International Trade Committee on Oct. 30th, 2024

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Do I have a little time left, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

You have two minutes.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

The results of the survey you published include other interesting figures on the youngest women farmers, those aged 18 to 34. According to 94% of respondents in this age group, the main challenge is finding a balance between domestic and professional duties. The work-life balance is also a significant challenge, according to 92% of them. Those are the biggest challenges for them.

The percentages are high for every age group, but they're a little higher for younger people. How do you explain that?

[Valérie Fortier]

There is more of an onus on women to prove that they are able to take over the business, whether it's family owned or owned by non-relatives. This is not the case for men. The figure is much lower for them because they don't have as much need to prove that they are ready to take over or that they are entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs, however, have to do a lot more to prove that they are able to run the business and that they have the physical capacity to do the manual tasks.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

You say that women have to prove themselves more. Is that simply due to a prevailing bias within the farming community, or is it more deep-seated than that?

[Valérie Fortier]

I would say that upbringing plays a big part in it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Desjarlais for six minutes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank very much, Madam Chair.

Ms. Bradbury, I understand that you haven't been able to complete your opening remarks. I yield my time to you, should you wish to use that time to complete your important testimony.

[Nathalie Bradbury]

Thank you so much.

I guess I should first start by talking about challenges along the way. There are some really excellent stories of successful women exporters, but first I'll talk about the challenges.

One challenge is knowledge about exporting. As I mentioned above, exporting and importing is a complicated business. Many of our members and partners have mentioned that businesswomen are not aware of the government programs available to them. We would recommend more efforts at coordination with trade associations, including OWIT. That would help to reach more companies about the opportunities and benefits of working with the TCS, about benefiting from CanExport, about promoting trade missions, and about the EDC, etc. We stand ready to be a partner with the government in promoting these opportunities.

Also, there are misconceptions and bias, and there are systemic barriers. One of our businesswomen told us a great analogy. Men's football has protective equipment to protect the players: helmets, shoulder pads, etc. To open up football to women, using men's safety equipment with no modifications and receiving the same level of safety is short-sighted. Women need systems that fit their needs in order to reach their desired outcomes. A lot of the programs and services—whether those are in banking or high tech, when you think of AI as the current problem, and when you're looking at government programs—prevent women from fully participating in international trade. If women want to go on trade missions but in sectors that are underserved by women, you're going to have fewer women going on these trade missions. Those are some examples.

For small businesses and ventures in the early stages of export, CanExport was mentioned as being helpful. However, this year it's so far behind in its processing that it's hard to plan marketing campaigns. It's still processing applications submitted until May 3. If you can backdate expenses, that's great, but are you going to take on the expenses when you don't even know whether you're going to be approved? It should hasten the approvals process—that would be a recommendation—by issuing denials earlier or creating mini rounds of approvals, for example. Do them month by month, tranche by tranche.

Another thing is better networking. Many businesswomen have told us that they need better networking. In other words, it needs to be more specialized by market or by industry sector. This networking also needs to include trade professionals. OWIT-Ottawa and OWIT-Toronto are ready to assist with more networking.

We've also brought up big business; somebody mentioned that. The trade team Canada approach with other countries.... It's actually—I think it's Germany and France—the business associations, like the French business association in Hong Kong when I was living there. It was they that organized the business delegations; it wasn't the federal government. This could be an innovative approach that could form part of their responsible business conduct strategy. We need to be shifting from a competition mindset to a collaboration and partnership mindset. Just as in the U.S., we all have to be in it together. It really has to be a collaboration. Should this become standard practice, this would help up-and-coming Canadian businesses—such as women-owned businesses and those of underserved groups—to succeed on their growth journeys and also to benefit from the experience and knowledge of larger, successful Canadian businesses.

If I have time, I'd like to mention one interesting example. A friend of ours was a manager for the Asia-Pacific at a former Ottawa company called Newbridge, and one of his clients in Indonesia was having problems. He said, “Look, I have my best Canadian engineer. I'm going to bring my best Canadian engineer to solve this problem.” He brought along a woman engineer. He said, “Look, this person can solve this problem quickly.” He understood that by bringing the right person, a woman but an engineer, she would solve the problem for them. There is another example in Ecuador that I could give about another company, but I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much. I think that speaks to the immense skill and ability. What struck me in your testimony were a couple of things, and I think I'd like to reiterate them to you so that I can practice my active listening and hopefully the active listening of our committee to what are really important recommendations that you've made.

One is relating to the fact that women's systems are needed. Many of the systems.... You used a very good example. I was on the veterans affairs committee before, and women veterans came forward and said, “Why is it that we are wearing men's military equipment when it's about our safety?” This was a serious issue that really struck me. You're saying the same thing when it comes to equipping women for business, making sure that they're equipped with the tools that they need, not just inheriting the tools that have been largely developed by men through systems that are largely and predominantly developed and still occupied by men.

You spoke about speed as a process that's important to ensuring the success of women entrepreneurs. For women who are participating in these systems, there could be less...the same regulations but quicker systems. I can hear that.

There's the networking piece. Women are often disenfranchised from being able to access vast professional networks that often exist and are probably multinational as well. You, yourself, are quite an exception. I read your biography. You're a good example and role model for many women across our country in terms of your immense contribution to the international space.

The other one was co-operation over competition. I think this strikes a deep chord with many groups that are marginalized in the economy. We can, in fact, do better work when we work together. That work can be multiplied, and that investment can also be multiplied, but even better, the return to Canadians can be multiplied.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you, Mr. Desjarlais.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much for your testimony today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Next we have MP Gray for five minutes, please.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to all of the witnesses for being here today.

My first questions are for Nancy Wilson. I was listening intently to your opening statement and the challenges that your women entrepreneur members are facing. You went into describing higher fees, unfavourable exchange rates and higher credit card fees. All of these really add to the expenses of small businesses.

Even for myself, when I had a business, we didn't use a customs broker, because we weren't big enough to do that, so the courier companies were the broker. We would put things on our credit card, so you get hit on that side. On the other side, I remember being very shocked looking at the credit card processing fees that we also had because we were a small business.

We know that the Liberal Party of Canada's economic adviser to the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, sits on the board of Stripe. Stripe have said they will not be honouring the credit card fee reduction that will be happening here in Canada.

You represent businesswomen, many of whom are running small businesses. Do you believe that all payment processors should be passing on the savings to businesses?

[Nancy Wilson]

I hadn't heard that, and I certainly do. I won't speak about Stripe in particular, but I think that doing business by credit card is ubiquitous nowadays. Any kind of e-commerce almost has to be done by credit card. The fees for small businesses absolutely have to be minimized, because they're essentially a tax on small business and an entry fee. They're certainly a barrier.

I'm an accountant, so I know a lot about foreign exchange fees and all of those other credit card fees. When we talk about lowering barriers to international trade, lowering barriers to entry, all these fees add up. It's death by a million cuts.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you so much for that. I wanted to move on to something else. We've heard a fair amount of testimony at a variety of committees with respect to the capital gains tax. I wanted to ask you, with the capital gains tax increase by the Liberal government, will this make it easier or more difficult for women entrepreneurs to access capital?

[Nancy Wilson]

I'm not sure if it will have a significant impact. In terms of accessing capital, in terms of, let's say, venture capital, women are struggling to get more than 4%—let's say 5% in a good year. The idea that new legislation is going to make it more difficult.... There are so many other systemic barriers that need to be overcome before we take into account capital gains tax as a significant factor.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you.

[Nancy Wilson]

So many of my members are self-employed that it's just not a huge factor.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you very much.

I want to move on to Valérie Fortier, please.

I have a similar question for you. I'm interested in the impact of the government's capital gains tax on family farms. We know that the president of the Wheat Growers Association told the finance committee that the Liberals' capital gains tax hike “inadvertently targets farmers who produce food to meet domestic and global demand” as “small businesses that are family run”.

Would you agree with these comments?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Please be brief.

[Valérie Fortier]

Yes, given the increase in taxes from year to year, it is obvious that the tax burden on municipalities is increasingly switching over to producers. The revenues we make from the crops we grow on our land are not going up, but they always want more from us. Taxes are being increased in relation to our revenues, but we can't increase the price of our products, such as milk, vegetables or grains. Grain prices have been dropping for a number of years. In terms of milk prices, we've lost market share as a result of trade agreements. It's similar for pork. Incomes are getting lower and lower—

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Ms. Fortier. I apologize for cutting you off. It seems like there's a lot of interest and a lot of questions and not enough time.

Mr. Sidhu, please go ahead.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being with us here today for this very important study.

As we know, small businesses are the backbone of our economy, and our government wants to make sure we continue to stand with small businesses. That's why we lowered the small business tax rate from 11% to 9%.

Just a few weeks ago, since we're talking about credit card fees, we signed a deal with Visa and Mastercard to lower those by 27% to help small businesses with their operating expenses. We want to ensure that we continue standing with small businesses.

To the witnesses here, first I want to turn to Ms. Wilson.

Have you been part of the government's women entrepreneurship strategy, and can you tell me how this strategy has supported your members?

[Nancy Wilson]

Yes, we have been part of the strategy. We've been involved in the women entrepreneurship knowledge hub. We've worked with them over the years. They've been hugely influential.

We also received an ecosystem fund grant. We developed a program that's currently going on right now, in pilot phase, whereby we use AI-enabled simulation software to enable women who are looking for venture capital financing for their business to practise their pitch and the question and answer period following a pitch to really hone their skills.

The WES has been hugely influential in helping us to help our members. We're very hopeful that we can continue to access funding to build those programs, as well as to hopefully access funding to directly support our members as entrepreneurs.