Status of Women Committee on May 14th, 2012

[Linda Hasenfratz]

Perfect.

My name is Linda Hasenfratz. I am CEO of Linamar Corporation, and I'm very pleased to have been given the opportunity to speak to the committee this afternoon.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, we are a diverse manufacturing company. We do a lot of business in the automotive sector, in commercial vehicles, energy, access equipment, construction equipment, and the like. Our sales last year were $2.8 billion. We have about 16,000 employees around the world. About 9,000 of them are in Canada.

We are very focused on growing our business. If I look back over the last several years, we've more than doubled our employee base. We've added 8,000 people since 2009, and actually 1,500 since the end of last year. More than half of them are right here in Canada.

We're a company that is very much focused on prosperity and growth and finding opportunities. So I thought this was a great opportunity to talk a little bit about what I think is important to allow that to happen and particularly about how we try to create that kind of future for our young women and girls.

When I think about prosperity and what makes us prosperous, as a person or as a country or as a company, I think it is driven by three key areas. One is competitiveness. We need to be competitive to win business. Another is opportunity, so we need to have the opportunity to pursue. Finally, we need to have a strong culture that supports our growth as a company.

All of those things are equally true for people. We all need to be competitive, so we need to have the right skill set. We need to be given opportunities. And we need to live in a culture and a society that values us so that we can grow.

If I look at those different areas, at competitiveness, what's that all about? Really, it's all about innovation. It's about efficiency. It's about product innovation and process innovation and continuous improvement in both of those things: productivity and efficiency. All of that really is driven by having very skilled, capable people, particularly technically skilled people, to enable that growth.

Great innovation is driven by great scientists, great engineers, great tradespeople, and great technology. A recent study by the World Economic Forum noted that “[t]he most important determinant of a country’s competitiveness is its human talent – the skills, education and productivity of its workforce”.

Women represent half of our population. Engaging women in innovation by building their skills dramatically increases our talent pool and therefore our global competitiveness.

When I look at what we're doing here in Canada in terms of our education broadly, and more specifically, in terms of our education of women, I think there is more we could be doing. We need to be acting in a more collaborative way and a more coordinated way. We have a lot of great schools in this country, maybe too many in some areas. We have a lot of repetition. All of them are doing things individually. Some of them are doing some great things. I wonder what we can do to better coordinate their efforts. How can we challenge them to make us the best?

When I look specifically at women in these fields, I think that there are just not enough. There are not enough girls and young women engaged in the areas of science, engineering, trades, and technology from which, as I've just discussed, our competitiveness is driven.

I think we need to start very young in the primary years to build an interest in these areas for our young girls and our young women and then build on that in a secondary school system to encourage young women to choose those careers.

There are things we're doing here at Linamar to try to encourage that. Again, we're trying to start young. For instance, we hold a summer skills camp for young girls, aged 10, 11, or 12, to try to introduce them to the idea of skills and trades as a potential career.

Last year we held the first of a six-year commitment for those camps. We had a great turnout and the girls really enjoyed themselves.

So just trying to get some interest in it, to get young girls interested in these areas of science, trade, technology, and engineering, is really critical. We've also held several workshops, at which we bring together high school students with female tradespeople within our own company and in other companies to learn about these careers. We've had more than 300 young women attend these workshops. They get to learn about all kinds of different careers in skilled trades, science, and technology and hopefully get inspired to head that way in their education.

We're running a program here in Guelph. We're headquartered in Guelph and have a large percentage of our Canadian employment right here in town. We're working with local schools in terms of interactive programs, again reaching out with our own tradespeople, who teach them about careers in manufacturing. More than 1,000 young people have been reached through these programs.

Finally, we again are working with local school systems to sponsor female apprenticeships. We've committed to five female apprentices per year for the next five years. We have two signed up in our first year, so we're not at our goal, but we're close to halfway there. We're glad to see the interest starting to bud.

I think the key is trying to interest and encourage our young people to get into these fields, and particularly to encourage our young women to get into these fields, where there are great opportunities to build a career that can be so satisfying and so lucrative for them. You can take a skilled trade or take your engineering degree and end up as an entrepreneur building a business and creating something really fantastic.

So first you get the interest going. Then, I think, we need to really work with our education system and try to prioritize our education system in these fields. I would love to see us in Canada setting a goal to be the best in the world in terms of an education system that's going to create the smartest, the most innovative, and the most successful scientists and engineers in the world, with the highest percentage of female grads.

You see a lot of examples of making a commitment like that, of being bold and putting a statement out there that we want to be the best in the world in terms of generating tradespeople, scientists, and engineers, and also that we want to graduate the most females. Let's make that a goal. Let's challenge our schools to come up with programs and to find ways to work together to make that happen.

Let's own the scientific podium. We've seen the results when you do get a focus, make a commitment, and set a goal for yourself.

So that was a lot about competitiveness and trying to drive an education that can help us as a country, and about women in particular and how to be competitive and get the opportunities in terms of these types of jobs, but as I mentioned at the outset, opportunity is the second key element driving prosperity. I think the frustration here for a lot of people is that girls and young women still just aren't getting enough opportunities.

I think there's a real mixed bag out there. Some companies are great. They really do look with open eyes at all the candidates and pick based on skill, capability, enthusiasm, and work ethic. But others still don't look at male and female candidates equally.

I think a key difference in my own success is that I was always given the opportunity to try. I was always given the chance at that next job, the chance to show that I could do it and I could take it on. I had a huge champion in my own father, who encouraged me without ever undermining my authority.

So I had it easier, I think, because I had that champion. I had that mentor who wanted to make me a success and wanted to give me those opportunities, and then it was my own passion, excitement, and capability that let me step up, take on those responsibilities, and be successful at them.

My question would be, how can we get companies to give those opportunities to women? Shall we ask them to self-declare diversity goals? Are there regulations we should consider at the board level, for instance? Certainly we've seen that in other pockets in the world, where regulations have been set to enforce certain levels of diversity and female representation on boards.

But the first step is really—

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Unfortunately, I must cut you off there, Ms. Hasenfratz. Your time is up. However, you will still have an opportunity to address your points during our question period.

Ms. Bateman, you have seven minutes.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you so very much. Thank you to all of the witnesses. I really appreciate the comments that have been made.

I have some specific questions for Linda Hasenfratz, because it's pretty exciting when you're talking about having 16,000 employees worldwide, and 9,000 of them are in Canada. Based on your discussion, it's clear that probably half of them are women. The target of my questions, first, is the women in non-traditional industries.

First, Madam Chair, with your permission, we had a previous witness—Action travail des femmes du Québec Inc.—who gave such interesting comments on the $205,078 grant they had received. It's a 24-hour grant. Reference was made to my colleague, Madam Truppe, that they would provide a report. I just want to reiterate the importance of our seeing what this organization is doing with that money, because that's very important work. Their target is young dropouts, immigrant women, women with disabilities, and single mothers in the Montreal region. I'd be so very interested in that.

My question is to Linda. If somebody gave you $205,078 tomorrow morning to help women gain employment, and perhaps target non-typical employment, how would you best use that? I'm so interested in the comments you have made.

[Linda Hasenfratz]

I would definitely try to focus that money on awareness and generating interest in young women in the areas of science, trade, and technology, in these non-traditional industries where we still don't have nearly the level of representation that we should.

My company is not 50% women, at any level within the organization. We're reasonably proportioned and our overall percentage of women is representative at all levels of management, all the way up to our board; however, we're frustrated by the fact that there aren't enough women out there getting an education in this area to allow us to increase our overall percentage. Only about 20% of women are graduating from engineering school, and a much smaller percentage graduate from skilled trades.

That's where I'd really try to focus.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

How can Status of Women help make that happen? Clearly, these are positions where women will have incredible careers, and they will be making a difference not only to the economy of Canada, but potentially to the economy of the world.

You spoke about collaboration and coordinated approaches. How could the Status of Women be more effective in supporting organizations such as yours?

[Linda Hasenfratz]

I think trying to create some awareness and a marketing campaign directed at girls to encourage them into these fields would be money very well spent, as well as trying to create a program across Canada engaging universities and colleges to try to work collaboratively to a broader goal of being the best in the world in terms of the calibre and the number and the success rate of engineers and scientists that we are creating, with a very specific goal of increasing the percentage of women in those areas. Being a key part of that goal would help us enormously as a country, and help women specifically.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Wow. I very much appreciate your comments about collaborating and working in a coordinated fashion with universities, but you're being much more proactive than that. You're grabbing young women when they are indeed young women of age 10, 11, and 12, and you're creating an opportunity for them to think out of the box and be exposed to career choices that are non-traditional and that would not necessarily be a part of their awareness. Can you tell me how you do that? Can you tell me who your partners are?

Perhaps that's where we should be dealing with young women, before they opt out of the math and science courses that they need to actually have these high-powered careers in the science and manufacturing sectors.

[Linda Hasenfratz]

Yes, exactly. I think you're absolutely right: that's a good place to focus. We've worked quite a lot with Skills Canada. It's a great organization that tries to broadly encourage people into skills and technical areas. We have worked with them for our summer skills camp for young girls and we've worked with them for the mentor workshops to which we've brought in high school students. They've been a great organization for us to work with.

We also work with local schools, colleges, and universities in general around education and education for women. I think the schools are open to it. They've been very open and excited about it. We probably need more companies to be doing this kind of thing and more encouragement from the federal and provincial levels for companies to do it.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Okay.

You also spoke—

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Forty seconds remaining.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Okay.

I have only 40 seconds left.

You spoke about innovation, about competitiveness, and about the parallels between what we need as a country and what you need as a company and how they were basically the same things individuals need. Can you just expand on that?

[Linda Hasenfratz]

I said there were three things that drive prosperity: competitiveness, opportunity, and culture. If you look at a company, competitiveness is about having innovative products and processes and improving opportunities about your strategy and how you go about getting that business.

Then the culture of your company is how you want to do things and what you value. But I think the exact same parallel exists for our country, in how we make ourselves competitive and where we find opportunity in the strategy we put together. That's the culture we create as a country.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

I have to interrupt, Ms. Hasenfratz.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you so very much for your comments.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

It is now over to the official opposition.

Ms. Ashton, you have seven minutes.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all the witnesses for your presentations today.

I'd like to direct my questions today to both Ms. Bird and Ms. Arnup.

I'll start off with you, Ms. Bird.

Many of us have had a chance to hear about the educational benefits of early childhood education, a topic that you have alluded to. But I wonder if you could tell us a bit about the economic benefit of early childhood education, both with respect to many of the women who work in the child care sector and to what it could mean to have a national child care program, not just for Canadian women but Canadians in general.

[Shellie Bird]

Thank you.

A number of national and provincial studies have been undertaken around the economic benefits of government investment in early learning and child care. It Is very clear that for every dollar invested in a system of public and non-profit high quality early learning and child care, there is a $2 to $6 return. This has been demonstrated in three separate studies by three separate economic researchers, so we do know.

We need only look to Quebec to see that in that province, investment in $7 per day child care has actually brought the poverty rate down by 40%. In particular—as I also know from my own experience—women who are trying to get off social assistance and trying to get into the labour force really find the costs of child care exorbitant and a barrier to their involvement in the paid labour force. If you bring down the costs of early learning and child care and make them affordable, more women will end up in the paid labour force.

We know there are economic benefits in the tax revenue that comes from women's earnings in the paid labour force, which does benefit Canada and the provinces.

I want to go to a comment that was made a little earlier about the men who drop out of high school ending up in trades or construction and women or young girls who do the same ending up in the caring professions like home child care. To go back to Linda's comments, I think valuing the work that women have historically done in their homes—the caring work, the care that goes into education, the care that goes into help—really valuing those kinds of things that women have historically done in society and valuing them through economic compensation will also improve Canada's economy. I think that instead of trying to trying to get women into non-traditional jobs simply as an economic strategy, it's time that our country valued the work that women do.

Thank you.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Thank you, Ms. Bird.

Ms. Arnup, you referenced the work of your organization in terms of advocacy and how challenging it has been. You did reference more broadly the cuts to advocacy. I'm wondering if you could tell us how women in Canada lose out when advocacy and research organizations are being cut, as they have been, in an extreme way certainly by this government?

[Katie Arnup]

Sure.

There was a time when my organization had funding at both the federal and provincial levels. Through that we were able to connect directly with communities. We have that capacity. We work directly with centres and, therefore, we have staff and connections with parents.

Through that we were able to create networks across our province, and I know that other organizations were doing similar work. That's the only way we can have a really close connection with families, to know what their needs are and where the gaps are, and to go beyond just the people who have access. We know that 80% of families don't have access to a space. How do we start having those conversations and being able to be a voice for them?

We don't have federal or provincial funding any more. Our members invest in our organization because they are child care centres and they need that collective voice. If we lose capacity and we aren't able to speak on behalf of those centres, no one will be hearing about child cares closing.

In Ontario we're going through a child care crisis right now. We are seeing centres close. I got a call today about a very high-quality centre in Belleville that represents about 100 families and that will be closing. That would never end up in a paper unless a parent called me, and called my co-worker, and we started trying to build some capacity around that.

The other thing is that there is no support for those families when that child care closes. Unless there is support out there to build awareness about what happens when a centre closes, what happens to those staff, what happens to those families and that community when there is no longer that hub? I think without organizations to speak up and do the work, it's frightening what the future of women will be.

It's very difficult for us to get families out when we have media events and so on. Parents are working. Parents are running from job to job, from event to event with their kids. They can't constantly be demanding more child care. They need people to represent them.

So that's what I do. I speak to parents when they have the time.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

I have one more question, and we'll see if we have more time after this.

A recurring theme throughout the study so far has been talk of mentorship and how important mentoring and role modelling is for young women. As a young woman myself, nobody can say that this isn't the case. However, what many of us wonder is what are we doing to change the socio-economic conditions that young women face?

You spoke a bit about the challenges facing young women in Canada today. I'm wondering how you would respond to the emphasis on mentorship rather than shifting the socio-economic reality of young women.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Be very, very quick.

[Katie Arnup]

Just to clarify that, were you asking how I would emphasize the importance of mentorship?

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Sure. Do you think—

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Unfortunately, your time is up. That was why I said you had to wrap up very quickly. Ms. Arnup may have a chance to answer that question later. I apologize, but we have to stay within the time limits.

It is now over to Ms. O'Neill Gordon.

You have seven minutes.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, I want to thank all of the witnesses and the contributors here today. It certainly was interesting listening to your presentations.

To Linda Hasenfratz, you certainly need to be congratulated on your achievement in your company. There is no doubt in my mind that you certainly would have experienced and seen lots of economic prosperity and economic leadership.

I also was a primary teacher, and I'm glad to hear you say that we need to introduce the ideas in the primary area. You certainly also have a great goal for the education system, and there is no doubt in my mind that the education system is where it all starts. As you say, they are certainly open to these ideas. I know that for a fact.

I would like to ask you, first, are girls entering non-traditional industries at an increasing rate? Do you see that in your jobs?