Status of Women Committee on Oct. 29th, 2009

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

I am sorry, Madam Chair, you know how passionate I am.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

The one thing we will do is create a poster and have Ms. Penner be the poster girl.

Ms. Penner, I'm sorry. I will give you an extra couple of minutes for my smart-alecky comment.

Go ahead.

[Debra Faye Penner]

What was the question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

A magazine, is what I think Ms. Demers asked about. A magazine or a publication that shows women in this position.

[Debra Faye Penner]

Any kind of literature, anything to encourage women to get into the industry, is a start. It is a hard industry, and women have to be able to stand up to the industry. I'm not saying it's just men; I'm saying it's a hard industry. When you send out crews, they go out to a specific job site. Some people are away from home for a long period of time. It is all over, right from start to finish, a tough industry. I believe that's probably the main reason why women have kind of stayed home to look after the family and the husband has gone out to work. My husband works in the industry, too, and is gone Monday to Friday and comes home on weekends. It's overall a completely different industry, when you look at factory work or anything like that. But anything to draw women into the industry is a good step in the future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Smillie, you have 25 seconds.

[Christopher Smillie]

That's all I need. I would recommend talking to the folks at the Alberta Women Building Futures. It's something I mentioned in my presentation. It's a joint program between Petro-Canada and the Government of Alberta. I would recommend talking to them about the literature they put out. It's sort of a growing organization in Alberta.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Smillie.

Ms. Mathyssen.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Penner, I didn't have a chance to talk to you at all and I'd like to do that. Are there any other women who work at Dig-All now?

[Debra Faye Penner]

Only in the administration end.

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

I also wondered, in regard to the supports...you obviously managed to get over a number of barriers in order to do what you're doing. I'm wondering if you had any support within your family or the business in regard to child care or flexible hours. Was there anything available to you so you could do what you do? Obviously you're magnificent at what you do.

[Debra Faye Penner]

I only took one day off after I had my babies and I was back in the office. I can't really speak to that end of it. I took my babies with me to work, and my mother worked in the office at that time, so we had day care in the office. That was a huge aspect of it. I don't know if I would have been able to go to work if that wasn't available.

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

That's a unique situation, having that flexibility. It's just not there for so many women. The need for child care that can allow you to make that incredible contribution is so important.

That's interesting. Thank you for that.

We were talking about mentoring and the importance of that. I think as female legislators we understand that perhaps as much as anyone, because there are so few women. Like the women you talked about, we're subject to heckling, discrimination, and harassment. It's no different here than it is in your particular field.

In regard to that mentoring, I'm wondering, Mr. Smillie, if you know of any mentoring programs that will encourage women that you would feel comfortable about.

[Christopher Smillie]

In our universe, the only sort of system in place would be the joint apprenticeship and training committee, which is something between a group of the contractors in the area and a group of the trades. That joint apprenticeship committee is responsible for ironing out any issues with any apprentices in the field. I would say that's really the only linkage that a male or female apprentice would have in terms of formal linkages to employers and their program. There's a representative from a community college on those joint apprenticeship committees as well. That would be the only one I can think of in our universe, beyond any sort of ad hoc mentoring groups that are out there.

It really is about the relationship between the apprentice and the foreman who is supervising that apprentice. Is that journeyperson or foreman giving them good advice and teaching them the trade, or is that person sending them to pick up coffee? At the end of the day, it really is about that relationship between the apprentice and the journeyperson, where the rubber hits the road.

If we were looking for a spot where we need to improve, I would say the best place to start would be job site supervision and what we can do to ensure that job site supervision is supportive for young women and men.

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

I want to step back and open this up to everyone.

We've seen a rise in the number of companies and businesses. Has there been an equal recognition of the need for pay equity or the need for affirmative action and parental leave strategies? Has that been part of the discussion?

[René Barrette]

Do you mean to get women into the building trades specifically?

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

To encourage women.

[René Barrette]

This is what we have observed ourselves. These young women come to training with far more diplomas than the young men do. In Quebec, we are seeing a phenomenon that, I think, also applies across Canada: girls do better in higher education than boys. These women will have more access to high levels of responsibility and decision-making positions than the boys, who lag significantly behind in academic results.

I think that it is good that we are instituting these kinds of boards, and engaging in female-driven initiatives to open the way for other women. That is tremendous. In an ideal world, men would also undertake similar initiatives. I know that I am not directly answering your question, but if male employers are already beginning to make room for women in their operations, and there is no question about it, we are on our way to a better world already.

So I think that is what needs to be established with employers: partnerships, ways of welcoming women and their realities and, in doing so, putting an end to the tradition that says that it is always the woman who has to make sacrifices and to take time off for her children's doctors appointments. Men also have to start taking time off, they need to get their employers to understand that they need to take their children to the doctor, that their wives do not want to go and so they have to. That is how things will change.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Ms. McLeod.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I too would like to thank the witnesses for the very rich dialogue they've added to our study on women in non-traditional occupations.

Certainly, as I listen to you, it sounds like we actually need strategies from birth through to ongoing successful employment, with interventions all along the way to create perhaps what our vision is. It's difficult to know which is the most important in terms of creating that. Maybe it has to come from many different angles.

I grew up in a family with four girls. My father taught us to change the tires on our car--there was no way his daughters were going to be standing at the side of the road asking for help--and to dig ditches. The expectation amongst my siblings in our family was that you can and you need to be able to do anything.

So I look at that as one thing. And I guess as we look at “birth through”, I'm wondering if anyone has a sense of how we compare internationally, specifically in construction. I'm wondering if there's anywhere that's better than us.

I leave that open to anyone.

[Christopher Smillie]

I'll go ahead and start.

I did notice in some of my preparations for today that in Austria and in Germany, there is a focus on exposing young women to these competencies very early on. As a result, it looks like the economy has a higher penetration rate of people who are involved in these trades.

I don't have the study in front of me. I could get it and table it for you at the next meeting, if you would like, or I can send it to the clerk. You can take a look at it.

But there seems to be, from what I have read, a correlation between exposure in countries where they do expose children to these competencies--

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Like what Laval is doing.

[Christopher Smillie]

Exactly, yes.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Okay. Great.

Now, I can appreciate the fact that if you have a construction job to do, given our geography and climate, you tend to make hay when the opportunity is there in terms of really going for it. But in other places, to go back to our medical example, doctors do incredibly fierce hours also, and they've turned it around to do much more job sharing.

I'm a huge fan of having flexible opportunities for people. Instead of doing a 14-hour day, you have two people doing seven-hour days, working in partnership. Does the industry tend to accept flexibility in terms of...? I mean, you might need those 14 hours, but let's be more sensible about how we fill those 14 hours.

I leave that open to anyone.

[Christopher Smillie]

Recently, I think, with some of the changes in the economy, there has been an uptake a bit on the formal program, the work-sharing program, from the government. But generally it's a “work as much as you can, as long as you can” kind of industry. The contractor is demanding the work to be done, and the client, at the end of the day, is demanding that their manufacturing plant is built.