Status of Women committee  I believe government still largely looks at the question of labour and employment as people going into an office and working nine to five. They build their programs around that sort of relationship. For a lot of people now, that's not how they make their living. That's not how th

Status of Women committee  I do not have a number with me now. I work with some other associations, and they've done research on that, so I can supply that.

Status of Women committee  It's expected to have a significant impact. The fact is that if it costs a lot more to launch a product in Canada and to market a product in Canada, then fewer of those products will become available. Either companies will stop selling certain products or they'll completely withd

Status of Women committee  That's a great question. Certainly, in terms of our membership in Canada for the company, just to give you a sense of the company—

Status of Women committee  With regard to upper management in Canada, I would say that of our members, about 80% are led by women. It's to the point that we are actually consciously trying to get some men onto our board, because it's female-dominated. As for the breakdown in terms of different ethnic back

Status of Women committee  Absolutely.

Status of Women committee  My name is Peter Maddox, and I'm the president of the Direct Sellers Association of Canada. Thank you to the chair and to the committee for giving me this opportunity to speak today. DSA Canada is a national association founded in 1954. We have over 65 members across Canada, wh

Status of Women committee  Every move that helps women in our industry in terms of whether.... I don't know the specifics of the rollout of programs across the provinces, but if women have more time to focus on their businesses because they're not focusing on their kids or other things, then, yes, obviousl

Status of Women committee  Supply chain has definitely been an issue, but that's been an issue for basically everybody in Canada, I think. A lot of our member companies are from the U.S. Some of them ship from within Canada but some ship from the U.S., so that creates difficulties. On the flip side, I wo

Status of Women committee  There are some private online trainers, but you have to pay for training like that. As I mentioned, some of our member companies do their own digital training. In some provinces there are online programs through which people can access some level of digital training, but it's fa

Status of Women committee  On the first point, I like to think that broadband Internet should be a huge priority for the government, because it's not just about broadband Internet. It integrates with every part of the economy. It creates opportunities for learning. It creates opportunities for economic act

Status of Women committee  I do not have that information. Unfortunately, it's very hard to calculate. I would suspect, for our industry, it's in the hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of revenue, if not more. It is difficult to get that information. What I would say, and I will reiterate my point

Status of Women committee  Was that question for me?

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. The genesis of our industry is supporting women, going back a hundred years, at least, in selling makeup and those sorts of things. It has developed around the fact that typically this is not somebody's primary household income. It's something they do on the side. Th

Status of Women committee  I'd be happy to answer that. With our industry, obviously from a purely commercial sense, the more consumers we have and the more sellers we have, the more the industry succeeds. Our member companies, particularly I would say over the last 10 years, have made a very great effor