International Trade Committee on Oct. 30th, 2024

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being present with us today in this important study.

I wasn't present at the last two meetings on this topic, so I am pleased to know that Ms. Nakamura mentioned some of the intersectional approaches that are necessary for addressing this work in its full potential.

Black and indigenous women, in particular women of colour, face extraordinary barriers. I welcomed your testimony today, and your opening remarks around some of the work to see those persons included in your work more recently, with your gathering on National Indigenous Peoples Day.

I'm curious to know, of course, how the challenges of women of colour are being met by organizations through this fund. I've actually had an opportunity, when I was given notice about this fund, to canvass some women businesses in Edmonton and Alberta. To be very frank, very few had heard about it. We have a lot of indigenous and Black women-owned businesses who've never heard at all about the women entrepreneurship fund. It seems like—maybe this is a bias coming from Western Canada—this is really focused in many ways in particular urban areas and hasn't really penetrated the areas outside of urban centres, particularly for women businesses that are in the far north or in rural areas.

Ms. Nakamura, I was pleased to hear you make a comment about a representative from the Yukon. I just wanted to offer that up at the very outset of this. I want to speak for the first bit of our discussion today on the women entrepreneurship strategy in its totality.

Some of this was asked by my colleague, Ms. Fortier, but to put it simply, is the program enough to address the gender imbalance in Canadian businesses, in particular as it relates to businesses owned by Black or indigenous people or people of colour?

Ms. Nakamura, please.

[Christine Nakamura]

Yes, I wanted to mention that despite the pandemic, since the WES funding was launched, the number of majority women-owned companies has increased to 18.4% from 15.6% in 2017. I think that the WES funding has had some impact, with various groups being funded to do activities that they would normally not have been able to do.

It definitely is making a difference, despite the fact that there were companies that went bankrupt or declined during the COVID period. Of the ones that scaled, I know of many companies that actually took off during the pandemic because of the nature of their business.

In fact, 2.8% doesn't seem like a whole lot, but that's still a significant increase to the number of women pre pandemic.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Just to square the circle on that question, is it enough support, or should there be an allocation of further money?

[Christine Nakamura]

Absolutely.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Simply put, yes.

[Christine Nakamura]

That's why, in my closing statement, as I said, we need to continue with this. This is just a small sampling that I'm providing from our project, but I'd like to hear from all of the others.

The women entrepreneurship knowledge hub, part of the Diversity Institute at TMU, has all the data. They've been collecting data from all the recipients of WES funding. I think it's important to look at those and research those to see what the value add is. If we do stop the funding, all of the work that's been done over the last five years with the WES funding is going to go to by the wayside, so we have to continue with it.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Of course.

I have another question here. I know we're running short on time, Madam Chair, but I think I can squeeze this in.

In recent years, the Canadian trade agreements, including CUSMA, the Canada-Ukraine agreement, the CPTPP and the CETA agreement, have all included gender-related provisions. What sort of impact, if any, have you seen from these provisions? Can they be strengthened?

[Christine Nakamura]

Sonya, do you want to go first?

[Sonya Shorey]

I'm going to invite you to respond, because it is so specific to trade agreements.

I do have a comment on the previous question.

[Christine Nakamura]

Okay. I just want to say that while the provisions that I believe are in there, including in the CPTPP, are not binding, I think that most economies are starting to embrace the fact that we have to gender mainstream.

As I said, I'm leading a mission to Taiwan and Vietnam in three weeks. Vietnam has really taken off. They're a signatory to the CPTPP, and they are looking at different ways of enhancing women entrepreneurs in their country as well. Taiwan is not a member of the CPTPP, but Taiwan is probably the most inclusive economy in the Indo-Pacific. From the political level to the business level, there are women leaders everywhere. That's the reason I'm leading a trade mission there.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much.

I don't think I have enough time for another question, but perhaps, Ms. Shorey, you could speak to that first question.

[Sonya Shorey]

Excellent. I just want to say that continued investment and collaboration are absolutely critical. We have made meaningful progress. It is too slow, and it is not enough, and without sustained effort, collaboration, investment and intention, particularly for women from marginalized communities.... As I shared in my opening remarks, we look at women from all identities and all intersections of identity.

One of the lessons learned from those who have lived experience is to meet women founders from marginalized communities where they are at. That takes funds to get out into the communities, to identify pockets of women founders who have that potential, and to do that in a way that's respectful of their culture and their background and where they feel safe.

That's something that we have taken steps to do. In many cases, the investment does not exist to do that. Everyone is putting all of the resources, passion and heart that we have in this country—those who are invested in this goal—into doing this together, but it takes support to do it systemically, to scale it and to make the kind of impact and difference that we all strive to.

Some of the organizations we've collaborated with include Adaawe Indigenous Business Hub here in the capital, Pow Wow Pitch and Chnge Mker, which serves Black entrepreneurs. There are so many diverse communities where founders feel safe. It's about getting out into those communities, pulling them in and giving them a sense of belonging, and without intention and funds to do that, it's impossible, so thank you for all of the investment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you, Ms. Shorey.

We're moving on to Mr. Baldinelli for five minutes, please.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for your excellent presentations today.

I'm going to first go to Ms. Nakamura.

Thank you for your presentation and your suggestions and recommendations.

In the first one, I didn't get a chance to get it all written down, but you talked about weaving together a suite of programs to assist women founder businesses. I was wondering if you could expand on that. Is it the initial trade missions, or is there something else, like the follow-up?

That's a fantastic job in doing those trade missions. You talked about $21 million in deals, but what further can be done? Once those deals have been started, who assists with the regulatory and policy issues that those women founder businesses then, once they're on the ground, have to take on and be challenged with?

[Christine Nakamura]

I'm going to start by saying, pre-mission, all of the women have to apply and compete to get on our trade missions, because we cover their expenses to go on the trade mission. It's a Canada-wide competition to apply for. We set up a jury to select the companies that we think will align with the commercial demands of the destination economy.

These women will get together. We select them several months before we leave. We provide them pre-mission training. We created a template, because we heard from those 300 women, during our round tables, about the needs and how to convince them to go abroad and export. We provide pre-mission training, market access training, market intelligence training, and business and cultural protocols. We will do some research and provide their competitors in-market, for example.

All of these things that we do in preparation are partly to get them studying too, because the onus is also on them to better prepare themselves; unless you're market-ready, you're not going to do anything when you get over there.

We bring in the diplomats and the trade commissioner service. We work very closely with the trade commissioner service in Canada, as well as in the missions abroad, to give them briefings on what to expect, and then we hire B2B service providers to interview the women and find out exactly what it is that they want to do in the market. Then they go on and do their Rolodex calls to make sure that the B2Bs are going to amount to something or that they have good potential.

The training is absolutely necessary, and for when they come back, we've set up a Slack network of all these women. They chatter on it and train each other on regulatory problems: “Somebody has faced this,” or “Don't get into this trouble, because we ran into this problem.” We have a network on Slack, on which all of the women whom we've taken abroad communicate with and train each other, so that camaraderie is also invaluable to what has come out. It's not just the business partners in-market; it's among themselves, because they would never have met each other unless they had gone on the trade mission and spent a week together studying each other and learning about each other's businesses and ways to help each other.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Ms. Shorey, you talked about the difficulties with regard to venture capital for women founder businesses. How can the federal government assist women-led and -owned businesses and entrepreneurs to commercialize their products and gain proper market access?

[Sonya Shorey]

I'm very grateful for that question.

At Invest Ottawa, we have worked carefully and closely with a host of different women founders from different walks of life to better understand their needs, the types of technologies and products they are developing, and what type of commercialization requirements they have. In certain cases, there are very unique capabilities, such as those that exist at Area X.O for hardware-based or smart mobility-oriented technologies, for breaking down those barriers, creating access to a host of different types of facilities and experts and access to capital, including programs such as SheBoot that enable the specific training to be investment-ready.

There are so many women founders who have incredible innovations, and they don't know how to scale; they don't know how to commercialize. Here in the capital, we're very proud that we have come together as a community with a host of different organizations, including our post-secondaries and all three levels of government, to tackle this challenge in a very collaborative way. We do a call every year to other communities across Canada, and we look to share our lessons learned to determine how every community can harness specific resources, capabilities and experts with intention in their community. It's a choice.

With the funding that is going into a host of different organizations, creating requirements for a particular percentage and for particular goals and target outcomes to be addressed for women founders and marginalized founders would go a very long way. Again, that takes investment so that you can bring in the right expertise to work with women founders in a way that's conducive to the way they learn, the way they commercialize, the way they export. The access is different.

We talked earlier about tax policy and open banking. The more avenues we have available to support women.... Often they will not even look to go and specifically get the type of investment that would come from a VC, because they're looking to see how much equity they can keep or how they can do it with that bootstrapped capital.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'm sorry to interrupt you, Ms. Shorey. Thank you. We have lots of questions yet.

We have Mr. Arya for five minutes, please.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Madam Chair, as a former member of Invest Ottawa, it's my pleasure to welcome Sonya Shorey to our committee. I was on the board of this economic development agency until I decided to enter politics.

Since we came to power in 2015 there's been a dramatic increase in the number of women in the top management positions in the Canadian corporate sector. It's not just that we shared the path with a gender-balanced cabinet; we also brought in Bill C-25, which asked the Canadian corporate sector, in their annual statements to stakeholders, to explicitly state their gender diversity policies. That, I think, stimulated the participation of more women in the corporate sector.

For example, today, 27% of the board members of the Canadian corporate sector are women, which is up from 11% in 2014. Today, 89% of the boards have at least one woman, compared to 49% in 2014. We have three or more women on 36% of boards, compared to 8% in 2014. In west Ottawa, I think, the majority—at least 50%—of the board members are women. I think in the number of employees at Invest Ottawa, women are in the majority, which is a good thing.

Ms. Shorey, I'll come back to you. I just have a quick question for Ms. Nakamura.

Ms. Nakamura, you said that women-owned businesses have gone up from 15.6% to 18.4%. Can you tell me what percentage of those are visible minorities or women from indigenous communities?

[Christine Nakamura]

I'm sorry. I don't have that data, but I wanted to answer back on the question of the visible minorities that participated in our trade missions—41% are women of colour on our trade missions.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

That's okay.

Listen, I remember a study back in 2014, when only 36% of the top management positions within the corporate sector were women, which was growing. Ideally, we are looking forward to growing to about 50%. Out of that 36%, though, only 1% of them were women from visible minorities.

Ms. Shorey, it's the same question. You deal with lots of women entrepreneurs, etc., and also women in board positions among the founders, among the senior executives. In your guesstimate, what percentage of them are women belonging to visible minorities or indigenous communities?

[Sonya Shorey]

Certainly I can speak to SheBoot, because every single founder completes a self-identification.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

SheBoot is a very specific program. I'm talking about the overall Ottawa picture of the sectors that Invest Ottawa deals in.

[Sonya Shorey]

For the overall Ottawa picture, it would be impossible for me to credibly give you a particular percentage. I can say to you that 50% of the founders we serve through our small business enterprise centre hail—in particular during the pandemic period—from backgrounds that they self-identified and from equity-seeking groups.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you.