Good morning.
Thank you, Madam Chair, vice-chairs and committee members. It is a pleasure to be here today.
My name is Ruby Dhillon. I am the founder and president of Pink Attitude Evolution. I'm joined here today by my fellow officer and executive producer, Jaspreet Sandhu.
Pink Attitude Evolution is a not-for-profit organization in Canada with a mandate to empower South Asian women to achieve their full potential in their chosen endeavours. To ensure that we make an impact at the most pivotal point in their lives and to stay connected throughout their journeys, we selected four cohorts to focus on: high school students, post-secondary students, middle-management professionals and finally the next chapter, which we've coined as women entering the workforce for the first time, re-entering it or just pursuing a new career.
Our focus is to curate annual programming, support initiatives and build partnerships that will provide meaningful value to our cohorts, such as mentorship and scholarships.
Today, we're grateful to have this opportunity to share preliminary insights on our latest initiative in partnership with CultureIQ: a national research study to understand how to unlock the true potential of South Asian women in the workforce and why this group is vital to Canada's economic future.
Holistically, our preliminary research indicates that the face of the Canadian workforce is quickly changing. South Asian women will be integral to its future.
We know this by making a note of the demographics, specifically the rate of natural increase. The Canadian population is heading towards a net-zero birth rate by 2034, coupled with a lagging rate of replacement of retirees, resulting in the shrinking of our national labour market.
However, it's quite contrary to what we observed in the South Asian population, which continues to grow and is the single largest visible minority group in Canada. In particular, the South Asian female population continues to increase year over year, while the non-visible minority female population has remained basically flat.
In addition, the growth is further strengthened by immigration, and we want to highlight international students in particular. We know that Canada has one of the highest rates of international students from South Asia. At the end of 2019, there were over 200,000 students from India alone.
What's important to recognize here is that a vast majority of them will remain in Canada to work and gain their Canadian permanent residency. Needless to say, there is a strong presence of South Asians in the workforce.
Beyond the shifting of population demographics, South Asian women are among the most highly skilled minority groups in Canada, underscoring a clear message that they're vital to drive the overall population growth and the national economy.
However, it's concerning that there are serious implications ahead of us if we continue to ignore statistics and do not address the challenges that prevent us from utilizing this highly skilled and untapped workforce.
I'd like to now pass it on to my colleague, Jaspreet Sandhu, who will go further into the findings and the positive outcomes.