What are we stimulating?

This is a big question and a bigger rant which I will try to spare you of. Basically, my opinion is that the current crisis is damn complex and pretty scary for a lot of people, but it is also a fork in the road for society. We can choose to take this opportunity to build something new and better for all, learning from the mistakes of our old collapsed and collapsing systems and understanding of the world, or we can react in fear and try to recreate the 'good old days' sacrificing important intangible assets of our society for the sake of recreating a flawed system reliant on massive and continuously growing consumption, and massive and continuously growing global inequalities and environmental problems.

I signed up here for transcripts of the proceedings of the standing Senate Committee on Human Rights.

Thought it might be good to figure out how these things work so I know how to best present my concerns. This committee is the one that will be examining the implications of Bill C-10 on human rights, specifically the provisions around gender pay equity. At the meeting this Monday they had statistics Canada in to present an interesting set of stats on Minority groups and employment in Canada. The above images are a couple of the most interesting slides in my mind.

In case you can't or don't want to read them they show that visible minorities in Canada have lower employment rates, and women are lower than men, but are gradually closing the employment rate gap. Average income is actually highest for second generation immigrants compared to other groups and lowest for new immigrants for both women and men, and there is a significant gap between the sexes again.

This matters in our current time for a couple reasons:

1. Lower wage and lower employment rate groups are often hardest hit by recessions because they bear the brunt of layoffs and are most vulnerable to shocks, so women and minorities who were already at a disadvantage in the Canadian job market are also most vulnerable.

2. Most of the jobs that are created through stimulus will be construction type jobs which benefit men more. Not to say men don't need it, it is just important to keep in mind that there is often a disconnect between who benefits and who is most vulnerable.

3. Part of the budget implementation act, Bill C-10 is making changes to the ability for people to fight pay inequity and other discrimination due to gender. (Example letter of concern from the Canadian Association of University Teachers).

My action is to figure out how to voice my concerns most effectively to the senate committee on this non budget related change being passed off as necessary to stimulus that might actually impede the economic well being women, and more importantly impede the pursuit of a just and equitable society. This is a multi stage action so stay tuned on the results, but the enquiries are under way.

I also passed on this information to my wife Heather so that her IDS class can discuss this in their next lecture but I won't take credit for just doing what I'm told :)