Status of Women Committee on April 9th, 2014

[Julia Fournier]

BDC ultimately gave a percentage of funds, as did RBC. RBC increased our line to support the transaction and ultimately enabled me to buy him out completely.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Great, thank you.

Am I okay?

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Yes, I just owed a few seconds to Ms. Fournier, so that's why.

Thank you very much.

Ms. Ashton, for seven minutes, please.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Thank you to all of our witnesses for coming in today, and particularly to a woman who is making it in the business world. We're very fortunate to hear about your work directly at the beginning of our study.

Of course our study is focused both on women who succeed, but also on the barriers that too many women face and which in fact prevent them from succeeding. We realize there are definite regional realities depending on where people are in the country and the kinds of opportunities they have ahead of them. I particularly appreciate having ACOA here to speak to us about their work in Atlantic Canada.

I know that in the latest budget bill the Conservative government announced that it was eliminating the Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation, which administers the women in business initiative in Cape Breton, which we know is an area where there is very high unemployment. This elimination is in addition to the cuts of nearly one-third of ACOA's budget over the last number of years.

I'm wondering if you can speak to us about the tangible ways in which these cuts to programs in terms of Enterprise Cape Breton but also more broadly, could hurt women?

[Daryell Nowlan]

Thanks for the question.

As we said, Minister Moore has spoken on this issue a number of times. Our intention with respect to the transition from Enterprise Cape Breton into ACOA's regular programming is to maintain business as usual. The kinds of things that we're doing, for example, with the Centre for Women in Business in Cape Breton, is very similar to what we're doing in the other Atlantic provinces. Those kinds of things would be the kinds of things we would see continue indefinitely. We recognize that those kinds of projects are important in all parts of Atlantic Canada. We will be working to continue those same kinds of efforts.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

For sure. We understand that the CEO is under investigation and that's caused a real gap in terms of the kind of programming that did exist. For us, it's very disconcerting that this is the situation and that ultimately women, and men, although our interest in this committee is women, would lose out.

I would like to speak more about ACOA's women in business initiatives. We've heard from people on the ground in Atlantic Canada who work with women who are facing tremendous barriers in terms of their economic prosperity. A lot of the women they work with have a serious need for skills training and access to well-paid jobs in a diversity of industries. We know that women who are in business oftentimes come from a certain background. Not all, but many do have a certain level of education and a certain access to resources. We know that ACOA's funding in this area is focused on women in business and entrepreneurs but perhaps may not have a definition or mandate that's wide enough to cover women who may not be in this category.

Is there room for ACOA to expand its narrow mandate to reach out to women who are interested in building their skills to be able to one day open up a business? These are women who may not have the educational level or the skills level right now to do that.

[Daryell Nowlan]

The kinds of programs I spoke about with organizations like the Centre for Women in Business, Mount Saint Vincent University, the P.E.I. Women's Business Association, etc., really have a very broad reach in the kinds of women and the backgrounds that they have and bring to the table. For some of the very reasons that you mention, in terms of really needing access to mentorship programming—whether it's business networking or having women get together to discuss the challenges they might be facing; whether it's helping each other or having experts and other mentors help them to find the right pathway; whether it's government or private sector funding programs—that broad reach into the business community and into the region in general is going a long way towards addressing some of the challenges.

We have heard from women entrepreneurs and from some of the researchers about some of the challenges facing women. We really look to those kinds of organizations that are on the ground with women in their communities to really ascertain what the rights are that need addressing and how they can best respond. They're quite broad actually.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

What we're hearing is that women of various classes and class distinction need to be recognized in terms of support for them to access opportunities in the training or business field. We're understanding that perhaps ACOA's mandate right now is too narrow to do that. I wanted to raise that with you.

Turning to the Business Development Bank, in 2002 the Prime Minister of Canada created the task force on women entrepreneurs to ascertain the contribution and needs of Canadian businesswomen, citing that it's very easy for government to develop a gender-biased policy that could benefit men, or worse, actually hurt women. One of the recommendations made by this task force to the Canadian public sector was to increase access to the social safety net, including child care, maternity, and paternity benefits.

We know that the government has scrapped plans for a national child care plan. From the perspective of the Business Development Bank and based on what you hear from women entrepreneurs that you work with, is child care an important issue? Is it something on which we need to see national action?

[Gina Gale]

From the bank's perspective, I'm not hearing that. Clients aren't telling me that is a concern of theirs. If I could speak personally to it, that would be a different thing, but from the bank's perspective, I'm not hearing that.

When I speak to entrepreneurs and ask them what their challenges are—and it's about the same for both men and women—it is access to financing. One of their biggest challenges is retaining and recruiting talent. But I'm not really hearing anything on the child care side of things, sorry.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Okay, that's great. Thank you very much for that.

I have a quick question for SSHRC. As a recipient myself of a master's, SSHRC, I am very thankful for the work you do for Canadian women, the support in research, but I'm wondering if perhaps you might be able to speak to the increased focus on business and finance funding that may perhaps be redirected. How many of the students who are being funded through SSHRC—

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

I'm going to allow a very quick answer.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

—are men versus women? I guess that is my question.

[Michèle Boutin]

The answer is probably going to be even quicker than you think. I'm not sure I understand the question, so I'd be happy to receive the question and provide an answer in writing.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Very good, thank you very much.

Everybody is very accommodating.

We'll go to Ms. Ambler, for seven minutes.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you to all of you for being here today and providing this wealth of information.

Dr. Konrad, I'd like to ask you about students and young women at an earlier age.

Do you think that young women are encouraged more than young men in the teenage years to pursue a liberal arts track in university as opposed to business courses or vocational studies?

[Dr. Alison M. Konrad]

There is clear evidence that, starting in high school, young women each year lose interest in science, technology, engineering, and math, relative to young men, and this makes it difficult at the university level for us to have equivalent numbers in our programs. There certainly could be substantially more encouragement for young women to retain their interest, and I know that direct interventions such as women role models coming into the classrooms, and also women mentors connected to young women in high school, women who are engineers themselves, who are business leaders themselves, help young women to get the message that they can do it, that the boys are not smarter than the girls, that this is not too hard for girls, that they are able to do this, and if they are interested, they should pursue it.

There is documented evidence that these kinds of personal connections help to retain the interest of young women. There needs to be more encouragement in that area.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you.

You mentioned that the glass ceiling is cracking. I was hoping that maybe you could clarify what that means, from your perspective.

[Dr. Alison M. Konrad]

That's an excellent question.

What I mean by the glass ceiling cracking is that once we look at the various highest levels of achievement, women who have made it through the mid-career bottleneck, who have somehow gotten through the phase where they have raised their young children and have still been promoted even though, at that mid-career phase, there is substantial and troubling promotion disparities between women and men, those few women who make it to that high level, at that point, are equally as likely to be promoted yet higher, as their male counterparts. I have seen multiple studies that have shown that.

It's really time for us to turn our attention to the mid-career phase in order to raise a feeder pool for women in leadership. At the very top levels there are good processes. There is careful, systematic, and thorough vetting of candidates, and when women are the best candidates, they are selected. When women are the best candidates in the mid-career level, we're still seeing problems, though. Even if we have women with very high qualifications, they are experiencing gender discrimination in promotion at mid-career.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you so much, Dr. Konrad.

My next question is for Ms. Gale from the BDC.

Ms. Gale, you mentioned that the average loan size for women is $200,000 less than for businesses run by men. Would you say that is because women are less likely to take risks?

[Gina Gale]

No, I don't think I would say that, because a lot of the women entrepreneurs we have are coming into it from a start-up point of view, which is very high risk. I think it's mainly because of the type of industry they are in, as well as because they own smaller businesses. As I mentioned, I think, 4% are in medium-size businesses, between 100 and 499 employees. They have very small businesses compared to the male counterpart, so I think that is—

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

So relatively the sizes of the loans are going to be smaller.

[Gina Gale]

Yes.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Is there anything that can be done about that, from your perspective? Why is it that women are in tourism and retail and, in general, businesses that are smaller?

[Gina Gale]

That's a really tough question to answer, why they're in those. What we can do, if we look forward, is probably target those industries if we want to increase the women entrepreneurs in the Canadian economy. We could look at food and services—it's 41% of the economy—and BDC actually has 41% of those businesses. They're very dominant in food and beverage, wholesale, business services, those types of businesses. We could certainly target those more so as to increase that.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

You mentioned that the obstacles are the same for both men and women. You went over them quickly, and I heard them, but I guess I want to know which ones—or which one—you think are the most challenging for women in particular, and how BDC helps women address that obstacle or those obstacles.