Canadian Heritage Committee on May 3rd, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

We're starting up again.

We have a busy morning with a number of witnesses. Before we get started I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that one person who was chair of the heritage committee before me was Gord Brown, who was a tremendous advocate for the arts.

Pierre and I were able to work with him on music committee or music caucus, and I wanted to take a moment before we begin today to acknowledge all his hard work for this committee and for the arts, and to bring that spirit forward as we continue with this study and with our other studies here.

Today we have witnesses for our study on gender parity on boards and senior leadership levels of Canadian artistic and cultural organizations. We have with us by video conference from ACTRA, Heather Allin and Ferne Downey. Thank you.

Then here we have Susannah Rosenstock from Art Toronto.

We also have Sophie Brière from the Université Laval.

We will begin with those appearing by videoconference. Since there are technical difficulties sometimes, it is better to proceed in this way.

We will begin with the presentation of the ACTRA representatives.

[Ferne Downey, President, International Federation of Actors, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA)]

Thank you very much, Ms. Chairwoman, and members of the committee, for allowing us to appear before you today as part of your study, and thank you for the eloquent remembrance of Mr. Brown.

My name is Ferne Downey. I'm a Canadian actor and past president of ACTRA, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema and Television and Radio Artists as well as current president of FIA, the International Federation of Actors. Joining me today is Heather Allin, a fellow Canadian actor, and Chair of the ACTRA national women's committee.

[Heather Allin, Chair, National Women's Committee, Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA)]

Ferne and I are here today as the voice of ACTRA's members, 25,000 professional English-language performers. This year marks a milestone for our union as we celebrate our 75th year as a national federation. That's 75 years of representing performers living and working in every part of Canada. Performers who are pivotal to bringing Canadian stories to life in film, television, radio, and digital media. Like many sectors in Canada, our English-language film and TV sectors are not immune to gender inequalities. We at ACTRA have fought long and hard to address this within our industry, and it's why we're here today: to identify the problems and provide recommendations for change.

[Ferne Downey]

In addition to my role as past president of ACTRA, I'm also proud to serve as the chair of CUES, the Canadian Unions for Equality on Screen. CUES is a group of union and guild representatives whose aim is to collect and analyze data to better understand the opportunities and challenges facing all women in the production industry, and to develop recommendations and tools to increase the number of women at all levels of production. Since we began about 2012, CUES has released two reports by Canadian academic Dr. Amanda Coles to address these issues.

[Heather Allin]

After undertaking an extensive review of industry statistics from unions and representing workers in front and behind the camera, the first CUES report found that women are highly under-represented at nearly all levels of production in Canada's film and television industry.

Three years later, with the numbers remaining stagnant, a follow-up report dealt with the statistic to determine why this inequity might happen. This second study found that the key to understanding the issue of gender inequality is the analysis, not just of discrimination against women, but of systemic advantage for men. Within the Canadian film and television industry this means that women have to work harder and perform at a consistently higher standard.

For example, a project's financial risk assessment is not gender neutral even though there was no evidence to support gender discrimination as a useful risk management tool in film and TV production. Stereotypes prevail. Male directors are seen as visionary and creative and female directors as demanding and difficult. A rigid hierarchical work model still drives the operations of independent film and television production in Canada.

[Ferne Downey]

–If we're ever going to stop the systemic exclusion of women, women must not only be part of the conversation, but also must be equally represented in key leadership and decision-making positions.

Studies support this. A 2016 study by the Rockefeller Foundation found that having women in leadership positions would significantly help attract a more diverse workforce, and a case study by Status of Women Canada found that companies with women on their boards were better able to attract and retain excellent employees. That study also found that, “Women are drawn to companies that already have women on their boards, because they see opportunities to advance”. However, while it's important for women to be equally represented on boards, we must stress that it is not an adequate way to address the issue of gender inequality in and of itself.

[Heather Allin]

Last October, CUES member unions and guilds were the first to report that the modest practical recommendations they had implemented from the first CUES report had already made a remarkable difference within their organizations.

The second CUES report went one step further. One recommendation was for an industry-wide effort for organizations to adopt gender equality as a core principle in policy development, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. Since the report's release in 2016, CUES has expanded beyond its own member organizations and has successfully worked with Canadian funding bodies to develop and execute these practices.

After launching its first gender parity policy in 2016, Telefilm received push-back from CUES and other industry players for its lack of quantifiable goals. With industry input, Telefilm revised its policy and announced specific gender parity measures for feature film production financing in order to achieve a balanced production portfolio for the number of films being directed, written, and produced by women for the year 2020. Just one year later we were pleased when Telefilm reported that of the 60-plus films the agency had committed to funding so far that year, 44% are directed by women, 46% have a female screenwriter, and 41% have a female producer.

While this is exciting news, Telefilm has acknowledged that films with over a $1-million budget continue to pose the greatest challenge in attracting female directors. However, Telefilm has committed to continuing to work with industry partners to address this, and is confident it will ultimately meet its goal.

Other Canadian funding bodies have also made their own commitments to achieve gender parity through the creation of special funds or changes to existing funds, including the CBC, the National Film Board, and the Canada Media Fund. We look forward to seeing further progress.

[Ferne Downey]

While the work we have started within our industry has been instrumental in our quest to create gender parity, we feel we have only just begun. We'd like to end our presentation by asking the federal government to play its role by implementing the following three recommendations.

First, ensure that there is gender parity on boards, like CBC/Radio-Canada, NFB, and Telefilm, and in government appointees to the Canada Media Fund.

Second, the government must urge all organizations that receive funding to set a goal of achieving gender parity in key creative roles in the productions they finance.

Third, the government must also urge those organizations to track and publicly report on their progress.

We thank you for your time and look forward to your questions.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you very much.

We will now to go to Ms. Rosenstock, from Art Toronto.

[Susannah Rosenstock, Director, Art Toronto]

Good morning, members of the committee, and thank you for the invitation to speak today on this important subject. It is an honour to be here and to share my thoughts.

I thought it might be useful to provide some biographical information. I am from the United States, and I completed a bachelor's degree in art history at Columbia University in New York and a master's degree in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU. I have been working in the visual arts in New York and Toronto for more than 20 years. I joined Art Toronto in 2010 and was promoted to director in 2014.

Art Toronto was founded in 2000 and it is Canada's only international art fair for modern and contemporary art. While there are more than 300 commercial art fairs worldwide, and dozens in the U.S., Canada has only one. Art Toronto is a five-day annual consumer event that takes place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and it is the largest and most important annual visual arts event in Canada. It has grown to become an essential meeting and networking event for arts professionals from across the country.

The fair is composed of approximately 100 Canadian and international commercial art galleries selling modern and contemporary art as well as hosting booths for art museums and other not-for-profit art spaces, art magazines, and curated projects. A multi-day program of talks and tours featuring prominent art-world figures takes place throughout the duration of the fair.

In 2017 Art Toronto was attended by more than 23,000 art collectors, art professionals, and art lovers, and it contributed over $10 million to the arts economy through artwork sales, in addition to tourism dollars spent in the city during those five days. Art Toronto's opening night event is a fundraiser for the Art Gallery of Ontario, raising close to $400,000 annually for the gallery's exhibitions and programs.

Art Toronto is owned by Informa, a multinational company headquartered in the U.K. Informa has 7,500 employees worldwide and is a leading business intelligence, academic publishing, knowledge, and events business.

In thinking about your request to speak about gender parity on the boards of Canadian cultural institutions and among artistic leaders across Canada, I did some research into Informa's hiring policies and the programs it has put into place to reach the company's goals in terms of employee diversity. While I was pleased to learn that 56% of Informa's employees are female, in the leadership groups at the higher levels this number drops to 27%, and in the directorships at the highest level the number drops even further to 22%. The number of female directors, however, is a higher percentage in Informa's Canada offices.

A similar trend can be found in U.S. and Canadian art museums. In 2018, though, I do not believe that it's sufficient to look at gender parity in these institutions and across the arts in Canada without also considering ethnic diversity.

In the U.S. and Canada there are clear disparities in gender representation in museum directorships, depending on operating budget size. The majority of museums with budgets less than $15 million are run by a female rather than a male director. The reverse is true for museums with budgets of over $15 million, where female representation decreases as budget size increases.

A study published by Canadian Art magazine in April 2017, entitled “Hard Numbers: A Study on Diversity in Canada's Galleries”, looks not only at gender discrepancies but also at the demographics of museum staff by job title. While the top directorships skew towards men in these roles, the study finds that visible minorities and indigenous people are severely under-represented at all levels of gallery administration, including curators and directors.

While these numbers have a variety of effects across an organization, it is perhaps most visible when looking at the gender and ethnicity breakdown of solo exhibitions presented at these institutions. A 2015 report by Canadian Art magazine looked at these exhibitions from 2013 until 2015 at one major institution in each province, plus the National Gallery of Canada, focusing on living artists by gender breakdown and racial distribution. The national average of this study showed that 56% of these solo exhibitions were given to white male artists, 33% to white female artists, 8% to non-white male artists, and 3% to non-white female artists. That is to say, what happens at the top affects what visitors see and experience at these institutions.

Informa has put into place new company-wide programs in the past few years to improve the gender balance at the senior management level and to create more diversity overall throughout the company. I think that some of these initiatives could be applied to the issue of gender parity and diversity in Canadian cultural institutions and on their boards.

Several years ago, an Informa graduate fellowship scheme and an Informa apprenticeship scheme were introduced, as well as a leadership development program to increase professional leadership skills, provide networking and collaboration opportunities, and to support succession planning, which is essential in any institution.

I believe that this last point about leadership, mentorship, and succession planning is key in developing future leaders in the arts in Canada who reflect the diversity and plurality of the Canadian population of the 21st century, and of the communities that these institutions exist to serve. This lack of leadership training resources to date in Canada has been cited as the reason that many of Canada's, and specifically Toronto's, more recent hires for CEOs, including the AGO, the ROM, and the McMichael, have all hired from outside Canada.

Like Informa's programs, I am aware of two excellent leadership development programs to be considered as examples, but also as opportunities for Canadians. The Clore Leadership Programme, in the U.K., aids in the professional growth of museum professionals; and in the U.S., the Getty Leadership Institute assists top-level museum and cultural executives from around the world to become better leaders, with the aim of strengthening their own institutions' capabilities, as well as advancing the international museum field.

Some good news is that new leadership programs in Canada are now available, including those at the Banff Centre, the Cultural Human Resources Council, and through Business for the Arts. These programs are a start, but more needs to be done to provide leadership training resources to a greater number of people in the culture sector, and to provide specific outreach to women, indigenous people, and visible minorities.

The resources of the federal government could help to make these existing programs more robust, and the government could work with other partners to provide additional opportunities. For example, the government could work with partner institutions from across Canada such as the Remai Modern, Ryerson University, the National Gallery, and The Rooms, to develop a cross-country leadership program with candidates in each location who meet annually for a leadership summit, with the opportunity to present and share ideas and meet with national and international arts sector leaders. These programs could be developed to specifically target female and diverse candidates that reflect Canada's population, and could create a new generation of Canadian leaders in the arts and culture sector.

I've also been asked to share my thoughts on gender parity on visual arts boards. The good news there is that these boards do have majority representation for women, though visible minorities and indigenous people are again greatly under-represented. I believe this needs to change.

In addition to my work at Art Toronto, I'm also a founding member of the board of the Toronto Biennial of Art, a new multi-venue art event that is set to launch in 2019. We are in the process of board-building and have set ourselves the task of building a diverse board of talented and passionate arts supporters who reflect our core values as an organization.

In considering how the federal government could work with partners to diversify these boards, I think this could be most effective in the grant application process. The Canada Council for the Arts has recently updated its funding policies with an emphasis on diversity as funding criteria that have a new weight. In this vein, there could be a preferred status given to charities or not-for-profit organizations that are working to address the issue of diversity in their representation, and these organizations could be eligible for more support for their projects. This could, in turn, lead organizations to create a greater range of board roles that encourage participation from a broader range of potential members.

Thank you again for the invitation to speak today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

We will now hear from Sophie Brière from the Université Laval.

[Sophie Brière, Professor, Université Laval]

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for inviting me this morning.

Like any good teacher, I prepared a PowerPoint presentation.

I am not an arts expert at all. That’s what I said to the people who invited me. However, I have done a lot of work on the presence of women on boards of directors and their impact on them, mainly in Quebec, in various sectors of activity, both public and private. Today, I want to talk to you about lessons learned from those research projects. Like any good teacher, I likely have material for two or three hours, but I will try to limit myself to 10 minutes. As you can see, at the end of my presentation, I added the list of publications. We have published four or five reports on the issue. So there is probably a lot to say.

I tried to answer the four questions I was asked.

First, is gender parity an issue in organizations, on boards of directors and among senior management? The answer is yes. I do not want to give you any figures this morning, because I think everyone has them already. We know that the percentage of women on boards is about 20%. The number is pretty much the same for the boards of large, publicly traded companies.

In the Government of Quebec, this percentage has gone up because it passed a piece of legislation and set a quota a few years ago.

In short, it is a persistent issue, despite women being the majority in universities and colleges.

What I want to say to you this morning is that this is not a talent pool problem. I am convinced that all the skills are there, mainly in the field of the arts. There is a talent pool problem in the science and engineering sector, because fewer women are studying in those areas, and that is an issue. In all the other areas, however, for example medicine, law and administration, women are there and they are competent, even though we hear that it’s not always easy to find women to fill certain positions.

There is also a perception that equality is achieved in feminized sectors. People ask me why I’m working on that, since there are lots of women in the arts, law firms and hospitals. That’s true, but they are not sufficiently represented in decision-making positions. You know as well I do that there are still significant pay inequities for all sorts of reasons that we can talk about again later. There is still a lot to do on this front. Yes, we have the impression that there’s parity, but that is not actually the case yet.

When I meet with the presidents or members of boards, they all say that they are in favour of equality and diversity. The discourse is very interesting. I have never heard anyone say that they were against that. However, when you ask shareholders meetings, board members or related associations to take concrete action, that's a whole different story. There are things we could do; I can come back to this later.

It has been suggested that the appointment of women to boards would have a significant impact on organizations' senior management, but that is not the case. My colleague Jean Bédard and I are currently conducting gender parity studies on boards of directors and we are following the statistics. The situation is stagnant except in the government and crown corporations.

People tell us that it's easy to appoint people to boards of directors, but the real challenge is at the senior level of organizations, because that's where the decisions are mostly made. I'm not saying that boards are not important, far from it, but the bulk of the work is done at the senior level of organizations. The two do not always go hand in hand.

Furthermore, women are not automatically pro-women. I am often told that, since we have appointed women, the problem is solved. I often say that, if we do not change the system and the organizational practices, even if women have been appointed, there will not necessarily be a change. It's sort of the same with diversity. If the pattern stays the same, it will not change. This does not automatically mean that women will promote new topics and have more clout. People have told me that they had appointed women and that, fortunately, nothing changed.

Boards are fairly traditional organizations. If we want real change, the people appointed to boards must make real changes and work in a real context of diversity and equality.

In addition, there is clearly a lack of data tracking. When we request data from organizations, including large corporations, we have difficulty obtaining the percentage of women in senior management and the percentage of women on boards. That's important, and that's what we're doing right now: we're tracking the data to disrupt the perception of equality that we are constantly seeing when people think the matter is settled.

I now turn to the second question: why are women not asked to join boards?

There are still many stereotypes. It’s incredible how many stereotypes there are about women being like this and men being like that.

There are many stereotypes related to work-life balance. Some people are a little tired of hearing about it, but you have to talk about it because it's not settled.

It is a major issue for women, but also for men, especially young men, as we are hearing more and more. People don't have enough time. Sitting on a board is extra, on top of other activities, quite often. Management positions require time. Sometimes, people will not accept a decision-making position because they say that they already have a job and a family, so they have no time to do more.

So there is this perception: we are not going to try to recruit some women, because we think that they are already busy enough and that we cannot ask them to do this as well. There are also women who exclude themselves by saying that they are quite busy, that they do not want to do more, out of respect for their spouse, and that it will be difficult to balance it all.

Furthermore, there are stereotypes related to the skills gap. I still hear remarks that women lack leadership, have difficulty communicating and do not have enough knowledge in the field. As I said earlier, I do not buy this discourse anymore. Frankly, I don't think we're there anymore. There are skills galore.

We must also stop reinforcing the stereotypes that women are more human and more open to dialogue, or that men are more this or that. This kind of rhetoric reinforces stereotypes, and we can't go very far with that. Instead, we need to work together and stop confining people to predetermined roles, such as women on human resources committees.

People also have the reflex of asking people from their own network. It’s common for the boards to ask people they know, because that’s what the appointment process is. Real skills profiles must therefore be built using real appointment mechanisms. That helps a great deal with getting out of the pool. Board chairs have told me that they could easily find someone in two or three days, but it might take them two or three weeks if they had to find women or people specifically in certain communities. It sometimes takes longer, but they have to make the effort to step outside their own networks.

I forgot to mention the discourse on competence. We often hear people say that they do not choose candidates based on whether they are women, youth or people from other backgrounds, but rather based on their skills. However, this discourse on competence denies one problem. Skills have nothing to do with choosing a man or a woman. Basically, it is important to recognize that people are competent, but that now the boards must overcome inequities and that, at some point, they have to make specific choices. This does not mean that people are not competent.

There is also a limited turnover in these positions. It is important to keep that in mind. People have asked me how many years it would take to achieve a quota that we might decide to set. We have to look at turnover in positions every four or five years. If we want to appoint women, we have to take that into account.

In addition, the same people are often asked to sit on boards, and that's true for women too. It is therefore important to diversify the pool of candidates.

As for the organizational measures, I will talk about them quickly. I think we need to discuss this issue openly. We must adjust the selection criteria to what we truly want to achieve. It is not necessarily a question of lowering the requirements, but of sometimes changing them according to the traditional experiences of women and men as well. We must enable everyone to participate in board governance. We must stop thinking that we are going to train only women because they lack skills. We need to work on organizational measures rather than single strategies.

Finally, what can be done to promote parity? There are a few methods.

Collect data, as I said.

Avoid working only on single strategies. Let's stop saying that this is the problem of women. This is the problem of organizations. That's what I wanted to say this morning.

Legislative measures can produce slightly more concrete results than simply explaining why the organization does not have women. That does not improve parity much.

Avoid magic bullets.

Do not focus solely on boards. I mentioned that.

Encourage organizations and senior executives to review their practices, not just ask women to adapt.

Take into account the impact of maternity. It's part of reality. In the culture sector, people have atypical hours and have a hard time finding childcare.

Implement communications strategies to highlight the progress made on adding women to organizations' boards.

Spread the word about innovative experiences. Right now, I'm doing a lot of work on good practices, if you're interested. I am working on case studies. Many people are doing interesting things, and those need to be documented in organizations.

Do not believe that things will get better by themselves. I do not look that old, but I've been working on this for 25 years and things are not fixed.

Finally, it is important to work in partnership with stakeholders. I hear all the time that the new generations, in two or three years, will fix the situation. That is not true, because they will use the same mould. If the work is not done at the level of the organizations, the changes will be smaller.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you very much.

We will now start with the questions and answers. The speakers will have seven minutes.

We will start with you, Mr. Breton. I understand that you will be sharing your time with Mr. Virani.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Exactly.

My sincere thanks to each of the witnesses. My thanks to Ms. Downey and Ms. Allin for their recommendations, as well as to Ms. Rosenstock. However, since I only have three and a half minutes, I will turn to Mrs. Brière.

I would have liked to listen to you for three hours, like your lectures. That said, we still have a few minutes together.

I am particularly interested in the performance of businesses. Of course, we are here to talk about parity on the boards of artistic and cultural organizations. I'm not sure whether you have heard about this, but some studies show that the number of women on the boards of directors is directly proportional to the quality or performance of the companies.

I would like to hear your comments on that. You have three minutes to talk about it.

[Sophie Brière]

I will answer in three seconds: it's true.

Honestly, I do not understand why we have to justify that. Why would women not perform well and help improve business performance? Rephrasing the question is answering it.

Basically, those sorts of studies assess the percentage of women and the bottom line. Top researchers will say that the causal link is questionable. Other studies try to show that, ultimately, the link is not as strong as it is believed, because the results are sometimes different when compared to other boards with women.

Personally, I am convinced that diversity, equality and the presence of women improve the situation. Many people have told me that they would not go back to boards of directors made up of 50-year-old white men only. I have nothing against men of that profile, I like them a lot, but we want people with diverse experiences. This is true for women and for other groups. That goes without saying. In their speeches, managers will say that this is where the future, profitability, performance, and sustainability lie. It's what makes a company socially responsible.

I completely agree with that. It takes energy to get there, rather than trying to still convince people that women can do the job. I think that goes without saying.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Since I have links with some boards of directors, I can say that establishing clear policies within these boards of directors has improved things and led to results.

You talked about legislative measures that the government could take, such as passing certain laws. These are good things. But I think the organizations need to take charge, put policies in place within their boards of directors and respect them.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.

[Sophie Brière]

You're absolutely right.

Setting a quota is a perfectly justified, correct and effective measure, but it isn't the only one. If we only set quotas, there will indeed be appointments but, after a few years, if the organizations haven't put something sustainable in place, we'll have to start again.

Of course, if we set a quota, there will be women on boards of directors. That's a good starting point. However, if we want to see real change within an organization, the managers need to want to change the practices and foster a working environment that will keep women in the organization and hold decision-making positions.

I'll give you an example. I currently do a lot of work with lawyers' offices—

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

I'll remind you that the member is sharing his time with Mr. Virani, so you will have to be brief.

[Sophie Brière]

Right. I'll just finish my thought.

There is a very large pool of women lawyers. Law schools are full of women. Yet, there are almost no women in the big law firms.

Even if there is a pool of women, they need to be appointed and retained. It's a challenge.

[Pierre Breton, Liberal, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Mr. Virani, you have the floor.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you very much to all the witnesses for their presentations.

I'll be directing my questions to ACTRA, and specifically to Ferne. That's partly subjective, because Ferne is a constituent.

Ferne, welcome to the committee. It's a great pleasure to have you here. Obviously there are a lot of creators and artists in Parkdale—High Park, among whom you are one of the most prolific in terms of your contributions. Thank you for your contributions to ACTRA and now to FIA, but also in terms of your work with CUES. I want to ask you a couple of questions, if I have enough time.

The first relates to your recommendation number two, which calls for stricter requirements on entities that receive government funding. As you know, that's a priority of Minister Joly. She announced in January a review of all of the grants and contributions given by Heritage to various actors' entities to ensure that they have harassment-free workplaces. That was also followed last week by an announcement by the Canada Council for the Arts where $500,000 was made available to different organizations around the country to promote harassment-free workplaces.

I want to ask, are those steps in the right direction? Secondly, about that $500,000 fund, is there a specific method or targeting that you think should be used for that funding, in particular to address some of the needs you mentioned in your presentation?

[Ferne Downey]

Thank you for the question. I'm proud to be in Parkdale—High Park.

In terms of your first question, yes, we observe that the government is working in the right direction. We have approached the problem of sexual harassment in the industry very industry-wide. We appreciate everything that the federal government is doing in taking steps toward that goal now.

It's a bit tricky to figure out exactly how to request that Canada council do its work. I think they're very proficient in terms of making their own analysis. We're just glad to see direct, actionable steps. We're activists. We need to have change. The change has to be systemic and long term.

We don't pretend that we're going to turn this ship around overnight. However, the baby steps we're all taking, societally and industry-wide, are the right baby steps, until 100 years from now we won't even believe we had to have this conversation, because women are respected, they're respected in the workplace, they're running boards, they're in many leadership positions, and society has found a balance that it has lacked for a very long time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Perfect. Thank you very much.

We will now be going to Mr. Eglinski, please.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you to our witnesses today.

I'd like to start with Sophie Brière.

I was quite interested when you were talking about the perception of equality. I know a number of years ago, when I was a mayor of a city in British Columbia, we needed to find a new chief executive officer or manager for the city. I had a number of women in senior management roles within the municipality, and I wanted to look at the possibility of hiring a woman versus a man for the chief executive officer role. I hired a headhunting firm, and we had extreme difficulty in finding people to come forward from the feminine gender to take it on.

One of the biggest problems was trying to find people who would move from the location they were in and who had gained enough experience to handle the job that we were asking. Actually, we couldn't do it. I finally found a lady to come out from retirement to take on the role, and I'm pleased to say she worked out very well. She's still there, some 10 or 11 years later.

Do you find that because of the uniqueness of the feminine...she might be a wife, a mother, versus the guy who's going to move on for a job role, they are maybe somewhat hesitant to take that big move?