Status of Women Committee on March 31st, 2010

[Dr. Kim Hellemans]

I cannot give you an answer to that because my knowledge of this is very limited. I'm speaking on behalf of someone who wasn't able to come today, so I will confess and say I don't know.

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

Do you have any ideas from your experience? I think it would be helpful for the committee to hear those, and any suggestions. Obviously our government is looking. There are currently some agreements in Alberta and B.C. where the provinces themselves have gotten together and said they need to solve this problem because of the demand. I think there are some initiatives we could--

[Dr. Kim Hellemans]

Is there no regulating--

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

It's provincial jurisdiction.

[Yaroslaw Zajac]

I wonder if I might dive in here.

The agreement on internal trade, in chapter seven, now says that if a credential is awarded in one province, it must be recognized in another. That's law in Canada. However, the implementation of that is going very slowly.

The other component that ties in with what Kim has been speaking about is the whole idea of foreign credential recognition and the framework to ensure that an individual has his or her credentials recognized very quickly, specifically within a year of arrival in Canada, or that a program is put together to allow that individual to in fact attain the credential that is needed in Canada based on Canadian prerequisites. Those things are in place, but....

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Just finish your sentence, Mr. Zajac.

[Yaroslaw Zajac]

What is happening is that the embryo of that is there, but we need to accelerate it. We need to make sure that what is already in place is in fact implemented fully, and it is not at the moment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

Now, from the Bloc Québécois, Madame Demers.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for being with us today. I found your comments extremely interesting. In particular, I was very relieved to see that I was not the only one who thought I couldn't do math, even though I have been managing my budget and paying my debts and bills for 60 years.

Ms. Cukier, you said that a number of recommendations were made 20 years ago, after the tragedy at the Montreal Polytechnique, but very few of those recommendations were acted on. We are still at the same point. I wonder whether this is connected with the fact that fewer women are now enrolled in engineering and technology.

Have we succeeded in making those who have taken these kinds of courses feel welcome? Are we now able to make them welcome and retain them, are there structures for bringing them in and retaining them, that are properly adapted to make them feel comfortable alongside their colleagues and coworkers? Could that be part of the problem?

[Wendy Cukier]

I want to be clear that there are more females in engineering today than there were 20 years ago. There are fewer computer scientists. But we've seen a decline of women in engineering since 2000 so that's one thing worth noting.

I think the “More Than Just Numbers” report set out a very strong conceptual framework without anything to support the implementation or the accountability. Whether we're talking about employment equity legislation, a national strategy around women in technology, or foreign credential recognition; implementation and accountability, I would say, are the big gaps. That's why I think there have been a lot of programs and a lot of good ideas but they've been very fragmented and there hasn't been the follow-up to say, okay, three years later, where are we? People will say we had brochures, we had events, we had people do this and that, but where are we in terms of our goals? I think that really, to move us forward on these issues we need not only the strategy, but we need the teeth and the commitment to follow through.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Ms. Hellemans and Ms. Cukier, you said that some choices were available to women in their thirties who wanted to go back to school. You didn't have time to give us more details about that. Could you do that now?

[Wendy Cukier]

Yes.

I am not an engineer. One of the things that I think is very important to emphasize--I'm glad you asked the question--is that many of the people working in technology jobs are not technologists, are not engineers, but they're what we would call hybrids. So a business student who does a minor in biotechnology could work in the technology sector. A business student who does a minor in information technology management can work in the technology sector. A psychology student who studies human computer interactions can work in the technology sector. We can also think smarter about the range of pathways in. There are many excellent managers. Someone may be an excellent manager in retail and they can be retrained to be an excellent manager in a telecommunications company and probably earn twice as much.

We've often thought about taking engineers and turning them into managers, but we don't think as much about taking managers and turning them into technology professionals. What you'll find is in many of those hybrid professions there are more women. So there are lots of multiple avenues. Project management is a really good example of a hybrid job where the management skills are important and you need technology vocabulary. It's very difficult to set those pathways.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now I will go to Ms. Mathyssen for the NDP.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have a couple of quick questions for Mr. Zajac and Mr. LeBlond.

Mr. Zajac, you actually said you would like to go to the door of the meeting of ministers of education and pound on it and say, you must make a change in terms of curriculum and teacher training and outreach to students.

Some years ago, I was involved with some young women who wanted women's studies included at the high school level, and they just plugged away at it and finally we are seeing some of that. It was called the Miss G__ Project for Equity in Education, and I think it's going to begin to give women a sense of how important we are in the economy, the society, and to the advancement of this country.

You said you'd like to go but have you made any kind of overtures? Has your council gone to various ministers of education, and if you have, what kind of response have you had?

[Yaroslaw Zajac]

Really, very little. We have not actually gone to the Council of Ministers of Education. Our provincial bodies have spoken with provincial ministries of education. What progress has there been? I would say it's been minimal, if any.

This is something that I think should have more emphasis, which it hasn't had. It is organizations like the Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists, like Engineers Canada, like the Canadian Society for Chemistry that should be knocking on the doors of those ministers. At the moment, it's done piecemeal at the provincial level. There's a lot of improvement that could happen.

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

You also talked about the national cooperative education and internship program. How did you manage to get businesses to participate in that? How do you encourage them to become a part of that process? I think it was in regard to this GoTechgirl program.

[Isidore LeBlond]

It certainly is one of our recommendations that we have strong support for a national program. Large, medium, and small employers need to have a little bit of a wage subsidy, something that can help them attract young people. It's not there now. We don't have it. It's one of the things we aspire to. That's why we're bringing it to this committee's attention. We'd like you to help us move that forward. It's one of the areas we need to work on, absolutely.

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

So the federal government has a role here?

[Isidore LeBlond]

They do.

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

Okay, thank you very much.

How am I doing for time, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Go ahead, you have about one and a quarter minutes.

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

Okay, I'll talk more quickly then.

Employment equity has been mentioned and this is something I worked on a number of years ago, and it was very clear to me that equity and equality are different. Equity means that you make sure the things that are lacking are in place for individuals to succeed and, in this case, for more women, more immigrant women, to succeed.

So what special measures should we be considering or advancing to give women, including immigrant women, that step up?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have half a minute to answer the question.

[Wendy Cukier]

On behalf of everybody, I would suggest the following; funding for transition programs and internships; language and cultural training; perhaps tax credits for companies that start to really invest in these things; and better counselling and customized services to ensure that women are getting the right information about where the jobs are and how to get them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

Now we go to the final questioner, Ms. McLeod for the Conservatives.