Status of Women Committee on April 2nd, 2012

[The Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Please be very quick.

[Tracy Redies]

I'll be very quick.

In the financial services, it's fairly even now. I don't really have any experience with any other industry, so I probably can't comment.

[The Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Ambler is next. You have seven minutes, please.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our guests today for their very informative and interesting presentations.

I listened with interest, Ms. Redies, when you spoke about financial literacy and starting girls and boys young in education and financial literacy.

This morning my 17-year-old daughter was showing me an assignment that she had done on the weekend. They were asked to choose a car online and figure out how much it would cost to lease depending on what down payment was put on the car, and what their payments would be.

Of course my child picked some sort of Lexus, with payments of $3,000 a month. Then I asked what she did for a living in this project of hers.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

She was a politician.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Right. Definitely not a politician.

She said, “Oh, I don't know. We didn't have to do that as part of the project.” I said, “Well, whatever it is, I hope you're making at least $1 million a year, because that's pretty much the only way you'll be able to afford a car that costs $3,000 a month.”

[Tracy Redies]

That's after tax.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Right. That's going to be after-tax money on your paycheque.

I appreciated your words on the importance of educating them young. I started working in a family business at the age of 12, filing and answering phones in a small business. I would absolutely agree with you that starting young is very important, and also following your passion. You're almost guaranteed to be successful if you really want it badly enough.

I want to talk to you about a few things. First of all, could you tell us a bit about mentorship programs, specifically the one that the Coast credit union has? I thought it was great that you have that, as opposed to a specific diversity program. It sounds like a more natural way to have women involved than forcing it.

I'll let you speak to that program, please.

[Tracy Redies]

We have a couple of mentorship programs. The one I was referring to earlier is our community youth team. It's mentorship, but it's more of a business experience and leadership development program, and as I said, I think it's unique in its industry. There are a lot of financial services organizations that do co-op programs with university students, but you don't see it happening typically at the grade 11 or 12 level.

We've found it to be a wonderful program. These kids, first off, have to go through quite a process to become one of our 25 or 30 successful candidates. They have to submit resumés. They have to go through interviews. There's quite a bit of competition for it.

What we find with these women and young men is that they are very enthusiastic. That's why we've made the connection. If we can give them not just the business training but also put them in the community events we sponsor—and we do a lot of this at Coast Capital—that enthusiasm for the organization comes through.

It gives them public speaking opportunities as well. They actually have to organize a lot of the events. They're getting business training in the branches; they get to work as customer service representatives, and they get some shadow training on other jobs. They also get this wonderful public speaking and organizational experience. I think it is really good. A number of these kids have gone on to work with us on a full-time basis.

In our other mentorship program—and I'm sure Ms. Moore has this at Chubb as well—we identify high-potential individuals. In our organization they are as likely to be women as they are to be men, just because of the nature of our organization today. They are mentored. They're given special leadership training and leadership assignments on projects that are important to the organization. I think that's a really great way of developing female talent within the organization. When they work on important projects and bring those to fruition, it raises the profile of these individuals, and everybody wants them on their team.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

I can see that.

I would imagine too that the opportunity to put that program, including the public speaking and the community involvement aspects of it, onto a resumé would really help a young person.

[Tracy Redies]

It really does.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Yes. Often after young people graduate from university, they've learned a lot and they're very bright, but they have nothing behind them in terms of concrete experience to offer to an employer, so I think it's great for so many reasons.

I really like the idea of mentorship programs, but both the Coast credit union and Chubb are large companies. Do you think there's a way that smaller companies could possibly adapt a bit of what you're doing?

[Tracy Redies]

Yes. I work with a number of women's organizations that try to help identify young women of talent and have them meet other women leaders in the organization. I'm sure Ms. Moore does the same thing. In my lifetime, I've mentored probably at least 10 or 12 young women through organizations like this. The Women’s Executive Network, for example, is one that I've probably done three with.

Frankly, the interesting thing is that it's a two-way learning experience. It's not just you providing them with your insight; they provide you with a lot of insight as well. As a result, those programs are very beneficial. I've always found them very rewarding.

[The Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Now we're going to Ms. Sgro for seven minutes, please.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, Ms. Moore and Ms. Redies. It has been fabulous listening to both of you. From a female perspective, it's fabulous to see you both in such successful positions.

Ms. Redies, when Coast was initially formed, was it put together by a woman at that time, or at what point did Coast seem to be going in the direction of showing some real leadership when it came to providing opportunities for women?

[Tracy Redies]

That's an interesting question. No, Coast is the product of three credit union mergers just after the start of the last decade in 2000.

I have been CEO for almost three years. If I'm brutally honest, our organization would probably have looked like a lot of other organizations prior to my coming in. I was fortunate in that a number of executives were retiring and I've always worked on diverse teams. I can tell you that in my experience, again particularly with the challenges in financial services and the problems we face, the more diverse your teams and the broader the perspectives you bring to those problems, the better the thinking and the outcome. I've always believed in diverse teams, so I had an opportunity to make some changes. As I said, we don't have specific diversity programs, but I think I brought a different lens to the credit union, and boy, we've got a lot done in the last three years too. That's one thing about women: they get a lot of things done.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Have you been out there specifically targeting women or marketing the credit union in a way that would be very appealing to women? I'm frankly quite happy to join the credit union.

[Tracy Redies]

Please do.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

I used to be a member of credit unions throughout various parts of my career.

[Tracy Redies]

While I look for diverse teams, diversity has to cross cultures and increasingly take age into account now too, because we have almost four generations in the workplace. We didn't do anything specifically, but at the end of the day, from my perspective, I chose the best talent, and women were the best talent. I'm very happy with the group I have.

We also hired some men. If I can share a bit of a joke with the committee, if you don't mind, with Catalyst we found out that we were number one in November of 2010. The survey was conducted in June of 2010. Between June and November I hired a man to run our commercial banking, and I had the great pleasure of bringing him into my office and telling him that he'd blown my numbers, which was probably the first time in my career.

I had the opportunity to change things. I wanted a diverse team, and for a number of the positions, the best people who came forward were women.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Ms. Moore, would you like to comment on the same?

[Ellen Moore]

Certainly.

Chubb is also an organization in which 45% of our executive talent in Canada is female and 30% of our board membership is female. I actively recruit female talent, but certainly you want the best talent possible.

We do have a bias as we're filling a board slot at the moment. We told our recruiting company to target women. I think it takes that level of focus sometimes to really get to the balance. It clearly allows us to get talent across industry into the board positions, because we'll look at women from various areas of banking and accounting and so forth. I think there will be plenty of talent out there.

The one comment I wanted to offer that hasn't come up yet is that I'm often asked, as an American, if the year-long maternity leave makes a difference in the development of female talent at all levels. Does it take women off their career tracks? I would suggest that if there is an opportunity for governments at social service levels and so forth to do an even better job of integrating the opportunities for women to understand what their career and return-to-work programs are within that year's timeframe, it would be helpful in retaining women.

I think on-ramping women after a career absence is critical. I think good companies do a really good job of it, but to someone's point earlier, there are smaller companies that don't have quite that benefit. I think local government might be able to play a part in that respect.

I personally think the year of maternity leave is a very rewarding and important experience for Canadian women. I think some women struggle with it when they're at executive levels, but in general it really is helpful.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

How do we get our various companies in Canada to be more women-friendly? I don't think anyone's suggesting that women don't have the capacity and all the rest of it, but women always end up having to fill in the gaps, whether it's for aging parents or in-laws or sick children or whatever. Is there anything in particular we can be doing as a federal government to make our businesses more open to accepting the fact that women are going to have these challenges and that they should make every effort to facilitate what's necessary?

Ms. Moore, maybe you could answer that first.

[Ellen Moore]

I would suggest, if we're talking about business and industry, that it's usually pretty competitive out there, so find a way to endorse—that might be too strong a word—or showcase organizations or industries that are doing it well. I know that Catalyst is quite concerned about a recent census that's been distributed. Clearly business and Catalyst and other organizations are not in the mood for having any sort of quorum, as some governments in the Netherlands are doing. We've talked about how you could almost shame some level of industry or other enterprise into recognizing what is good practice or what might allow them a level of competitive advantage. I'm not exactly sure how government can get behind that, but recognizing what's done well in a more visible way might be one way.

[The Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Ms. Ambler.