Minister Stevens and Women's Equality

March 14, 2002

Old Socred Defends Squirming Stephens

Directly contradicting the Premier, George Abbott and Harold Long tried to stop Joy MacPhail from questioning Minister of State for Women's Services, Lynn Stephens, on the service plan for her ministry. That plan calls for the elimination of funding for women's centres in 2004-05.

Thanks to the work of former Auditor General George Morfitt and the subsequent introduction of the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act by the NDP government in 2000, government must now clearly lay out its goals, strategies for meeting those goals and indicators for measuring whether the goals have been met. The documents that contain that information were called performance plans under the NDP and are called service plans under the Campbell government. They allow the public to look three years forward at what government intends to do.

Estimates debate involves going through the budget for each minister, debating that minister's estimates and passing what is called a "vote" which is the legislative approval of that segment of the budget. During the estimates debate the topics are wide ranging and can cover anything within the responsibility of the minister whose budget is being examined. In past years, however, future policy was not in order. On March 5th Premier Campbell made it clear that he was changing the rules.

Estimates for the Premier are usually one of the last called for debate. On March 5th Premier Campbell took the unprecedented step of having the estimates debate begin with the office of the Premier. The very first words spoken by the Premier were:

Hon. G. Campbell: "This is the commencement of the estimates discussions that we will have for this year. I want to say that over the past number of years there have been consistent calls from professional public service staff, as well from Members of the Legislative Assembly, that we try and change the way that estimates be carried out. There has been an effort this year to lay out a detailed set of service plans for all of the ministries, a strategic plan for the government, as well as a service plan for my office."

Opposition Leader Joy MacPhail responded by asking Premier Campbell for clarification. When she asked if the Premier would respond to questions on the details of service plans for all of his ministers, the Premier said:

Hon. G. Campbell: "No, ministers will be dealing with their plans in detail across government, as they should. I will be dealing with the estimates of the office of the Premier. I will also be glad to answer general questions on the direction of the government. Detailed service plan questions will be directed to ministers, as they should be under estimates."

"The change, I think, that is being proposed here, and that we are going to try and carry out, is that all the ministers of government will welcome questions from all members of the Legislature with regard to their service plans as we move to create a system that's more accountable and more measurable so that, outside of the Legislature, the public understands the plans and the measurements we're going to use."

One would think that the Premier's promise was perfectly clear, yet on March 12th George Abbott soon reverted to old habits when his Secretary of State, Lynn Stephens, was getting grilled about planned cuts to women's centres. Not only did Abbott step in to defend Stephens but he appeared to direct the chair, Harold Long, to rule MacPhail out of order. Long immediately did as the Minister instructed. The following exchange illustrates that the Premier's promise is not being implemented by his ministers.

Hon. G. Abbott: "The service plan of this ministry was released on January 17. Any Sherlock Holmes could have gone and looked at it anytime after January 17."

"What we're here for, Mr. Chair, as you have reminded the member on a couple occasions now, is to discuss the estimates for the fiscal year '02-03. There is no cut in funding to women's centres in '02-03. The member is indulging in speculation, as well as future policy, in attempting to get very definite answers to a hypothetical situation in '04-05. It's completely out of order."

MacPhail reminded Abbott of the Premier's commitment, but after a little sparring, Abbott again tried to shut down MacPhail's relentless questioning.

Hon. G. Abbott: "With all due respect to the member, she is asking for details around a situation some 24 months plus out. The minister responsible for Women's Services has, I think, given very full and complete answers to the questions that have been posed."

"We will gladly submit to your guidance with respect to the relevance of this, hon. Chair."

The Chair: "Well, member, I think it's important that we stay with the estimates of this year, the coming year. I concur a small bit that with the three-year planning that is in progress, you will have an opportunity in the next estimates to debate the following year. If we could stay with the year in question, I would appreciate it."

J. MacPhail: "To the Minister of Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services, what's the purpose of the three-year service plan?"

MacPhail quickly demonstrated that even with the chair following the minister's instructions she could run circles around the lot of them. TV viewers watching the legislative channel instantly faxed and emailed comments that were delivered to MacPhail on the floor of the house and used to make a weak minister, Lynn Stephens, squirm. By reminding Stephens that the public was watching, MacPhail turned up the heat.

J. MacPhail: "I said that these are televised proceedings, and the public is actually watching them. When the minister stood up and said she's going to be working with women's centres to secure alternate funding, we immediately got information from the women's centres. They said: "We've been trying to secure alternate funding, and we can't."

Stephens never did say where the women's centres would find alternative funding, but thanks to MacPhail's relentless questioning the record in Hansard now shows that Premier Campbell's Minister of State for Women's Equality does not consider herself to be an advocate for women. If a program helping women is being cut in health or in the children's ministry, it looks like Stephens will be in hiding.

Also click here for the Campbell government record on appointing women to crown corporations.

Feb 23, 2002

Minister Stephens and Women's Equality

"We believe it is Ms. Stephens who owes an apology: to the people served by her ministry, and to the people who elected her."
Source: Langley Advance News

BC's Minister of State for Women's Equality was interviewed by one of her community papers on her attitude about women and equality. Her shocking statements resulted in demands for her resignation. Her letter demanding an apology from the Langley Advance News yielded the retort quoted above.

The Langley Advance News reports that Stephen's comments included:

"The opportunities are exactly equal. A single woman and a single man have exactly the same opportunities, with the same education."
"More women are abused, not oppressed."
"She agreed that the "rich get richer and the poor get poorer."
"Well, then, make more money," she suggested to people who think Liberal tax cuts benefit the rich more than the poor.
"I agree with everything our government does."

On February 23, the Vancouver Sun waded into the dispute with an editorial in defense of Stephens. The Sun claims to review the substance of remarks Stevens is alleged to have said, but the Sun falls into a familiar pattern frequently followed by those who would dismiss discrimination against women.

The editorial boldly starts out numbering its points "first" followed by "secondly" but it never gets beyond that with the result that the careful reader might think that they could only find two points in support of Stevens. Unfortunately, the Sun was wrong even on those points. The first Sun point read:

"Stats Canada says single women with university degrees now make a little more than men with degrees, though single women, in general, earn just 96 per cent of what men make. But women now make up more than 55 per cent of university students. So, as new graduates enter the workforce and spend more years working, any lingering gap can be expected to disappear, even turn around."

It is difficult to find the Statistics Canada report that supports the Sun's claim. Data on income by gender, marital status and education are not collected except in census years. We do know that data from the 1996 census shows only 13.6% of BC's population over 15 years of age had a university degree (BA or higher).

Even if the Sun's claim about single women with university degrees were correct, note that only 37 per cent of youth in BC complete any post-secondary education. (source: "A Macro Analysis of British Columbia Youth", May 3, 2001, Ministry of Advanced Education pdf) Women would have to wait a very long time for pay differences between men and women to be eliminated if they depend on all income earning women attaining university degrees. Recently announced policies from the Campbell government to allow tuition fees to dramatically rise and to eliminate grants won't help women.

The Vancouver Sun's second point is consistent with the traditional approach to minimize pay differences. The Sun editorial said:

" Secondly, Ms. Stephens is said to have said that income differences between men and women result from women opting to work part-time because of family obligations. Again, statistics back up the assertion."

"Critics will point to her own ministry figures, which show a women working full-time earns only 73 per cent of what an average man makes. But that figure is deceptive. It doesn't take into account statistical differences in education and work experience. Nor does it account for the fact that women working full-time put in 38.7 hours a week as compared to men who punch 43.8 hours."

Economic literature is full of reports that try to explain income differences between men and women by throwing in every factor a researcher can think of and only then attributing discrimination to any remaining residuals. Those researchers frequently overlook the discrimination that occurs within their explanatory factors. For example, women may face greater barriers achieving the education and work experience mentioned in the Sun editorial. A factor that is almost always ignored is occupational segregation. It remains true today that most clerical workers are women and most engineers are men. It is circular then to say that pay differences exist because of those occupational differences. That begs the question of discrimination in determining why there are gender dominated occupational ghettos. It is equivalent to saying that pay differences exist because men dominate the best occupations without bothering to ask why.

The Sun should read more reports from Statistics Canada. A Statistics Canada report titled "Women in the Labour Force, 1994 edition" does comment on the reality faced by women. The abstract to that report says:

"While the proportion of women in the labour force has increased dramatically, several aspects of women's work experience have been slower to change. For example, while many women are entering occupations in which few women have worked in the past, most employed women are still concentrated in female-dominated occupations; women's earnings remain well below those of their male counterparts; and even when employed, women are still primarily responsible for housework and family care."

The Vancouver Sun could learn a lot from the Langley Advance News. Rather than defending Stephens and playing cute with what it termed "politically incorrect thoughts", the Sun ought to have followed the Langley paper's lead and called for an apology from Minister Lynn Stephens.