Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses for their presentation.
I would like to begin by talking about my own experience as a first-generation immigrant who arrived in Canada with a nursing degree. After my triplets started school, I decided to go back to school. When I was getting my bachelor's degree, most of my colleagues were visible—or racial, as you say—minority women. I completed my bachelor's degree and then took a master's. Most of my classmates—about 75% of them—were visible minority women. In my first PhD course, we were four or five women, and all of us belonged to a visible minority.
So it is not a matter of language barriers or a lack of degrees. I was shocked to learn that, in 2011, 16.2% of Ontario's minimum wage employees were members of a visible minority. The situation does not only affect women; you said that both women and men were affected. As for the labour market, you mentioned that the unemployment rate in 2006 was really high, and that 9.3% of unemployed women belonged to a visible minority. So the unemployment rate is high, and the employment rate is too low.
Here is my question. According to you, what obstacles are visible minority Canadians, especially women, facing while trying to achieve greater economic security by entering the workforce? I am not talking only about women who have more of an opportunity to earn a degree, but also about those who are overqualified. Why do those obstacles exist?