Status of Women Committee on May 16th, 2019

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

I'll be very quick.

I know that Stats Canada is doing a series of surveys with regard to public spaces and how safe they are. Could you provide to the committee the specific questions that Status of Women Canada will be asking, on behalf of young women on campus, and how those questions will facilitate their being protected? I recognize that you won't have time to answer that question, based on my time, but it would be helpful to this committee if those specific questions from Statistics Canada could be provided to us in writing, so that we can evaluate them as well. I think it's an important issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Okay. Thank you very much.

You're just asking for something in writing coming from the minister, showing that information.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

That would be good. I recognize that the time has run out.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Okay. Fantastic.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Madam Chair, you said that the witness would have 30 seconds to respond.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Go ahead. You have 30 seconds to respond. Thirty seconds only.

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

We've worked with an advisory council to help develop a framework to address and prevent gender-based violence on campuses across the country. They've been doing that work diligently and will be providing us with the report. As you mentioned, there's going to be a survey of post-secondary students, because we know that 41% of sexual assaults on campus were reported by students. Parents care about it. We care about it. There'll be more to come, shortly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent.

We'll continue with our five minutes and move over to Emmanuella Lambropoulos. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

I'll be splitting my time with my colleague, Eva Nassif.

Minister, it's always a pleasure to have you at our committee to answer our questions, and we appreciate that you're here today.

Obviously, we know that gender-based violence is still a huge problem across the country, not just with indigenous communities—although there is a higher percentage there—but within all communities across Canada. We know that as much as our government's been taking that lead and fighting it as much as possible, it's still an issue. Part of the reason is that a culture doesn't just go away within a couple years. These things are taught from a very young age. Toxic masculinity plays a huge role in this.

I was wondering what our government is doing to get men and boys involved in the solution to eventually—and we hope, completely—get rid of gender-based violence.

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

That's a great question.

As you know, Terry Duguid has been working very diligently on engaging men in a conversation to advance gender equality, and boys as well. We were doing this as Status of Women Canada. Even when it wasn't our mandate, we were supporting LGBTQ2 individuals and working to engage men and boys. Now, with this new mandate, we actually have the scope and some support in terms of resources to do this work.

We've been having conversations with folks who have been doing this work. There are organizations and men and boys who are actively working every day to advance gender equality in talking about things like toxic masculinity and the paradox of privilege that comes with being a man, and reminding all of us that when women and girls do well, so do men and boys.

I think that's one of the missing ingredients of our efforts to achieve the sustainable development goal number 5. Men haven't always been included in the conversation—for good reasons sometimes, and sometimes because of habit—but we know that men are part of the solution. Men want to be part of the solution, so we're working on a strategy to better include them. That strategy includes, as Irene mentioned, organizations that are already doing the work. We hope to be able to better support them to help them scale up their efforts and to collaborate better together.

What we heard, Terry—one of the most common phrases we heard on the road from folks—was “thank you for bringing us together”. This in itself is success for us, because we don't get to come together anymore. There is more to come on that as well. As you know, the Prime Minister is a big advocate for this as well.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Go ahead, Eva.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Minister, for being with us.

Last February, in my riding of Vimy, I had the pleasure of announcing to an organization in Laval, the Table de concertation de Laval en condition féminine, something to empower women: funding for women's economic security in Laval.

We are doing things. We are changing the lives of women, and this is great, but my question, Minister, is about our conference in June: Women Deliver. It is taking place in our country. It is the largest conference on women and gender equality. Would you talk about our contribution to this conference that is taking place in Vancouver?

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I realize that Irene asked this question and I didn't get a chance to respond. Women Deliver is the largest conference of its kind for feminists and equality seekers. It's like the Olympics for feminists—literally. Canada had to bid on it. It was a competitive process. It happens every three years. It has happened in Denmark. We're hosting it in Vancouver now. So far, we have over 7,000 people attending and we have a pretty strong wait-list.

Like the Olympics, it's not about what happens in Vancouver alone that's important. What's also important is that people are doing this, that they're coming from 170 different countries and that hundreds of thousands are joining us virtually. In communities across the country and around the world, people are hosting their own Women Deliver events.

The whole point is to use it as a moment to reflect on the progress made, on the push-back that we're experiencing and how to push back against that, and how to accelerate our progress to 2030. If that's our goal, then what happens after Women Deliver is even more important. How do we sustain that work? For those who are experiencing financial challenges, we've invested in organizations like CanWaCH to be able to give out grants. We're also investing in something called Feminists Deliver, with indigenous women's issues front and centre and a really important moment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much. We're now going to move on.

What we're going to do for equality is give three minutes to the CPC and three minutes to the Liberals. We'll start with Kellie Leitch.

You have three minutes.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Minister, since you mentioned earlier that you had not heard of or didn't know about the “It Starts With One” program, maybe I can give you a bit of a background.

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Sure.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

In 2013 I had the pleasure of becoming the minister. I went out with departmental officials and others and talked to a lot of Canadians, particularly young women interested in excelling in or changing their careers or finding something that would provide them a great opportunity in the future.

One of the things that came back continually was the need for mentors. It was not just that they wanted to be able pick up the phone and call someone. They actually wanted someone who would return their call and have a meaningful relationship with them, someone who would invest time in them as an individual and a person for the long term.

I can say from personal experience that my becoming a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon only occurred because two men decided there should be more women in their profession and that they should make that type of investment. It was a very personal relationship. Dr. Allan Gross, the chairman of orthopaedics at the University of Toronto, and Dr. John Wedge at SickKids were both gentlemen who made a choice that women should be in leadership roles.

I do understand why 52% of graduating medical students were women, and not having any of them enter surgery was a bit of a challenge and a problem for them, but that one-on-one relationship was very important. Numerous other leaders in Canadian society, whether from medicine, business or otherwise, were finding the same challenges—there was enormous talent among young women but they were not actually being allowed or provided the opportunities to get into leadership roles.

The “It Starts with One” program was a result of those consultations and of the need for that one-on-one relationship. We asked every leader who signed up—we had over 5,000—to make a one-year commitment to be in continual dialogue with that young woman, to actually step up and have a meaningful relationship. Whether it be Richard Nesbitt, who had been the chairman at CIBC, or Victor Dodig, who now is the chairman at CIBC, numerous others across the country, including Annette Verschuren, and others, would make that kind of commitment.

I'm not seeing that continue and I think it's a loss to the country. I think we have enormous young female talent—even here in the House of Commons—and we're not realizing their full potential to end up in leadership roles.

I guess my reflection on that and also on the work we did on women on boards, publishing a report on increasing the number of women on Canadian boards.... As you said, Minister, their number hasn't even changed in your time. It started at 18 when I was there. It ended up at 21. You could say that's a rounding error, but it hasn't changed in this government either.

I think that work of providing entrepreneurs or others with leadership opportunities so that they could end up on a board is extremely important. It's all part of the same stream.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent. Your three minutes is up.

[Kellie Leitch, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

I will leave that with you, Minister. It was not my intent to have a diatribe but rather to ask you and the current government to make a sincere investment in that program.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

I rise on a point of order, Madam Chair. The time has been—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much, Rachel. I appreciate that.

I appreciate all of this. I do know the three minutes is up. I kind of find it somewhat condescending. Thank you very much.

We will now go on to Salma for the last three minutes.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Your time has been cut a few times. I have the last three minutes, so is there something you would like to add that you have not been able to?

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

We get to do this work because other people fought for us, mentors who believed in us, women and men and gender-diverse peoples who have gone out of their way and experienced significant hardships so that we have the right to vote, the right to be here; so we can have choices, whether on the careers we pursue or the people we hang out with, or on when, if, and how many babies we have, and with whom. These are hard-won gains.

Especially right now, at this moment in time, we need to double down on our diligence to protect these hard-won gains. We owe it to the courageous silence-breakers who came out through the Me Too, little girls like my nieces and the little girls and the little boys in your lives and the ones questioning their gender identity right now, to keep pushing back against the push-back, and to find ways to be kinder to one another, because this work is hard, and despite our differences, we all want the same outcome. We owe it to them to make sure that, as Canadians, we continue to set a standard for equality and women's empowerment.

A point was made earlier around the transition from Status of Women to Women and Gender Equality. We worked really hard to advocate for the department to become so. I was particularly proud when Bill C-86 passed. I worked really hard on that. I reached out to many who had been working on this for years. The fact that I was able to push it through has a lot to do with the fact that I have a Prime Minister who sees the value in gender equality as the right thing to do, and as the economically advantageous thing to do. The fact that I get to do it is because I have a team around me, in this room and beyond, and colleagues who, in their communities, get that courage and that reassurance from Canadians that we need to do more—that we can't go back. We see what's happening all over the world with women's rights, and we cannot for a moment allow Canada to follow the path of places that are once again questioning the right to having a safe and legal abortion.

A lot of work has been done that we can be proud of, but there is a lot more work ahead of us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

That's excellent. Thank you very much, Minister.

[Maryam Monsef, Liberal, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.