Canadian Heritage Committee on May 24th, 2018

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you. That's what I was looking for.

I'm going to let my colleague finish off my time. I believe I have a minute and a half.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Perfect. Thank you so much for being here today.

I also have a question for Ms. Pigott.

You had mentioned that our TV and media have a great influence on women and that we need roles to encourage women, to influence women, and that type of thing. In my past line of work, I found that any form of media sets the culture and tone for our society.

How do we do that when we have media that's full of sex, or full of degrading or demeaning things towards women and youth? How do we achieve that?

[Marguerite Pigott]

When you control who tells the story, you control the story. We need more women directors, more women screenwriters, more women producers. There is no shortage of talent in any of those categories.

What we find, when you do a review of the numbers coming out of Telefilm or the Canada Media Fund, is that women producers, writers, and directors are generally being funded at lower-budget levels and not so much at higher-budget levels.

That is going to change over time, but to Mr. Eglinski's question, certainly not without proactive measures. Telefilm, the CMF, CBC, the NFB, all have proactive measures in place. Certainly the industry and the CMPA are taking a leadership role and are taking additional measures to advance women in key creative positions. That's how you change those stories. That's how you change how little girls see themselves and understand what's possible for them, and that's how they grow into women who are going to step forward and take those roles that they should be taking now.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

For sure. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Aubin, go ahead.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank each of our witnesses for joining us this morning.

I would like to start by quickly going around the table and asking you to answer in the order you made your presentations in the beginning.

You are appearing before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which is pretty representative of the House of Commons. There are about a dozen members around the table, including four women, who account for about 33% of the total. As a result, we are not even reaching parity.

Do you think Parliament has credibility on this issue when it does not itself have a policy for achieving parity? We have no official policy to guarantee, when an election takes place, that the number of candidates respects parity, which would enable us to get more women elected.

If you find that the question is too risky in terms of confrontation, I will rephrase it. Would it help every organization you represent to see the federal government implement measures to ensure parity in the House of Commons?

Mr. MacDougall, do you have a comment?

[Andrew MacDougall]

I think one of the things to bear in mind is that although there is absolutely a benefit in seeing women in roles of leadership in an organization, you need to have a dialogue and support from a broader community. That is, you're not going to achieve anything without advocates from men within an organization and broadly.

I think there is absolutely a role that Parliament can play, notwithstanding that it has not reached parody yet in terms of advocating for change. Whether we need to legislate to improve representation at Parliament is the trickier question, which gets to the fundamentals of the way we elect our representatives. I think that one, frankly, is a difficult question to be able to answer.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

Do you have a comment, Ms. Morgan?

[Vanessa Morgan]

For arts organizations, it's more to do with transparency and explaining and showing where we are, rather than a top-down, legislated, or rules-based requirement. It allows the patrons and the audiences to see how many women are involved and at what level. I think it's more on a reporting side and explaining to the public where women are involved.

Certainly, in the performing arts industry, there's a very strong movement afoot; the public themselves are sort of forcing that issue.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Pigott, do you want to say anything?

[Marguerite Pigott]

From our perspective, when we're having conversations around committee composition, board composition, and conference speakers, something I hear cited again and again is that we need 50% women. “Come on, the government did it: 50% in the cabinet. We can do it.” That was a sterling example that is cited often and is enormously encouraging.

From our point of view, the second thing is that studies show that, in media, women hire women. If there's a woman producer, she's going to hire women directors. She's going to hire women screenwriters, etc. There is a trickle-down effect, or a virtuous circle, you could say. When we see more women in power, I think the same thing applies.

Whether or not that should be mandated is beyond the scope of my expertise, so I won't comment on that.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

My next question is for Ms. Morgan.

In your opening remarks, you alluded to a position to be filled in your organization for which the list of selected candidates had 12 names. Five of the candidates were women. I was thinking that this figure was close to parity. It's not bad, except that only one person will be selected. Based on that short list, how to ensure that the individual chosen at the end of the process could be a woman?

At the end of the process, are the only elements that are considered in selecting the individual their qualifications or the view they have of your organization, or is there a point system that supports the advancement of women?

[Vanessa Morgan]

That is something we do worry about. We could get down to two highly qualified people. I think if we were to select the male candidate from the two finalists, he would have to be quite superior to the female candidate or we would tend to go to the female candidate, because of the current environment.

In a way, it's a bit of a reverse bias; if they're equal, the woman will get the job.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

I want to come back to Mr. MacDougall.

In an article you published in Policy Options concerning the need boards of directors have to evolve more quickly in terms of diversity, you say that the turnover of administrators does not make it possible to achieve parity quickly enough and that the quotas have helped achieve a higher level of representation for women on boards, and more quickly.

Could you give us a few examples of those quotas and the way to do that, and tell us whether that is the direction we should be focusing on?

[Andrew MacDougall]

Certainly. There is no doubt that in countries that have imposed quotas for women on the board, companies somehow find women and they succeed in achieving those quotas. France imposed 40%. They have 40% women on the board. Several countries are all along the same vein.

If you impose a quota you will absolutely achieve that quota within the time frame contemplated by the quota. The problems with quotas are that they don't convey the right message. They do, as some of the other participants alluded to today, lead to a perception that somebody is there because of the quota and not because they are bringing the skills and talents that are needed to help the board with the board's role and responsibilities.

I am generally very much opposed to quotas, but I did flag in that publication that we might be able to accelerate change if we did impose a quota for companies that had boards of at least four directors and required those companies to have at least one woman on the board. We've noted in our report that the biggest change year over year was the number of all-male boards declining dramatically—by 9%—down to, I think, 36% of outstanding boards.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

I'll have to cut you there because we're already over time.

We are now going to Ms. Dzerowicz.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks to everyone for their excellent presentations.

Ms. Morgan, it was actually in Davenport, the riding I represent in downtown west Toronto. I hold these artist strategy sessions two to three times a year, and it was out of a discussion that I had at the last one when we talked about Soulpepper and the situation that had evolved there late last year that led to me put in a motion to have this study done. Soulpepper was very much a part of inspiring this whole study, and I think this is a positive thing.

A key fact that came out was that, with artistic directors, there is a low number of women artistic directors, and you correctly reinforced that as part your presentation. I want to talk about that for a minute and maybe see some specific recommendations that we at the federal level can do to be helpful around this.

We heard from Ms. Pigott that funding for women in programming is less than for men, so we know that's part of the issue. We heard that there is a handful of really tiny organizations and some really big ones, so it's really hard to build that capacity. How do you help build that?

I wanted to maybe just pause for a second to see whether or not there's something we can do in that area in terms of helping to build that capacity or helping a bit more in terms of those senior leadership roles within the arts and culture sector. What might be specific recommendations, beyond maybe ensuring there is adequate funding, particularly for those plays or artistic endeavours that are led by women?

[Vanessa Morgan]

If there's a way to set up international training programs to.... At a lot of universities now, students will go to spend a year abroad, so I'd recommend some type of program like that where people could go to the U.S., to the U.K., or other places where there are larger or mid-sized theatre companies so they could gain that experience, and not necessarily at a young age but maybe after they've run a small company in Canada, and they'd like to move up. There's got to be way to gain that experience, but it's very expensive for someone to pick up and move to London or something, so if there could be some kind of international training program, I think that would be really helpful to allow people gain that experience.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Pigott, would you have anything to add to that?

[Marguerite Pigott]

In terms of developing female leaders...?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I mean more to that specific artistic director-level position.

[Marguerite Pigott]

In film and television, what we're seeing is that there are many programs that are currently in place and working well. Women in View runs Five in Focus. They run 2xMore, and CMPA is involved in both of those.

Individual production companies are hiring 50% women directors. I know that Shaftesbury is very aggressive in terms of using women directors in predominant roles. I think that kind of growth is beginning to happen, and we just need more of it. Sponsorship and mentorship opportunities like the ones that Women in View are creating are very important in terms of bringing that to pass, and ensuring that women producers can produce at higher budget levels is also going to be very important, because they tend to hire women in key creative positions.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

The reality is that, as women progress in their careers, we want to have kids, and family becomes very important, so we want to work as hard on our careers as on making sure that we have some of the flexibility we need to be able to take care of our family. To what extent does there need to be some more work done in the artistic and cultural sector around that?

Perhaps I'll start off with you, Ms. Pigott, and maybe Ms. Morgan, and then I'll go to Osler.

I think that's something we kind of mentioned, but that's key. We need the flexibility, and that's the reality.

[Marguerite Pigott]

Yes, I couldn't agree with you more.

Child care is a huge issue. When a woman is shooting a movie or shooting a television series, the hours are absolutely intense, so there does have to be some kind of support for child care.

Interestingly, in another study I read, it mentioned that one of the key programs that was really essential in creating change was paternal leave, because it changed how society saw the role of women and men. We think of child care programs being just so that women can have some of the pressure taken off. Well, maybe the pressure can be shared, so if we change that dynamic, more becomes possible.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

To what extent do you think there's something that needs to happen within the arts and culture sector versus everything coming sort of from the government in terms of support around child care? What more can happen? What is the additional recommendation?

We have put in paternity care sort of at the national level, so we've put something into that. Is there something more that we can do, or is it just that there needs to be broader recognition of more flexibility within the industry?