Status of Women Committee on May 30th, 2017

[Dr. Tamara Daly]

Yes. Again, it's not my area of expertise, but I know that in the past there have been these sorts of tax incentives, and people do take advantage of them. If you're talking about the medical expenses portion of taxes, I'm assuming that is one area that you could look at, expanding the percentage that people could use to write off their income if they make those kinds of accommodations to their homes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's your time.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

I was actually thinking of the home renovation side.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're going to go, for our final five minutes, to Ms. Harder.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you very much.

My first question is for Ms. Daly.

You talked about the community taking responsibility. Based on the premise of the question, you're definition of community would be largely government-driven. My definition of community would not include the government. I don't consider them to be a part of my community. I have a very different community. There is, I think, a need to define what exactly community is. With that, one of the thoughts that it prompted was that part of many people's communities is actually faith. Since the mid-17th century, faith-based organizations and churches have played a very significant role in being able to provide health care and those necessary services to individuals in need.

To this day, would you agree that faith-based communities still have a desirable role to play in being able to offer some of those services, and to actually do it in a cost-effective way, as well?

[Dr. Tamara Daly]

Well, unless you don't use roads or street lights or attend public libraries, I don't see how your community doesn't involve government.

Some of the community support agencies like the ones I talked about are associated with faith-based organizations and some are not. It really depends on who's doing what in that particular community. I think the important point is that a lot of these organizations have found it more and more difficult to get the sort of funding they need in order to provide the excellent services they're able to provide.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Do you think, then, that perhaps there is an opportunity for governments to work with not-for-profit organizations, particularly faith-based organizations, in order to provide some of those services?

[Dr. Tamara Daly]

I think it's important for government to consider working with all the different types of third sector organizations in order to provide the sorts of services that people in all class brackets require, in rural and urban communities. A lot of these organizations help particularly people who are living in poverty or who are extremely isolated. Because they are grassroots, they are able to do the sort of work that other organizations are not able to do.

My point here is that a large component of seniors care is social care. In this country, we focus more and more on health care services, but we can't forget the integral part of care that is social care. I think that's an important aspect.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I would agree with you on that. That's exactly the point I wish to make.

In my riding of Lethbridge, Alberta, I see this demonstrated incredibly well. We have two seniors organizations that, I would argue, are actually preventative care, in the sense that seniors are invited to come and engage in social activities: eat meals together, play games together, lawn bowl, exercise together, take computer classes together. These sorts of things are proven to keep people healthy longer.

In addition, we have a number of churches within my riding that have actually started care homes for seniors and are doing a phenomenal job in providing not just for their health necessities, but for their social necessities or well-being in that area as well.

[Dr. Tamara Daly]

I think the important point is to separate the ownership structure from the delivery and funding of services. In a lot of these cases, there might be private ownership, but we often have public funding that is supporting the delivery of these services. I think that's the important point to consider.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

You made reference to Denmark, and you talked about enforcing equal responsibility between men and women for taking care of a loved one. Help me understand. How do you enforce equal responsibility?

[Dr. Tamara Daly]

In the case of Denmark, they did it through legislation. They made it a requirement that both men and women, if they are in a partnered relationship, take responsibility for early child care. They would take time off work. If not, it would be lost for both parties. What happened was that, over a generation, as more and more men participated in work without the negative consequences that are associated for a lot of men with taking time away from work, they have become one of the most gender-equal places on earth. Men now see that they have a role to play in care at all stages of life.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I can appreciate that, but it certainly does rob people of choice.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry, Rachael. That's the end of our time for today.

Thank you so much to the witnesses. We've enjoyed the conversation about unpaid care, and we have some good suggestions to go on. If you have additional comments that you'd like to make, please submit them to the clerk. Thank you again for your time.

We're going to suspend while we prepare for panel two.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We are back with our second panel.

Today we have with us Dorothy Byers from FIRST Robotics Canada. Dorothy is the chair of the board of directors.

We also have with us today Iris Meck, who is the president and founder of the Advancing Women in Agriculture Conference.

We are very happy to have you here today talking about improving the economic security of women in Canada.

We'll start with Dorothy, for seven minutes, and then we'll go to Iris.

[Dorothy Byers, Chair, Board of Directors, FIRST Robotics Canada]

Good morning, everyone.

First, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you today about this very important issue.

As a woman in Canada who has been very fortunate to seek and enjoy a stable and enriching career in the service of others, I am passionate about my new path that speaks to the successful engagement of girls and women in STEM, the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.

For the past 17 years, I've had the opportunity to encourage girls and young women to challenge themselves in the FIRST Robotics family of programs. FIRST is an acronym that stands for, for inspiration and recognition of science and technology, a family of programs that is a catalyst for learning for students from grades 1 to 12. It's run nationally through school- and community-based teams. There are four FEWO committee members who have a total of 11 teams dispersed among their ridings. Five provinces currently have FIRST high school level teams.

The founding mentor of Canada's longest-standing, nationally and internationally most successful girls' team in FIRST, I am a proud supporter of this initiative. Now as chair of the board of FIRST Robotics Canada, and the first woman, I may add, internationally to be in such a role, I am in a national position to impact the ability of girls to chase their dreams in STEM.

What's the issue? Here are some of the statistics. Growing numbers of girls successfully pursue post-secondary education in STEM fields. They're very high achievers in university, college, and industry training programs. We tell them that they can do anything and that they know they can. They believe us. When they enter the world of work, though, something causes them to question their choice. Women retreat from these fields as they pursue their careers.

Why is there this attrition? They're unsupported by male colleagues. They're frustrated by gender biases, conscious and unconscious, in hiring and promotion practices. They're faced with stigmas related to women in STEM, which is perceived often as being unfeminine. They lack supportive networks. They don't have role models or associations. There is inequity in pay, as reported by Statistics Canada, across all STEM fields. In fact, in Canada, women make 72¢ on the dollar of a same job.

We do not see women in leadership—there are 12% of women employed in engineering—or colleagues achieving to their full potential. They're frustrated. They're very high-achieving women, of whom 64% report that they are under more scrutiny than their male colleagues, especially when they're applying for a promotion.

The U.S.-based, data-driven and research-driven NCWIT, the National Center for Women and Information Technology, says that women don't need to be fixed; men need to become their allies and advocates.

We often hear about the leaky pipeline. Little girls engage in STEM wholeheartedly. I have witnessed this. As they progress along the pipeline, though, they question their ability and lose confidence. Ultimately, without supportive peers and adults, they decide to leave STEM fields. The statistics are clear: those who continue are in a minority in post-secondary programs.

Further attrition occurs in the workplace for all of the reasons above. This is a travesty for Canada. It's proven that diversity brings richness of thought, enhanced innovation, stronger teams, and has a profound impact on our GDP.

What's the impact of FIRST Robotics Canada? Our recent strategic plan, EDI, equity, diversity, inclusion, is there to support girls or alumnae of the program, but we're in a catch-22. Here we are supporting girls, but we're not serving these extraordinary young women who will be Canada's STEM leaders if we don't focus on the workplaces they will enter.

The creation of the Girls in STEM Executive Advisory Council this year is a results-driven, strategy-based group with three aspirational goals: to support young women in FIRST programs; to change the culture of the workplaces into which they will enter; and to investigate the impact of men and dads on the attitudes of their daughters.

FIRST's strategy is this, to meet goal one. Last weekend we had our first girls in FIRST weekend. Sixty-five girls from 25 teams across the province and 35 adults came together for two days. The focus was on the development of personal life skills: to be resilient, confident, courageous, brave, embrace failure as a learning opportunity, and to flee from perfectionism—so often part of being a woman—to enable success in the STEM world.

On the agenda, we had presentations and panel discussions from role models and industry leaders. If you see her, you can be her. Challenges of the glass obstacle course were discussed. There were workshops to discuss issues, build skills, dream about the future, to network, and to assertively suggest how they would like to proceed. The goal is not to fix the girls, but to augment their skills. Conceived of and executed by adults created the head of the comet, but the girls themselves have taken on the tail. The next steps are emerging.

To meet goal two, the girls in STEM executive advisory board are seeking systemic change in workplaces where women traditionally retreat. We are building presentations to build awareness and to call out gender biases and to grow the movement of men as allies and advocates and champions, to clearly state that equity, diversity, and inclusion aren't just good for women, but they're good for society and the economy as well. It is an economic imperative.

We need to challenge the media, to change that image of scientists as being men in white lab coats.

We intend to call attention to the status quo where 22% of employees in STEM are women, and this has only grown 2% in the past 30 years. We know this will cause discomfort, but we're okay with that.

To meet goal three, there are workshops for men in the lives of girls, to make them aware of their impact and provide strategies to support their girls and their daughters.

These are aspirational goals of FIRST Robotics Canada to move the needle on the current generation of young women by helping them and by challenging systemic attitudes. If we don't, all the good work encouraging girls in STEM is for naught.

What's the national picture? We need women in STEM and for them to stay in STEM. We need to close the gender gap. It isn't just the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do. That is echoed around the world. We need to achieve systemic support for solutions, to demand change. This will be challenging, but together we can all make it happen. We need national strategies to reverse the trend. It is not just good for society, but for Canada's innovation strategy, the national economy, our place in the world, and it's good for 50% of the population.

I have some recommendations. Challenge the status quo by holding CEOs and boards accountable for their demographics and hold organizations accountable for systemic change. Withhold funding and other resources, as Minister Duncan's proposal for university funding states. Bring together organizations that support women in STEM. Build networks. Impose quotas to achieve balance. That's demonstrated by Sweden's voluntary quota project. They can be very effective in boosting diversity and improving systemic change. Engage men in the conversation so that they can become advocates. Empower women, and engage men. There should be support from the federal government to encourage the development of organizations such as Australia's Athena SWAN, the U.K.'s Athena SWAN, and the U.S.-based NCWIT, all of which support women in STEM fields. At present, Canada lags behind in this work, and we need to change that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's very good. Thanks so much.

We'll go to Iris. You have seven minutes.

[Iris Meck, President and Founder of Advancing Women In Agriculture Conference, Iris Meck Communications Inc., As an Individual]

Good morning, and thank you to the committee for inviting me to present.

I was raised on a farm in Manitoba, took my degree in agriculture and management in agriculture at the University of Manitoba, and have worked in the ag industry for all of my career.

In 2000, I started my own company and worked with agriculture communications and marketing, specializing in ag conferences.

In 2014, I gathered a group of women leaders from across Canada in the agricultural industry. I brought them together to discuss the opportunities and challenges that women face in the agricultural industry, and the skills and tools that would be needed to hone their leadership skills.

It became very apparent through this group of women leaders that there was a strong need for women at every age and every stage of their careers, in every agricultural sector and food sector to hear and learn from the experiences of successful women, to network with women who share a common passion for agriculture and food, and to grow life and career skills to prepare them for the best possible futures. It was an opportunity for women to invest in themselves and benefit their families, their businesses, their communities, and the industry overall.

With this as our guiding principle, we created the first Advancing Women in Agriculture Conference in April 2014, and we attracted over 400 women from over six provinces, representing over 130 organizations. It was a huge risk for me, personally, one that was not very profitable but most rewarding.

The program emphasizes what I call the key leadership skills and development opportunities that women need in today's society: communication, including mentorship, coaching, and networking; financial management and independence; health, both physical and mental; balancing life strategies and career planning, and setting goals in all of these areas.

Speakers were chosen on the basis of their expertise and their experience. They were selected not only from the agricultural industry but from the industry overall.

Over the last year, due to demand, we've enhanced the program of agricultural workshops by including networking, succession planning, coaching, financial management, and risk management.

The time has never been better, I think, for women in agriculture. Women are changing our industry every day, on the farm, through associations, in our universities, and in the board rooms of corporate agribusiness across North America.

To accomplish this change, women need strong networks and solid skills to build confidence, as Dorothy mentioned, to be motivated and inspired, and to increase the recognition of women in the industry through articles, print ads, and their actual day-to-day work. They need real-life, real-world examples of what's possible. That's where Advancing Women takes the lead.

Our audience today represents every industry sector, 4-H, university students, farmers, and entrepreneurs.

Since 2014, we've held six conferences in Alberta and Ontario. Over 3,000 women—that's an average of 500 women per conference—have attended from across Canada, representing over 350 organizations in Canada. This initiative is clearly filling a great need as represented not only by the number of women who attend but also the importance of the support that we receive from private industry sponsorship. This includes farm organizations, financial institutions, agribusiness, and a wide range of private ag and food stakeholders from across Canada.

Many organizations participate not only through sponsorship but by registering many of their staff and customers to attend AWC. They use it as a supplement to their internal training programs and marketing programs.

Our main goal for Advancing Women was learning, and bringing an exceptional speaker program to our audience. To date, we've been true to our commitment, and according to our audiences we have exceeded these expectations.

Our second goal was to make the conference as affordable as possible for all women in the industry. We are not only grateful to our private industry sponsors, who have helped accomplish this, but also to the Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan governments, which have classified AWC as a training program and allow for reimbursement, in part, of registration fees and expenses incurred by producer farmers and processors.

Our third goal is to assist in building a stronger ag community and industry overall for the future. To do this, we sponsor young women from universities and colleges who are studying agriculture, 4-H members, and any of those who apply in the community, by covering their registration and hotel accommodation. This is done by myself personally and by industry stakeholders who are interested in doing so. To date, we have sponsored over 50 students from across Canada.

AWC is recognized in supporting, celebrating, and recognizing the contribution that women make in the industry. Women participants leave more confident, enthused, and motivated, and are more apt, therefore, to be advocates in the industry and involved in industry associations and boards.

We have supported many women networks in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario. We have also provided a network for women who, for example, are widows raising families and want to keep the farm for their children growing up. We've built a network of over 25 farmers across the Canada-U.S. border, so that they have this network of support.

We've been asked to bring the conference to the United States and Africa. We have also been approached by other industries in the insurance, energy, food, restaurant, and hotel associations. We also support women in youth groups, to get involved not only with 4-H but with others.

Our overall goal is to have women involved in agriculture and food to benefit from AWC, not only from the speakers but from each other. We are considered today to be the largest leadership conference for women in agriculture, where women in agriculture can join a community of their peers to listen, learn, network, and grow.

We have more than 2,800 followers on Twitter, more than 860 connections on Facebook, and more than 9,000 connections on LinkedIn. Our YouTube station, which we created last year, has been gathering thousands of people to view our videos of speakers from the conference.

I thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent.

We're going to start our round of questioning with my colleague, Ms. Damoff.

You have seven minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank both of you for being here today and for being trailblazers in what both of you are doing to encourage young women to seek careers in fields that are not traditionally filled by females.

I'm going to turn to Dorothy first. I've known Dorothy for years. She is truly an inspiration to generations of young women.

Dorothy, thank you for being here.

I saw a picture on your Twitter feed—I think it was on the weekend—with the caption, “FIRST is important to me.” Some of the things the young ladies have said are things like, “It helps boost my self-confidence,” “It allows me to feel equal,” and “We are the future. Let's make it good.”

That's tremendous, but we heard, as you mentioned, that we don't have enough young women who stay in those careers. Given your long history at St. Mildred's, and now at FIRST Robotics, do you know if those first girls who joined the robotics team at St. Mildred's have stayed in STEM as they've gone on?

[Dorothy Byers]

Yes. Actually, my two first FIRST girls, as I call them, who came and said, “Mrs. Byers, we want to build a robot,” are both practising engineers.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

How many years ago was that?

[Dorothy Byers]

That was 17 years ago.

The statistics state that 95% of girls who are in FIRST Robotics programs go on to STEM-related fields. A longitudinal study is under way to see where they are in their careers. In my experience with the girls in the girls-only team, many of them stay because they have the confidence. They've had the opportunity to know that they are resilient and that they can withstand what we call the glass obstacle course. Now that I've left the educational field, I have a much broader perspective. I really have put a lot of focus on that in the last year.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Are you seeing more girls joining the robotics teams?

[Dorothy Byers]

Yes, and many of the teams are very keen on having girls on their teams. It's not just being on the team, it's also what they do on the team. FIRST has such an array of opportunities for girls, whether it's media or business planning, building a robot, or making presentations.

For us, it's a matter of what they are doing. Are they rolling up their sleeves, getting in, building, designing, and getting dirty? Are they elbowing the boys out of the way to be able to do and learn all of those different skills, and to have the opportunity to test themselves?