge impact on that, with major cost savings.

¹  (1555)  

So what does this mean to this group, to the federal government, and to this committee? I think there are a couple of things. One is that it's time to start linking these issues with the other government priorities and the other interests of the federal government. If we don't get this right and if we don't address these issues, which most people laugh at and think are fluff, and think that anybody who's looking for work-life balance is just a lazy wimp and a whiner.... They're not. This is a critical core piece of work that needs to be done in order for you to fulfill all of the objectives you're setting down, both as a government employer and in terms of public policy.

    There are some implications here that are beginning to bubble across the country, so that if organizations don't start to address these issues in a very concrete way—and not just by putting a policy on a set of books, but truly integrating this—the employers are running the risk of being held liable for any illness or injury resulting from the work environment. From a litigation perspective, there's a lot of work happening right around the world that is beginning to hold employers accountable for what's now being termed as “psycho-toxicity” in the workplace, or all of those psycho-social issues and work-life balance issues. Increasingly, lawsuits are being taken to court right around the world. So there is this increasing possibility, with huge implications.

    Another thing is organizational resiliency. You're facing a major restructuring of the public sector, just looking at the federal government as an employer. In order to deal with all of the things coming down and the pressures being put on the economy and the government and success—to say nothing of your labour shortage that is looming, as people hit retirement—the implications are that if you don't deal with work-life and well-being, you're not going to have the resilient, agile organization you're going to need to deal with current and future demands.

    As for the implications for public policy and employment legislation in the federal jurisdiction, I think there are a couple of things we need to have some discussion about. One of those is long-term disability, and whether that stays within the employer compensation package, or whether we lift long-term disability out of that and put it into more of a citizen-based initiative. Then there are all kinds of occupational health and safety and taxation issues that we can talk about if you're interested.

    Just to close my remarks, I want to focus on “now what?” What do we do with all of this, and what action can be taken immediately, in the short-term, and in the long-term?

    In a nutshell, the federal government should, as both an employer and a representative of those under federal jurisdiction, do three things: modelling, motivating, and monitoring.

    By modelling, I think you have to become the employer of choice that you talk about. You have to get these right. You have to start supporting your managers, and you have to start addressing these issues in a significant way—and much, much more strategically than has ever been done before. The time is right. The demand is there, and we've now got the knowledge base and the data set, so we know how to address these issues.

    By motivating, I think you have to motivate other organizations to follow suit, both within the federal jurisdiction and across the country. That can be done in a number of different ways, whether it's recognition in awards, whether it's tax incentives, or whether it's different ways of acknowledging the way in which organizations are themselves managing work-life and well-being.

    In the United Kingdom they've been looking at a new stress code, which I think somebody mentioned in an earlier discussion. They came upon that not because they were interested in reducing people's stress, but specifically from a health care reform perspective. They are finding, as are we, that the majority users of the health care system are those with the highest levels of stress. So if you can go to the root or source of that stress, not only are you dealing with individual health and well-being and organizational resilience and success, but you'll also have an impact on things like health care costs.

º  (1600)  

    In terms of monitoring, I think it's critically important to keep the pressure on, to continue measuring and documenting the successes, the learning, the things we've attempted and failed at, those we've attempted and succeeded at, and those we've attempted and need to adjust a little. I think that continued research is going to be absolutely critical.

º  (1605)  

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): Thank you.

    Mr. Pallister, I understand you have a conflict.

    Mr. Brian Pallister (Portage—Lisgar, Canadian Alliance): I was supposed to leave quite a while ago, but I'm too interested to leave.

    Monsieur le président, excuse me for sparing you my usual lengthy preamble. I'm sure the other members will make up for it with theirs.

    Thank you both very much for your presentations. We all know that we can't do justice to this topic in such a short time.

    Both of you spoke, I think, of making sure we get it right. It is critical that we emphasize to all employers the importance of this concept of work-life balance and implementing it. Failing to implement it and failing to pay attention, employers will do so at their own peril.

    That being said, it would also be true, I think, that we would be imperilling our small and medium enterprises in the country if we ignore the differential impacts that they feel when we implement policy that is, to our minds, quite appropriate for larger companies or for the federal government. I want to ask you to address that.

    Obviously, as a member of Parliament who, like many of my colleagues, represents many of these small companies and many of the people who work in small businesses, I am always cognizant of the red tape faced by small companies. I suppose the differential impacts of even things like compassionate leave may be felt by smaller firms, despite the compelling case to make for these additional benefits on an individual level. If we ignore the cost impact, not to mention the productivity impacts on a small company of implementing policies like these, are you confident that there's research available--and we won't have time to get into that in great detail today--and are you confident that this has been paid attention to in this dialogue?

    Many of the studies we've had shared with us have been done more so, I would say, to be fair, with larger companies, with government people. Feedback mechanisms and so on have been developed for people who work in that environment.

    I guess I'm ranting on a little. As much great sense as it may make to a large outfit, I'm very concerned that we don't implement policies that would have a damaging effect, say, on young people trying to enter the workforce or on women's ability to get jobs in small-business environments, because for many Canadians, that's how they get employed.

    Dr. Donna Lero: I could comment in two ways on that one.

    First of all, you're quite right that the vast majority of the research is done on larger organizations, and that's true both in Canada and in the U.S. Some studies have been done on small and medium-sized firms, one of them by my colleague, Kerry Daly, at the Centre for Families, Work and Well-being, where I am.

    We did a study in 1999-2000 looking specifically at small businesses and the ways they addressed work-life issues. Rather than finding a stereotype of small businesses saying “That's not for us, we can't afford it, that's for those guys”, we were finding that small businesses were very much concerned about work-life balance, about the capacity of a small group of people to rely on each other very often at a time when there was little in the way of financial resources.

    There's a huge commitment to each other in a small business. So there was much more in the way of informal flexibility and accommodations and a recognition that this was critical in order for the business to succeed.

    It's not possible in every organization, and I would say that there are huge differences between a small consulting firm and a small manufacturing company. We do need to look at what makes sense in different circumstances.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Donna, I'm sorry that I'm going to have to run. I want you to keep talking, though, because there's a transcript that I'll be able to review of your comments. So pretend I'm here, and these folks will nod.

    I really appreciate your time, and I do apologize for leaving early today.

º  (1610)  

    Ms. Nora Spinks: That's not a problem. There is a lot happening in small businesses--and enjoy the read.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: And we have contact information, thank you, so we're going to be able to follow up.

    Dr. Donna Lero: Yes, I can send you a copy of our report.

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): I appreciate very much your time, Mr. Pallister. You were supposed to leave before four o'clock, and you are very patient. I understand you're interested in the topic.

    Mr. Brian Pallister: Thank you.

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): And he's quite right, Donna, if you want to continue on this very same topic, he will read the minutes.

    Dr. Donna Lero: I was saying that small-business employers clearly see the need for work-life strategies that make sense in small businesses. They are doing a variety of different things, not always in the same way that large companies do, but with a great deal of sensitivity to the needs of their workers.

    We found that the most common way that small businesses responded was with flexible time and informal flexibility, rather than on a policy basis.

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): Excuse me for interrupting. You had mentioned manufacturing and another type of workplace.

    Dr. Donna Lero: It was just as an example, a software firm.

    We did not see differences between manufacturers and those other kinds of small service firms in terms of recognition of the importance of the work-life balance. There were some greater opportunities for flexibility in how workers did their work, in where they did their work, in how they resolved team issues in companies that weren't dealing with, for example, a production line, where you literally had to have everybody at a station at the same time.

    What I want to talk about, though, is the issue around leave. As part of the national evaluation study on Canada's extended parental benefits, there is a section of that report, which will be made public shortly, that addresses employers' perspectives. We found that regardless of size, employers in small, medium, and large companies were fairly neutral about what they observed as the effects of the extended leave.

    Where small businesses I think sometimes have difficulty is where there are additional costs in terms of maintaining the benefits for individuals and in the additional costs of replacing individuals, while you still have others on leave.

    There is limited research, but there are some suggestions that tax incentives and practices could be put to use in those circumstances that would reduce the costs to small-business owners in that area. I would say that this is also critical for non-profit organizations.

    The obvious example I can give you is a child care centre. A mom-and-pop, privately owned child care centre with eight people has to maintain a staff-to-child ratio. If someone is not there, they must bring in somebody else. We know that child care fees are an issue.

    So there are organizations and employers who would benefit from some support, but there's no lack of desire for increasing work-life balance and for being supportive.

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): On the benefit to the employer, in this case, especially the smaller employer, you talked about tax incentives. There must be other incentives where the federal government could get involved and say “Okay, if you do this, it won't be a penalty in your productivity now. If you feel that, we're going to compensate you, in one way or another.” Obviously, when we do say that, the finance department is always looking at the money that's coming in, and all of a sudden you start getting money out and they say, well, we're not getting the tax dollars we were expecting.

    What is the quid pro quo for the finance department?

    Dr. Donna Lero: I think part of the issue is if you're going to have productive small businesses, and they are the engines of the economy, then you have to pay attention to what will allow them to continue and to thrive. To the extent that you have people who are not showing up for work or who are not productive in small businesses, you have a real drain on those companies. I think it is of critical financial interest to ensure that they have the supports they need, just as we look at the supports they need in terms of business practices and taxation.

    I can give you an example, which is something that Italy and Spain have tried out. If you hire a replacement worker for somebody who is on leave, as an employer, you don't pay the EI premiums for that replacement worker. That's as much motivated to increase employment as it is to reduce the costs to a small-business employer when they have to replace someone.

    There are sometimes creative ways. Given that we have a fairly large EI surplus, we might think about some of the ways where both employees and employers could benefit.

º  (1615)  

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): This would be music to my colleague Mr. Pallister, the last comments you made. I find that to be a very reasonable suggestion.

    Perhaps Mr. Finlay would like to enter the discussion and ask some questions.

    Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I'm listening intently, and it's certainly a step forward in my experience. I was in education for a long time, and I had permission to try some of these things on an ad hoc basis.

    There were a couple of young teachers sharing a classroom because they both had children at an early age, and so on. The director was not too interested at first because he couldn't quite see where the responsibility would lie. He was afraid that it would end up being one day for A, and then one day for B, and not the program for the day. He wanted what was best in teaching every day, but he was prepared to try it.

    We tried it, and it worked out very well. The two teachers involved were good teachers and were determined to do the job as well as they could. They could appreciate it. I said “If you start switching, and it turns out that you work one week and then Betty works the next week, that isn't going to hold the thing up, and I'm going to have trouble with that. It isn't to give extra holidays. It's to lighten the load day by day, do the best job possible, and look after your other responsibilities.” It worked very well. It never became standard, but it was something we did that I thought was worth while.

    I see the same idea in some of the things that we have here. I think that's all for the good, because it makes people more aware of their responsibilities in the job. Everything that I've heard you say would suggest that it makes for a happier workplace.

    As probably many members do, I have a number of questions, Mr. Chairman. I think I'll ask this one first. If we have more time, I can ask one of the other ones.

    On page 2 of what we were given as briefing notes, and you talked about it, is the new six-month compassionate benefit, which I think is a fine idea.

    Dr. Donna Lero: It's six weeks.

    Mr. John Finlay: Six weeks.

    Dr. Donna Lero: Does it say six months?

    Mr. John Finlay: I'm sorry: “These new EI benefits will be paid to workers who have to be away from work temporarily to provide care or support tor a member of their family who is gravely ill with a significant risk of death within six months. These new benefits will be provided for a maximum of six weeks.”

    Dr. Donna Lero: Yes, it's only six weeks.

    Mr. John Finlay: I have a gentleman who is caring for his wife, and it is 24 hours a day. He gets some health care. This is in Ontario. He was recently told by the community care access centre that they'd be cutting his hours for this home care. They didn't have the money, and so on. He's concerned about how long he can last if they cut his palliative care. They say that if she requires nursing, they can give him some more, but it isn't nursing that she requires, that he can do all that.

    What he requires is someone to go in two or three days a week or for three hours so he can go curling or go and buy the groceries. I had that experience with my own father. I'm sure that must have been considered.

    Then when it says risk of death within six months, or six weeks, it means four different caregivers will have to be lined up for the six months. What if the person lives for six years?

    I know we shouldn't bite the hand that feeds us, and we have limited resources; nevertheless, it really creates quite a problem in that sort of situation.

º  (1620)  

    Ms. Nora Spinks: We did the background research for the compassionate care benefit, and there were a couple of things that came up in consultation with the medical community. Once a doctor declares somebody is facing imminent death, the average time is less than three months--this is all medical data. So they looked at six months.

    But one thing we know about people who are dying is that it's not predictable. At least with babies being born, you can sort of guess within a week or two, a month at the outside. For people dying, it's much more complex.

    We also found that the number one stress on families was income security. Again, the dilemma with the compassionate care benefit has all the same issues that are related to maternity and parental care, which Donna was talking about earlier. It's only available to those who quality for EI. There's the two-week wait period. There are a number of issues associated with that. Then the question is, at what point in the dying process do you access the dollars?

    This was step one. What we were able to do was get agreement for this new program to be available January 4. This also takes some pressure off small businesses. One of the things we know about small businesses is that you have a choice: your employee either goes on leave, or you lose them forever. The leave-or-lose dilemma is becoming increasingly challenging right across the country, across all organization types, when we now know that it costs two to three times the annual salary just to replace somebody. That's the cost to the employer. So it's better to have them on leave than to lose them forever.

    Having said that, there are costs associated with that leave. Donna's example about providing an opportunity for EI relief during that period to backfill the leave position is a very effective example for small and large businesses when they have to deal with that.

    The challenge with compassionate care, bereavement, or elder care is that there aren't the community resources, so the employer and the family have to pick up the difference. Going back to the three-legged stool I talked about at the beginning, even if you had, as in your example, the interest, availability, and ability to provide those care services, a strong personal circle of support, employed or not--I don't know about that--if they were part of a supportive work environment or were able to take a leave, there would be no community resources to assist them in fulfilling that function.

    We know, for example, you can have all the financial resources in the world, and if there is no elder care service to purchase, you can just put that money on the kitchen table, because there's nowhere to spend it. It means that the community--family and friends--is your only option. So when there are no services or the services have been cut back or are no longer affordable, his only option in order to keep himself well, healthy, is to go to his own doctor appointments, do his own groceries, and get his own fitness and leisure into the equation so he can do this long term, because it may be five, six, or seven years. It means he's going to have to rely on family and friends to pick up the difference, but we know those family networks are becoming less strong and deep and wide.

    It makes more and more individuals and families precarious.

    Dr. Donna Lero: If I could pick up from that, it's the income support in the way of benefits and a leave policy that makes sense, but it's also the community service.

    Just as in child care, you need the income and the child care. It's the same thing with home care and this kind of thing. Ditto if you have, for example, a person who has a disability and it's not a life-threatening thing. You're going to need time off and you're going to need services.

    One of my concerns is as we try to move from what we have, which is maternity, parental, and some sick benefits, and expand the umbrella of very important and valuable uses of the EI benefits, the less it makes sense to me to have it be a very narrow window of who's in and who's out. You have to be at imminent death. What if you're not, but you need health care? The question of at what point this ceases to be labour policy and more one of social protection and work-family policy starts to become more and more obvious. Then one questions, as you said, whether this belongs in EI, constructed as an EI policy, rather than a social policy.

º  (1625)  

    Mr. John Finlay: Exactly.

    My next question was going to be about the disabled, not only physically, but mentally disabled. There used to be places in Ontario where they could be looked after. All but a very few research areas have been closed down. There are halfway houses or small group homes and so on, but certainly at present they can't handle the numbers. It is a dilemma. My own secretary had problems in that box.

    Dr. Donna Lero: It is probably going to get worse because of the aging population, so we need to think about the crunch for the caregiving we're starting to need.

    Mr. John Finlay: My friend with the disabled wife says that a lot of people won't come to do it. The centre can send someone, but the person won't want to do that job. They want to look after someone who's in bed or is not going to be too much of a problem.

    Ms. Nora Spinks: I also think this is a really good example of the necessity for provincial-federal partnerships, because the provinces are responsible for health care services in the community, yet it dramatically impacts labour legislation and broader public service. There needs to be a lot more collaboration between not just employer and government, but also between federal and provincial levels.

    One example of where there has been a lot of innovation in this area is actually being spearheaded by a labour union, not an employer, and that is CUPW, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. One of its initiatives is to provide supports through the workplace in the form of subsidy. It's a cash contribution, paid for by the union for their members to purchase respite services, to access services for those members who have family members with a disability.

    There is a lot of experimentation happening in this country addressing those issues. That being said, as we move from institutional care to community care to family care, we're faced with a number of critical issues that are employment related but are also health care related. If you look at some of the numbers this week coming out around the nursing shortage, just in Ontario, it's a crisis situation. Without the human resources, even if there were the will for the social policy to provide these supports, there aren't the bodies to do it. That compels us to get very creative and very innovative.

    One of the questions we've been talking about in the employer sector, and certainly within HR, is whether it makes sense to look at the whole EI program and its roots, its history, and its development. It was, at one point, just insurance for those temporary gaps in employment, and then we started parachuting in maternity, parental, adoption, and sick benefits, and now compassionate care.

    It's really no longer the same types of issues requiring the same types of solutions. It's about income supports. It's about income security. It's about the ability to return to the paid labour force in a variety of different ways. So we're just beginning to have those dialogues.

    If this committee and the federal government could start playing a leadership role in opening up those dialogues about all of those possibilities and potentials, I think you would be pleased to see the amount of cooperation and collaboration from the union side, from the employer side, from the government side, and the community side looking at how all that is coming together.

º  (1630)  

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): Thank you, Mr. Finlay.

    These family-related benefits pertain to EI at the moment. That is the vehicle. If not EI, what other vehicle could we use to provide these family-related benefits?

    Dr. Donna Lero: We have income supports that are not tied to employment, like the national child benefit, that are simply income supports that recognize sliding income and the need for supporting families.

    One could look at some other federal mechanism or joint federal-provincial mechanism that wouldn't be called EI but would be an administrative thing, and it would be family supportive.

    I'm not familiar--maybe you are, Nora--with other countries. Most of them do have something that is uniquely family, like the Family and Medical Leave Act, for example, in the United States, which is not paid leave, and can be administered because there's nothing to administer. It's just 12 weeks of leave without any pay.

    In the European countries it works in a variety of different ways.

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): It only guarantees that the person will come back to the same employment.

    Dr. Donna Lero: It holds the job, but it doesn't provide anything. It's one of three countries in the world that doesn't have paid maternity leave. You leave and you come back as quickly as you can because you're without any kind of benefit.

    Ms. Nora Spinks: The average leave is six weeks.

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): Are you suggesting that process?

    Dr. Donna Lero: Absolutely not.

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): Good.

    Dr. Donna Lero: No, but I was suggesting that there are countries that have family-related benefits that are not in an EI fund, but they are family-related benefits on their own.

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): But if they are family-related benefits--

    Dr. Donna Lero: They're paid out of income tax.

    Mr. Eugène Bellemare: --then aren't you opening the floodgates to more than just the workplace?

    Dr. Donna Lero: Yes.

    For example, you might have a flat chlid care allowance for parents who are home raising their children. That's a very different instrument from a leave and benefit policy that is oriented toward a smaller period of time and a return to the workforce.

    Ms. Nora Spinks: I think if you look back on the history of these benefits through EI, the primary reason they're there is because that particular vehicle existed. The administrative capability was there to manage the way in which those dollars were allocated and administered.

    It wasn't because it necessarily made logical sense or philosophical sense. It was strictly operational. So I think there really is not at this point any other existing vehicle. I think what it would require would be rethinking and re-creating something that would be much more conducive and much more reflective of today's reality.

    The existing system was designed and developed based on the reality of 20 years, 30 years, 40 years ago. That doesn't exist any more, yet our social policy hasn't caught up to that. So part of it is creativity and innovation. We need to come up with new and different ways of doing it. There isn't an existing plug to put it in, other than where it is now, at EI.

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): Mr. Finlay.

    Mr. John Finlay: That was another thing I wanted to ask. I'm a little dense, excuse me.

    Both of you are in this field. The chairman just asked you, where's the money coming from? I read in my research that Nora has been working on these issues for approximately 20 years as president of Work-Life Harmony Enterprises, which provides workshops similar to this one. Where did the money come from to start you off? Are you almost an employee of Human Resources Development Canada, or what?

º  (1635)  

    Ms. Nora Spinks: Definitely not. Work-Life Harmony Enterprises is a private consulting research and training firm based in Toronto. We work around the world.

    Mr. John Finlay: That's what I thought it must be.

    Ms. Nora Spinks: As any other consulting firm does, we get contracts with employers of all kinds, whether it's the voluntary sector, the charitable sector, the public sector, broader public or private sector employers, small, medium, and large. They purchase services from us in terms of policy development, strategy development, management tools and resources, evaluation, measurement and metrics, education and awareness. We do a lot of coaching of senior executives, CEOs, and executive teams on modelling balanced behaviours and implementing harmony habits so that they can not only talk about work-life and well-being, but actually model it themselves and demonstrate how you can be successful and be healthy at the same time.

    Our funds come from a variety of different sectors. We don't get any public dollars. We don't get any--

    Mr. John Finlay: If you had a good idea for something that was pertinent to human relations in the workplace, as what you do is pertinent to the workplace, could you not apply for EI funding?

    Ms. Nora Spinks: We've certainly worked with governments. We've worked on the labour program and worked with them to get up and running the work-life website and provided them with information data, but that's on a purchase-of-service agreement with them.

    Donna and I do a lot of work together. We run, for example, round tables with the HR community, and with executives, and with people interested in these topics, to do the brainstorming, innovation, and the development of new ideas around these issues, but we haven't accessed any EI resources to explore this further or develop any....

    Mr. John Finlay: Does the University of Guelph support...?

    Dr. Donna Lero: The university has a longstanding commitment to applied interdisciplinary research. I've been at the department of family relations and applied nutrition for almost 30 years. We began this Centre for Families, Work and Well-being because we recognized there was no vehicle for bringing people from different disciplines together and doing this applied research.

    Personally, I've had grants from HRDC, from child care visions and social development partnerships, to look at child care in particular. The parental leave issue is a particular interest of mine, and I was asked to be on the national evaluation study.

    Mr. John Finlay: So it's a public-private partnership too, in a sense.

    Dr. Donna Lero: Increasingly academic researchers are dependent on having both the private partnerships and the partnership with government to do the kind of research that we do.

    Mr. John Finlay: I can translate that into my experience with the Livingstone Centre in Tillsonburg, which involves HRDC, plus assisted living, plus day care, plus counselling, plus computer training, plus employment training, plus retraining, and so on.

    Dr. Donna Lero: I think if you look across this country, different organizations, groups of organizations, and groups of individuals who are addressing these issues tend to do it in some way, shape, or form in either a partnership, a collaboration, or a consortium.

    Mr. John Finlay: Right.

    Dr. Donna Lero: This is particularly true for small businesses.

    I was at a meeting a couple of weeks ago in Hamilton that was chaired by a gentleman who is a member of the chamber of commerce, owns a small trucking company, knows these issues are critically important, but also knows that he can't address these issues alone as an independent businessperson. So he brought together a group of people from other small businesses, from large businesses, from the community, and basically everybody put their heads together and talked about how we can address these issues collaboratively and collectively and not just tactically, individually off in our own places.

    I think we've seen that in a number of communities. For example, there's a group of farm families in Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan, that have pooled their resources together in a collaboration to provide mental health services and addiction services not only for their employees, family members and people who come and work on their farms, but they have extended that to include all the community members, including suppliers, customers, and the local school board. It's more of a collaborative community-based approach.

    I think that when we start looking at some of these new initiatives, and we start looking at leveraging those existing partnerships and really helping to interpret a lot of the data—you've been inundated with data, and you know how much information and research is out there— we need to interpret that for people to understand what it means to them.

    I also think we need to look at alternative citizen-based solutions that recognize the diversity across this country and recognize the diversity of both workplaces and families. We all have the same issues at different times. We deal with them in different ways and we have different sets of resources to deal with them. But babies are still born and people still die, and they will continue to do so regardless of what we do in terms of public policy. We can either wait and deal with the aftermath or we can recognize the diversity in our families today, recognize the complexity in our communities, recognize the need for collaboration, and begin to make a change for this generation and many more to come.

º  (1640)  

    Mr. John Finlay: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    The Vice-Chair (Mr. Eugène Bellemare): Madam Spinks, Madam Lero, you've been very informative. You do not have many members, but what we wanted out of this is that you had more time to elaborate. Our researcher and the clerk won't just write a résumé or the minutes. The researcher is responsible for preparing a report. The input that you gave is really an add-on.

    Usually, you have a whole pack of MPs and they rattle off questions very quickly. I'd say that most of the time witnesses don't have the opportunity to say everything they would like to say. Not that you've said everything that you wanted, but it was more of a dialogue than a quick rifling of questions and answers within a time period. Everything here is timed to the second, as far as getting on with the time an MP has to ask questions and you have to answer.

    It has been refreshing because of that. We all appreciate the fact that you've come a long way to help us out with establishing an idea for a new public policy in that field.

[Translation]

    Ms. Nora Spinks and Ms. Donna Lero, thank you very much.

    The meeting is adjourned.