Thank you, Madame Chair.
Good morning. My name is Jill Earthy and I am the regional director of Futurpreneur Canada for B.C. and the Yukon, the only national non-profit organization that helps young Canadian entrepreneurs launch successful businesses. I am also the co-chair and co-founder of the WEB Alliance, a collective of over 25 women's business networks in B.C., and I'm formerly the CEO of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs.
ln addition, I serve on the board of the Women's Enterprise Centre here in B.C. and at Simon Fraser University. I'm passionate about supporting entrepreneurship, women in business, and the economic benefits that come from doing so.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you. Before I speak about the collaboration that is occurring in B.C. to better support women in business, and particularly the results from the recent B.C. Economic Forum's “Women as a catalyst for growth” event, I would like to share some information about Futurpreneur Canada and its important work to support young entrepreneurs and women entrepreneurs, as the two topics are interconnected.
For those of you not familiar with Futurpreneur Canada, we help 18 to 39-year-old entrepreneurs with no security and no track record launch and grow businesses. We do this by providing loan financing of up to $45,000 from Futurpreneur Canada and the BDC. Our loans are based on character, not collateral, and the strength of the young person's business case. We also equip them with mentors and we have more than 2,800 volunteer mentors across Canada.
ln addition, we offer a stand-alone mentoring program called MoMENTum to help young people who do not require financing. Plus of course we give them business resources, counselling, and networks to help them navigate the initial years of their businesses. We also support new immigrants and ex-military. This combination gives young entrepreneurs the confidence, competence, capital, and connections they need for business success.
Since we were founded in 1996 we've invested in 6,740 Canadian entrepreneurs, and last year alone we helped launch 800 new businesses, almost 40% more than the previous year. These businesses have created 26,000 jobs and $191 million in tax revenues. Plus we've seen a significant increase in the number of women entrepreneurs served by Futurpreneur Canada over the past five years.
This corresponds to recent Global Entrepreneurship Monitor research showing that the ratio of Canadian women to male entrepreneurs has improved from 2:1 to 3:2 since 2002. Last year, we helped 353 young women. That's over 40% of our clients, and here in B.C. 44% of the clients we served were women. We've helped them launch businesses across a variety of different sectors, including non-traditional areas such as the skilled trades. We've had an opportunity to seize on this momentum and provide more aspiring young entrepreneurs with the investment and programs they need to launch their businesses.
To help meet the growing demand for Futurpreneur Canada's services and to increase the number of youth-led businesses launched by 10% each year, we have respectfully requested a Government of Canada contribution through Industry Canada of $37.5 million over five years to support our full start-up program plus an additional $2 million to support the expansion of our stand-alone mentoring program with a focus on women entrepreneurs. This is a reduced annual contribution but Futurpreneur is proposing to do better with less.
We are currently helping about 2% to 3% of the potential youth entrepreneur market and our goal is to double that in the next five years. With this requested government support, 5,600 young people will benefit from our full start-up program and 2,000 more people will benefit from our expanded stand-alone mentoring program, MoMENTum.
Futurpreneur Canada's internationally respected mentoring program is truly one of a kind. Research from a 2014 Ryerson University report found that in Canada, a new firm has a 77% chance of surviving its first year, only a 36% chance of surviving its first five years, and less than a 20% chance of surviving its first 10. The Futurpreneur entrepreneur five-year survival rate is between 50% and 60% and our repayment rate is 80% to 90%. We believe this is due to the strength of our mentoring program and our comprehensive business resources. We have a proven track record of advancing economic growth by supporting emerging entrepreneurs and their growing businesses.
Building further on this, through my role I am able to engage in collaborative and progressive work taking place in B.C. to create solutions and recommendations to better support women in business, and to stimulate economic growth. For the past six years, representatives from over 25 women's business networks, including those focused on supporting professional women, entrepreneurial women, women in finance, women in law, women in mining, my colleague, Fariba here, from SCWIST, Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology, and the list goes on. We have been meeting to share ideas and explore ways to leverage resources to reach and support more women and to collaborate on events and initiatives focused on the economic benefits of supporting women.
This group, now representing more than 10,000 women in the Lower Mainland, and now growing to reach other regions of the province, is called the WEB Alliance. I am honoured to be a co-founder and co-chair of this group, along with Laurel Douglas, CEO of the Women's Enterprise Centre in B.C. ln February of 2013, the representatives of the WEB Alliance had the chance to meet with our premier, the Honourable Christy Clark, and to suggest the creation of a premier's women's economic council. This was meant to be a means, a connection point, within the provincial government to influence policies and address ways to grow the economy by supporting women in business. We were thrilled, when in February of this year the premier did announce the creation of this council representing 16 women, from throughout the province, in a variety of sectors and roles.
With this council now in place, the WEB Alliance saw an opportunity to bring a large group of community leaders and influencers together from throughout B.C. to participate in a working forum to create realistic solutions and recommendations—in other words, an action plan—to be presented to all levels of government, to corporations and organizations, and for us, as individuals, to have clear tasks to take away and implement.
The issues are clear and the business case exists but what we felt was needed was an opportunity to share best practices, brainstorm new ideas, and increase awareness and accountability on this topic. A pre-read document highlighting key research was created and circulated in advance to all participants to ensure we were building on the research and not just revisiting it. I will be happy to share this document with you.
We were told that it was the first time in Canada that such a diverse group of individuals participated in one place to address the three topics on how to grow women in senior leadership with a focus on boards and executives; how to grow women entrepreneurs, looking at inspiring women to be entrepreneurs and how they can grow their businesses; and how to grow women in non-traditional and emerging sectors, including areas such as the trades, science, high tech, and LNG. Four hundred and fifty participants spent the day focused on one of these three tracks, working through a facilitated format to create solutions. We were honoured that Minister Leitch attended the events and shared some opening remarks along with Premier Clark, Minister Bond, and Minister Yamamoto, as well as Alex Johnston, executive director of Catalyst Canada.
We are now in the process of putting together a comprehensive report in the form of an action plan that we will share in the coming months, and we would be honoured to have the opportunity to present it to you in 2015. Some preliminary recommendations include the need to activate men. The economic forum sold out well in advance demonstrating a strong interest in this topic, but what we were missing were the men in the room. Engaging men and having them participate in and contribute to the conversation is a key piece in order to affect change.
We have a number of recommendations moving forward that we will share shortly.
On the need to elevate the conversation and to increase accountability among all of us, as individuals and leaders, to do our part, the proposed legislation being discussed in Ontario around boards explaining or complying is a great example. Simply by exploring this option, more awareness is being raised on this topic across the country—