Evidence of meeting #59 for Status of Women in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was business.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Julia Deans  Chief Executive Officer, Futurpreneur Canada
Sandra Altner  Chief Executive Officer, Women's Enterprise Centre of Manitoba
Lindsay Amundsen  Workforce Development, Canada's Building Trades Unions
Jennifer Flanagan  President and Chief Executive Officer, Actua

9:40 a.m.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

Hi. It's Karen Vecchio, and I'll just take this over.

We went onto your website, Sandra, and there were opportunities for workshops and things like that. What are some of the gaps you're finding? You mentioned education and things of that sort. What are some of the gaps you feel you're having to fill, especially when women—and maybe young men—are graduating from their post-secondary programs or from high school and don't have those skills? What are some of those gaps that you're having to fill?

9:40 a.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Women's Enterprise Centre of Manitoba

Sandra Altner

The biggest thing we see is financial acumen. The program, which Status of Women actually helped us to develop a few years ago and which we call My Gold Mine is essentially a program about how to create profitability and how to understand your own financial statements. It is essential not only for entrepreneurs, for a business in growth mode, but also for anybody to understand how money works, how budgets work, and how you can build assets over time. Students these days don't seem to be graduating with that kind of information. We're finding a lot of the work that we're doing here through that particular program, which has continued over time past the support that we got from Status of Women and has grown hugely, has been very successful.

The other work we do—the advisory work, the financial labs, the business plan development, and the financial projections—has been huge. There's been a huge need for that. I would say that having that as an emphasis in programs like ours across the country would be very important.

9:40 a.m.

Conservative

Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON

Excellent. Thank you.

9:45 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

Excellent. That's the end of our time for this panel.

I want to thank you, witnesses, both for your testimony today and for the work that you're doing to improve the economic status of women in Canada. We're just delighted to have you.

Thank you again.

May 4th, 2017 / 9:45 a.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Women's Enterprise Centre of Manitoba

Sandra Altner

Thank you.

9:45 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

We'll suspend while we change panels.

9:45 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

All right. We are happy to resume our study of the economic security of women in Canada. We're very excited to have our panel today. From Canada's Building Trades Unions, we have Lindsay Amundsen, the workforce development lead; and from Actua, we have Jennifer Flanagan, the president and the CEO.

Ladies, we are glad to have you. You will each have seven minutes for your comments, and we'll begin with Lindsay.

9:45 a.m.

Lindsay Amundsen Workforce Development, Canada's Building Trades Unions

Perfect, thank you.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks for the invitation to appear today. Canada's Building Trades Unions is a national, non-profit organization that represents 14 national construction unions across Canada, representing 500,000 tradeswomen and tradesmen across the country.

CBTU is working towards an equitable, accessible workplace in Canada through Build Together, a workforce development program focused on the recruitment and retention of workers from under-represented portions of the population. Diversity in organizations is increasingly respected as a fundamental characteristic of an organization's ability to create an environment of involvement, respect, and connection, where rich ideas, backgrounds, and perspectives are harnessed to create value. A better-skilled and more inclusive workforce is the key to successful attraction and retention.

The Canadian construction industry has an aging workforce, and in the coming decade will lose almost a quarter of its skilled workers to retirement. At the same time, medium- to long-term forecasts by BuildForce Canada indicate that the industry will continue to grow. To fill the vacancies left by retiring baby boomers and meet the demands of anticipated growth, the industry will need to recruit and train new workers. This is an enormous opportunity for women in Canada to earn a secure living wage. Careers in construction offer economic security for women and a direct path out of poverty.

Build Together's initial program, women of the building trades, promotes, supports, and mentors women in the skilled construction trades. Women represent 4% of this industry on average in Canada, a number that has remained unchanged in decades. At our CBTU 2016 policy conference, a resolution was passed on women in trades that included a goal to double the number of women in our industry within the next five years. We hope that through our work and our partnerships with other incredible organizations across the country this number can change and that we can successfully recruit and retain women in our industry.

Build Together has challenged existing myths and stereotypes of careers in the trades, providing the space for robust conversation on how to engage women in the sector. In support of the project, Build Together has provincial platforms where tradeswomen as leaders, mentors, and ambassadors can network, engage, and support the cause at the local level. Again, we have created the space for conversation on how to engage women in the building and construction trades.

We've identified methods to defy stereotypes and amplify the strengths and characteristics of women as tradespeople. As part of our outreach, tradeswomen have attended events across the country, including trade shows, career fairs, schools, mentorship events, and networking functions. We have been featured in media outlets across the country as part of the overarching narrative of middle-class opportunities in the trades as well as the empowerment and equalization of women.

In the past, the burden fell on women to use humour to deflect discrimination or harassment, in fear that speaking out or filing a complaint would not make a difference. We believe that unions, employers, owners, contractors, and tradespeople all have to commit to removing these barriers rather than blaming someone for failing to overcome them.

At CBTU, we have demonstrated our commitment by passing a respectful workplace resolution at our 2016 policy conference, recognizing that harassment and discrimination in the workplace are behaviours that will not be tolerated by our organization and our affiliates. In support of this resolution, we introduced resources that aim to create safe and welcoming work environments. Build Together has workshops, materials, and diversity training modules that provide leadership with the information, tools, and protocols they need to enforce a zero-tolerance policy towards unwelcoming behaviour.

Change must come from the top down and from the bottom up, but most importantly from middle management—the supervisors, foremen, and forewomen who manage our tradespeople every day on the job. When workplace culture is inclusive and staff morale increases, ultimately productivity and efficiency improve. Research suggests that in environments where employees feel valued, teamwork increases, which leads to decreased absenteeism and employee turnover.

In support of our work on respectful workplaces, we'll be launching an industry-wide, industry-championed campaign, calling on levels of leadership within industry to be champions and advocates for respectful workplaces. We want to provide our communities, our members, and our partners with the most promising future in an inclusive network of building trades.

Now that I've had the opportunity to highlight the work we do, I would like to take a moment to address a barrier that I've encountered in our work with Status of Women Canada.

As outlined in the Status of Women Canada general eligibility requirements for the women's program funding, labour unions are not eligible for funding via Status of Women Canada. Other not-for-profit organizations are eligible, as well as for-profit Canadian organizations, if the nature and intent of the funded activity is non-commercial and not intended to generate profit.

Our office has met with Status of Women Canada on this issue a number of times over the last three years, with no resolution on this policy. There have been a number of calls for proposals that women of the building trades have missed out on, slowing down progress of our mandate, and in our opinion, the mandate of Status of Women Canada.

The latest call for proposals that we were not eligible for was the call for proposals for projects to advance gender equality across Canada. Through this call for proposals, organizations will receive funding to identify women leaders in various sectors, organizations, and communities, and engage them in local projects to advance gender equality. The call aims to identify and engage a total of 150 women leaders from across the country, to mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation in 2017 as we move forward.

We are disheartened that because of the exclusion that Status of Women Canada has outlined in their eligibility requirements, there will be no female leaders from the labour movement, especially construction, included in the 150 women leaders from across the country.

Tradeswomen from across the country who are leaders in their communities, in their workplaces, and in their unions and who have spent countless hours volunteering their time for the cause will not have the chance to be engaged in this project. They are working hard every day to provide solutions to the barriers women face in their industry. They are mentors and advocates who work tirelessly for gender equality in Canada, and they do not deserve to be excluded as leaders in this country.

The unionized skilled trades do not have pay equity issues, but we do have workplace cultural issues and issues surrounding child care and pregnancy in the trades. We are working to address some of these barriers, but we need your help.

We hope that the eligibility requirement can be revised and changed to reflect the important work we do in this sector; to help us continue to provide economic security for women in our country; and to reflect the inclusive eligibility requirements of other federal departments, such as ESDC and numerous other government departments.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today about the work we are doing and for hearing our recommendations on the economic security of women in Canada.

Thank you.

9:55 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

Excellent. Thank you, Lindsay.

Now we'll go to Jennifer, for seven minutes.

9:55 a.m.

Jennifer Flanagan President and Chief Executive Officer, Actua

Thank you very much.

Hello, everyone.

It is a real pleasure to be here with you this morning to talk to you about our organization, Actua, and about our work with young girls in science and technology.

Good morning, everyone. It's a real pleasure to be here today. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share Actua's work and some of our recommendations with regard to your current study.

Actua is a national charitable organization that designs and delivers programs that build confidence and skills in science, technology, engineering, and math. We support a network of 35 university- and college-based members across Canada who deliver programming in 500 communities reaching every province and territory. For 20 years we have been the national leader in inclusion programming in this area, engaging underserved and under-represented youth through national programs for girls and young women, youth facing socio-economic challenges, youth in remote and northern communities, and indigenous youth.

Our work in STEM education contributes substantively to Canada's social and economic prosperity. We all know that STEM occupations are typically associated with better employment conditions and higher pay, yet women still occupy only 21% to 23% of all STEM occupations. Obviously this is contributing significantly to the gender pay gap. The stage for this gap is set well before women enter university or the workforce. It begins when young girls learn about their world, hearing subtle and not-so-subtle messages from parents, teachers, and their peers about their roles, and often participating in very different extracurricular activities from boys.

It continues in high school, when teenage girls with higher math scores are less likely to choose STEM programs at university than are teenage boys who have lower math scores. The gap widens in university. Despite representing 59% of all university graduates in Canada, women represent only 23% of graduates in engineering and 30% of graduates in math and computer science. If we want to close this gap, we need to shift the narrative—from how girls and women must change to fit into STEM to how the context around them needs to change.

Actua's national girls program was developed 20 years ago in response to these barriers. We have interacted with literally tens of thousands of girls and their parents across the country. From those experiences we have learned a lot, and a couple of things in particular. Young girls aged six to 10 have no shortage of passion, curiosity, talent, and interest in science and technology. That is without exception across the country. That interest drops at around grade 5 or 6. At this age we see a marked decline in the participation rate of girls in our programs. That decline worsens as time moves on. The interests, behaviours, and choices of girls are hugely influenced by parents and teachers.

We now engage 10,000 girls each year through those initiatives, and do a lot of evaluation to ensure that they're effective. We see from pre- and post-evaluations that girls' confidence, enjoyment, and interest in STEM are increasing as a result of Actua's programs. This is further reflected in the larger data. Between 1991 and 2011 the proportion of women in scientific occupations increased from 18% to 23%. It's not enough, but it's a good increase. In fact increases were seen in all occupational categories except in computer science, where the proportion of women declined from 30% to 25% over that same period.

With technology now underpinning every single field, from business to health care to agriculture, digital literacy is no longer a “nice to have” skill. It has become a basic literacy. If we don't engage girls in building digital literacy, they will be further segregated and will continue not to have equal access to major areas of growth within our economy.

In October 2014 Actua launched with Google a three-year project called Codemakers. We want to transform the way in which youth are engaging with computer science and digital skills. We want to move them from their typical role as consumers of technology into much-needed roles as innovators and producers of technology. In the first two years of that project, we've engaged 80,000 youth across the country in digital skill development experiences. The demand for those programs in every community across the country is massive, but girl engagement has been lacking. We wanted to aggressively pursue changing that so we didn't go down the same path we did with our STEM programs.

Last year we had the support of Status of Women to launch another project, this one to look specifically at the issues and barriers facing girls in computer science and in building digital skills. To date we have done an environmental scan, a literature review, and expert interviews. We're in the process of doing what I think is very unique, a girl-led research piece where the girls are developing the research and then going out and conducting the research. It's putting them right in the middle of this project.

Just a few things have come out of that initially, and I would be happy to come back and share the results once we're finished. At a more general level they include the following.

First, learning experiences in computer science need to be accessible to girls. The systemic sexism that exists in computer science traditionally and how it has been approached needs to be addressed.

Second, girls also need support and encouragement from their parents and teachers, but the parents and teachers need to actually be trained on how to provide that support.

Finally, girls need to understand that digital literacy is a basic literacy. It's not just about becoming a computer scientist. It's relevant to all of their interests in every career path they might want to pursue.

It's clear that in order to make real change we have to focus on context, how everyone from every sector, men and women, needs to stand up and demand that the context for girls and women change. We need to have more open and transparent discussions with girls and women earlier on about what to expect when they get into the workforce, what challenges they might still encounter, and how to overcome those things that exist within the context.

We also need to acknowledge and counteract popular misconceptions about computer science that are not going to appeal to girls.

In closing, I would like to actually commend the current government and those members of other parties who have put their support behind major federal investments in STEM outreach programs for youth. Actua has literally been advocating for this for over 20 years, and in the recent budget 2017, a new fund was announced called teaching kids to code, $50 million over two years. This funding is essential to support organizations like Actua that are ready to scale their work to engage girls in those critical early experiences. We will not achieve gender pay equity if we do not have girls engaged early.

Moving forward, I want to leave you with three recommendations.

The first is to support and incentivize initiatives and efforts to get more women on boards, more women in senior positions in all sectors, and to profile and celebrate companies and specifically men who are fighting the status quo on this. If girls do not see change at the top, things will not change from the bottom.

Second, support initiatives that help parents, teachers, and other influencers gain a better understanding of the skills and competencies that girls require to achieve economic independence; more specific information on that is needed.

Then third, in your constituencies at the local level, support and highlight initiatives that are challenging the status quo and advancing this narrative about how the context needs to change.

That's it for our recommendations, and thank you.

10 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

Excellent.

We'll begin our round of questioning by my colleague, Ms. Ludwig, for seven minutes.

10 a.m.

Liberal

Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB

Thank you very much for your presentations.

My first round of questions goes to Ms. Flanagan. In terms of what you had mentioned about STEM occupations being roughly 20% to 23% women, and then in terms of the universities and colleges that you're working with, the 35 of them, can you tell me if you have a percentage of how much of the faculty members are women in the colleges and universities that are involved with STEM teaching?

10 a.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Actua

Jennifer Flanagan

I would have to get that specific information for you, but off the top of my head, I'd say it's very low, less than 20% in engineering faculties and computer science faculties. Then obviously as the professorship positions increase in stature, the numbers go way down. It's a big issue, an issue many groups are focused on, and I know women engineers across the country are battling on a daily basis.

10:05 a.m.

Liberal

Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB

Thank you.

My daughter is just finishing university, and some of her friends, girls, graduated from engineering. I had asked them how many female faculty members there were. They said one or two. In terms of mentorship even within the disciplines, there's obviously a challenge there. Thank you.

I also thought it was really interesting when you talked about the significance of the passion of young girls between six and 10. To me that was really interesting because so often, in elementary school education, much of the faculty are women, and as the grades increase, we see a difference between men and women in terms of the teaching levels.

I know from teaching at the graduate level that we would talk about technology, but then when I would talk with the teachers who were in the masters of education program, I would learn that it wasn't integrated into the regular curriculum in the undergrad level.

Do you have any involvement with the undergraduate teaching in terms of curriculum influence or guest speaking about the importance of mentorship role models in terms of your practices to incorporate teaching into undergraduate levels for teachers who will then be teaching kids whether they are six to 12 or 11 to 18?

10:05 a.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Actua

Jennifer Flanagan

That makes so much sense. We should be teaching in-service teachers, meaning teachers in training, about these subject areas and making sure that they're not intimidated by science and technology and not passing that intimidation on. You're right that most elementary school teachers are women, but most of those teachers are very intimidated by science and technology because they've had negative experiences, or they don't have the background.

The answer is, yes, we have worked with faculties of education across the country. Within those member institutions that I talked about, they will often be called on to do workshops with people who are becoming teachers just so they have a first exposure to hands-on science. Now, it's more on the technology and digital skill development, but that is not part of the formal curriculum of most faculties of education. That's a huge issue, one that obviously we're taking every opportunity to influence. That needs to change.

10:05 a.m.

Liberal

Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB

Thank you.

Ms. Amundsen, I want to ask you about the STEM panels you mentioned. We heard from the previous witness, Julia Deans from Futurpreneur Canada, about the importance of having panels. Basically, it's often the case that women cannot be what they cannot see.

10:05 a.m.

Workforce Development, Canada's Building Trades Unions

Lindsay Amundsen

We say that all the time.

10:05 a.m.

Liberal

Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB

I use that a lot, too. I quite like it.

Well done in terms of the panels. Perhaps you could explain a bit more about them. How involved are men in the panels or in changes in the workplace culture? As much as we encourage women to go into, what we hopefully will not be calling too much longer, “non-traditional” fields, we also have to get their male colleagues on board to support this.

10:05 a.m.

Workforce Development, Canada's Building Trades Unions

Lindsay Amundsen

Sure. Construction is 96% male, so we have to get the men on board, otherwise it's not going to go anywhere very fast. I work for a board of 14 national construction unions, and they're all led by men. We did have one woman leader, but she retired, and my boss is male. Really these changes that we're championing are being championed from the male leadership in partnership.

Build Together is really unique in the sense that we started out by working with the grassroots, working with tradeswomen who work on the tools. We're trying to merge the top and the bottom together so that we can influence the middle management and the union halls and the supervisors and the foremen and women who do this work every day. We're trying to do whatever we can to increase the number of women in the industry, to make sure that we champion respectful workplaces and a culture that is welcoming and inclusive for everybody, including zero-tolerance policies. We hope to see tool box talks every day. They do a tool box talk every morning on safety. We want that to include respect and a workplace free of harassment and discrimination.

There's still a long way to go. I'm by no means saying that it's perfect, but we absolutely need men as champions. I think the industry champion program will be a really useful tool to recruit champions in the entire industry, who will train them on this message and provide them the tools they need to champion an inclusive workplace.

10:10 a.m.

Liberal

Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB

Thank you.

I just have one quick question.

Both of you talked about the significance of diversity, and we have before the House Bill C-25 on diversity on boards. I will give you an example. When I was talking about the value of diversity, one comment that I had heard was, “But we want to have qualified people.” If someone is female or has a different background, why is there an instant conclusion made that they're not qualified? How do we change that? We know, as a government, looking at Bill C-25, that the the boards that are much more diversified are much more likely to be successful. We know from the Toronto Stock Exchange that companies with boards that have women on them are much more likely to have a higher return at the end of the year.

Help us out with that.

10:10 a.m.

Workforce Development, Canada's Building Trades Unions

10:10 a.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Actua

Jennifer Flanagan

Are we allowed to swear?

I'm just kidding. I know there's a transcript.

10:10 a.m.

Workforce Development, Canada's Building Trades Unions

Lindsay Amundsen

So x it out.

10:10 a.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Actua

Jennifer Flanagan

No, I mean not now, but when we're responding.

I think we just have to stand up and call that out.

That is just not the case; it's just not the case. I don't buy it anymore. I think we need to say very simply that's not correct. There are plenty of qualified, diverse perspectives. You just need to put the effort in and you need to look at your recruitment. We have this conversation, especially around boards, where wonderful companies that we work with are working really hard on inclusivity within their corporate culture policies, and boldly and authentically working on that. Then they have one woman on their board. They say they can't find anyone. That's baloney. You need to look at how you recruit.

10:10 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu

Absolutely. That's your time.

All right, we're going to do something unusual, because I don't normally ask questions, but my colleagues have said that since I have a background in engineering and construction—32 years—perhaps my questions would be meaningful.

Ms. Flanagan, on the topic of the opportunity in digital literacy, we've had the IT consortium come to the Hill and talk about the gap of 180,000 jobs in the next five years that we'll not be able to fill. I'm a huge fan of the $50 million that was given for coding and to try to get girls into coding. My concern in the STEM areas is that although at age eight girls think they can do anything, that they can go into those areas, by the time they get to 13, they have lost the confidence or desire to enter those fields. We also see that once they graduate from university, we can't retain them in these fields. What do you think the federal government can do to help in this situation?