Status of Women Committee on Nov. 7th, 2017

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Everybody, we're going to get started. We look to have a quorum here. Some members will be joining us shortly. We're going to continue with our study of the economic security of women in Canada.

Today we will have two guests on our first panel.

Carolyn Van is the director of youth programming for Canada Learning Code. Bonnie Brayton will be here shortly.

We may have to mix it up a little until our second panellist gets here. After the presentation, we may go to questions, but we'll see how it goes.

To begin, Carolyn, I give you the floor for 10 minutes.

[Carolyn Van, Director, Youth Programming, Canada Learning Code]

Thank you for having me here today on behalf of Canada Learning Code, and please note that I'll be happy to answer any questions following my statement.

As the youth programming director of Canada Learning Code, I have the great privilege of working with my team to develop and provide accessible technology education experiences for the youth of our nation, particularly young girls.

I have the lived experience of a woman in STEM, particularly the “T” in STEM, the technology side. I am able to teach digital literacy skills at the post-secondary level, and I have held positions within organizations requiring me to hire for technology-related careers. This experience has helped me to understand just how problematic the gender gap is in this nation, and it ultimately led me here, with Canada Learning Code, to address this issue in a very systemic design lens on education.

The stark reality of the gender gap in technology is made evident by taking a quick scan across the room in your average computer lab classroom, by looking at the teams who build all the mobile applications we use on a daily basis, and by considering some research.

Studies state that women represent less than 25% of technology roles within Canada, and that of those women who make it in the industry, 25% are exiting the industry due to sexism or the experience of unwelcome workplace environments—all this while women make up half of our population. This is a problem.

Women are key decision-makers in Canadian households. Women are influencers of our next generation of scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians. Actually, women represent the larger proportion of educators in our classrooms.

Because technology is an ongoing and ever-growing driver of innovation within multiple industries, we have an opportunity as a nation to minimize the gender gap and to ensure that we are working towards a more prosperous and unified nation.

How can we address this issue? There is no one causal factor. It is very complex, very systemic, and therefore there is no one solution to all of this.

What we do know, however, is that the causes of the gender gap in technology have nothing to do with biological differences. In fact, while many of us doubt it, there have been numerous research studies out there to demystify this. There is zero evidence that there are aptitude differences in math between women and men.

What we should be assessing is the design of things. What I mean by this is the design of experiences that we are all exposed to from the moment we are born. These are the experiences that shape what we feel we are capable of doing and what we can do. They shape our understanding of how the world works, of what leadership looks like, and of who can play a role in developing new technology.

We must empower women and young girls to feel confident, to equip them with the skills and knowledge to go beyond being consumers of technology and become creators.

We believe at Canada Learning Code that tech education can play a significant role in this. With Canada Learning Code, we have the privilege of designing accessible, inclusive learning experiences for women and young girls, who make up two groups of Canadians that have been historically marginalized and under-represented.

We have programs for adult women. The ladies learning code program aims to provide beginner-level technology experiences for adult women along with mentorship from those in the industry.

Our youth programs are all about sparking the curiosity and interest of girls at an early age, and then providing support along the way as they bloom towards adulthood.

Our programs for teachers are for educators of all sorts, which are meant to equip educators with all of the resources, the skills, the confidence, and the training to enable them to introduce digital literacy within the classroom at the primary school level.

As we work towards having equity, diversity, and inclusion by being better represented within the workforce, at Canada Learning Code we really hope to continue to grow that pipeline within the workforce and education with young women and girls.

I'd be happy to answer any questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Fantastic. Thank you very much.

As we can see, Bonnie is not here yet. I'm going to ask the clerk if there's a way that we can divide some time, because I know the first person with their seven minutes may actually have questions for Bonnie, as well.

Clerk, is there anything that has been done in the past?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Marie-Hélène Sauvé]

We could do half. Instead of seven minutes, we could do three minutes each.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Instead of doing the seven minutes, is it okay that we'll start with three minutes? Then we can go back to allow those members to question the second panellist.

Okay, that's fantastic. Everybody is good with that,

We're going to move on with the first three minutes of questioning for you, Carolyn, and that's going to be Marc Serré.

Marc, you have the floor.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for your presentations and the work you do.

We have heard from witnesses who talked about high school programs and programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM. They told us that the breakdown of girls and boys in those high school programs is about 50-50. At the post-secondary level, however, there is a gap, since fewer girls and women enrol in those programs.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this. What more can we do at the high school level to change the decline in enrolment of women and girls in STEM programs, especially in technology?

[Carolyn Van]

Sure.

We know that the interest in STEM for young girls drops off at around 12 to 13 years of age, which is a significant problem. There seems to be a lot of interest from girls in areas of STEM leading up to that age and then there's this drop-off that happens.

Something that we currently have with our programs, which we'd like to see more of, is more technology education experiences, along with a community for those girls between the ages of 13 to 17 to continue to nourish and support their interests as they look to apply to post-secondary institutions in areas of STEM. By providing that ongoing support, that mentorship, and that community, we hope that teenage girls can continue to learn and to connect with other young girls to help with that drop-off rate.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

You also said you offer teachers workshops about programming. I would like to hear more about that and what you recommend that we consider in order to determine what could be done as regards teacher education and training across the country.

[Carolyn Van]

Sure.

We know that to keep technology education only at the curricular level is not enough, quite frankly. At Canada Learning Code, we believe strongly in getting technology education into schools at an early age. With all of our experiences teaching thousands of youth across our nation to code, we are taking all of our very hard lessons learned, packaging them up, and providing educators with content and with in-school workshop training on professional development days to really help teachers feel confident. We give them the knowledge to smash some of the myths that they have and some of the fears that they carry about introducing computational thinking within elementary schools.

Our programs are free for teachers. We can travel across Canada giving workshops to educate groups of educators. Whether you are an educator in school or a Girl Guide leader, we have in-person workshop training for that and we have all of our content and helpful resources online at no cost on teachers learning code.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thanks very much. You have so much information.

Turning over to our CPC members, is it Rachael or Martin?

Martin Shields, you have the floor for three minutes.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I find the topic very interesting at the school level. Being an old guy, I remember the fight between the calculator and the slide rule.

A lot of the time this comes down to school board decision-making regarding policy about what they allow and how they allow technology into the classroom setting.

You're mentioning something totally different, so I believe that you may be focusing on the wrong place. If you want to change policy, you need to convince school boards and administrators, who are the people who make these decisions, to get it to that level.

Would you like to make a comment about that?

[Carolyn Van]

We're very aware that to solve this issue it's going to be a multipronged approach. Something that we are currently focusing on is to try to not allow the lack of, say, Internet connection or computing equipment to be a barrier to teaching computational thinking. Our team is faced with the huge task of being very aware of what the current situation is and getting very creative in designing solutions, so that a teacher who has a classroom with none of these resources can still introduce computational thinking in some way. We're trying to design education that is as barrier-free and as obstacle-free as possible.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

I very much appreciate that, as well as working at the grassroots level and building those skills for the classroom, but then you go to the academic side, where new teachers are taught by an older generation that is less familiar with that technology. You then have another side that isn't doing it, and has never done it, and they are the people who are teaching teachers to be teachers. How are you addressing that one?

[Carolyn Van]

Currently we're just starting to dig our claws deep into K-to-12 computer science frameworks in various provinces. We're looking to map a lot of our education design to those frameworks. This way, as an educator adopts this tweak in the curriculum, it is more easily digestible. It will also ensure that we have thoroughly thought of everything that needs to be met within the curriculum and designed for that.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

We have 10 provinces with 10 different curricula, and this is also a challenge you have. Are you approaching this differently provincially?

[Carolyn Van]

Yes. We have met with a couple of ministries of education to start the conversation on how we can address this. We've met with the ministry of education in Ontario to start moving towards that, so we're starting the process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent, Carolyn, thanks very much.

Since I've been allowing them to go closer to three and a half minutes, we're going to do the three and a half minutes.

Please go ahead, Sheila.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much for your work, and to your whole team for the impact you're having. It's really helpful for us.

I'm going to read two recommendations from one year ago, October 18, from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. It did a focus on Canada's success, or lack thereof, in adhering to its United Nations commitments around eliminating discrimination against women. This happens only once every five years, so it's a really good touchpoint for us.

They've made two recommendations directed at Canada that I think will resonate, so I'd like to get your perspective on whether your group would be happy to see these recommendations reflected in our final report.

There are two of them. The first one is in 37(b):

The Committee recommends that the State party... (b) Strengthen its strategies to address discriminatory stereotypes and structural barriers that may deter girls from progressing beyond secondary education and enrolling in traditionally male-dominated fields of study, such as mathematics, information technology, and science;

The second recommendation is in 39(b):

The Committee recommends that the State party... (b) Adopt effective measures, including skills training and incentives for women to work in non-traditional professions, and temporary special measures to achieve substantive equality of women and men in the labour market and eliminate occupational segregation, both horizontal and vertical, in the public and private sectors, and adopt quotas to enhance the representation of women in managerial positions in companies;

It has the non-traditional as well as the secondary to graduation.

Do you have any reflections on whether, if Canada took those measures, it might help advance representation of young women, especially moving into STEM fields and coding?

[Carolyn Van]

I mentioned earlier that the drop-off rate is quite high—it's 25%—for adult women leaving areas of STEM due to experiencing sexism and unwelcoming workplace environments. We are seeing a lot of those women getting involved in mentorship programs, including ours. We have many organizations that are huge supporters of our organization almost solely to have their staff become active as mentors for these young girls and for these young people.

We see young girls making it through post-secondary institutions in a STEM-related field and graduating, but then they don't see women represented in areas of leadership in those fields, and they take another route. Again, we're happy to see adult women getting involved, recognizing that's the case, having conversations with their organizations to ask, “How can we ensure that we keep our women within our organization”, and contributing back to the next generation through mentorship and involvement with their programs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

We're going to continue with the three to three and a half minutes, with Pam Damoff.

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

I'm going to let Emmanuella take my time because my questions were focused on DAWN.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Sure.

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

Is she coming?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

We still have her on. If she comes, we'll have her for 11.

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

Okay, and if you could indulge me for just a moment, Chair, I just wanted to welcome the young people in our audience today. I have two young people from Toronto and Mississauga, and I see the group has grown in this meeting, so I suspect that other members do as well.