Thank you, Yaro.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Our message is clear. How can Julie think about a career as a water quality technician or a food technologist if she doesn’t know these occupations exist in the first place?
Last September the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists took part in the promotion of technology careers at World Skills 2009 in Calgary. National Technology Week and GoTechgirl hosted five demonstration areas within Canada House for the very first time. Imagine 5,000 students, teachers, educators, and parents per day for five straight days marveling at all the options available to them.
CCWESTT is another example. From May 13 to 15 this year, the Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology is holding its biannual conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Madame Matsui, the past president of CCWESTT, has already appeared before this committee.
National Technology Week and GoTechgirl will be playing host to the youth program during the CCWESTT conference. There will be four half-day sessions of interactive learning, tours, and real-time hands-on demonstrations.
We bring to your attention key findings of a recent high school survey that was conducted across Canada in five cities: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax. Finding number one was that the majority of young women do not have a good understanding of what applied science or engineering careers entail; therefore, they cannot aspire to those careers. Only 9% reported having heard of National Technology Week. This year marks our seventh year across the country.
A majority of young women have negative perceptions of engineering and technology occupations. Compared with young men, young women do not have role models who encourage them to consider technology careers in the first place. GoTechgirl is trying to disseminate career information to young women by tackling the negative perceptions.
And lastly, too few parents encourage their daughters to study math and science.
So what are the highlights of the GoTechgirl program? First, it is a registered trademark of the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists. Second, it is a national outreach campaign to educate and inform. Third, it is seeking out success stories and forming a champions list, a mentor list, to build the role models. Fourth, we have a number of national contests to encourage young people--young women specifically--to show us their skills across a number of areas. And lastly, we promote and put on technology camps. They're usually held in colleges and are hands-on Saturday morning sessions. Young women get to come with either mom or dad as their free ticket in to experience applied science and engineering technology occupations. These are held across the country and are gaining speed.
Do we need the program to grow? The obvious answer is yes. Do we need more resources? The answer again is yes. We are working with the private sector to do that. We represent 14 different sectors of technology, and we're doing a major outreach campaign to help us promote that. We're going to the workers, the employers who are looking for those workers of tomorrow, to help us to be part of the solution.
We bring forward to you today three recommendations. The first one is that together we must do more to educate and inform young women of the many career choices available through scholarships, mentors, information sharing like career nights for students and parents, and summer job programs for students in grades 9 to 12. And we must teach the influencers--the school counsellors, the teachers, and the parents--who face an enormous task.
Second, the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists welcomes the opportunity to work with the Museum of Science & Technology to develop TECH ZONES to promote those careers in technology.
Lastly, the Canadian council is a strong advocate of a national co-op placement program, especially in the areas of applied science and engineering technologies. In Canada, the greatest successes that take place are when the private and public sectors collaborate to attain a common good. That is our suggestion.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.