Yes, absolutely. From my perspective, I have great optimism that those numbers can go up. I think there are a couple of different things that we need to do.
I have a lot of answers to this question. I'll focus on one.
I think we need to look beyond gender. We need to realize that when we look at equity, equality and advancing those topics, we can't look at one silo or one issue in a vacuum. We have the women entrepreneurship strategy. We have the Black entrepreneurship program and the 2SLGBTQI+ entrepreneurship program. We really need to start looking at underserved and equity-deserving groups and developing programs and sustainable long-term funding for advancing equity and equality en masse for all of those groups.
I started CanWCC in 2018. Two years later, we were hit by COVID. It felt so false to me to continue to be talking about gender equity and equality when it wasn't just women. Oh, women were certainly pounded pretty hard during COVID, but so many equity-seeking groups were suffering.