Evidence of meeting #22 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was startup.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
The Chair NDP Hélène LeBlanc
Thank you very much.
I will now give the floor to Ms. Young, or Mr. Young, rather.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
You keep on calling me Madame. That's okay, because I want to be treated equally on this committee, and I appreciate it.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
Thank you very much.
Victoria Lennox, I wanted to give you some free time to paint a picture and tell us how to create better mentorships for women, access to networks for women, and also child care access for women. Those were three, four, and five, on your list. I didn't write down the first two, sorry, but I have the other three.
Take some time, please, and tell us how to do this because this report will be a guide for provinces, women, all kinds of people and groups across Canada, on how to help women become entrepreneurs.
4:25 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
I'm happy as well to submit something to the committee that's more substantive, that's backed up with stats and things like that.
We're not starting from scratch. There are organizations across Canada that service women entrepreneurs, but there are only so many mentors, experienced women, who've succeeded, been there and done that. They have a scarcity of time because they're still growing their companies. We need to make the most of their time as they give back to support the next generation of entrepreneurs. A national women's mentorship network would bring together the top women entrepreneurs in Canada and leverage their time properly through conferences, through online digital mentorship, and make them accessible to entrepreneurs across Canada.
Conferences across Canada have a hard time finding women entrepreneurs to sit on panels because they're so busy either taking care of their children or building their businesses that they don't have time to do something superfluous like a panel. If we could leverage their time appropriately and make it make sense so they're engaging lots of people all at once that would be great. I think bringing together all the support that's already available into one national initiative where everybody has a national stamp and grabbing the women entrepreneurs and developing some sort of advisory council and then employing a digital platform to execute the mentorship would help a lot.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
Can I just interrupt for one second?
I agree that it's best coming from women because they've been there. But what about male mentors?
4:25 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
Yes, please.
Some of my best mentors—my chairman is a man. It's also so refreshing to work with men who understand how to work with women. It wouldn't be exclusively for women or men. I think we still need more women role models. I think they still are behind the desk building their companies so we need to help to encourage them to get out.
In terms of access to child care I might turn to my colleagues because they probably know more than I do. I think we can look to Nordic countries, and we can see how that's facilitated an influx of female entrepreneurs. This is all backed up with statistics. Looking at some sort of national health care strategy—and I'm someone who wants less government—I think when it comes to female participation and entrepreneurship child care is a major factor. So far organizations like Startup Canada can step in from the private sector. There's only so much we can do.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
In Oakville we have a very active chamber of commerce. At least every month they have a number of events. One is Business After Hours. When you go there a room like this would be full of people networking and roughly half of them are women. They are tremendous entrepreneurs, and then they hire other women as well. It's growing. If it weren't for entrepreneurship the percentage of women who are unemployed would be much higher than it is. That's a good networking opportunity.
Can you think of any others that are working?
4:30 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
As I said, Ladies Learning Code. I think the chamber and a lot of places are really strong. Organizations like Startup Canada can help them refresh their image for the next generation of start-ups to be part of the chamber network, which is really exciting.
In a lot of places where start-ups reside there are not a lot of places for women only. A lot of times women entrepreneurs don't want to go to women-only events. They want to go to events with everybody, but also that encourage...and they want to see themselves on panels and in the program.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
What were your first two points? I want to make a note of them.
4:30 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
The first one was supporting girls and getting them interested in topics on business earlier on. Also, relatable role models, encouraging mentorship, and facilitating access to support. You can go to the BDC but does the BDC know how to deal with a female-owned enterprise? Can we encourage and help the BDC to develop the capacity to deal with women entrepreneurs? How can we make the current ecosystem more entrepreneurial and women-friendly and have access to child care?
4:30 p.m.
NDP
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Joan Crockatt Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
Thank you very much.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today. I think we're starting to get a nice picture emerging here of some things that will work. I want to thank you all for taking a positive attitude, a “glass half full” attitude, because I think that is one of the successes that we as women bring to the table that we may not even recognize.
In that regard, Victoria, I want to just walk through your Startup model and what you think its success is. I mean, 80,000 members...?
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Joan Crockatt Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
In only two years; that's amazing.
What do you actually think brought women to the table? As an executive in the newspaper business, one of my goals was to increase the numbers of women. We could do it, but it was hard. We looked at a whole range of initiatives that would actually bring women to the table.
I'm wondering what you think was your key that brought women to the table for you.
4:30 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
I think it was the grassroots. I think if I had sat in my cubicle at Industry Canada and said, “I want a women's initiative, and I'm going to do it from here”, it wouldn't have worked.
It's community-based. At Startup London the co-leader is a woman. She's engaging other women. They're engaging each other. In Toronto we have a woman of colour taking the lead. That community is full of women of colour because she's bringing in all of her friends. The peer-led engagement is just really powerful. In Charlottetown we have entrepreneurs in the biotech industry, so now we have a big biotech cluster for Startup Canada there.
It's peer-led grassroots. The way we work is that it really is bottom-up insofar as we encourage local development. You'll never see Startup Canada develop a national policy and impose it on our communities. It really is kind of bottom-up. When government gives us the opportunity, as they have today, to sit at the table—thank you so much for having me—we engage our communities and say, “What do you want us to say? We have this really cool opportunity.” We also put the ask out on Twitter.
It really is bottom-up. What's worked for us—this is how we've engaged aboriginal entrepreneurs—is just that peer-led, making sure they're part of our network and are bringing their networks in. Then they see it as a platform for them.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Joan Crockatt Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
I have to ask this, and not because I take the view that this isn't the direction. You said that you'd never see top-down, that everything's all bottom-up, and that you'd never develop a national policy. But one of the things you've called for is a national day care policy.
How does that fit with the rest of your strategy?
4:30 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
I think anything you do, and I think this happens already, needs to engage those who are operating the programs on the ground. Having their buy-in, their influence, will make it work. If they're not engaged in it, it won't work.
They're not contradictory. I think it's more in terms of the methodology of how you execute it and how you partner with those on the ground driving that change.
May 5th, 2014 / 4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Joan Crockatt Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
Maybe I can just explore this a bit more, because I think we're now drilling into how we actually make this function.
One thing that I noticed, too, moving through the ranks as a businesswoman, was that I always said I wish I'd known at 25 what I knew when I was 35—namely, that I had all the skills at 25 to do the same thing—and that I wish I'd known at 35 what I knew when I was 45.
I think one of the things that can help us there is mentorship, but then again, women tend to be—perhaps you'll disagree—somewhat wary, I guess, of authority and joining something that they perceive to be kind of a big monolithic organization. They like small organizations.
We were just musing about whether some kind of a national mentorship registry might be a way to go, and I think we've heard a similar thing suggested here. Do you think that is a way to go, or is it more facilitating some kind of crowdsourcing local thing that will actually pair women, one on one, with somebody else who's successful, and they can go for coffee at, you know, the little art gallery or entrepreneur café thing?
4:35 p.m.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Startup Canada
It's all of the above. I think it has to be both. I think if you have some sort of national registry where you have all of your mentors catalogued so that it can be leveraged by an organization like Startup Canada to help facilitate that...but all of those mentors will be the same mentors who go to that coffee shop.
So I think it's just how you execute it. I think some sort of registry is valuable, but I think it's all of the above. It's mentorship however it happens.