International Trade Committee on Nov. 25th, 2024

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning. Thank you to all our witnesses for their presentations.

My first question is for Ms. Dickinson.

It will sound strange, but I think it's worth thinking about. You mentioned the famous tariffs that are likely to be implemented. We know the protectionist leanings of American administrations in general, including those of Mr. Trump.

You called for reinvestment in the domestic market. You said we needed to get away from our dependence on the American market alone, on the exports we send there and on partnerships with the U.S.

We know that women entrepreneurs have more difficulty exporting their products, for various reasons, as has been raised in this study. Of course, we wouldn't welcome a difficulty or a more difficult situation, but if these women entrepreneurs are already more focused on the domestic market, can't this difficulty ultimately become an opportunity, insofar as sooner or later everyone will have to turn more to this market? In this case, women would already be there.

Could this give them a new advantage, a kind of lead over the others, finally?

[Arlene Dickinson]

That's a very good question.

Again, in the sectors that I invest in, which are the food and health sectors, we greatly encourage the exploration and development of the domestic market for all of the businesses we invest in. We believe that if we can grow a company successfully here, then export markets become much more readily available. Those markets do not need to necessarily always be the United States. They can be other markets, like Asia, Europe and other areas.

Developing here, though, does require a lot of coordination among the provinces and changing some of the regulatory challenges that these businesses face, which are interprovincial challenges, some of the legislation that exists and some of the regulatory concerns that exist.

There needs to be an opening up of the ability to sell inside our own borders. Those things are real challenges, whether it's getting ingredient supplies or getting the type of resources you need and the type of market opportunities that help you for growth in our country. This is a bigger challenge sometimes than going into the U.S. is, so we need to make sure that, if we want people to grow domestically, which I believe is a real, good solution and we should do, then we need to look at the rules and the regulations that may be stopping them from growing domestically. It shouldn't be easier to export to the U.S. if we can't grow our own market here at home.

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

In this case, we know that there are certain policies or incentives currently in place in the United States. In the October 7 session devoted to this study, we talked about the introduction of a tax incentive to encourage larger companies to buy from companies run by women or whose owners are women. This already exists in the United States. Obviously, it's based on a certain quota.

Do you think this would be a good way to help women entrepreneurs? Should we be considering the same thing in Canada?

[Arlene Dickinson]

Yes, a hundred per cent. I think government procurement is a place to start, but incentivizing businesses to buy from women entrepreneurs and giving them a reward for doing so is one of the recommendations I made in my opening remarks. I think we can encourage large businesses to buy from women entrepreneur-led businesses by giving them some incentive to do so. I'm a big believer in not having quotas, but in some cases you need quotas.

You need to start to change the dialogue, and that happens only when you actually measure and make people accountable for doing the right thing. The way to do that is not necessarily just to slap their wrist when they don't, but to give them an incentive too. It's the carrot versus the stick approach, and I think the carrot in this case is going to work far more effectively than the stick would.

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

In the case of a possible incentive, it would be a form of harmonization with what happens in the United States. What's more, we now know that the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement will be renewed in 2026. I imagine that you and your colleagues are watching this very closely, and sometimes with some trepidation.

Do you think Canada should propose changes that would put more emphasis on women entrepreneurs who want to export? You're talking more about the domestic market, but do you think there's anything to be done there?

[Arlene Dickinson]

I don't know how to.... I'm trying to think of the right way to phrase this for the committee, so that you can actually do something with my feelings on this.

So many of the challenges that women entrepreneurs face are about the right access to the right people at the right time, and that's generally because many of them do not have connections to the business community in other markets, are not introduced properly or do not actually have the strength and the courage of conviction behind them to fund properly.

Yes, I think it's a challenge for women entrepreneurs in general. It becomes even more challenging when you ask them to start thinking about exports, because they do not have the types of connections or the types of resources they need, and they're not given the same opportunities.

This is the bias I was talking about earlier. This exists. We have to think about how we can eradicate these biases. We have to remember that women entrepreneurs are actually incredibly talented, that their businesses are proven to be more successful and that they have a lot of things going for them.

One of our witnesses today, Helen, was talking about the fact that many of them have many biases that they start with, and they have many challenges, whether it's taking care of their parents, taking care of their children or dealing with domestic violence. There are many things that we have to address in order to help women be able to export.

It's a very complex question that you asked, but I think it is something that can be tackled by opening up trade doors through trade commissions and other areas where we put a focus on helping support women entrepreneurs in other markets. I think there is a service that provides that today, but whether or not it's actually driving the right results is questionable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have six minutes, please.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being present with us today.

I was very much encouraged by your testimony, in particular on three aspects. One is addressing the very real and very perverse issues that are both historic and social in Canada, that largely suppress, limit or create barriers to women's participation. I heard most particularly the intersectionality and the issues relative to that intersectionality. If you're an indigenous woman, you're even more likely to see serious barriers, particularly those social barriers that are so severe, as we are dealing with the very real crisis of murdered and missing indigenous women. We can only imagine how difficult that reality is when trying to build a business, trying to do the hard work of raising a family and trying to stay alive. It's all incredibly challenging. I want to just make space for the immense strength it takes to do that work simultaneously with building up communities through economic development.

I understand that Ms. Dickinson will have to leave here shortly. For the sake of time and with great respect to the other witnesses, if you don't mind, I'll focus my attention just on Ms. Dickinson for the remainder of my questioning in this period. Then we'll turn to the other members for responses. I wanted to be clear about that.

Ms. Dickinson, you're a legendary entrepreneur in Canada. You have, for so many years, shown Canadians right across this country, most particularly women, that Canada can be a place where women succeed. Canada can be a place where entrepreneurship is possible. Canada can be a place where innovation can meet a global crisis that we're all dealing with, which is serious issues relative to the supply chain that we have in Canada. We have a very weak supply chain. When I was first elected a member of Parliament, we had a national emergency when the British Columbia corridor between Vancouver and the rest of Canada, particularly my province of Alberta, was cut off overnight. What an immense impact that had on the livelihoods of Albertans.

I hear that same pain when I hear Kim Oliver, for example, mention the very serious barriers related to northern export and northern import as a severe challenge. I can imagine.... As Albertans we dealt with it for a week, and you deal with it every single day. That's a serious pain and a serious crisis that I think is important to this discussion. I want to focus on the intersection of these barriers—the historic and very large social biases.

Ms. Dickinson, in 2022, APTN, also known as the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, launched a new show called Bears' Lair, in the style of Dragons' Den, which champions indigenous business owners. In each session, indigenous judges listen to pitches from 18 entrepreneurs, with $180,000 on the line.

Are you aware of that show?

[Arlene Dickinson]

I'm not, but I love the idea of it.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Well, I agree. It does, I think, attempt to address that intersectionality.

Through your testimony today, I hope that you provide us with some answers for clarity on how, from your personal experience working with indigenous entrepreneurs, we can better assist women and indigenous entrepreneurs in trying to address some of the historic and social outcomes you speak about.

You, as a matter of fact, invested in January in an indigenous-owned business known as Bannock Express, which appeared on Dragons' Den. Rachel Smith, the founder, accepted $80,000 for 20% of that business.

Can you talk about what working with an indigenous-owned business was like for you?

[Arlene Dickinson]

Rachel is a great example of.... Going back to Helen's and Kim's testimonies on this, I believe she has 12 children. She took and adopted some of her sister's family after her sister passed away and dealt with a whole bunch of family issues that came along with that. Then she started a company. She started a bannock company. It's just a testament to her resilience and her persistence that she was able to do that.

What we did for her was put her into our accelerator program without charging her for it, so that she could get the type of education and support she needs at this stage of her business. She wasn't prepared yet to scale it, but we were able to help her get connections with Sobeys as a retail grocery location, and we were able to give her the support she needs in terms of mentoring, coaching and programming to help her become a better entrepreneur.

We have seen many indigenous entrepreneurs on the show over the years. An increasing number of very strong entrepreneurs are coming out of the indigenous communities.

I personally want to support and help women across all areas, whether they're indigenous or from any of the other communities that exist in our country. I want to be able to help them. They need the focus. They need to have the type of support and programming.... They need to have the understanding, because they are living in different circumstances. They are dealing with different challenges, and we need to acknowledge that.

Simply, all women are not dealing with the same problems simply because we're women. We are dealing with different issues because of where we live, the challenges we've been brought up with and the communities that we reside in.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Perhaps, Ms. Dickinson, you can supply this in a written response, just because I think it's quite important. You mentioned something that's important to me, which is the expansion of Canada's value-added mechanisms, particularly in agriculture. I come from Alberta. I was a beef producer for a long time. As you know, much of our beef, just like every other agricultural good, gets exported, and the producers themselves are paying the same raw material inputs and aren't getting anything in return. I think it would be really valuable to know, from your expertise, how we can strengthen domestic supply to good, innovative products here in Canada, to support our innovative food and agricultural business. I know we don't have enough time today, but if you could supply that in a written response, that would be very wonderful.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Dickinson, we have Mr. Williams for five minutes and Ms. Fortier for five minutes. Hopefully we can get them in before you have to leave.

[Arlene Dickinson]

Yes, I'm good until 12:15. My meeting was actually just pushed, as I said, so I'm good for another 20 minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Six more rounds....

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for attending today. It's great. This is a great topic—to talk about entrepreneurship in general.

Ms. Dickinson, thank you for being here today. With the writing of a capital gains tax increase across the board, do you feel that this government has been particularly kind to entrepreneurs in Canada?

[Arlene Dickinson]

I don't think that the government has really understood entrepreneurs in Canada; that is how I might characterize it. I don't think it's trying to be unkind. I think it's just being.... I think it has a lack of understanding of how entrepreneurialism works and what entrepreneurs need from government support. You do see things like superclusters being put up and funding being made specifically for women entrepreneurs. However, the rules and the parameters that are put around it are actually anything but entrepreneurial.

I'd say it's more of a lack of understanding than potentially trying to be unkind.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

You've written that the government claims the capital gains tax is an investment in Canadian businesses. Is there any real evidence that these funds are going to entrepreneurs, or do you feel that it's just a cash grab?

[Arlene Dickinson]

I would say that until it determines and tells us how it's going to spend that money, it looks like a tax grab at this juncture. Until we understand exactly how those dollars are going to be deployed back into our economy in a meaningful way, with some accountability to it, it does feel like it's a mechanism to get more tax for the government coffers.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

I don't know if you've seen the recent charts that look at the GDP per capita in Canada. We, for the longest time, kept pace with the Americans, but in the last six years in particular, there's been a big, widening gap between the GDP per capita for Americans and the GDP per capita for Canadians. The average American worker now makes $22,000 more than the average Canadian worker. We've seen half a trillion dollars sucked down to the U.S. Are we ready for a new Trump government in the south, and is this government equipped to handle what has already been a massive gap, widening over the last nine years?

[Arlene Dickinson]

I've been very vocal about the fact that we need a strategy for the future that is Canada's strategy, not a reactive strategy. Of course, we have to be prepared for what is going to happen with our neighbours to the south. However, until we have our own plan and a strategy that actually focuses on taking advantage of our educated population, our skill sets, our natural resources, the things that we control—until we have a plan for the future that actually looks into the future and is not a short-term fix—we will be very subject to what happens in the U.S. having huge implications for our economy. I don't think we're ready, because I don't believe that Canada has a plan and a strategy for the future.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

It's very concerning, because the first time this started to happen was after 2016, and now the government is here again, looking down the barrel of another Trump presidency. We saw this gap widen.

Do you feel that if we don't have a plan, as you stated, under this current government we're just going to see that gap widening?

[Arlene Dickinson]

I think it is the responsibility of any government, whether it is this current government or if there is a new government and a new leadership in place, to have a plan. This is how business works. Business has a plan. It is not trying to please everybody. It is trying to stay focused, clear and level-headed about what it's trying to accomplish. Again, I don't see a plan for our nation. I don't see a strategy for how we're going to win using our own resources to do so, and I see us being too reactive.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

You're a champion for venture capital, and I love that. You talked about scaling as well. We do need to see scale in business in Canada. Americans generate $200 billion in venture capital a year. The Canadians generate only $6 billion, according to the last numbers. Particularly for women-led businesses, it's less than 2% of that venture capital. How do we fix that problem to generate more venture capital and make sure we have more funds that allow investors to take risks in Canadian businesses and grow and scale those Canadian businesses?

[Arlene Dickinson]

Again, I think there need to be better tax incentives to encourage investment, whether it's in VC funding or whether it's in angel funding. I think there need to be better incentives.

I can tell you that I'm well known. I am known because of a television show, and I'm known because I'm an entrepreneur. When I raised my first fund, it was one of the most difficult things I've ever done, because I was a woman.

Raising capital in the VC environment is not easy. I think that every woman who has testified today can tell you that it's difficult to find capital, no matter where you are. If I struggle to raise capital with my experience and background, you can only imagine how hard it is for anyone else in the VC environment. There are so many rules and regulations put around government and public funding that go into the venture capital ecosystem that it becomes very difficult to access and deliver the value that you want to deliver as a venture capitalist.

The VC community is struggling in Canada right now. It's struggling to find private business that will put money into the VC ecosystem. There is far too much reliance on government funding for our VC ecosystem, so, if that's the case, you have to ask yourself how we can encourage private enterprise to invest in VC. That will come only with the right incentives.