Yes. Thank you for bringing that up.
We just completed a three-year project that was funded by Status of Women Canada under the women's program. That project had to do with Quebec's mining sector in two resource-rich regions—Abitibi-Témiscamingue and the Eeyou Istchee James Bay territory. That was a very worthwhile program, where we were asked to completely transform the industrial mining sector, in three years, on a voluntary basis. In fact, no coercive measures, employment access programs or contractual obligations were to be applied.
In three years, we did manage to complete the project—and we are proud of that—to establish an internal diagnostic with community partners consisting of certain industries or companies. We even established a multi-year action plan that set out measures to increase the presence of women in the mining industry, especially in areas where very few women are employed. Their proportion is only 4% in production trades. In the case of those trades, entry level positions often make it possible, through internal training, to access trade positions. So we developed an action plan, but mining companies preferred to undertake small targeted measures. Very few of those companies were willing to adopt the action plan as a whole.
There are some useful measures, but that is not how we will fight systemic discrimination. That said, we are proud of what we were able to produce thanks to that report. We even developed a good practices guide for the mining sector. It would be a real pleasure for me to send relevant links to the committee. The guide is housed on the website of Quebec's Comité sectoriel de main-d'oeuvre de l'industrie des mines. Since its launch last November, it has been consulted several hundred times. That means that a need exists.