Status of Women Committee on May 4th, 2017

[Jennifer Flanagan]

It's a really important question. Again, it comes back to experiential learning and to talking with girls specifically about skills and competencies. Those are the things you mentioned, right? They're the things like marketing, communications, and some of the other skills that are required by these tech companies. It's not just hardcore programmers or coders but having that kind of digital literacy combined with those skills that is very important. When we're talking about major growth field areas such as artificial intelligence and other tech areas, those skills that you just mentioned are so critical, and they aren't going to be advanced by having people who are just doing coding languages.

The context is important, as is talking to all kids, but girls in particular, about how valuable those skills are, right? When I say youth, I mean those in university as well, so that's why we want to broaden the message that digital skills are not just about creating computer science jobs, but that they are important to combine with all other fields. If you're doing a B.A. and you're passionate about something else, underpin those with digital skills and then you can go and work in a start-up.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Maybe we can call it “STEAM” and not STEM, with the A in there.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Jennifer Flanagan]

Maybe.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

One of the things that I want to follow up on, and which our first panel talked about, is smaller and rural communities not having the same opportunities as big cities do. I'm from Atlantic Canada. I think it's prototypical, really, for rural Canada to have vast, very sparsely populated spaces with communities of maybe 5,000 to 20,000, or somewhere in that range, as the population centre for different areas. Is there something you think the federal government can do to create the same opportunities for digital literacy and for networking and mentorship in construction or other industries in these smaller hubs, so that we extend the benefits not just to our biggest cities?

[Lindsay Amundsen]

I'm glad you asked that. We tried to apply for an open call for proposal a few years ago. This is where the problem with the funding issue all started. We partnered with an organization in Newfoundland and Labrador called Office to Advance Women Apprentices. Newfoundland and Labrador has 13% of its women in construction compared to the rest of the country, which has around 4%, so we looked at what they were doing with their organizations. They are working with union and non-union tradeswomen across the entire province. They make it to the smaller communities. They help women get a foot in the door with contractors and employers.

They are a two-way street. They're helping employers and the contractors navigate these scary issues of hiring women, making them more comfortable with it, working them through some of the issues that might come up with having a woman on their job site. We partnered with that organization to bring the organization across the country so we could have similar organizations like this in every province to hit the smaller communities, and we weren't able to receive that funding.

[Jennifer Flanagan]

It's really important to have that as a priority within any funding pool, for example, including with this new money that's just been announced, to make sure there is a very heavy component on remote communities in there.

For example, we have a member at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton who travels to dozens of communities across the province to deliver this programming. If the community doesn't have Internet access, then they do unplugged programming. If there is Internet access, then they work with whatever is in that community, investing in organizations that can deal with the particular challenges of remote communities and not waiting for that infrastructure to be in place but still developing and delivering programs for those kids.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

We have about a minute and a half left, and I wanted to hit on a very big topic, the social attitudes and social context shift that you mentioned being an essential part of this. I met my best friend from home who is a Mountie up north and was encouraging his wife to apply as a parole officer; she's been thinking about it for years. Today when they were in the car their three-year old son said, “Daddy, don't be silly. Girls can't be Mounties”, and my friend pulled the car over and had a big chat with him, but these social attitudes are rampant.

There are some obvious things we can do. Bill C-25 addresses corporate boards. We can appoint a gender-equal cabinet. We can look at board appointments and that kind of thing.

Are there other things we can do as the federal government to help inspire the communities at large to help serve as an impetus that will get the social shift moving so it's not two generations from now?

[Jennifer Flanagan]

I think the work with parents and teachers is so essential, and making sure a component is there. People generally get that, but it hasn't been a component of a lot of these funding programs, so if you're working with girls, if you don't work with their parents and talk to them about those messages, many parents won't correct that. They'll just say “not really”, or they don't know how to correct that. There's a huge amount of push-back.

I had an experience recently when we were getting off an airplane and my four-year old looked at the pilot and said, “Oh, my goodness, look. It's a boy pilot”, as if that never happens. I had very explicitly had conversations with her to make her think that all pilots are women. It's just a shift, and people around me were pushing back. I've had that push-back all the time.

It is so important that we can cook that in, so we can do training programs for parents. It's not just about saying, “Hey, you should encourage your boys not to treat girls differently”, or “You should do this”. Training for parents needs to be as well designed and of as high quality as we're doing for girls. Investing in that parent piece is very important.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thanks very much.

I think I'm out of time now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

You are, but I was interested in the answer.

We'll go now to Ms. Vecchio, for five minutes.

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

Thanks very much.

Lindsay, I want to start with you because I think you are a mentor for the field you are in. I look at the work you are doing. Can you share with us how you chose that career? We realize that you had to face barriers. What were some of the things you had to deal with as you were getting into this career? When it came to the education field, what were some of the barriers you dealt with, and what kept you ongoing?

Could you make this a little more personal, looking at the fact that you've been able to mentor so many other women in this field?

[Lindsay Amundsen]

I'm not a tradeswoman, so I'll start with that. This is why I rely on the tradeswomen in the field to give me the information I need. I am from the labour movement. I've worked for a few unions before this, but I think I'm very lucky to work for an employer that is saying, “Do what you have to do and here's this platform” and believes in me and supports me. I have a board that believes in me and supports me and listens to me and takes my advice. They're all 60-year-old men, and plus—

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

Okay. Let's look at the women you are working with, then. Out of the group you're working with, what specific skills are they looking at? Are they looking at welding, for instance, or electrical? What are some of the things that you're finding women are most focused on right now, where they're kind of finding that this is where their keenness is?

[Lindsay Amundsen]

Do you mean what the barriers are, or what they're interested in?

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

No. Right now, when you're looking at the field of people that you're working with, what are they specifically doing at this time? Are they doing the welding? Are they doing the—

[Lindsay Amundsen]

Yes.

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

Is there one field that you're finding is particularly more gripping for women to be involved in?

[Lindsay Amundsen]

There are some trades that are doing better than others in terms of retention of women. There are reasons behind that. There could be a general interest, or it could be the effort on behalf of that particular trade. There are lots of female electricians. There are quite a few female welders.

There are 60 different trades. Some trades have more women in them than others. Certainly I see a lot in the carpentry field and in welding, electrical—anything with attention to detail. We have a lot of participation in our program by those working in the electrical field.

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

That's fantastic.

When my daughter came home a couple of weeks ago and told me that she was welding, I was so excited about it.

[Lindsay Amundsen]

Welding is so hard.

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

Yes.

[Lindsay Amundsen]

I'm terrible.

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

Well, I guess she's doing really well. To me it's very exciting, because it's opening up a new door that she at the age of 19 would never have thought about.

I'm wondering how the women whom you're working with got engaged. Do see more people graduating from these fields? When people are applying for the apprenticeship programs, are the numbers going up or are they remaining about the same?

[Lindsay Amundsen]

I hear from the women I work with who have been around in the field for about 20 years, and they say that things are changing, from their experience, on the job site. Where they used to be alone in the field as women, they are now seeing three or four women, maybe more. It depends. Some projects have more women than others, but certainly things are changing.

I think they could certainly change a lot more. I think the initial interest, for a lot of them, came from a family member who was already doing the trade. Now we're seeing some movement when we go in and do these presentations and go and talk to kids in schools. They do hands-on at the career fairs. You can see the light going on in their eyes when they see these women talking about their experiences in the trade. They're going, “Oh, that's cool. You can do that? Girls can do that? That's really cool.”

They don't know that there are all these different types of trades in construction. They have no idea. Just making sure that they're aware of all the opportunities and options for them is really helpful.