Status of Women Committee on March 24th, 2015

[Maia Welbourne]

Good attempt.

Yes, it's my branch that has led on the policy development leading to express entry.

Express entry, as a system, was designed to be gender neutral, applying that GBA lens as we did through the policy development process.

There is no question that it is also designed to target those individuals who have expressed an interest in coming to Canada who have the skills and aptitudes in need by the labour market. Under the system, a qualifying job offer essentially guarantees that an individual is invited to apply for permanent residence. That's great to hear that this individual was invited to apply just 24 hours after she made her initial submission to the system.

We're also looking at processing service standards of six months in 80% of cases, a significant enhancement of our processing times, which means that individuals who aren't already in the country, as she may have been, are able to come to Canada even faster than before.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, Mr. Barlow, but you're out of time.

It is now over to Ms. Liu for five minutes.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you for your testimony. It's very informative.

I'd like to focus my questions on the financing of research, so I'll be directing them to Ms. Walden.

I looked at a study that was carried out in 2010 among Quebec universities that showed that men are better financed than women in terms of their research in the STEM fields. I also notice there's a study on tenures and funding allocated by the tri-council that showed that on average women and men obtained about the same funding for their research.

It seems that there's a difference in funding between men and women in terms of the private sector, and that might be something we should look at. From that, maybe we can deduce that the private sector is more prone to financing research that's more male dominant, such as engineering and computer programming.

Is that a conclusion that you've looked at in the past?

[Janet Walden]

Within our fields of science and engineering, our success rates for women and men are about the same.

You need to disaggregate a little bit the data on the research funding of women versus men, because we have more women who are at the assistant and associate professor level, closer to the entry level, and fewer at the full professor level. When you aggregate all of the data, it looks like their research is funded at a level slightly lower than that of men, but as I say, you need to disaggregate that in a certain way and look at it differently.

In the industry funding part of our industry programs, we have a pretty broad mix of science and engineering across the board. Again, the challenge that we see is that at the full professor level there are much fewer women than men in the science and engineering fields.

In particular, as you mentioned, fields such as civil, mechanical, chemical, and mining engineering, etc., tend to be very strong in terms of the business sectors and financing of research. Women faculty at the full professor level are about 9%.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

That's a very small number.

[Janet Walden]

You see a small number. Again, this is an area where we have some work to do to open those doors.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Would you have any numbers, or do you know if there has been a study carried out on Mitacs scholarships and whether or not there is a difference in the number of Mitacs scholarships given to women versus men?

[Janet Walden]

Mitacs is a separately incorporated body from NSERC and would have its own statistics on male and female representation. I can tell you, though, that in our programs, roughly 41% of our undergraduates financed are women, and about 39% at the master's and Ph.D. level.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you.

Madam Savoie, I was made aware of a report produced by a working group on equal pay that was tabled in 2004 and published. Has there been any work on the recommendations that were carried out following the tabling of that report?

[Linda Savoie]

Could you be more specific about which report we are talking about?

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

This is a report that came out in 2004, produced by the working group on pay equity. The report produced various recommendations.

[Linda Savoie]

I'd have to get back to you on that. There is a lot of work being done on pay equity issues across the various levels of government. I'll refer to those specific recommendations, and I can commit to getting back to you on that.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Great. If you could table your answer with the clerk, that would be appreciated.

[Linda Savoie]

Sure. With pleasure.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Ms. Walden, I believe you also mentioned the women's faculty awards program, and you spoke about it favourably. We know that the last competition was held in 2008. Do you believe that is something we should look at bringing back and funding again?

[Janet Walden]

That program was in place, as I noted, when universities were hiring at a lower pace than they are right now. I think there are a lot of pluses and minuses with programs like that. There were certainly some careers launched as a result of it, but I would say there were also some issues around whether or not these particular positions were received within the universities at an equal stature to a regular assistant professor hiring.

Ultimately, we determined that we were in a situation where the universities were hiring much more. We saw many more women being hired, and we didn't want to have a stigma associated with these faculty positions. We moved on to feeding the pipeline more and removing barriers, as opposed to creating specialized positions.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Perkins, you may go ahead for five minutes.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

First of all, I'd like to say how pleased I am with the work you've all been doing. All of you need to be congratulated for the methods you're using and the amount of energy you've dedicated to this. I think it's very important, and you've been truly quite remarkable.

I have two questions. I know the work that Citizenship and Immigration had been doing is tremendously valuable to round everything out, but unfortunately I don't have a question for you.

My question is for the other three, Madam Chair.

My first question is about the graduating age from high school to university. In the province of Ontario, graduates are generally 17 years of age, and we're asking people to make life choices about what education stream they're going to pursue. I'm wondering if any studies would make any determination about what the optimal age might be for females versus males to ask that question.

My second question is, how do we pique the interest of folks in the guidance counselling streams and the staff and teachers within high schools in allowing these young women to grow differently?

For example, we have a school in my riding that has what they call a SWAT club, science women are tops. That's their club and it's very well attended. They have a robotics group and all those sorts of things. There's another group, a national group called FIRST Robotics. They're engaging with high schools, trying to get them to put robotics teams together. I know the federal government has been funding them. They just had an event at Durham College, University of Ontario Institute of Technology a week ago, where they were choosing the finalists who were going to go to the United States for the final competition.

There are some great things out there. I'd like to see how we incorporate them all, how we bring them together, looking at that age, looking at the teachers, and looking at what else is out there. How do we bring it together?

Those are my questions, Madam Chair. Three witnesses can answer.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Ms. Savoie, did you want to say something?

[Linda Savoie]

Certainement. In working with our stakeholders who have extensive expertise on this, to your point about the opportune moment to expose the girls to these possibilities, there seems to be a fair bit of interest from girls between the fifth and ninth grades. As you know, we don't have the levers to be involved in schools specifically, but we do work with partners like Actua, which my colleague Janet Walden mentioned earlier, which create these opportunities for girls outside school hours and often in collaboration with the school system, such as camps, summer camps, and events that girls can participate in to trigger their interest. A lot of very interesting work is happening out there at that level. A lot of it is focusing on that age group, but I know there are initiatives on either side of those age groups.

In terms of guidance counsellors, that is very much a provincial area of jurisdiction, but then again, one of the projects we've received recently that Status of Women will be funding is occurring in Montreal and is specifically targeting guidance counsellors in a high school. It's in my old stomping grounds, but there's no relation to the project arriving as a result of that. The local Y is driving this project, working with a small group of guidance counsellors, to try to identify what the barriers are right now, what do they not know that they should know to be able to provide proper guidance to girls.

There are a lot of initiatives on that front happening across the country, and we'll hopefully see some pick-up and changes in the trends as a result.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Time is up. The witnesses can finish their answers as we continue.

Ms. Crockatt, you have five minutes. Please go ahead.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

I want to tell all of you that this is a whole bunch of Kodak moments going on here to have all of you together speaking about this with one voice. I think there is a very strong message here that we have to reach young girls in elementary school, excite them about career possibilities, and get the guidance counsellors and the curriculum all working together. I think we've heard that in pieces before, but I never got it as clearly as I got it from all of you here today. I really want to thank you for that.

I'm going to ask every single member of the panel this. I'm sitting here and trying to tweet, because I know we're reaching young girls on Twitter, right? I'm thinking, do we put Justin Bieber in the hashtag to get to them?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

These guys nixed it, by the way.

I want to ask every one of you, how do we get to the young girls? I'll work my way around the table. Are there any innovative ideas? I mean, we're in an innovative field. We're trying to do things differently. Try to see if you can give me one strong recommendation about how we reach those young girls.

Janet.

[Janet Walden]

I think Madam Savoie gave a very good overview. There are a lot of organizations doing a lot of really exciting things, but I think the most important thing is the hands-on direct contact.

As I say, we have a lot of organizations out there doing that, but it's really seeing, touching, and doing science and engineering that's going to get kids.... I don't think there's an age. I think that from kindergarten right through to high school.... At the high school level, what we have to make sure of is that our science teachers are as excited and as knowledgeable about science as our students are.

I think there are a lot of external forces that can be brought to bear in terms of science camps or whatever, but it's the hands-on contact outside the classroom and then inside the classroom that's important to carry on that enthusiasm. Good science teacher education coming out of the universities is really important as well.