Status of Women Committee on Oct. 8th, 2009

[Martin Green]

My only response is that because training is devolved to the provinces, we do have a requirement that they report on the impacts of those training programs, but we don't target specific groups at that point.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Perhaps Mr. Parisien could...

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I'm sorry, Madame Demers.

Ms. Hoeppner.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to thank all the witnesses for being here and for the hard work you do. I'm very impressed with the information you brought us. I'm very impressed with the level, not only of organization but of commitment and the programs and processes in place to help women in Canada. The numbers you have brought us definitely reinforce what we all know: women are not victims in this country. Women are rising to the place that they should be and they are taking their rightful place as leaders in this country, in every sector. I want to thank you for bringing that information.

There are two things I want to ask. To follow up with Ms. Demers, we had a witness here when we did a study on unemployment. She talked about the fact that in many construction fields, in many non-traditional roles that are primarily dominated by men, there are a large number of women who are providing support and administrative duties in offices. Even though we know that statistically men are actually performing those duties of building roads and infrastructure right now, how many women are employed in the construction field in a support role? Maybe they're not the actual tradespeople but they are in a support role. How would their jobs be affected?

[Christel Le Petit]

That is not a number we have on hand, but we could probably put it together and forward it to the committee at a later date.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I think it's important that we have a multi-dimensional look at the funds provided for infrastructure so we know the whole chain of jobs being created. I believe that women are being impacted, and I think it's important that we look at it. You said that women represent 47% of total employment while they accounted for only 21% of job losses from October 2008 to 2009. It's important that we link that together and see why that is.

I have a 15-year-old daughter in high school right now, who is looking at her future. She's making some pretty big decisions on what she's going to do later on. Is she going to take the university route or the trades route?

The provinces administer education and helping high school students look at the field of study they want to pursue. Can you tell me which provinces have a really good handle, or are taking a lead, on introducing non-traditional roles to our high school kids, and even our children? I think young girls and children have to begin to dream and imagine themselves in non-traditional roles before they grow up to pursue those non-traditional roles.

[Yvan Clermont]

We don't have this type of information. What we could provide, though, is information about the percentage of women in certain trades by province to see if there are any provincial differences. We don't have any meta information about the types of leading programs or anything of that sort that could be taking place in each of the provinces.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Would there be any information on the uptake of even programs that we're offering and where provinces are partnering with us?

[Martin Green]

There are. I don't have an exhaustive list, but actually over the last couple of days I've been looking at this. I have a 17-year-old and a 14-year-old daughter, for whom this is becoming a key question as well.

In looking at it, several provinces are doing that. Ontario has a new program that is targeted exactly at getting young women to enter the trades in non-traditional roles. I was looking through that on the website. I see Newfoundland and New Brunswick are doing that. I would be hesitant, for obvious reasons, to suggest which provinces are the leaders in that. But they all do that. Also, with respect to the LMDA and LMA moneys, we do an annual report on what they are doing to encourage that in various provinces.

You also have a number of private organizations, like the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologies. I was just at the WorldSkills event in Calgary, and they had a booth there. Actually, I was drawn to it because they had this electric guitar--one of these rock guitar things--and if you played it you won a T-shirt, but it was only for young girls. It was called Go Tech girl. They're focusing on young women across Canada in grades 7 to 11, basically to show them that there are very meaningful careers in the technology trades out there. It was actually very impressive. They're funded by a number of private sector organizations, and I believe our department used to provide some minor funding to them.

There are all sorts of activities like that going on. When I look at them, they all seem to be bubbling up in the last year or two, so there are obviously some sorts of economic drivers going on behind this. I think there's a societal acceptance and all those kinds of things happening.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Good. Do I have more time?

Just from what your response was, I think, too, for a lot of years there has obviously been a very big push for all of our young people to take the university route. It's only been in the last few years that we've said to our kids, listen, getting a trade is a good option. There are a lot of jobs. The money is good. It's a good, honourable thing to do. But I think we've been talking in that way with our young men. Maybe what we need to do is find ways, and hopefully there will be some leadership from the private sector even beyond what you mentioned, where the private sector will come forward. I imagine they already are seeing the need to do that. They need skilled workers. They need to look at where the pool is. There is a huge untapped pool with young women.

So I'm just wondering, are there any kinds of programs right now that you would be doing with the private sector, or just basically the apprenticeship ones and things that you're already doing?

[Martin Green]

Just before Éric speaks about it, there are a number of things we do. One of the things that you've mentioned, which is actually happening out there, is there's still a big question for men in the trades.There's still this whole issue out there that going to university is the thing to do. There's some sort of stigma, almost, about the trades, which is still an issue we're dealing with in terms of getting young men to go into the trades and to complete their education. That's probably even more pronounced for young women in that regard.

Éric can probably expand a little on the other.

[Éric Parisien]

Yes. There are 33 sector councils, and they vary in fields such as steel, child care, policing, textiles, manufacturing, and so on. Perhaps the four sector councils that have had a more significant look at these issues include mining and construction. The IT sector is absolutely dramatically serious about the dwindling number of women or girls entering college or university programs in science and technology, specifically technology, IT. Also, the automotive repair industry numbers have increased slightly over the years, but it's not significant.

The issue is one of demographics and economics. Those companies are looking at an aging workforce. They need highly skilled people, and like you said, you have to tap previously untapped labour pools.

Women need to go into mining more. The Mining Sector Council has developed a very significant and in-depth analysis of the physical demands of key occupations in their sector for two reasons: one, to avoid injuries on the job and have a workforce that can stay in the mining industry longer; the second one is to attract women into their occupations. Some very sophisticated mining operations in this country are actually done above ground, where the underground is done by machines and robots more than by human beings. So this becomes a better possibility for women.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

That's it, Candice. Thank you.

Irene Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for being here today and bringing all this expertise. I truly appreciate it.

I'll start with a question from the notes that were provided by our researchers, and I want to thank our analyst and researchers. As always, they've provided excellent support documents.

In these documents there's a section that talks about women in the corporate world. Essentially, despite the fact that more women are entering corporate office positions, only about 17% reach any level of management, and of those, only 6% have actually led companies. In terms of climbing the ladder, the higher the ladder the fewer women.

I wonder if Statistics Canada or anyone has tried to investigate that to determine that, and does it suggest that the glass ceiling still exists?

[Tracey Leesti, Assistant Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada]

I'm not aware of any studies myself that we have done looking at that. We can go back and take a closer look and perhaps get back to you on that, but I'm not aware of any off the top of my head.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Would that be instructive, to really get a picture in terms of that glass ceiling?

[Martin Green]

We don't have any specific studies either, but there is still a lot of attention on that, because obviously gaps still exist.

This is sort of anecdotal, but there's a project we've just finished with the University of Ottawa under the workplace skills initiative, a small project that actually seems to be yielding results. It's aimed at immigrants under the foreign credential recognition rubric. There are a number of skilled immigrants, and how do you actually up-skill and re-skill immigrants who've had managerial positions outside the country and come here and find themselves thwarted?

It's actually an online tool for small and medium-sized enterprises, which usually have the most problems dealing with that kind of thing in their labour force, because big companies tend to have more resources to do it. They're having a lot of success by saying, “Here are the three or four things you can do to actually better utilize these qualifications that are recognized outside and move people up levels within companies.”

It's focused on managerial talent. I suspect we would find that the glass ceiling and those things still remain in many companies, although I believe the data overall shows that some of that is improving.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

On page 19 of your presentation, you referenced the impact on the labour market of things such as student aid, child care, employment insurance, and employment equity, and obviously these do impact the ability of women in terms of their success. Have you investigated the importance of these elements for women in order for them to achieve success? For example, without child care, is it more difficult?

[Martin Green]

I don't think there has been a holistic analysis of when you put them all together. I know we have pretty good data, which I don't have with me, with respect to the take-up under student assistance, and the same with child care.

Child care is a fundamental component of this debate. The employment insurance programs are the same. There's some pretty sophisticated analysis of women who are taking that up. Employment equity obviously would have an impact as well.

I don't think we have put them together in a sort of holistic story of what it means for women in non-traditional and apprenticeship jobs.

Would that be fair?

[Christina Caron, Director, Labour Market Policy Research, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development]

Maybe I could add, though, that looking at Canada by comparison to other countries, there has been analysis done, for instance, by the IMF, looking at the whole complex of policies within Canada, that has indicated that definitely certain policies in Canada have helped to stimulate the rate of participation among women. Canada ranks very highly, I believe it's sixth right now, in terms of the latest figures in the OECD in labour market participation.

Some of the policies that the IMF has credited for that include our system of taxation, where we have separate taxation of spouses, which is not the norm in every country, of course, and child care would be another of those policies.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay.

Sorry, but Canada is sixth in the field of what...?

[Christina Caron]

Canada ranks sixth in terms of labour market participation in the OECD for women of working age.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay.

[Kathryn McMullen, Chief, Integrated Analysis Section, Tourism and the Centre for Education Statistics Division, Statistics Canada]

I could add something much more targeted as well. These are data from the national apprenticeship survey. We have to bear in mind that it's not a huge sample.

Men and women were asked to give the reasons why they did not complete their apprenticeship program. For women, the top-ranking reason, although it was still for only about 16% of women, was family responsibilities. Second was financial reasons. The top for men was financial and that they got a better job offer.

So if we look specifically at the trades, child care does seem to be one of the reasons that prevent women from completing, bearing in mind that there are relatively few women in trades to start with.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

But it still has an impact, then. That's interesting, because I was going to ask, too, about the grants that were referenced, with $2,000 a year for apprenticeships and that kind of thing. I wondered how many did drop out or didn't access that opportunity because of child care problems and caregiving, because women do very often get into that kind of box.