Status of Women Committee on March 31st, 2010

[Yaroslaw Zajac]

If we speak about the GoTechgirl campaign, there are about 20-odd mentors who can be reached through Facebook by any young woman. That allows any young woman to ask, what is it like to be a biotechnician? They can pose that question to a biotechnologist via Facebook. We need much more capacity to provide that type of mentoring activity to young women. We need more capacity to deliver that type of information to young women. One approach we have used is Facebook. That's obviously a very popular one, but these social networking things pass by rather quickly, and all of a sudden it's something else.

The more we did that, the more access we had to young women and the more we were able to convey that. Again, I go back to the theme of influencing. Why are school counsellors not familiar with such things? Why are school vice-principals, who are very generally involved with these components of career planning, not informed? Why are they not focused on women? “Oh, Sally, you clearly don't want to go to university. You know, a dental hygienist would be a great career for you.” Yes, but that's, again, stereotyping. It's the ability of our influencers not to stereotype that I think is a major achievement that needs to be achieved.

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

Last week, we met with a group of women by teleconference. They specifically said that in their non-traditional fields, they do not sexualize their approach. In construction, they look at themselves as being like everyone else and start at the same level as everyone else. I think that is a positive message to send to girls.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

We're trying to work out some timing here for going another round or not.

Now we have, for the NDP, Ms. Mathyssen.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for being here and providing this expertise.

Again, I have so many questions. I hope I can get through at least some of them.

Ms. Cukier, I didn't have a chance to go through this as thoroughly as I would have liked. I did note in this paper that there are a number of reasons, a range of factors influencing the decision for young women not to pursue technology careers. I found it interesting that both you and Ms. Hellemans mentioned child care and the lack of child care as the number one constraint when it comes to young women. I wonder if you could comment on that and the other factors suggested, in terms of women making these decisions.

[Dr. Kim Hellemans]

Yes, child care is a huge issue, and I can speak to this personally. I spent 13 years in post-secondary education, and by the time I was ready for a job and a tenure track position at a university, I was at prime child-bearing age. Many young women who are highly trained in these fields feel the same way. They build their career and put off child rearing altogether. Then it becomes an issue because they may not want to take time outside of their career to raise a family, or they put it off and put it off, and then have issues related to fertility, which is a big issue in women in our community. There are issues of not being able to be up for tenure at the same time as their male colleagues. Many women may not want to take a full year of maternity leave, because you've always got job pressures.

That's not just university. That's in many other positions as well. A lot of women choose to have their children during their masters or PhD, where child care is a huge issue.

So putting money and resources into child care I think is a wonderful way to go.

[Wendy Cukier]

I'll echo that. There's also a class issue. Particularly for young women in lower socio-economic levels, the decision to work or not is often a question of affordable child care.

If you look at the best companies in which to work in Canada, they're almost always companies with on-site child care and, increasingly, elder care and other forms of support for women.

In the high-tech sector in particular, we heard in our consultations about one of the real challenges--this is true for academics as well. If you take time off to have children you get out of the loop. You don't just get out of the loop; you don't have your publications, and you're not going to conferences. Technology changes just like that, so progressive companies, and presumably institutions, put in mechanisms to support women and men who are on parental leave so they don't get out of date, they stay plugged in, and so on.

So I think it's a case where there's real intersection.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Cukier, in your opening remarks you referenced the initial document as being more than just numbers, as being the result of a response to what happened in 1989 at École Polytechnique.

I'm going to date myself now, because when I was an undergrad at the University of Western Ontario there was a real barrier for women considering engineering. It just wasn't the place for women. There was a sort of rough and tumble attitude that I think might have been intimidating. One of the things we've heard from presenters is that harassment, sexual harassment, is part and parcel why a lot of women don't go into trades traditionally regarded for males, and perhaps the professional schools.

I'm wondering to what degree women may be avoiding this kind of job or professional school because they feel vulnerable, isolated, or even unsafe.

[Wendy Cukier]

I would say it's a factor today, but not as much as it was. When I started working--and I was in an engineering-dominated environment more than 20 years ago--there were sunshine girls on the walls. My colleagues talked about female anatomy the way they talked about what was on the sports pages--including the women around us. The one time they took me out for lunch they took me to a strip joint to see how I would react.

That would not happen in a government agency today. So I would argue that a lot of the safeguards in place have dealt with some of the really bad cases of harassment in government and in very large organizations, particularly for professional, white, middle-class women. However, in small and medium-sized enterprises they often don't even know there's a human rights code. In some engineering schools and technology schools the behaviour of the students is still appalling. The anti-racism task force at Ryerson just issued its report and found lots of evidence that racism is still a problem at my university.

So I would say that harassment and the other things you mentioned are still a problem, and we're kidding ourselves if we pretend they've been wiped out. At the same time, the environment is much healthier than it was 20 years ago. The biggest impediments are not overt discrimination and harassment. The biggest impediments are the systemic barriers: exclusion from the informal networks; people saying you don't want to work in the oil industry because it's dirty and your hair will get messed up.

The informal and systemic barriers are actually tougher to address because they're harder to see. That's why I think it's really important to continue this work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

That round is over. In order for us to get through a second round and still have our half hour on future business, I'm going to move the five-minute slot to a four-minute slot. That will get us all to fit in nicely and get on with our jobs.

So I shall begin my second round with Liberal Anita Neville.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you all for coming today. This is a very interesting panel.

I want to just pay a bit of attention to the immigrant women you talked about. I was really struck just at the end here, Ms. Cukier, when you talked about the informal and systemic barriers for women, period. I was struck by how profound they must be for immigrant women, whether it's in a learning facility or whether it's in the job. I appreciated your comments on procurement. That's very concrete in terms of what the federal government can do.

Could anybody give us some definitive recommendations in terms of immigrant women? Clearly, there's a lot of talent coming into this country that we are not taking advantage of.

[Wendy Cukier]

Maybe let's let Kim have her share.

[Dr. Kim Hellemans]

From what I've heard from the women I've worked with, there are two big issues. Number one, it's faster training to get them ready for the Canadian workforce. As I mentioned in my notes, it's often ten years before they're actually certified to work in the Canadian--

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Is that access to institutions, or credentials?

[Dr. Kim Hellemans]

It's credentials, that's right. The second one is facilitating language and getting into the Canadian culture and networking with other groups of women. So it would be some centralized facility or site that could, once they immigrate to Canada, say this is where they go, these are the local networks, the actual virtual things so we can give them resources.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Are there enough ESL classes for special purposes?

[Wendy Cukier]

What was quite shocking about our study in Peel, and we surveyed 3,000 people--immigrants, non-immigrants, employed, unemployed--was that only 40% of the immigrants said they were satisfied with the services available, and only 25% of the immigrants with post-secondary education indicated that they were satisfied with the services available. This doesn't just apply to just women; it applies to men as well. I would say the fragmentation of services--and I think that's Kim's point--and even the funding model that promotes competition rather than cooperation and one-size-fits-all sorts of solutions really do not serve well-educated immigrant men or women. So that's one point.

On the second point, on the happier side, there's really good evidence that programs like the ones offered by the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council and groups that offer internship and mentoring kinds of formal programs have interesting results. Immigrants who go through those programs get jobs less quickly, so other immigrants get jobs faster, but the immigrants who go through the mentoring and the internship programs get better jobs, are paid more, and spend less time trying to get back to the level at which they entered. There's huge research to support the incredible impact of having those kinds of internship and mentoring programs available.

As well, it's not just about ESL. There are many immigrants who come to Canada who actually are anglophones, but they speak with an accent. They don't understand the cultural norms. They don't understand the modes of communication, etc. So the bridging programs that are needed for professional immigrants are much more sophisticated, complex, and customized in terms of their needs than a lot of the programs that are currently available and supported by the existing funding models.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I don't have any time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes, you do. You only have about 30 seconds.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

How are the existing models currently funded, by federal or provincial governments, or jointly?

[Wendy Cukier]

Both, all.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Everything.

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now, for the Conservatives, Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This has been very interesting. I studied music and economics, but to put myself through my music degree, I worked in a drafting office. I had a multitude of jobs in that capacity. So I'm very interested in seeing women in technology jobs. I had the advantage of being in a high school where there was a tech department. I had the opportunity to choose credits from the tech wing. Would you want to see that as part of a core curriculum? Do you think that's the conversancy we need to be encouraging? I fully recognize that's under provincial jurisdiction, but do you think that would help solve the problem?

[Yaroslaw Zajac]

I think it's a question of a focus. If you take the average grade school student, average high school student, that individual can name you the planets in their orbits in the right order in the solar system and around the sun. That's science. That same individual cannot tell you how a telephone works.

We teach science—and it's vitally important, and it's good—but we do not take that one step further and start teaching applied science. So when an individual starts making a decision about going into an applied science field, that bridge is not there, and that decision is not made.

If I had my druthers, I would knock on the door of the Canadian Council of Ministers of Education and I would say, “Change your curricula in the school systems. Focus not specifically on science but on applied science so that an individual starting to make a career choice can actually think in terms of applied science.” At the moment, they do not.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

One of the things we see is the speed of the evolution of technology. There are technologist jobs available today that, when I was in school, weren't even dreamed of. We had x-ray technicians. Now we have MRIs and CAT scans and technologists to go with each of those new criteria. I look at that, and I see there's a constant evolution. I see more women in those jobs, partly I think because they're what we would call clean jobs, not welding jobs. I think there's a basic attraction there.

I did want to speak to Ms. Hellemans as well about the issue of credentials. Again, as a federal government, we're dealing with a constitution that allows that part to be handled by the provinces. We have currently across Canada--I was vice-president of a regulated health college in Ontario--447 credentialing agencies across Canada where you can't even move from one jurisdiction to another without having to reapply and recertify. How do you see the federal government working in that area?