International Trade Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2017

[Alma Farias, Representative, Toronto Chapter, Organization of Women in International Trade]

I think that one of the key issues on supply diversity is the limited access to working capital for women. All these contracts require large amounts of working capital. Unfortunately, women-owned businesses are limited in terms of these resources, especially in developing countries—and still in Canada.

Just last week, one of our OWIT members attended the WTO public forum in Geneva. The MasterCard representative mentioned that one billion women have no bank account. This gives you an idea of the issue of working capital.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you. The time is up. We're going to the NDP now.

Madam Ramsey, you have the floor.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Thank you so much for your presentations.

Crown Royal is bottled in my riding in Amherstburg, Ontario, and of course Wiser's and Lot 40 are right next door and Hiram Walker is in Windsor. We're certainly watching the geographical indicators around Canadian whisky closely to ensure there's that carve-out.

My questions are going to centre around the other guests here today. I really want to talk about this gender chapter.

I've heard you say that at a bare minimum it needs to be a trilateral committee, much like we saw in Chile, but I really want to talk about what the best possible scenario could be. There are things to be included, of course, such as pay equity, social supports for women, access to shelters, and domestic violence legislation, because when women entrepreneurs have the choices and the stability in their lives to be able to grow, I think it benefits all women across Canada. I'm hoping that those things are in there, but I want to ask you about access to capital.

You mentioned how limited capital is for women, as is the access to decision-makers. These are the real barriers that exist in our own country as well as when women are trying to trade. Beyond that committee, how can we entrench these into enforceable language in NAFTA? How do you view that?

[Alma Farias]

First, we believe that including the gender chapter in the NAFTA is a serious way to address inclusiveness.

We are also realistic. We know that the negotiation of this chapter is going to be challenging with the U.S. and Mexico. We are not expecting a hard commitment. We are expecting, as a very first step of commitment, to get these trilateral committees and implement programs. I think we need to start somewhere.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

I think we need to go as far as we can possibly go, though. If it's something that we're going to look at and bring into the agreement, we should ask for everything, and then, of course, it will be negotiated.

Can you speak a bit about the gendered barriers that you see in NAFTA? Have you done any analysis in your organizations on those barriers? I hear you about the committee, but my concern regarding the committee is much like what we saw with the committees in the TPP that were being set up, and certainly in the Chilean committee, which is that there won't be any enforceability. There will certainly be women meeting, which is always valuable and comes up with a lot of solutions, but we really want to focus on what exactly we can entrench in there that's enforceable.

What do you think the gendered barriers are in NAFTA specifically? Are there chapters where you see those barriers?

[Alma Farias]

I would say that we need to understand first the root problems of this gender inequality. One of the root problems is the salary gap. This is the beginning of the gender disparity.

As we mentioned before, the main obstacle that women business owners face is the limited access to credit. Sometimes there are also difficulties in getting into the business networks, especially in some male-dominated sectors such as mining and manufacturing. In developing countries—and I mention this because we have a NAFTA partner, Mexico, a country that is considered to have an emerging economy—we have to be aware of unpaid housework, which is part of the ecosystem and I think needs to be considered. We are aware that this is a social norm, but if we at least address this barrier, we can help our partners to understand what we want to achieve.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Thank you.

Marcela, did you want to jump in on any of that?

[Marcela Mandeville]

Yes. Thank you.

I completely agree. In terms of what are some tangible pieces we could put in, definitely in the scope of supplier diversity, is there a way to create some numbers, some baseline metrics, and some goals around how to engage women-owned businesses in supply chains? Is there a way to show that transparency through numbers by looking at the best practices in the three countries and determining what the best baseline number would be, not only bilaterally or amongst all three countries, but even within our own country in terms of how women-owned businesses are part of the supply chain?

I also think the point about access to capital is very interesting. I do think we also require some metrics around access to capital. More than talking about the lack of capital, it's about actually measuring how much capital is getting into the hands of women-owned businesses that are growing and expanding internationally and participating in trade through NAFTA. How are they being capitalized? What are the results of that?

We've seen through our work with a small segment of women entrepreneurs—less than 200—the amazing ability they have to generate business with the right amount of holistic support, which, in our case, includes financing through our organization.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move over to the Liberals. I understand they're splitting the time. Mr. Dhaliwal, you're starting. Go ahead.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the presenters.

My question is for Mr. Westcott. For Spirits Canada, to date what progress has been made in reference to the regulatory issues when it comes to labelling requirements, particularly for the export of Canadian spirits?

[Jan Westcott]

I'm going to ask my colleague to touch on that a bit.

[C.J. Helie, Executive Vice-President, Spirits Canada]

We have no real market access problems exporting into either the U.S. or Mexico. What we are looking for, really, is to take some costs out of the business by having greater regulatory harmonization.

Our model has two things. One is the TPP annex, where a lot of work was done to simplify differences in regulatory approaches. Second, on the wine side, the new World Wine Trade Group made a lot of progress on labelling harmonization across those countries, so we saw that as an opportunity to do something similar for spirits.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

What other nations should we focus on with free trade when it comes to spirits and wines?

[C.J. Helie]

We're strong supporters of the Korea and Colombia agreements, as well as the agreements with Europe, CETA. Those are great export opportunities for us. Looking forward, we just put in a letter of strong support for TPP-11. In fact, TPP without the U.S. has maybe even more upside than with the U.S., because of the negotiating dynamics.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Karen.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you for your presentations.

My questions are around gender analysis and the gender lens. Looking at NAFTA, for example, as it currently stands, if we're looking to modernize it, what are the differences and the opportunities in having a specific chapter on gender or having every chapter written through a gender lens?

That's for Ms. Farias or Ms. Butler.

[Ainsley Butler]

I think the model from the Canada-Chile agreement of having the gender chapter is one that can be followed and built upon. In particular, we mentioned having access to data that allows us to understand truly the contribution of women to trade. I think having provisions like that in a separate chapter would go a long way in making it possible to eventually streamline throughout trade agreements.

If we are talking about having even the most minimum considerations implemented into the agreement—although we would definitely support mainstreaming and consider that highly ambitious—we think that probably the chapter approach would be the most realistic at the moment.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Okay. Now we're looking big, so we could look much more broadly and at the possibility of potentially looking at it through a gender lens. If we look at our 2017 budget, we can see that the outcomes of that have been very significant, because it wasn't just one specific chapter within the budget itself. The budget was looking at each detail in terms of a gender lens.

I want to raise this point. Jennifer Reynolds, from Women in Capital Markets, in Toronto, presented before the status of women committee. She mentioned a number of the same concerns that you have mentioned in your presentation: the just-in-time supports, the need for mentorships, the issue regarding financing financial literacy, and basic elements such as affordable housing and child care.

In terms of getting access to capital, would it be fair to say that one of your recommendations might be to recommend to the Government of Canada that we have specific capital set aside for women who want to get more deeply involved in entrepreneurship and also in international trade?

[Ainsley Butler]

Yes, absolutely. Any programs or activities that promote women participating in trade and facilitating that trade through access to finance in a public or private program are things that OWIT would definitely support.

When we mention the concept of gender analysis, it's really also taking inspiration from the budget. I think it's an important step forward. I didn't want to understate the importance of making that analysis.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you.

Mr. Westcott mentioned micro-businesses. So often, women are involved with micro-businesses that are so small that there's a lack of networking. When they are so small and selective, how do we do a better job of connecting women and making them more aware of the available resources and the opportunities in trade?

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

It will have to be a quick answer.

[Ainsley Butler]

Well, I think that there are a number of organizations that offer a lot of services to women, and reaching out to those women is really important. For example, the women we meet at our OWIT events are often very shy to come to us and tell us what they're doing.

If everyone has the common message to encourage women to access programs, to see what's out there, to not be shy to come to networking events, to volunteer, and to offer their time and their expertise, it doesn't really matter if it's a micro-business or a large business. That experience is highly valuable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

The time is up.

Marcela, I think you wanted to have a quick comment, but I have a question for you in regard to what Ms. Butler said.

We have a development group, the Export Development Corporation. Would you suggest they should be reaching beyond, getting into the communities, and finding women who have products that have potential for export and mentoring and helping them? Is that what you're saying? Are you saying to reach in there and find out, because they might be a little timid about jumping into that trade? Is that where your sense is?

[Marcela Mandeville]

Yes, absolutely. We see that all the time, that connecting with organizations like Export Development Corporation as well as BDC. We have very strong relationships with other service providers. When we have our micro-businesses, for example, a big job that we have is to connect them to the community. We create those introductions. We create those pathways for them to be able to explore what would work best for them.

That's a big value that our organizations work to achieve with the entrepreneurs. It's extremely important that they connect to each other and to those resources that are available through the government and other service providers, as well as connecting to mentors and sponsors who are going to get them the connections they need.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thanks very much.

That wraps up our time in this segment. Your recommendations are going to be in our report and we will be putting them forward to the government. Hopefully, we can get a little more traction on that.

We're going to suspend for a minute because we have some other witnesses ready for the next panel.

Again, thank you, witnesses. You'll see our report coming out for the end of the year.