Pease give your daughter my best wishes. We want to see many young women, as well as indigenous people and other under-represented groups, go into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Again, I have made this a key feature of my mandate. In the spring, we began having conversations with the post-secondary education community about the fact that this is an issue and needs to be addressed. I don't think a country can afford to lose half its talent. In September, I was pleased to bring back the UCAS survey, which was cancelled under the previous government after having been going since 1937. Why does UCAS matter? Come next April, we are going to have data. Are women progressing through the ranks at the same rate as male colleagues? Are they making equal pay? That data matters. In October, we announced 11 new Canada excellence research chairs. These CERCs are important. They are among the most prestigious awards internationally; $10 million over seven years. Of the 11, we announced that two would be in clean and sustainable technologies, and with that, we announced new equity and diversity requirements that universities would have to put forward. Their equity and diversity plans in those will be tied to the Canada research chairs.
The last thing we did, also in October, was to place all this data on the SSHRC website. We are trying to lead here by taking action on this, but we are also leading internationally. When we went to Beijing for the international Carnegie meeting, Canada worked with Japan to put forward a motion to study women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It was one of three subject areas studied internationally.