Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to appear as a witness and to address the committee this morning.
My name is Ryan Montpellier and I'm the executive director at the Mining Industry Human Resources Council, also known as the MiHR council, which is an industry-driven, non-profit organization that leads the development of solutions to the industry's HR issues.
Our goal, very simply, is to build a diverse, sustainable, skilled, and safe Canadian mining workforce that is recognized globally. To accomplish this goal we do not work in isolation. We work with almost all major mining companies in Canada, with contractors, with equipment suppliers, with aboriginal groups, with post-secondary educational institutions, and with a number of other stakeholder partners.
My talk this morning aims to give you a bit of an overview of some of the labour market issues affecting the mining industry in Canada. As you all know, the mining sector employs a number of occupations that are STEM related and, in particular, I'll spend the majority of my talk this morning talking about female participation in the mining industry and some of the barriers and challenges and opportunities that exist with regard to their women's participation in the mining sector.
Let me start by providing a little bit of context as to some of the challenges currently facing the mining sector and its labour market. We're essentially facing what we've called the perfect storm. We have a sector that is growing at the same time we have an industry that is aging. According to the Mining Association of Canada, about $100 billion of new mining projects are currently going through the environmental assessment and permitting phases. Even if a small fraction of those mining projects come to fruition, that will mean a significant increase in the growth of the sector and cause a significant amount of strain on an already tight labour market.
The mining industry also is not immune to the aging workforce. In fact, about 40% of the mining industry workforce today is over 45 years old and one third of the industry will be eligible to retire in the next five years. Compounding this problem is the question of where we are going to find the next generation of miners and from where we are going to recruit these individuals. As you can probably guess, most major mining projects are not located in large urban centres. They are more and more in rural and remote locations in Canada, and many of them are fly-in/fly-out operations which, in itself, is a challenge not only to men but also to women and everyone.
Very few kids grow up today saying, “When I'm older, I want to be a miner”. This is often a second or a third career after the first few options don't work out. Also, the mining industry has not done as great a job as it could have in attracting new Canadians and women. If you put all of this together, you have a very daunting task, which is to hire what we are forecasting to be over 100,000 workers in the next decade, and that's under a very moderate growth scenario. If, as the World Bank is forecasting, commodity prices do rebound, we will need to hire upwards of 125,000 new workers over the course of the next decade. Clearly, there's no silver bullet here and there's no simple way of attracting this next generation of mine workers.
The industry today is implementing a very sophisticated strategy to ensure that down the line we have the right people with the right skills, at the right time. One pillar of that strategy is to make better use of all potential sources of supply, which includes making better use of and attracting and retaining and developing more women, more aboriginal people, and more new Canadians.
There are a number of initiatives under way that I could speak to with respect to aboriginal engagement and engagement of new Canadians, but for the remainder of my talk this morning I'll focus on attracting, retaining, and developing women in our sector.
I'd like to start by saying that women today are working in the mining industry more than they ever have before. In fact, today women represent 17% of the mining workforce—that's almost 38,000 women—and although that is not necessarily a number to be proud of, it has increased by over 40% in the last decade, so we are trending in the right direction.
We fully acknowledge that female participation in the labour force as a whole is much closer to 50%—it's in the 48% range—and that we as an industry have a lot of work to do to attract and retain more women in our sector.
When we drill down a little and look at the specific occupations where females do participate in the mining industry, we see that over 50% of females in the workplace are working in HR, finance, and administrative and support roles. However, when we look specifically at the STEM-related occupations, the occupations that are specific to skilled trades or production—we're talking about miners and equipment operators—we see that number fall to under 10%. For many occupations, that number is 5%. In some occupations, it's as low as 2%. In the professional and physical sciences and technical occupations—here we're talking about geology, mining engineering, the geosciences, and metallurgists—that number is about 20%, which is on par with other sectors of the economy.
Obviously, doing more to attract, recruit, and retain women is a priority for our sector. To do that, we need to knock down some of the barriers. I'd now like to give you a few examples of some of the barriers we've found as a result of some of the research we've done.
The first barrier is the lack of career awareness and the lack of interest that women have in the sector. MiHR recently conducted a survey of 2,000 career-seekers—1,000 men and 1,000 women—between the ages of 18 and 24. These individuals were looking for a career at that moment. Unfortunately, only 7.5% of women surveyed indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed that they would consider mining for employment, and only 8.5% of women indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed that mining offered jobs that interested them.
As an industry, we need to change these perceptions. We need to do a better job of communicating with regard to the rewarding careers and the modern careers that exist in our sector.
The second barrier we have identified is around workplace culture. Studies conducted by MiHR, by Women in Mining Canada, and by the B.C. labour shortage task force have all indicated that workplace culture in the mining sector is often thought of as male-dominated and as a deterrent to women's retention in the sector.
We recently wrapped up a national survey of mining workers, an employee survey, and we found that women respondents were more likely than men to find it a challenge to adapt to mining work culture. The majority of men and women respondents indicated that it is harder for a woman than for a man to succeed in their workplace, yet 70% of all respondents did say that mining companies are putting in place programs to encourage a respectful, welcoming workplace. Clearly, 70% is a number that we want to increase, and we want all mining companies and suppliers to build workplaces that are inclusive and respectful.
The third challenge that I wanted to highlight is career advancement. Career progression and advancement is a complex topic. In our research, a lack of career advancement opportunities was identified as a barrier by women.
Additionally, research has indicated that women's careers in mining are stalling despite interest in further advancement. Our research suggests that one cause of this may be the lack of role models and the lack of direct mentorship. Without visible role models and mentors, it was more difficult for women to navigate and progress in their careers in a male-dominated environment. Also, and not surprisingly, women were more likely to have taken parental leave. In the research we did, parental leave was identified as having a negative impact on an individual's career path.
What can be done to increase participation of women in the sector and in STEM occupations in particular? Well, the first building block to put in place, I believe, is taking a long-term view and creating the supply of workers by investing in career awareness and promotion for the occupations that will be most in demand, and those are the STEM-related occupations.
Promoting a positive and accurate image of the mining industry and the careers it offers is also essential to support career awareness efforts. Employers are already doing a lot of this in supporting work placements for young women, providing mine tours, and bringing women on site. We have done a number of programs and pre-employment programs to help women transition to the sector.
The second area I would identify is that of providing more flexible work arrangements. This was identified as a key barrier in that the mining industry and our work schedules were quite rigid and were not conducive to individuals who, in some instances, also wanted to raise a family.
To support advancement, workplace culture must also be better understood. MiHR is currently researching workplace culture barriers, and we will be publishing a study on this in the fall of this year.
Over the next three years MiHR will be implementing our new project on addressing systemic barriers to gender equity in mining, which will address the invisible barriers that exist in current mining policies and procedures and hinder the inclusion of women. Ultimately, the project will expedite the institutional change necessary to improve gender equity in the Canadian mining industry.
Finally, many mining employers today are making remarkable strides with respect to gender diversification, and we are encouraging them to share their strategies and results. This transparency has already started at the board level with securities regulators in Canada, in Ontario and Quebec in particular, now requiring publicly traded Canadian companies to disclose gender diversity indicators and practices. Deploying a similar reporting or disclosure mechanism to all levels of an organization, not just around the board table, would encourage more companies to adopt gender diversity policies and practices throughout their organization.
I'll end it there. I think I've surpassed my ten minutes.
Thank you very much.