International Trade Committee on Nov. 20th, 2024

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Lastly—

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

You have 30 seconds left.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

How have rural and remote indigenous communities in Alberta done in their recovery since COVID-19?

[Brenda Holder]

There is a really mixed bag. I know there are certain businesses that have worked very hard and recovered well. The story is not the same across the entire province. We are gearing up to do better and Indigenous Tourism Alberta is offering all the support we can and really trying to ensure that indigenous tourism thrives in this province.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We go now to Mr. Arya for six minutes.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I welcome Ms. Isabelle from Startup Canada.

I have to recognize that a majority of the board members of Startup Canada are women. I think, including the team, the majority of them are women. It's good to know that. I know that you are not women-focused only, but it still is good to see that a majority of the board members and the management team are women.

Before my question, I just want to mention that, today, 27% of the board positions across Canada are held by women—27%. That is up from 11% in 2014. In fact, among the TSX-listed companies, 30% of the board positions are held by women. It did not happen just like that. We did pass a bill in 2016, Bill C-25, where we asked the publicly listed organizations to mention their diversity policies in their annual statements to the stakeholders. I remember that I had to fight to get the definition of “diversity”. The bill did not mention it. Even now, the legislation does not mention the definition of “diversity”, but I think I compromised when the regulation identified that diversity includes women, indigenous people, visible minorities and people with disabilities.

Though 30% of the TSX-listed companies have women on the board, only 10% of the overall number of board members, including men and women, are visible minorities, and only 1%, including men and women, of all the board members are indigenous people. When you look at the 30% who are women and dig deeper.... We don't have the statistics for this, but I'm sure that the percentage of women belonging to visible minorities and indigenous people will be less than 1%, or a maximum of 1%. It may be 2% if you want to be very generous. There are still a lot of things that need to be done, and that is where we are going.

Ms. Isabelle, I have a couple of questions for you.

I have a small objection to one thing in your speech. Again, you come before the committee like many witnesses, saying, “We need more funds. We need more funds.” That is like a broken record, and it's in spite of the government's providing a record amount of funds to various programs for women entrepreneurship and women in business. In fact, part of your statement also indicated that the problem is not with the amount of funding that is made available. Forget the cuts that some of the political parties are proposing. The problem is not with the amount of funding that is available, because in part of your statement you also said that 56% of the women founders did not know that there were programs. The problem is not with the funds; it is with the knowledge, the education.

You also mentioned that they have problems with exporting. Let's talk about exports. Before joining politics, I was part of a small company, an export-oriented company. I know that part of your funding comes from EDC, if I'm not wrong. You should know that EDC has programs for small businesses, both women-owned and not. If they get the contract, I think 70% of that is getting funded by EDC. There are funds available. EDC has hundreds of millions of dollars available to fund exports. It is the education that is required for women entrepreneurs to take advantage of the funding that is available.

Now we come to my question. You mentioned helping women entrepreneurs in different sectors, different segments of the economy. Maybe I missed it, but you didn't mention the manufacturing sector. In general, the knowledge-based sector was very small, if I'm not wrong. Am I right?

[Kayla Isabelle]

The knowledge-based sector is actually quite high in our programming.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Okay. What in the knowledge-based sector is high, and what percentage of women are in these knowledge-based industries?

[Kayla Isabelle]

It depends on the program that we engage, whether it's our startup women program or our startup global program.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

I'm sorry. I was not talking about the program that the women entrepreneurs are accessing. My question is about how, in the knowledge-based sector itself, outside of the programs that you run, there are very few women in manufacturing. It's increasing, but there's still a small percentage of women in knowledge-based industries.

You know the various funding programs that are available from the government, like IRAP and SR and ED. My specific question to you is this: Would it be good if we carved out a portion of those existing funding programs and directed a percentage towards companies managed by or owned by women?

[Kayla Isabelle]

There are two parts to that. I appreciate the challenge of the testimony in that there is a tremendous amount of funding available. I completely agree with you, but I think a lot of it is either left on the table or, in the moment, doesn't go to a woman founder; it ends up perpetuating the cycle by going to a male-led business.

Targeting specific industries absolutely makes sense. Where there could be some opportunities is looking at that intersection of identity.... In the manufacturing space, there are probably programs and organizations that have that niche subject matter expertise. I can't think of a lot of women's support organizations within my network that also have that expertise.

If there's a way, not necessarily to build more funding or look at building something net new, but to leverage collaboration to bring both of those characters into one program or explore this with a pilot, that is the model moving forward, instead of building too many net new programs across all of these intersections.

There is such a tremendous amount of programming out there that I hesitate to add too much more.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We'll move on to Mr. Savard-Tremblay for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to both of our witnesses.

My first question is for Mrs. Isabelle.

In fact, I'm going to ask you the same question I asked our first two witnesses a little earlier in the first hour of this meeting. I think it will be all the more interesting given that your organization helps start-ups.

Do you think there are ways the Indian Act hampers start-ups in what are unfortunately called “reserves”?

In the first half of the meeting, both witnesses said yes. In your work with start-ups, would you say you're noticing the same thing?

On a day-to-day basis, when you work with indigenous businesses, how do you deal with these obstacles? What are your tactics?

[Kayla Isabelle]

That's a great question. Thank you for posing it.

Within our programs, 4% of our support goes to indigenous founders. We always partner with indigenous-led organizations. We have no indigenous-specific programming at Startup Canada. We will partner with indigenous podcasters. We'll partner with folks like Magnolia at NACCA. That's our approach to ensure that their programs are integrated into Startup Canada's initiatives, and if there's something that's beneficial for their community, they also get that access.

There are a lot of barriers. Magnolia mentioned before in her testimony trust building in showcasing a diverse community of indigenous founders. We have some great success stories that I can think of, like Jenn from Cheekbone Beauty. We can look at Bobbie Racette, who is an incredible tech entrepreneur who has raised the largest amount of any indigenous founder in Canada.

We have these great champions whose businesses are the next ones we really need to profile. I think there's a beautiful opportunity for partnership with indigenous-led entities and folks who are supporting every type of entrepreneur. Tell those stories from a wider podium so that more indigenous entrepreneurs are inspired by that more varied community of indigenous founders who are really scaling as well as speaking to the global topic.

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

From what you're saying, then, indigenous start-ups represent a tiny minority of your clientele.

Why aren't there more of them? Why aren't they better represented?

In fact, when we think of start-ups, we mostly visualize young people, younger generations. Are there any young indigenous entrepreneurs?

What would it take for them to dare to become entrepreneurs?

[Kayla Isabelle]

Thank you for that question.

In terms of why there's not more representation, it takes a lot longer to develop relationships with indigenous communities than it has historically with other partners we have. That is intentional. That needs to be a part of the process. We need to build that trust.

For example, Startup Canada did a national tour this year. We also did one last year, and it intentionally began in Whitehorse. There are incredible indigenous communities in the north. It took us two years to enter into some of those conversations, build trust on the programming and have them understand our perspective and where we were coming from, and then we could really enter into a partnership.

There's also no funding for those types of relationship-building activities, nor do I necessarily think there should be, but it needs to take a cultivated and very thoughtful approach to build these relationships.

For indigenous youth, I've seen some great announcements funded through the private sector supporting indigenous communities. The Mastercard Foundation made an announcement this week at the Indigenous Prosperity Forum. I believe it announced a program to support 2,000 indigenous youth and equip them with both mentors and programming. There are those types of supports.

Again, it comes to the intersection of larger, indigenous-led programming across the country and trying to develop partnerships to inspire that next generation and make sure that indigenous youth are included in that.

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

During the first hour of the meeting, we heard about some deceitful things happening, of businesses not actually being indigenous. They might have been once, but they aren't anymore. That said, they continue to benefit from assistance programs.

Have you heard of this? Have you witnessed this kind of thing?

[Kayla Isabelle]

I haven't witnessed it personally, but I obviously trust the comments made by my colleagues.

We have seen this with women founders, though—women in leadership positions who are quickly taken out of those leadership positions as they apply for funding. I think this goes to the question of not just checking boxes. We have to look very thoroughly at, and be deeply accountable to, ensuring we have representation from diverse communities.

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

I'd imagine there aren't many among your members, given that you mainly represent start-ups, whereas businesses generally need to have several years of experience before they start receiving government contracts.

Do you know of any of these businesses managing to find their way into government agencies to win contracts?

[Kayla Isabelle]

Nobody comes to mind at the moment.

Government procurement always seems like this beautiful opportunity. It's a carrot that I often feel is dangled at many early-stage founders, but government is not going to partner with a very early-stage company. We receive quite a few partner testimonies about this.

I can think of the gay and lesbian chamber of commerce. They do a great job bridging some of their diverse founders and ensuring direct access to the folks who have that procurement vehicle in government.

Many of our companies have zero to nine employees. They're under a million dollars in revenue. Some of them are too much in their infancy. The idea is, how do we make those connections? We do this through our start-up gov program, so they at least know who to call once they're in that space and at that stage. However, the process itself—as we hear time and again—is very laborious and difficult. Founders are working on building their businesses. They don't necessarily want to be doing all the paperwork.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Desjarlais, go ahead for six minutes, please.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

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

It's one of the greatest barriers we have in our country. The low level of women's representation on senior executive boards was mentioned by my colleague Mr. Arya. There has been, of course, movement on this. Canada should be a leader in this space, though. It's not going fast enough. You spoke about international access. I think that's a very important issue. I'd like to speak to the members of the committee, and spend some time on that issue, after I spend some time speaking about the importance of indigenous tourism with Ms. Holder.

Ms. Holder, I have a bio of you here. I'm not certain if we've ever met before, to be very frank, but I see that you're a descendant of former Iroquois chief Michel Kwarkwante. I am also a descendant of Michel Kwarkwante. It's likely we're related somewhere, deep down that line from the late 1800s. It's good to meet a cousin from a long time away.

You are the vice-chair of the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada, and its Alberta director. One of the largest issues we're hearing about when it comes to indigenous tourism is the barrier to capital. We talked about that capital barrier. There's a consequence to not accessing capital, which is that indigenous women are often taking their own savings, which they generated, as source revenue to build those companies. That's huge. We admire them for that. I'm sure you know exactly what it feels like to build up a company. However, there's a critical moment in there: How do you commercialize it? When I talk to people right across Alberta, particularly women who want to get involved in indigenous tourism, this is a barrier. They do everything right. They literally build this beautiful site, just as you have. Then they don't know what to do after that. They have the stories. They have the pride. They have everything, but they don't have the clients. They don't know how to bridge that gap.

What could you recommend as a program or service that supports this work? What do you recommend these women do in this circumstance?

[Brenda Holder]

That is a fantastic question and I appreciate your asking that. It is such a delight to meet you. Thank you, cousin.

This is most certainly a very difficult question to answer because there are so many nuances involved in it. If I kind of take a step back and think about my own journey as an indigenous woman within the tourism industry, I had probably one of the most difficult journeys of my entire life in trying to get funding. I worked very hard to do all the right things. I ended up having some support from what was back then called Aboriginal Business Canada. It was a very small amount of money. They offered, I believe, 70% of the grant money and I had to provide 30%. In order to do that, I was expected to get a loan from the bank.

I was refused seven times, even with an absolutely outstanding business plan that was written and provided by Aboriginal Business Canada at the time. They found somebody who could do a good business plan for me. I really was not very high risk, but I really had to work hard to try to establish myself as a credible person who was going to be able to carry this out.

Over time, it feels like you're just being chipped away at and chipped away at. You go through all of these hard things and then you're faced with this absolute monster called “marketing”. As an aboriginal or indigenous woman, that is a word that we just simply, truly don't understand in terms of how we are to procure all of these clients, especially overseas, when we're told, “Oh my God, Germany is going to fall all over itself for you.” It certainly doesn't happen.

I kind of feel that the ball has really been dropped, not only with the financial aspect of it, but also with all of the other supports that we require to educate ourselves enough to be able to understand how to move forward in a business.

One of the things we're working on with Indigenous Tourism Alberta is something called the “six senses” program, which is absolutely magical. It is providing that support for entrepreneurs, along with some excellent mentors who've been there and done that.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Among what you mentioned today, the marketing challenge in particular is the biggest one. I hear that all the time, too. I hear it, whether it's in relation to Germans, Europeans, folks from the United States or from Asia. They all want to see what we have to offer. They all want access to this unique, authentic experience and the ability to do that in a really good way.

I think you've given us a very important answer today, which is this challenge about capital access and marketing. The capital access portion is shocking to hear. You, someone of very high credibility with a business plan, were rejected seven times. That's a significant barrier.

I don't have enough time, but in the next round we'll hopefully have a chance to delve deeper into that.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We'll go on to Mrs. Gray for five minutes, please.