Status of Women committee  Human beings have many frailties and weaknesses. And by the way, we could have a story about a man who did something that was untoward. Right? So I don't think we can take any individual circumstance, and I think we have to keep a sense of humour about all of this.

Status of Women committee  And that was probably a joke.

Status of Women committee  It's normal human nature to sort of say I wish I could sit up in business class, except my policy says I have to go to the back of the plane. So we have to be able to take a joke.

Status of Women committee  We're relying on other researchers generally, and they are looking at public companies most often, because that's where you can get the data, and it's on a very geographic-diverse basis. So this applies in China just as much as it does in Europe or as it does in Canada. I'm confident that the results are pretty clear and they're pretty universal.

Status of Women committee  In terms of the federal government having a target—and I must say Prime Minister Trudeau's approach to this in his government has been very encouraging, but that only goes so far—it's good to lead by example. I have my own target for anything I run. I attempt to achieve 50% gender parity because I believe my company will run better as a result.

Status of Women committee  The answer is that it's starting to get out. Catalyst has done a good job in making sure that large companies are doing something about it. I think you can split men into three different groups: the 20% who are very active in sponsoring women, who believe in this, and are doing it; the 20% who don't believe it, aren't going to do anything about it, and who today often occupy positions of power; and the 60% in the middle.

Status of Women committee  Yes, I would disagree with any view that you would want to delist a company. Delisting a company and taking it away from the transparency and governance of a public company is, on its surface, negative, so I would not see that as the.... Ontario Teachers is a major investor and shareholder.

Status of Women committee  Again, leading by example would mean that, anywhere the federal government is providing money to any institution or any industry, there should be a requirement for achieving gender parity or near gender parity to get that money. The markets are very important. If I can only get that money at a university, I put forward candidates who are gender-diverse and near gender parity, then you can bet that's what people will do.

Status of Women committee  I wouldn't give up qualifications for gender. There's an irony in that: you don't need to do that. There are plenty of qualified women in the marketplace. You may have to look a little more broadly than business schools or former CEOs, because fewer than 5% of CEOs are women. Therefore, if the criterion is that you must have been a CEO of a public company, you're not going to find many women.

Status of Women committee  It's actually very positive. It's slow in some cases, but very positive. We know that the banks have achieved their 30% target quite readily in terms of gender diversity. They should start to see the benefits of that now. We have the “comply or explain” legislation at the Ontario Securities Commission for public companies.

Status of Women committee  The Ontario Securities Commission has a comply or explain at a 30% level for women on boards, which I think is a very good first step in terms of getting to the root of this issue. That's had a material impact on the number of women on boards, although a lot of companies are still not complying.

Status of Women committee  I'm not an expert in this area, but in the book that I'm doing with Barbara Annis, we talk about the fact that when I was in my thirties, this was my first exposure to why we need to focus on the position of women in leadership. I didn't care about maternity leave when I was about 35-years old until I had female employees who felt that it was an important issue.

Status of Women committee  There's nothing wrong with mentorship, but mentorship creates no risk for the person mentoring. The better term nowadays is “sponsorship”. Sponsorship means that the person recommending the woman—the young woman, perhaps—is actually taking a risk. In my work in industry, I was able to promote women into positions of power and take a risk, because maybe they're going to succeed, maybe they're going to fail.

Status of Women committee  So, please don't put that imposition on new women coming on the board, when you also should be putting it on the men who are sitting on the board.

Status of Women committee  It's starting to change but it's changing very slowly. There are some very significant role models out there today. Women role models in senior positions are important, not just to women, but are actually more important to men. Men need to see women in positions of power in order to get comfortable with that.