Status of Women Committee on April 9th, 2014

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

You are by no means obligated, but if you have any information that you can send us regarding any of the questions asked, we would appreciate hearing your testimony orally. We understand that you can't answer every question, but if you could answer even just a few of them, we would really appreciate it.

Let's continue with Mrs. O'Neill Gordon. You have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to welcome and thank all of you for being here this afternoon.

I want to begin first by congratulating Julia on her competitiveness. I think that's a plus for anybody, especially when you're in a business. Running a business, you need that little bit of competitiveness to make you carry on and go ahead. You deserve a lot of credit for taking the initiative and running with your competitiveness. I'm sure it will serve you well.

My first question is for Benzvy Miller. I was listening to many of the programs that you were talking about. We all know there's a lot to learn when trying to become an entrepreneur. What programs would be best highlighted for those who want to learn about becoming an entrepreneur?

[Shereen Benzvy Miller]

The Government of Canada has a lot of programs that can help entrepreneurs. What we need to do in government is make them easily accessible to entrepreneurs based on whatever sector they are interested in. It's hard to say which ones are the favourite programs, the best programs. I mean, BDC is obviously a strong program, but we have a whole array, depending on what the needs are of the business.

What would be best is to actually lead entrepreneurs to things like the Canadabusiness.ca website so that they get all the information they need, including procurement information. Remember that the Government of Canada spends $23 billion a year, which means it is actually paying for things to be supplied to it, and entrepreneurs want to be suppliers to the Government of Canada. So the opportunities that are available on the government electronic tendering service are important, and those are also built in through these websites. So really it's to direct entrepreneurs to the government websites that contain the information for the 290 programs that are available.

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

There's lots there, then. I too was impressed with the fact that you said a quarter of our entrepreneurs are people who were born outside of Canada. On a more positive note, I was thinking that this would be sort of an indication of how appealing Canada really is to outsiders. We want to consider that as a positive note and think how great our country is.

[Shereen Benzvy Miller]

I'm also the assistant deputy minister for tourism in Canada, so yes, I think that we are a very attractive nation.

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

Yes, I know. I agree. I say that all the time.

My next question is for Mr. Nowlan. As you know, we are all working to try to see that more women reach prosperity, and you speak of some areas where your programs encourage women of lower income, because when we talk about borrowing money and things like that, we are looking at earnings and security. These women just don't have that much to offer. I was wondering where your programs encourage women of lower income, or those with less, to hire training to enter the business world. That would be a big obstacle just to overcome in that sense.

[Daryell Nowlan]

As I alluded to earlier, for the organizations that provide the direct service to women that we provide funding for, a big part of their role is to educate women or entrepreneurs on what they need to succeed in business, whether that's specific business management skills or education more broadly. In some cases they actually provide that kind of training, or contract with folks to provide that kind of training for women entrepreneurs.

In other cases it might be simply raising awareness among women that if they want to succeed in a certain field, they need to get a certain kind of education. To connect it as well to your previous question, the important role that they play is we as a government department can do a lot of promotion and a lot of talking, but these folks are in the field working with these entrepreneurs face to face and can direct them where they need to go, whether it's for more training, for more education, or to some financing programs.

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

I am going to check with Julia to see if she had something she wanted to add to complete her story. She was cut off.

[Julia Fournier]

No. BDC rocks. That was my commitment, and I said it.

It's true. We wouldn't have been able to do that transaction without BDC. It was more than $400,000, and they were incredibly supportive of me as a woman who is the majority owner of an enterprise. They led me through the process to ultimately be the exclusive owner of the company. They feel like a partner to me and to our companies, which is definitely beneficial for us.

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

How many would you employ?

[Julia Fournier]

We have, on average, 4,000 to 5,000 contractors on business going into customer sites every other week. We pay them every month. In house we have about 50 employees between both companies.

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

That's a big challenge.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mrs. O'Neill Gordon.

Ms. Duncan, you have five minutes.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm going to pick up where I left off. I can't remember if it was Dr. Elliott or Dr. Konrad who mentioned the most troubling issues facing these career women.

[Dr. Catherine Elliott]

That was Dr. Konrad speaking about mid-career.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

Dr. Konrad, could you share these troubling issues, the challenges and your recommendations, with the committee, please?

[Dr. Alison M. Konrad]

The difficult issue that I was referring to was the gender discrimination and promotion at the mid-career level in firms. Once people have passed the entry level, they've already demonstrated they're adding value to the firm, and they are no longer just receiving investment, but now it's time that they're giving back to the company and adding value. At this level we see not just small but substantial gender discrimination in advancement opportunities, and that is regardless of whether the woman is receiving the highest possible performance ratings in the firm.

This is very troubling and difficult for people to manage. One of the difficulties, of course, is making the choice to continue to move up in the firm and go to those high levels where they see people who cannot be present for their families. Do they really want that? I think it is very possible, and firms are doing this more and more, to create more of a team environment, where even at the senior levels jobs can be shared, jobs can be part-time, and people can continue to move forward. There's a huge mindset that needs to be changed, that somehow if you're part-time you can't move ahead.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Dr. Konrad, It seems there's an awareness education piece, from what I'm gathering, and then different models. What would be the recommendations to this committee that you would like to see implemented?

[Dr. Alison M. Konrad]

In this area, this would be cutting-edge. As such, I think it would be very valuable to have a nationwide study identifying firms that are moving forward with changing the rigid traditional career hierarchies and becoming much more flexible and developing a wide variety of career paths where people can continue to add value to the firm, but also be present for family and still have a real chance at being the very senior leader of the firm.

This would require identifying those companies that are engaging in these kinds of practices and identifying the struggles they're having and coming up with the factors and contingencies that help them achieve some solutions and that would develop some models for business to use.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you so much, Dr. Konrad.

Ms. Gale, if I remember, was a survey done in 2004 of BDC for BDC?

[Gina Gale]

Was there a survey?

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

I'm asking you.

[Gina Gale]

I'm not sure, do you...?

I don't recall.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

No, okay.

Ms. Benzvy Miller, you have this wonderful outreach campaign. What are the top three challenges you hear for women?

[Shereen Benzvy Miller]

One thing, and this is for businesses generally, is knowing how to access markets and programs. It is difficult for individuals to work collaboratively with the various programs across government, so in our service-to-business strategy we're trying to come up with a way to integrate all of these services so that we are more user-centric. That's a challenge for government, generally. For women business owners it is as much of a challenge as for any other business owner.

One of the things that you've heard is that women own businesses in a variety of sectors. One of the important sectors is the tourism sector. Tourism is actually a very big business. It's $84 billion a year in Canada, so it's a big industry sector. The support that we provide to that sector in terms of ability as an export business to reach out and to actually attract business is important, as well. Providing support to that is important.