Good morning, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for coming.
Before I start, I'd like to go on the record by saying that having spirited discussions in the committee is part of our job. I thank you for coming and for the detail provided and for allowing us to be able to ask the questions that we may not be able to ask once we are reading the bill. By no means does that mean that we will opposed this bill. When it comes to the House, I personally will be supporting this bill.
I'd actually like to borrow some of the comments from both Mr. Schneider and Wendy. That will frame the question that I'm about to ask.
Mr Schneider, I heard you talking about the availability of a “broader and deeper” selection pool of board members, which lends itself, I think, to the broader definition of “diversity” that we've been discussing.
Wendy, I heard from you that it's not a question of the pool anymore, but a question of intention, which is great. It gives us a way forward, which means that, based on well-defined selection criteria, there is enough talent in the pool for us to really expand the base of diversity.
Those are great. You also talked about targets versus quotas. As a former engineer and an alumnus of Ryerson, again, I welcome you. It's great to see that Ryerson is representing itself in many other aspects in our government.
You also talked about the criteria of the director qualification and developing the pool. Now, once again as a former engineer, I believe that we set targets or quotas; we also put robust tracking, rigorous evaluation, and transparency in place. One of the concerns that I have was the fact that there is no mechanism in place to be able to assess the impact of this legislation, and this is one of the concerns that you raised in the article you wrote called “In Montreal, leadership diversity remains a work in progress”.
Can you please give us some idea of what mechanism you would suggest? Also, you had indicated there is no penalty regime. What would you recommend as a penalty regime?