Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to say I meet regularly with the university women's organization in Aurora and we have some wonderful conversations.
Just to put on the record, Madam Chair, I do believe that many of these things that we've been discussing here today do fall under provincial legislation. In Ontario we have the Employment Standards Act, and it is enforced by the Ontario legislation.
However, I just want to say, by way of background, that when I was in secondary school, I was in an academic program but had the opportunity to choose from the technical programs that were available because of the credit system. I chose mechanical and architectural drafting. When I was pursuing my music degree--and I'm a classically trained pianist--I worked in an engineering office as a draftsman or draftsperson and I was responsible for architectural, civil, and industrial design work. I had the opportunity to participate in survey crews as part of my responsibilities to the civil work that I did. Obviously all of that has met with constructive destruction, as they say. It's now done by a CAD system, and I see many women who are pursuing that.
I went back and did business and economics later on, and I am the proud owner of a business now that does disability management for corporations. I worked in construction fields all the time, meeting with injured employees and helping them back into the workplace.
But what we've also seen over the past number of years is an incredible number of women.... I speak to the enormous number of very competent women in Newmarket--Aurora who are business owners. I'd just like to read this into the record:
Over the last 20 years, Canada has seen a 200-percent increase in the number of women-owned firms. By 2001, nearly half (47 percent) of all small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Canada had at least one female owner. In 2003, women held majority ownership in 18 percent of SMEs, an increase of 3 percent from the previous year. The employment contribution of women-owned firms is also significant.
It goes on to give the stats.
So it seems to me that we need to be not only addressing the issues of employment and how we see women in non-traditional jobs, but also that many women are moving into non-traditional positions in owning their own businesses. So we have a multi-pronged problem. We need multi-pronged responses to it. So if we say that we want to encourage women into the trades.... And right now, we have a demographic problem. If you look at the average age of people who are in the drywall industry, they are 57 years of age. The average plumber right now in Ontario is 53 years of age. So we're coming up against some significant barriers, and we need to be encouraging people to go into these jobs, male or female.
But if we're looking at women going into these businesses.... And they are going into business for themselves because that's where they're going to earn significant dollars, being self-employed and having control of their own futures. How do we put things in place that are going to be of assistance to them? Do you believe that the things we're starting to do in legislation...? For instance, we've passed the Fairness for the Self-Employed Act, where women can now access EI benefits if they choose.
I went through the process in business. I had small children. I had a disabled mother-in-law. All of these are barriers for women. They have these things that they have to do.
How do you see these pieces of legislation assisting women who are going into business for themselves because they see that as a very positive and very productive future?