Status of Women Committee on April 23rd, 2015

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Chair, could we have the text of Ms. McInturff's presentation?

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

That should be possible. It will be included in the evidence in French. We had her speaking notes in English only.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Yes, but perhaps we can have them translated into French so that we have them available before we start drafting the report.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Yes, we can do that.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Chair, I would like to have a minute before the end of the meeting to raise a point of order.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Okay. Thank you.

We now move to Mrs. Perkins. You have five minutes.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate all of your presentations. They've been very enlightening. I almost wonder where we should begin here.

Maybe I should start with Ms. McInturff.

You've had several opportunities where you've spoken about accessible and affordable child care being an inherent part of what could make this a game-changer sort of thing. I'm having a bit of difficulty following that bouncing ball. We're talking about getting women in particular into non-traditional jobs, but quite often non-traditional jobs come with non-traditional working hours. Daycare systems, as they exist throughout the country, tend to follow traditional working hours, and having daycare available in non-traditional working hours could then create another whole dynamic of issues of availability, of who is going to be providing those, of how it is going to work, and of how you can provide for every instance. I'm not sure that this is as big a piece as perhaps we're hearing in the dialogue today, if you were to extrapolate it out and put it throughout the entire spectrum of the workforce, as it could be.

Have you looked at it from a total 24-7 comprehensive viewpoint, or are you looking at it in the traditional work hours?

[Dr. Kate McInturff]

I'm not aware of any country that offers child care 24 hours a day, so there's no model to say, “Here's what would happen if we had that.” What I would say is that when women who worked in mining, for example, were asked what the barriers were, child care was one of their top three responses. They are saying, “This is a problem for us.” You're absolutely right that, in some non-traditional trades, one of the other things they said was more flexible work hours. Child care isn't the only piece; it also has to be an employer—

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

But the child care piece isn't as easy a fix as what we continue to hear again and again about the fact that, if we had this national child care policy that.... There's a whole lot of dialogue of what that would look like, how it would have to look, what the inherent costs would be, and who bears the cost.

[Dr. Kate McInturff]

In every country that has provided affordable and accessible child care, women's employment levels have gone up, so that evidence is clear.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Okay, but I'm not going into women's employment levels so much as the non-traditional roles, and I don't think that they necessarily marry. That is what I'm saying. They may, but I don't think that necessarily they would automatically marry. I just wanted to put that out there, because it's one of the things that I don't think is conclusive.

Now to the young women who have come to us from Carleton, you are both tremendously inspirational people, I have to tell you. Your enthusiasm for what you do is very clearly articulated. I have to tell you that what you're doing with young people, with the kids, is commendable. I very much know that it's your kind of enthusiasm that's going to bring out the best in those young girls, and perhaps allow them to want to be just like you. I appreciate all you're doing in that regard.

The Girl Guides things is awesome. I didn't know that existed. Congratulations for that.

I believe it was Danniele who brought forward the statistics about the Fortune 500 companies that have women on their boards. They far outperform those that don't, I believe is what you said. Thank you for that. I really appreciate hearing that.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

I'm sorry, Mrs. Perkins, would you ask your question?

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Yes.

Do you know that our Minister of Status of Women, Kellie Leitch, has brought forward a program where the boards now are accountable to increase the number of women they have on these boards of directors of corporations? Do you find that this has been beneficial to this process?

[Sandra Eix]

We don't at this point have data on that but the evidence is really strong. There are about 20 years of research, mostly from the States, but the evidence in Canada is similar. It's staggering, the difference between zero women on the board and more than three women on a board. There's a critical mass factor as well. It can be an increase of 84% on return on sales.

The evidence is there that it works in general. Obviously an initiative that promotes that in Canada is a laudable initiative that's bound to see results. I don't have the data about what the results have been for that initiative, but that would be an interesting thing to investigate.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

We now move to Ms. Crockatt for five minutes.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Lovely.

Thank you all very much. Every one of you has added something really special to this.

You see people around the table nodding because we've all had many of these experiences. I actually found the study very uplifting. A lot of us have been through many of these challenges, but we're also getting further ahead. With every discussion we have each year, and with every study we do, this seems to be a little bit more in the forefront. The news is a bit better.

When you were talking, Suzanne, I was thinking about how in Alberta we don't have so many of the problems of getting women into these skilled trades and higher jobs, because there's such a desperate shortage of work for us. Although the male culture may dominate, if they don't have a woman driving those big, huge trucks in Fort McMurray....

Incidentally, they now drive by far the majority. I think it's over 80%, and their driving records are also way better than the men's.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

They're highly sought after; otherwise, they might get somebody coming in who doesn't even have the same language or cultural background, which can be more difficult to integrate. They're actually being welcomed in the workplace.

One thing we are looking at is that in my own industry, for example, the newspaper industry, we had a real problem trying to get women editors until circulation started to decline and they started getting good tracking. They found out that women were big consumers, and that's who advertisers wanted to put the advertising in the paper for, to get those eyeballs. Suddenly we had a big push to integrate women.

You guys are all in scientific fields. What you do is based on evidence. We've heard some of this evidence about women increasing the returns on boards and maybe increasing sales. I'm wondering if anybody has any new research.

You know, I think we're far better to make a moral case that women will actually improve outcomes if you can get them in the workplace rather than trying to push people in—you should because you should.

I'll throw that out there, but Suzanne, do you want to start?

[Suzanne Winterflood]

From us it's much more anecdotal. The employers we've spoken to, however, who are accepting of having women are often quoting to us, “If you have a female welder, she's so much more meticulous. She has more attention to detail.” It's more anecdotal, in our case. Because we do our research through focus groups, it's more qualitative. It's spoken and it's noted.

There definitely is a lot of support. Those guys, or those companies and employers, who are already employing women can see the value.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

We should capture that, maybe. I should ask everybody if—

[Suzanne Winterflood]

Yes, absolutely. That's in our needs analysis. I know it's in there in our report, which we would share with you, if you'd like.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

If anybody else has examples, perhaps you can send them in later.

Do you want to give them now, Sandra or Danniele?

[Sandra Eix]

The statistic I brought up earlier was from the return on sales.

There's a study quoted in one of our papers from 2009. The study's name is actually “Profit, Thy Name Is…Woman?” It's a longitudinal study. They put in the caveat that correlation and causation are definitely two different things. The 20-year longitudinal study suggests that in places where they promote women to leadership positions, where there's a lot of women in the workforce, where in general it's a very diverse workforce, there's a correlation to high profitability.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

We see that on boards, but this is in the workplace, not on boards.

[Sandra Eix]

Yes.