Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for being here today to speak to this very important issue. Ms. Beckton, your centre studies women in politics and public leadership. I go back to something I mentioned earlier in this committee. Being involved with ParlAmericas, we would often have discussions with groups of women in politics about how to encourage more women to get involved. At that particular point in time, it was a snapshot where I believe somewhere between 80% and 90% of Canadians had female premiers.
When I speak with them—and I've known some of them—they definitely got their jobs because of talent. When they look at it, they say, “You don't need quotas; you just need to go with it.” But I understand, certainly on the corporate side, that we haven't seen any kind of real push that is going to encourage more women. Again, we've heard in testimony that there is a certain pool and some people might be on four or five different boards, and when they leave, they just keep recycling the same people.
How do we encourage more women to get involved on the board side in publicly traded companies? The women I know who are engaged in business are busy running them. I've talked to many of them, saying, “Why don't you expand or why don't you look into these things?” They say, “My interest is in the business that I'm starting and the businesses that I'm running.”
How do we encourage more women to be part of this other pool that seems to be recycling the same people?