In the area of entrepreneurship, this is a big question. I'm not even sure how to attack it. I think a lot of the issues are issues of socialization. They're deeper and more intrinsic in our society than simply providing loans or support services to women. We need to be looking at societal changes. I'm not sure how much the federal government can do in that area until and unless we work on our educational system.
In the work that we do, we think that we're working in that direction already. Continued support from the government to agencies like the RDAs that support women's entrepreneurship initiatives; programs or projects that specifically work with newcomers and indigenous women; and the ability to include those women into the mainstream and create more of the peer mentorship opportunities.... If I could sit down and start rewriting that proposal and getting into more detail on it, I could think of four or five or six different projects that we could do on a national level through the Women's Enterprise Organizations of Canada that would pull together some of the work that's already been done across the country. However, there's no common voice; there's no collection of information, knowledge, and expertise.
From all of the organizations like ours across the country that have been working specifically with women for 5, 10, 15, 20 years, there's nothing there yet that can pull that together into some kind of central organization or agency or portal that can benefit all of us by sharing best practices and coming to understand all of the different regional differences and how we have each responded to those issues and found solutions that we now need to share. I don't think we need something new. We need to support and continue the work that's been done and to develop that national voice.