Status of Women Committee on Feb. 6th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Good morning, everyone. I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 94 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. I won't go through all of the things, but I will just remind everyone that if you are not using your microphone, ensure that it's off. Make sure you do not put your earpiece beside the microphone.

There are different channels that you can select for English or French translation, because I know that some of the questions will be in French today.

For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please raise your hand, as well, from there.

It's very exciting to have all of us together and returning to our study. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, September 21, 2023, we will continue our study on women's economic empowerment.

I would like to welcome our first panel for today. Each speaker will be given five minutes for their opening statement. Karen Campbell is the senior director of community initiatives with the Canadian Women's Foundation. She is on video conference. In the room, we have Jamie McMillan, who is the founder of Made in the Trades, and we also have Caitlin Morrison, who is the director of operations and communications for The Prosperity Project.

We'll begin with five minutes for Karen, who is online.

[Karen Campbell, Senior Director, Community Initiatives, Canadian Women's Foundation]

Good morning. I'm Karen Campbell from the Canadian Women's Foundation, Canada's public foundation for gender justice and equality. I'm joining today from London, Ontario, on the traditional territories of the Attawandaron, Anishinabe, Lunaapéewak and Haudenosaunee peoples.

Thank you for the invitation to speak on the pressing issue of women's economic empowerment. Women, particularly Black, racialized, migrant and low-income women, bore the brunt of economic losses in the pandemic. An uncertain recovery has ushered in neither stability nor security. Those who experienced the most marginalization are feeling cost-of-living pressures disproportionately.

For close to 30 years we have funded organizations serving women and gender-diverse people in the community economic development sector. We have invested more than $17 million in programs supporting them to pursue careers in the lucrative trades and tech industries, to explore self-employment and to join the social finance ecosystem.

Despite significant gains in women's educational attainment, many of the barriers to entry and advancement that we saw in the 1990s remain. Representation is still woefully inadequate in the tech and trade sectors. The gender pay gap persists; workplace violence and sexual harassment occur at alarming rates; not enough workplaces have embraced flexible work schedules to accommodate caregiving needs; and sexist workplace cultures persist, hindering women's economic empowerment.

At the foundation we know that funding community-based, labour market-access programs is vitally important. However, it is only a partial solution when the work environment's diverse women and gender-diverse workers enter, and it is set up to exclude them. Transformative culture shifts in male-dominated sectors and policies that support system changes are needed to achieve women's economic empowerment.

In recent years, we've seen an exciting example of this kind of transformative change. For a decade, we funded an organization called Women Unlimited, which partnered with Nova Scotia Community College to provide preapprenticeship training and wraparound supports to women entering the skilled trades. In 2021 that program was formally integrated into the college system, and a wraparound support fund for women was established to enable their full participation in their educational program. The integration of Women Unlimited into the college system demonstrates the school's commitment to providing the gender-specific supports that students need when training for and entering a male-dominated field.

At the foundation we have taken on a range of strategic partnerships that build momentum for transformative change. For example, in 2018 we partnered with YWCA Canada, Catalyst Canada and Plan International Canada on a project called “In Good Company”, through which we work with a small, motivated group of businesses in the skilled trades and tech sectors to enhance their diversity, equity and inclusion practices with a view to modelling what it takes to build more inclusive and welcoming workplaces for diverse women and gender-diverse people.

Over the decades, we have seen that women and gender-diverse people often turn to self-employment because of the barriers and forms of discrimination they encounter in the labour market. Many of these entrepreneurs are motivated by social justice goals, and they are not interested in replicating the barriers and challenges that have impeded their economic empowerment.

Last year we welcomed funding through the Government of Canada's women entrepreneurship strategy, which has enabled us to support Black, indigenous and racialized women and gender-diverse entrepreneurs, to build businesses grounded in feminist business practices that foster inclusive workplaces and to build equitable local economies. Continued federal investment in the women entrepreneurship strategy holds considerable transformative potential.

Since 2019 we have also invested in 90 diverse social-purpose enterprises led by women and gender-diverse people through our investment readiness program, which is funded by Employment and Social Development Canada. Through this program, we are supporting innovative entrepreneurs to join the social innovation ecosystem. Strengthening these organizations ensures that they can thrive and keep making a positive impact in communities all over the country. This highly effective program is coming to an end in March 2024. We hope to see it renewed and extended to match the full 10 years of the social finance fund.

That being said, the economic empowerment of women and gender-diverse people requires more than the kinds of investments that the Canadian Women's Foundation can make, even though it is Canada's largest foundation focused on gender equity.

Systems change, such as the development of national, affordable child care, closing the gender pay gap through effective pay equity policies, and creating affordable housing targeted to women and their families, is essential. These strategies, along with ensuring that workplaces are violence- and harassment-free, are crucial to setting a stage on which programs and individual efforts can achieve individual empowerment.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much, Karen. You can tell that you've done this before. You were at five minutes on the dot.

We're now going to move over, and we will be speaking to Jamie McMillan, who is the founder of Made in the Trades.

Jamie, you have five minutes.

[Jamie McMillan, Founder, Made in the Trades]

All right. I'm very new at this, but thank you very much.

I'm speaking from the perspective of a woman in the trades. By “woman in the trades”, I mean that I am a contract worker, so it's very different from full-time employment. I am a very proud woman in trades and love to support women in trades; however, I promote everyone in trades. I am about equality, inclusion and diversity.

Recruitment is very easy. I am part of an effort to recruit the next generation of skilled trades workers through Made in the Trades, where I'm a professional speaker through KickAss Careers and Made in the Trades, as well as an educator for kids in school, all the way from pre-kindergarten right through to kids of all ages who will listen to me, and that's including full-grown adults.

I love speaking to kids, and I do speak to kids all over North America, and specifically across Ontario. I get to speak to employers as well. My message to kids is always the same. It's about promoting and supporting skilled trades as a viable career pathway for anyone, regardless of differences.

I don't find that recruitment is an issue at all. I find recruitment very easy. Retention, however, is not as easy. Instead of looking at people entering into the trades, I would like to see the statistics for people retiring from the trades. I think the numbers would be extremely different.

There is a lack of opportunity in the skilled trades, which is a barrier for recruiting the next generation into the skilled trades. We have a lack of funding for co-op opportunities. Students aren't getting co-op opportunities. Apprenticeship opportunities are very few and are not working with the school programs a lot of the time. Employers are not willing to take on first-year apprentices or newer apprentices a lot of the time, despite the labour shortages.

Overcoming challenges and barriers in the trades is a huge thing, but this is not about the workplace. Harassment, bullying and all of those things exist outside of the skilled trades. These are human issues. They are not specific to the skilled trades or to any other workplace. I want that to be very clear, because the issues we face in the skilled trades are everywhere. It's not just women who deal with these issues. It is men as well.

I heard a very inspiring quote the other day that really resonates with me: “If we are not intentionally inclusive, we are unintentionally exclusive.” There are so many efforts being made to promote women or under-represented groups in this industry.

Speaking as a contract worker, I can say that this is very detrimental to the careers of women in the trades who are contract workers. We do not need to deal with the same problems as women in full-time construction employment do. The issues that we deal with are very unique in contract construction, and I believe that we need more voices at the table to speak about the issues we have, because they are very different, and I don't see them addressed very often. I think there has to be more conversation with grassroots workers, not so much always focused on the employers. I think you need to speak to the employees.

We really need to shift the paradigm in the skilled trades. It's been a male-dominated industry for very many years, and the paradigm has been shifted all the way to the male side. Now I feel like we're going through a bit of a cultural shift, where we're taking it all the way from one side of the pendulum to the other side of the pendulum, and that is also doing a lot of harm to women in contract construction.

I believe in supporting a safe working environment, with proper PPE and fitting tools, but what I'm not exclusive about is that, again, this is not just a female issue. This is an issue that we all have. We should all have fitting PPE and workwear that is safe for us. We should all have clean bathrooms on site. However, in contract construction, this seems to be an issue sometimes, because contract workers do not always know if they will be getting a woman on their work site, so it is sometimes almost impossible for them to provide all the required clothing and PPE to fit all different sizes of women when the chances of their getting a woman could be very low. To be honest, most PPE does not fit men comfortably either. They struggle a lot with this as well.

There are many issues that I would like to bring to the table, and I can speak all day on this, but what I think we really need to do to change the culture of the workplace is to look at early childhood education. We need to bring more training and knowledge to students. We need to talk more about these opportunities and stop making it sound like college and university are the only pathways to success. As somebody who struggled in school with learning disabilities and ADHD and who spent most of my time in classrooms that were for special education, I can tell you that the skilled trades saved my life, and I wish that everybody got the same message I did.

Thank you for your time today.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Jamie, thank you so much for that very personal testimony. We really appreciate it.

We are now going to Caitlin Morrison.

Caitlin, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Caitlin Morrison, Director of Operations and Communications, The Prosperity Project]

Good morning.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for having me today.

I represent The Prosperity Project, an organization that believes women's success is directly tied to Canadian economic prosperity and works to dismantle barriers impeding that success.

Our organization applauds this committee for conducting a study on women's economic empowerment. We believe it is an important step for women and for Canada's economy.

Many of the witnesses you heard from have pointed to the importance of supporting women entrepreneurs. We see merit in this thinking, but we believe this addresses only part of the gender inequity problem. The advancement of women in corporate Canada is also of critical concern.

One of our organization's key initiatives is the collection and analysis of data related to gender equity and diversity. Our annual report card assesses gender disaggregated data from some of Canada's top 500 corporations by revenue. To be more specific, we look at the number of Black women, indigenous women, women of colour, women with disabilities and 2SLGBTQIA+ women at four levels of leadership.

Our 2023 report has been circulated to the committee. Members will note that this report shows worrying trends. It shows a significant year-over-year drop in women in the pipeline to leadership. This indicates a possible reversal in trends toward gender equity in the years ahead. We worry about who will be sitting at the decision-making table in five to 10 years. More troubling are our stats related to Black women, indigenous women, women of colour, women with disabilities and 2SLGBTQIA+ women. These groups remain all but absent from high-level leadership roles in corporate Canada. Sadly, our 2024 report, to be released later this month, indicates that this woeful under-representation of some groups of women persists. In short, our data shows that corporate leadership in Canada is still very much a white man's game. Why is that?

Our “Canadian Households' Perspective” report shows that women are facing tremendous burnout. They feel a lack of support at home and a lack of support in the workplace. They feel they have been passed over for promotions and are underpaid, and they are less confident than their male colleagues about speaking out for their own advancement. In a way, this makes sense. Corporate Canada was not built with women in mind. It certainly was not built with racialized women in mind. This is why the entrepreneurship model seems so appealing. It is easier sometimes to build something new than it is to change established practice, yet we believe Canada must address the inequities in established practice to create widespread economic empowerment for women.

I come here today with a challenge for this committee and the government: Support a corporate model that uplifts all women and encourages their advancement.

First, encourage and support the collection of gender-disaggregated data in Canada at all levels of leadership, including the pipeline to leadership. As one of the few organizations to collect such data, we know this is not an easy task, but we know it is crucial. To address inequity, we must have a clear understanding of where women stand in corporate Canada, not just with an eye for gender. The status of women from under-represented groups must also be tracked. One cannot fix a problem of inequity unless one can detect it.

Second, incentivize corporate Canada to publicly report gender-disaggregated data. We have already seen shareholders request racial equity audits. We posit that such incentives will spur corporations to take action to ensure that their policies and workplaces remain inclusive and equitable.

Third, encourage and support mentorship initiatives like The Prosperity Project's Rosie mentorship program that help encourage women from all backgrounds to feel supported in the workplace and have the confidence to speak up about their own goals for professional advancement.

We know such measures are important steps to building women's economic empowerment. As our organization's tag line states, when women succeed, we all prosper.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much to the three panellists today.

We will now be starting our round of questions. We will start with six minutes each.

I will now pass the floor over to Dominique Vien.

Dominique, you have six minutes.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The witnesses today have given us some very good insight. Unfortunately, we aren't learning much. We know that women's economic empowerment and equity are lagging. We're seeing this issue and we would like to see it much more easily resolved.

Data from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada shows that women‑owned small and medium‑sized businesses are less likely to survive than businesses of the same size owned or managed by men.

Ms. Morrison, since your focus is on data compilation, do you have any information on this topic?

[Caitlin Morrison]

I apologize, but I'll answer in English. My colleague Julie would be happy to discuss it in French after this hearing.

Our organization does not collect data on women-run small businesses. Our focus is on corporate Canada and the top 500 corporations in Canada by revenue. We have not seen any trends that would indicate that women-led businesses struggle compared with male-led businesses. However, that's not really part of the data we collect. We focus on understanding the totality of women's representation and leadership, not entirely on the corporate success.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you for bringing up this nuance. I thought that you might have some information.

It's worth noting that women are increasingly taking their place in politics, for example in the National Assembly of Quebec and here in Ottawa. The situation is improving. You said that leadership positions for women aren't increasing as quickly as desired. Men are still the ones accessing these positions. I believe that the situation is better in the public sector, for example, where pay equity legislation applies and where men and women really do have the same opportunities for advancement.

Your concerns apply more to the private sector. Right?

[Caitlin Morrison]

Yes, I do. That's a wonderful question. I believe we've seen a lot of factors in our “Canadian Households' Perspective” report.

When we ask women what kinds of things encourage them to seek leadership positions and what kinds of things discourage them from seeking leadership positions, we see that a lack of support in the workplace is a major factor. We're told that women are more likely to seek leadership positions if they have access to mentorship. Often they prefer mentorship outside their workplace, because it gives them the opportunity to be more open in the things they're discussing.

We also see women telling us that access to child care remains an issue. We believe encouraging more access to child care among some of the provinces would be a very helpful thing in order for women to continue to seek leadership roles.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

One of my colleagues will certainly have some questions about this.

Perhaps Ms. Ferreri would like to ask a question about day care.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Go for it. You have a minute and a half left.

We'll switch over to Michelle.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to both witnesses.

I guess I would ask if you could just expand on that, if you could, Ms. Morrison.

I'm very interested also in what you said, Ms. McMillan. I loved your testimony. For kids out there watching who don't feel that they're worth it, as a mom with kids with identified learning differences, your testimony really rings true for me, especially for young girls, who are often overlooked with that. I think your testimony was incredibly powerful, and I want to thank you for that. It was excellent.

I guess I would ask first, Ms. McMillan, if you have children.

[Jamie McMillan]

I do not.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

You do not have children.

The child care issue is a very significant one, as I look around the room here. We're seeing a lot of issues rolling out across the country with the affordable child care program. Do you think expanding it to who can offer this program would be beneficial to increase access?

[Caitlin Morrison]

First of all, affordable child care is an extraordinary thing that this government has done and implemented. I think what would be beneficial would be sorting out the best way to incentivize certain jurisdictions to increase the availability of spots.

There are lots of ways to do that, but I'm very short on time. Hopefully, we can come back to that later.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much. I'm sure we will.

I'll now pass it over to Lisa.

Lisa, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Welcome to all our witnesses.

Jamie McMillan, we have met many times in the past. I'm so glad you were able to make it here today. You are always such an engaging speaker. You always speak personally and from the heart, and we really appreciate it.

We've met over round tables about how to get more women into the trades. A lot of the discussions we've had are about how the workplaces aren't conducive to women's participation. They don't encourage women to participate. I was really interested in your observation that you would like to see retirement numbers from the trades, and that recruitment is easy but retention is really difficult.

Would you explain a bit more how that works and what you've seen?

[Jamie McMillan]

Yes. As somebody who promotes actively in this community, I don't find that there are any issues with getting anyone to be interested in the skilled trades, but we do have a lot of issues when it comes to the skilled trades, because they're not viewed as viable or lucrative pathways. There are lots of misconceptions. People think it's not a good job and it's terrible, hard work. There are lots of reasons we can't keep people in the trades once we get them in.

Once we get past all the challenges and barriers and convince people that these are lucrative pathways, some of the problems we have are that, yes, women are under-represented in this industry. Because this is a human issue and not a women's issue, it does take women with a bit of a thick skin and a good sense of humour to stand up in the face of that animosity sometimes. For me, I like the challenge. I think success is the best revenge. If somebody tells me I can't do something, I'll do it better than them—

[Voices]

Hear, hear!

[Jamie McMillan]

—or I'll at least try to. Win, lose or draw, at times I'll have some people come up to me who are really difficult personality styles to deal with. Once I prove myself, they shake my hand and tell me I've proven myself as a woman in the skilled trades. I like to refer it back to them: I don't identify on this job site as a woman in the skilled trades. Here I identify as an ironworker, a welder, a boilermaker—a skilled trades professional. That is how I like to identify.

We need to change the workplace culture. We need to work on the emotional maturity and dysregulation that's in the culture. I think we need to really hold people accountable for the behaviours that happen in the workplace. We have to figure out how to create solutions around this. If we want to create a diverse, inclusive workplace culture, we have to include everyone in the conversation. We have to start gathering men as our allies to be part of this conversation, and sometimes just make it their idea, because that works better.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

On that note, last week I visited a woman-led construction company that had a lot more gender diversity than most work crews. Men on that work crew told me they found it a nicer work environment. Have you heard the same sort of testimony from people?