Status of Women Committee on Oct. 29th, 2009

[René Barrette]

Those are very good questions.

We have information from the Commission de la construction du Québec, as these women are registered in an apprenticeship system and they tally up hours in order to become journeywomen. This information can be quite specific and we know that the retention rate is almost the same for men and women. About 25% are still working in the construction industry after three years, which is the same rate as men. The difficulty is getting into the field.

I will tell you a story about that. We were dealing with a discrimination case last year involving a young woman who was just finishing a program study. It was not a man who stopped her from getting the job, it was a woman. A female employer told her that her husband did not approve, but she was the one saying no. Originally, she said that she did not want any female carpenters in her business because they would go on maternity leave, because they were not reliable, and so on.

With the assistance of the Commission de la construction du Québec, we intervened and the business owner was strongly censured for it. He was brought back into line. I am telling you this because it is an example of an access issue. But as soon as women get into the field, they stay just as long as men do. The difficulty is getting in.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

That was my third question.

Does discrimination come from both men and women?

[Sylvie Émond]

Yes.

[René Barrette]

In this sector, that is true.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

We are women, and we know just how unkind we can be to each other, and that is putting it mildly. It is often said that it is men who discriminate against women, but women are also guilty of it.

[Sylvie Émond]

And not only that, I can tell you, as I pointed out in my conclusion, that parents may also be to blame. Sometimes they have such an attitude against vocational training! It shows that they are not ready to send their children there. To them, it is not discrimination, it is just not professional. And yet, Heaven knows how much we need manual trades. That is why we write that parents and employers have their work cut out for them in this regard, as Mr. Barrette just said.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

So, once more, it is a matter of education.

[Sylvie Émond]

Exactly.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

The focus has been heavily on university qualifications and degrees. As I said, I have two daughters and I have always encouraged them to get into the trades, the “short vocational programs”, not because they are any less worthy but because I think they are trivialized and yet, that is what we need. This is what we will need in the future, hands and arms, and women are just as capable as men of doing that kind of work.

[René Barrette]

But there is a common thread. Lawyers want their children to be lawyers and plumbers also want their children to be lawyers.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Well, I am not asking my daughters to become politicians. I would not do that to them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now, Ms. Irene Mathyssen.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for being here. It's really quite wonderful to have the educators and those who are the practical people in terms of the trades.

I wanted to start with you, Mr. Smillie. You were talking about the transition from apprentice to journeyman and how very difficult it is--fewer than 1% of women actually make it. You said subsequently that even for young men it's difficult because of lack of stability, the cycle of the work schedule, hours and the flexibility of those hours, illness, children, and moving to other provinces. Those are certainly onerous barriers.

I'm wondering, how many men actually then complete the program, in light of those barriers?

[Christopher Smillie]

In terms of percentages, the information I found said between 16% and 25%, so it's still a very low number. On the acceptability scale it's still only 16% to.... It depends on which trade and where, but generally the range was 16% to one-quarter actually go through and complete a certified apprenticeship program.

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

I was interested in that for a couple of reasons, first because of this notion that women have additional barriers: we commit pregnancy and have children. I say that because I was denied a job when I was a young teacher because I might commit pregnancy, and I did, but I--

[Christopher Smillie]

Someone could accuse me of committing pregnancy then too.

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

That whole notion of maternity leave, etc., is a problem. Yet you identified young men's responsibilities regarding children, and they're still doing ever so much better than young women. Is there a societal barrier here? Do we have to get past a culture, a mentality, in terms of making these jobs available to young women?

[Christopher Smillie]

I'm not sure, but I think it may also have to do with when you extrapolate the numbers, the number of women, actually, so it's a science of numbers, I would assume. If you have 1,000 men go into an apprentice program, 25% of them are going to make it. If you have 15 women go in, maybe only one or two will make it. It might just be a science of numbers because there aren't as many. That would be my off-the-cuff explanation.

At the end of the day--sorry, this is a question from before--the follow-up is so important when these women and men are in their apprenticeship programs, the monitoring of these folks, who's monitoring them as they progress.

Can you just remind me of your question, again, so I don't get off track too much?

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

It's simply that the barriers you described almost sounded like the same barriers that we attribute to the experience of women. How is it that 16% to 25% of young men still manage and only 1% of women?

[Christopher Smillie]

You know what? At the end of the day, I think it's about availability of work. People are looking for steady work when they're young. If the choice is between finishing the apprentice program in construction and only working 700 to 1,000 hours and working in a call centre where the work is a little more steady, that might be part of the problem.

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

Okay.

My husband is a tradesman, and he spent many years of his life railing about the fact that employers in Canada are not willing to provide the opportunity to move apprentices along. They're just not willing to make the investment. Is that some of it? Do we need, therefore, to provide more encouragement so that employers will take up that very important role of providing opportunity and experience?

[Christopher Smillie]

I don't want to offend any of my employer partners out there in the world, but at the end of the day it really is up to the individual in the field to monitor their own progress through their apprenticeship program. Because a construction apprentice might work for 10 or 15 employers during a year, there is no real consistency, so there's no adviser.

My colleague from Laval said we have advisers. That would be great if we had someone who is an adviser to a construction apprentice in the field, but because our industry is so cyclical—I'm an electrician apprentice, I go wherever the work is, and I work for many different employers throughout the year—there isn't consistency. So if no one is bringing you into the guidance counsellor, so to speak, and saying, “Chris, it's time you moved on and wrote your third-year exam,” that kind of thing gets missed, just because of the number of employers you might have.

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

I'm wondering, is that a failure of the system that we have in place? I know my husband had a school and he had an employer, and he was three days a week with the employer and two days a week in school. That's how he managed to attain such an incredible and positive level of expertise.

[Christopher Smillie]

Usually what happens is you go on what they call “block release”. No offence to the Bloc. You do your six months of on-the-job training. The good thing about our apprentices is they get paid while they're working, and then they have block release, where an employer will release 10 or 15 of them all at once to go to the classroom portion of their session. So generally as an apprentice you don't have the freedom to go and take courses when you want. It's up to your employer, and I'm not blaming them. My friends at SNC-Lavalin will get upset with me. But at the end of the day, you go on block release whenever the employer tells you. You go and do your training then.

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

I see a response here. I wonder if someone from Laval would like to respond to this as well.