Status of Women Committee on April 21st, 2015

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Yes, I am listening.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

During the presentation by the representative of FIRST Robotics Canada, I perused the document. I appreciate the effort that was made to translate the document, but unfortunately there is a page on the impact of schooling that has not been translated, and of course, the appendices have not been translated into French. I would like to ask that the next time this be done more rigorously

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Yes, thank you for your intervention, Ms. Sellah.

We will see to it that all members receive the pages in French that were not translated.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

I would appreciate things being done at the same time.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Perfect, thank you very much, Ms. Sellah. We will see to it that this gets translated. Sometimes it happens that everything is not translated. There was only a little bit missing.

Ms. Truppe, you have the floor. You have seven minutes.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank you again for being here today. As I've said, it's really important that we get the feedback from the experts out there so that in this case we can hopefully help more young girls get into the STEM programs. I have a couple of questions.

Bonnie, maybe I could start with you. Being in London, I'm familiar with Let’s Talk Science. You do a great job. Your name is always out there, so if nothing else, somebody should be hearing about girls and STEM. At what age do you start engaging girls? I'm not sure if I missed that.

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

Our focus is not girls only. Our real values are access and equity.

We start at age two. We have programs that are used in hundreds of child care centres across the country. A lot of what we do is working with and through educators, whether it's in the early years.... For example, hundreds of the aboriginal head start programs on reserves have used much of our early years programming. Also, we help to empower the educators and the parents of young children to bring in and infuse an inquiry-based or STEM-based approach. We have something right up into grade 12.

We have a suite of five programs. Each is tailored quite differently based on the barriers to engagement that both teachers and students face.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Give me an example. What would a two- or three-year-old be learning?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

Through the brand IdeaPark and Wings of Discovery, we have a real skills-based orientation. Young children would be looking at their natural environment and learning to ask really good questions, whether it's in the playground or in the park, and learning to explore. Actually, all young people's perspective is about the world around us. It's about how we engage their curiosity, their interest in the world, and how we can provide them with the frameworks and the confidence in order to continue to explore.

We've also really excelled in professional development of educators and over our history have trained over 30,000 teachers at all different ages and stages of grade levels. It's a space that we're starting to get back into, especially at the high school level, because at the high school level we're hearing from ministries of education from coast to coast that there's a lack of perceived relevance, and the connection with science, technology, society, and the environment is something that they want to be doing better and more fulsomely but don't have the resources to do so. By convening the provinces together, providing platforms to be sharing practices, and getting materials out, they're able to do that.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Is it Let's Talk Science that would develop these programs for the two- and three-year-olds, or are you working with the boards?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

Yes, to all of it. We have a pretty competent team that is well versed in education, being classroom teachers themselves or at various levels of administration—

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Right, and a lot of volunteers, as I know you said.

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

Yes, a lot of volunteers. The volunteer piece is really interesting. That's the flagship program I started as a graduate student myself. It's now offered through 41 universities and colleges, with about 4,000 volunteers. It brings that experiential participation into classroom and community settings.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

That's amazing.

You also mentioned that there is no mandatory grade 12 science or trade that they must take so that they can experience something else while they're in high school. Are you working with the boards on this? Do you foresee any change in that? Are you doing something, or is Let's Talk Science doing something?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

Absolutely. I think under the banner of our “Spotlight on Science Learning” reports for the last few years, we've really had a good look at the macro level. I can say that the ministries of education from coast to coast are really interested in talking about this issue. It has become a great concern to everybody. How do we scale up best practices? How do we understand where some of the decision points are?

For example, while there is no mandatory grade 12 science credit, it's also very difficult to track optional enrolment. We're seeing that right now at the high school level. Four out of five kids in general are leaving grade 12 without the physics requirements they need for engineering. Those are four out of five kids we've lost before they even make post-secondary choices.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

I did some round tables in the last year and a half or so, and I went around to different places in Canada to see how we could get more girls involved in STEM or skilled trades. The round tables started out with the need to get them early in high school so that they would know what courses could be taken. But by the time a couple of round tables had started, it was, “Oh, no, that's way too late. It has to be elementary school so that they're thinking about it for high school.” That made perfect sense.

I actually hosted a round table for the Western engineering girls to see why they chose engineering; I was really curious. I think a couple of them had female relatives who were in engineering. Others said that they just looked it up on their own. They said they think the reason for the lack of it is that people think it's just one job, engineering, which I think one of you mentioned. There are so many choices in engineering.

Now, you mentioned the lack of exposure and the lack of role models. All of that came up. What do we do about that?

[Dr. Bonnie Schmidt]

I think one of the biggest things to keep in mind is that there is no magic bullet. If there were, we would have figured the problem out a while ago. It's understanding what the challenges are at each age and stage, and ensuring that there is a cultural approach to it.

I think one of the other pieces, too, is that at the political level, the dialogue is often segregated. We'll talk about climate change, or we'll talk about environment, or we'll talk about health care systems, but often we're not showing the integrator of science and technology across all of these big, big issues that you're faced with making decisions on. It's not connected to science and technology. People continue to see science as laboratory research, and engineering as.... We're getting way better at understanding what engineering is, but there's still a real misconception there.

So it's understanding the barriers and it's understanding that it changes as people age. It's dealing with parents, who are critical influencers and role models for young people's decision-making. If they're not realizing the influence of STEM on critical global issues as well as workplace issues, then we're missing the boat. It's a cultural piece, and all of us are needed. I think there's no one single player or one single approach.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you. I'd—

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

Oh, wow. I didn't even get a chance to talk to Dorothy and Karen. Time goes so fast.

Thanks.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Actually, just as a piece of clarification, we received the presentation from translation services but we didn't realize that some of the slides had not been translated. We will make sure those slides are translated and distributed to all members.

We noticed that.

Ms. Freeman, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of you for your presentations. I apologize that I was a little late, but I've had a chance to look through all your briefs, so I'm up to speed. Thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it.

Ms. Muzaffar, you were talking about how access and compensation are still very gendered in STEM generally. It's in a lot of fields, but especially in STEM, where you were saying there's 20% less compensation for women. Where are you getting that data from?

[Saira Muzaffar]

The 20% is an average. It's not specific to STEM sectors.

The last statistic in my statement is from U.S. Labor. I don't have a comparable one for Canada. I did have an opportunity to go through the meeting notes from the committee's previous meetings. Generally speaking, what we're getting from StatsCan is that the data is there, but we're not really looking at what women are making across the board in a fruitful enough way to have a meaningful measurement. Measurement is a challenge in not just compensation.

That being said, no one around this table will disagree that women are still not paid the same.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Thank you.

Yes, there's definitely a lack of data around what's actually happening and where the problems are. For you, what would be your recommendations to try to promote pay equity?

[Saira Muzaffar]

Transparency; when it comes to payment and performance reviews, you need to set standards. This is where we're looking to government for leadership, because industry will always move ahead. It's business as usual. But until we start changing things in government, we're not going to be able to set standards.

We're doing some really cool experiments at TechGirls. We're working directly with industry and running some beta tests on how hiring policies and performance reviews can be changed. We're conducting facilitation workshops. We have some really brave companies stepping up and putting not just their processes but also their money behind this in saying that they're going to run some experiments and see where they're falling short, and they're going to record this data. TechGirls is fortunate enough to be facilitating this, recording it, reporting it, and sharing it with industry. I look forward to being able to share that information, but we're just starting out on that.

Transparency would be the number one thing.