Status of Women Committee on May 5th, 2016

[Neil Bouwer]

Perhaps I'll start.

We work very closely with Statistics Canada, which is world class as a statistical data provider, and we have a great relationship with them. If you ask an economist or a statistician whether they have all the data they need, you will always get the answer that more is better. That is true; more is better. We would like to invest more in data, to be sure. Some areas are easier than others. Internal data about our own workforce, of course, is readily available to us. When it comes to policy issues, depending on the policy issue, we may have better or poorer data quality.

[Mitch Davies]

I will take the opportunity to plug some good work that I think is part of the answer in getting better information and data, and it gets to the point of what resources the department uses to draw on.

The Council of Canadian Academies, if you are familiar with it, is a foundation that does impeccable work to collect evidence on questions of which the government, and in fact our department, has been a heavy user. We are also the host for the funding arrangement with them. In 2012, we commissioned a report called “Strengthening Canada's Research Capacity: The Gender Dimension”. This arose as a consequence of recommendations that we commissioned in terms of enhancing the profile and the ultimate success of women in higher research.

We had the Canada Excellence Research Chairs inaugural competition, and those who were selected, those who were given awards—and these are big awards, $10-million awards over seven years—were all men. I am sure they were all meritorious. These were fantastic researchers around the world. However, we immediately turned to an ad hoc group to ask them to look at recommendations about where we could improve the performance. One of the things we commissioned was this report, and I can report that the next round of Canada Excellence Research Chairs had women among the awardees.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That is your time.

We are over to my Conservative colleague Ms. Vecchio, for seven minutes.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mitch, this is to you. You were talking about the practice, that you will put it into practice. What does the practice look like, first of all? Previous witnesses mentioned that, instead of just having a champion, they have people embedded within their organization. What are your next steps with the GBA?

[Mitch Davies]

In terms of what the practice looks like, I wouldn't say that we are in any way different or divergent from the other departments. We have a very rigorous questionnaire, and there is a checklist. It takes you through a series of questions that you have to look at, the fundamental matter: whether or not there could be differential outcomes in terms of gender, and whether there are measures you can take to mitigate that. In all cases now, when this work is done and the matters go up for decision, we have to show that we have done the work. Either we end up doing a review at that level to indicate that we didn't find anything—and we can actually scrutinize that; in my group we look at it—and the director general in the program area has to sign off on it, or they have to complete the full analysis. This happens about 50 times a year, as we look at memoranda to cabinet or Treasury Board submissions in the department.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

When we talk about the questions, what are some of those questions? Can you identify and give us a couple of examples, so we know? We talk about these questions, but what are they? Put those into context for us, please.

[Neil Bouwer]

While Mitch is looking for his reference, I just want to mention that I did provide the clerk of the committee with the GBA questionnaire that NRCan does, and I know that other departments use a similar one. If you are looking for a tangible example, I would refer to that as well.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

That's wonderful.

[Mitch Davies]

He is going to show me the specific...because I want to quote to you from our actual policy document.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

That's awesome.

[Mitch Davies]

I will answer the second question you posed, which is about what we will be doing next. I don't think this is something we can declare “work complete”. That was where I was talking about the two measures we are studying right now. Getting people like this fine lady here who is pointing out the questionnaire through my notes, people who are trained to her level of skill about this in the sectors, in the work areas, spreading the focal points.... I think my colleague from NRCan also mentioned that.

I can quote to you some of the questions: “What sources of information or evidence did you review in your assessment of possible gender considerations?”—and then you have to check gender-disaggregated data, academic sources, government reports, or non-academic work. Another question is, “Does the initiative improve the situation for all, or does it impact diverse groups of men or women differently, positively or negatively?” Yes or no, and if so, explain.

It is with this sort of diving into the question that this questionnaire makes you do the homework. Coming back and saying, “Well, we didn't do it” is now not an option. It has be shown that we have done that homework in the department on all the measures that come forward.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Fantastic.

It is off to you, Neil. I really appreciate the information you have provided to us here. It's great. It is very handy to use. I see that some of the numbers are quite high, and I applaud you for that, but what were the increases? If we are comparing this data, what are we comparing it to? It is wonderful to see that we have 40.2% in management for occupations in the resource sector in 2015. What kind of data would we be comparing that to? Let's say, how much did that increase from 2010? Do we have figures to compare it to?

[Neil Bouwer]

I think the answer to that is yes, but I don't have those with me. I'd be happy to provide data.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

That would be wonderful, just so we can see how things have increased. Give it to the clerk, if you don't mind.

There might be an obvious answer, but in some of the management we see much higher levels when we come to female versus male on some levels and when it comes to business finance and administration. Mining, oil and gas are sitting at 81% male versus 19% female. Why? I think it's obvious, but why would we say that is the right answer?

[Neil Bouwer]

I don't know how definitive I should be in my remarks here, so let me say that it has been a long-standing challenge in terms of the labour market availability for both the geographical locations and for the types of occupations we see in the natural resource sectors. The 80-20 rule of thumb in natural resource sectors is a pernicious and historical imbalance.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Have we seen an increase though, at all? Would you say that with where we are, sitting at around 20% right now, was it 10% five to 10 years ago? Have we seen a gradual increase in change? Where would you see that?

[Neil Bouwer]

I will get back through the clerk with that trend analysis, though I should say that rule of thumb has been cited to me in the past as well. I will try to provide what I can in terms of a trend analysis.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Just because we have such an awesome chair who's an engineer, how has the GBA impacted engineering and these sorts of things? I don't know if she wants that question answered or not, but if you wouldn't mind.

[Mitch Davies]

I'll cite a couple of examples. Take a look at the Canada research chairs, which is a program offered by the granting council and part of our portfolio. In terms of trend, and you're looking for where we were and where we are now, I can share with you that the CRCs in 2001, 14% were women, and in 2012, it was 26%. That's a trend, and it's in the right direction.

I can still say we're starting from a low base, so I'll switch data sources. The Science, Technology, and Innovation Council in 2015 put out their report, “State of the Nation on Science”, which is an excellent report, and they talked about women's share of Canada's science and engineering Ph.D. graduates at 32% being significantly lower than other countries. The United Kingdom is 49%, and the United States is 46%.

What's happening though is the share of female Ph.D.s in the fields grew between 2006 and 2012. The trend is right, but we're starting from a lower point. We have some catch-up to do, and I would reference in terms of programming that NSERC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, has chairs for women in a science and engineering program they launched in 1996, which has a goal of directing chairs across the country on a regional basis as women who can then be examples of those in the field. We had also funded—and it was something we did as a consequence of gender-based analysis—our science technology innovation strategy refresh in 2014. We went on to create a priority on attracting young women and diverse groups into STEM fields, which led to funding of Let's Talk Science, which is a non-profit that promotes science to youth in Canada with a specific purpose to get at those under-represented groups. We provided $12.5 million to them for that purpose.

We're trying to get at it, use the data, and then follow on with the funding and programming to move the needles.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

Over to Ms. Malcolmson for seven minutes.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair. Thanks to the witnesses.

I was pleased to hear the NRCan representative describe the mandatory requirement for GBA submission to federal budget proposals, memos to cabinet, and Treasury Board submissions. Is there an equivalent requirement for, I'm going to call you Industry Canada because I can't remember the new name?

[Mitch Davies]

It's Industry, Science, and Economic Development, and we're calling it ISED. If we say it enough it will become the acronym, and then no one will know what we're talking about.

Yes, we have similar requirements in our department to have that work done on a mandatory basis.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

This question is for either of the witnesses. Are there times when you have had submissions to those bodies turned back by virtue of an incomplete or inadequate analysis to those bodies?

[Neil Bouwer]

Yes, in the case of NRCan, we do find our capacity to be uneven, and so we play a support as well as a challenge function to those submissions. We work iteratively—that's a polite way to put it—with some of our organizations, and that includes both within the department and within our portfolio organizations. It does happen that we play a challenge function and have to iterate the GBA template.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Well, is sometimes a proposal returned to you by Treasury Board and they ask you to redo some of the work?