Status of Women Committee on April 21st, 2015

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

Well, I personally am very unhappy that technology is not required anywhere in the country and that science is not required in grade 12, but with the caveat that just continuing to ask for more of the same is also not good. Thinking forward to what's needed for skills, attitude, and capacity development, and knowing how much information is out there, I think we have to actually rethink the skills and competencies that are needed for graduates, and it's not necessarily subject area specialization.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Okay. We don't have a chief science officer anymore.

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

Right.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Would that be helpful? I met with another country this morning that has two.

For the panel, would having a chief science officer be helpful? Can I have just a yes or a no from all of you?

[Dorothy Byers]

I really believe that you need to have a champion, so if there's someone who believes in the importance of a topic such as STEM or science in education at the high school level.... I know that at university it's very different, but we see this in everything we do. If there is strong leadership and there is a voice, then the voice will be heard and it will collect the champions behind it. That will create the systemic change.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

So should we have as a recommendation that there should be a chief science officer?

[A voice]

It's a good step.

[Dorothy Byers]

It's a good step, yes.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Schmidt, you mentioned that a FedDev program had been sunsetted. What was the loss in terms of the funding?

You mentioned the funding that you would like to see going forward. How much is that for, please?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

The funding that went into the STEM file through FedDev, to my knowledge, was $20 million over three years. It was launched as a term-delineated project, so it wasn't a surprise when the funding left. That was quite clearly articulated. What was quite reassuring in the 2014 science strategy was that the government put a quadrupling of the amount into NSERC for youth STEM initiatives.

The loss was a loss of the bucket within southern Ontario to allow organizations to scale up and really think strategically about partnerships and implications. We saw dramatic growth in our own reach at Let's Talk Science and in the capacity to build new programs. We were well positioned to leverage it, so we haven't lost. It allowed us to get to the next level of transformation within our organization.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

To FIRST Robotics Canada, I think there was a page in the deck that said there's $26 million in scholarships worldwide, and we have $150,000 in Canada. Can you expand on that, please?

[Dorothy Byers]

The international organization is profound. There's a lot of money in the United States for university and college programs, and there's a slide in our presentation about that. FIRST Canada, remember, has been in place since 2002, and it behooves the universities to step up to enable that type of scholarship money, because it is a change-maker for a number of students who are then able to step into those kinds of programs. It is quite profound.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

What would be the recommendation to this committee?

[Dorothy Byers]

A recommendation would be to encourage universities and colleges so that we are looking at skilled trades as well as professional choices to be made available, and for universities to encourage funding in those ways for students.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Should there be funding from elsewhere?

[Dorothy Byers]

For scholarships, yes, and as you'll see from the slide we presented around the sponsorships we've been able to generate, there are sponsorships from those different organizations, companies, and whatnot. In the United States, NASA is one of the major sponsors, and the profound impact that has on the students—not just in money but in expertise—is really quite remarkable.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Do you have any other recommendation regarding scholarships? You said NASA in the United States...?

[Karen Low]

I think there's one other thing. It's a scalable type of thing. It's like the chicken and the egg. We've started out and we don't yet have the number of students that are involved in the U.S. The U.S. has almost a quarter of a million students, so again...and they have a lot more universities. They have 10 at the top. The only thing that's limiting us is that we have a proven program but we don't have enough money to really spread it across all the provinces.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Your recommendation?

[Karen Low]

More support.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

Now I want to go to TechGirls Canada. I admired your point that you can't tackle just the pipeline in talking about transparency, hiring, and performance reviews. We know from old studies that if a gentleman's or a woman's name was attached, there were very different results than there were when those names were hidden. Do you have any recommendations here?

[Saira Muzaffar]

This is a touchy-feely subject. It's very uncomfortable, because how do we change social behaviour when you are talking about government and governing? Providing support for organizations like TechGirls and not just organizations.... These guys are very important. It's about maintaining the education and actually building the pipeline looking forward, but it's also about providing support to organizations that go into companies, into industry, and into school boards to provide models that change behaviours and models that change the way people think, and to articulate barriers faced by people of colour, people with other barriers, and women in general, women with other privileges. There's a lot of stuff that intersects.

When you're looking at putting your report together.... I had the opportunity to briefly go over the minutes from your last couple of meetings, and a ton of the focus is on the pipeline. There's not enough conversation going on in those minutes for women who are already in the workforce.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Barlow, you have the floor and you have five minutes.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you.

Thanks very much to everybody for being here today. This is a pretty impressive panel that we have and I appreciate your taking the time.

I want to start with Ms. Schmidt and maybe change the focus a little bit.

For me, coming from Alberta, our focus is definitely on skilled labour and the trades. You talked a little bit in your study about how there hasn't been a lot of growth in women going into the skilled trades. Do you have a reason for that? I know it's maybe difficult to explain, but can you give me some background on why they aren't going into things like welding, engineering technology, petroleum engineering, and those kinds of things?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

Some of the data we've found is I think perception-based as well, of girls thinking they don't want to necessarily work with machinery and whatnot.

I'll give you an answer as a mom, actually, instead of as Let's Talk Science. I have a daughter in grade 12; well, she's in grade 11 right now, but taking a number of grade 12 courses. In grade 9 she was the only girl in the technology class. It was really fascinating, because the reason she decided she wanted to try the grade 9 tech course was that when we refinished our basement a few years ago, I had her involved in doing the drywalling and the studding and all of the stuff we needed to do.

I'm now very upset with my corners. However, that's another conversation.