Status of Women Committee on April 28th, 2015

[Nancy Darling]

With our programs we try to have the women do labour market research before we sponsor them for a trades foundation program. They have to be able to show that there is a job available for them to go to once they complete the training or we won't want to sponsor them for that training. But that being said, there are a number of things to consider depending on which trade it is. If it is welding, they are probably going to have to leave Kelowna. There are not very many welding jobs in Kelowna. So are they able to leave and go north? Do they have young children in school? If so, they're very much tied to the community. They may not be able to leave and take those jobs in the northern part of the province or in Alberta. So those are some of the factors they have to consider when choosing a trade for a career.

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

Certainly within the engineering profession, I think the evidence is that the greatest attrition is between the ages of 27 and 32, which is when women are having children or balancing a lot of other factors in their lives. I think there is a huge element of corporate policy and culture at play in that attrition.

[Ryan Montpellier]

I agree. For sure we see the same thing in our sector.

I think what also contributes to that attrition are the conditions that in our case, in the mining sector, are specific to our industry, things like the rural and remote nature of the industry. You can do that for a few years if you want and you can go to live in Yellowknife, but eventually people tend to migrate to where they are from. Or things like a fly-in/fly-out schedule in which you work for two weeks and have two weeks off are doable for a period of time but not for a number of years, and eventually that takes its toll. We see much higher levels of turnover for males and females with those schedules, but you can't get around that.

It's about providing as much accurate information as we can about job requirements from the get-go so the individual doesn't necessarily go through all the training, get the job, do it for a year, and then leave. If that happens, we're not helping that individual or the sector.

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

That leads right into my next question. We have heard from witnesses, including Status of Women officials, who say that accessibility to flexible child care, especially if you're talking about jobs that are taking you outside your community, or shift work, for instance, and things like that, make it very difficult to raise a family. We know that women still bear a disproportionate amount of child raising and taking parental leave and things like that.

I don't know if you have any observations about how access to child care or lack of access has made a difference. I'm speaking to all of you, by the way.

[Nancy Darling]

It has definitely made a difference for us. Child care is one of the most common barriers we hear of.

With trades jobs, even if you are working locally, most daycare centres won't open until 7 or 7:30 and you need to be on the job by 7 a.m., so you need to be dropping kids off at 6:30 at the latest.

We have a daycare on campus and we're working to have that daycare made 24 hours so that access is greater for our women. We're hoping that is going to be a trend. That is what we need, greater access to daycare so our women can work.

[Ryan Montpellier]

We went through the same thing. A number of mining companies have tried either to set up daycare in the community in which they operate or to support those daycare centres financially or in other ways.

What was interesting was that, for small communities in which both spouses or both members of the family work for the same mining company, the challenge then became scheduling and being flexible. I think all of that speaks to some of the challenges we're looking at: how our industry and our employers can become more flexible to accommodate different types of families today in which there's not just a single income earner but multiple incomes or family structures that are different from what they were 20 years ago. How can we change to accommodate different types of people?

[Jennifer Flanagan]

I can tell you that we engage 1,000 undergraduate students in STEM fields every year as we deliver our programs. There is already an ongoing dialogue among the females who are working for us about that specific challenge and the concern. As they're going through an engineering program, how are they going to balance this, and are they going to be able to work in this field? They're checking out sometimes before they've even done their undergraduate program. That is an ongoing concern for women, and absolutely we hear that on the ground.

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

You mentioned it's one of the barriers to continuing. Sometimes it's even one of the barriers to entering that kind of employment. Do you see it as one of the barriers to upward mobility as well? If women are taking more time than men, is that contributing to the lack of being assigned more interesting work or being open to promotions and things like that?

The question is for all of you.

[Nancy Darling]

Absolutely. We have only two female trades instructors at our college. One of them we got because the second she told her boss she was pregnant—and she was only three months pregnant—she was told she couldn't come back to work.

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

My goodness.

[Nancy Darling]

So not only did she leave work as an electrician, she's done with that field. She's into teaching now.

I was shocked to hear that, because I didn't know if it was even legal for them to say she couldn't come back because she was pregnant.

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

Some of my colleagues are saying that's not legal, but, I guess it's still all about the culture of the workplace.

[Nancy Darling]

It is the culture. They were afraid. They said, “We're afraid you'll hurt yourself. What happens if...?”

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Mr. Montpellier, you have the floor, but I would ask you to reply briefly.

[Ryan Montpellier]

I agree. Hearing stories like that is just horrible.

I think in our sector when we surveyed women they did identify parental leave as a major barrier to upward mobility. When we asked employers the same question, they didn't. So there is a disconnect.

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

They're not actually going to say they fired her because she was pregnant.

[Ryan Montpellier]

Exactly. But I think it speaks to the point that there is a disconnect between what female employees perceive to be issues and what employers perceive to be issues. I think even raising that disconnect to employers, hopefully, will help them to address some of it.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

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

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

I have a couple of questions, and I'm going to share my time with Madam O'Neill Gordon.

Ryan, I'm going to go back to you because I didn't get to finish my questions. My time went so quickly. I think you said 17% of the mining workforce—38,000—were women. Did I get that right?

[Ryan Montpellier]

Yes.

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

Do we know what the age group might be for that 38,000? Are they over 45 or 50, or 25 to 40?

[Ryan Montpellier]

I can certainly get you that breakdown. I don't have it in front of me. My first instinct would be to say they are younger than the average age in the industry. We've seen a significant number of female hires in the last decade compared to what there was three decades ago.

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

Right.

You said something about the average age. What is the average age?

[Ryan Montpellier]

In the industry today, I believe it is 46 or 47 years old. And about a third of our industry today will be eligible to retire in the next five years.

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

I think you said that half of the mining industry was over 45 years old. Is that right?