Status of Women Committee on Feb. 15th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I call the meeting to order.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to meeting number 97 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 by using the Zoom application.

It seems there's no translation. Is there translation now? Can you hear me?

I'll keep on talking. Let us know if you can hear the translation or not. That would be awesome.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

I can hear you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You poor thing.

[An hon. member]

Can we suspend for a moment?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I will suspend for a moment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Welcome back to the meeting.

I'm not going to go through all of the information regarding the microphones. The biggest piece of information is this: Please do not put your earpiece close to the microphone, and please make sure that between sessions, your microphone is down.

If you wish to raise your hand, please do so on Zoom. I see we have Emmanuella on Zoom. Everyone else is in the room.

As we continue with our women's economic study, it's an honour to have the minister here.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, September 21, 2023, the committee will resume its study of women's economic empowerment.

Today I would like to welcome Minister Rechie Valdez , who is the Minister of Small Business. With her today, from the Department of Industry, we have Francis Bilodeau, the associate deputy minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, and Etienne-René Massie, the assistant deputy minister for small business, tourism and marketplace services.

Minister, I'll give you five minutes for your opening remarks. The time starts now.

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Minister of Small Business]

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, both here and online, for inviting me to speak on women’s economic empowerment.

This is a critical and timely topic, especially as we continue to navigate the path to recovery from the impacts of the pandemic.

In my role as the Minister of Small Business, I am committed to ensuring that women entrepreneurs and business owners in every region of the country have the tools and supports necessary to recover, start, innovate and grow their businesses.

As a woman and former entrepreneur myself, I know first-hand the unique challenges faced by women business owners and operators every day. Unfortunately, these barriers are disproportionately higher for racialized women. After 15 years of working in the financial sector, I took a leap from corporate banking to start my own business. I discovered it while baking my daughter's first birthday cake; I found my creative passion. This journey has given me a deep understanding of the systemic barriers that prevent women from accessing the resources needed to start and grow their businesses.

My experiences are not unique. Throughout the world, women continue to face challenges related to starting and growing their businesses, including access to financing. In Canada, only 16.8% of small and medium-sized enterprises are majority-owned by women. It's 37% if you include self-employed women. Women have a hard time getting credit through financial institutions because they may not qualify. According to the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub, the average amount of financing for men-owned businesses is more than double that for women-owned businesses. However, we know that studies show that when we advance gender equality and women’s participation in the economy, we can add up to $150 billion of GDP. Supporting women isn’t only the right thing to do; it's the smart thing to do.

In 2018, to try to change that, our government introduced the women entrepreneurship strategy, or WES. The WES is the first-ever program of its kind in Canada. It represents $7 billion in investments and commitments from almost 20 different federal departments, agencies and Crown corporations. As part of the overall investment, $165 million has been committed to the WES ecosystem fund to help non-profit, third party organizations strengthen capacity within the entrepreneurship ecosystem and offer business supports to women entrepreneurs.

I know, and several witnesses in this committee have already mentioned, how important mentorship is, and the ability for women to get the support they need and have that network to tap into, a network of other women who are excited to share their business ideas and advice. That can mean the difference between someone letting their doubts win or having the courage to open their own small business.

The Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub, or WEKH, consists of 10 regional hubs across the country, with over 250 partner organizations, and it's received over $17 million to address the knowledge gap and serve as a one-stop resource for data and best practices for women entrepreneurship. Through WEKH, more than 22,000 women have participated in critical mentorship and networking events.

Budget 2021 allocated $55 million to create the women entrepreneurship loan fund, which provides loans of up to $50,000 to women entrepreneurs. So far, the WES has delivered nearly 9,000 affordable loans to women entrepreneurs.

The inclusive women venture capital initiative is a $15-million investment to fund projects led by non-profit organizations to strengthen and build a more inclusive venture capital environment for Canadian women.

In October, we announced an investment of up to $25 million in five venture capital fund managers as part of the inclusive growth stream of the renewed venture capital catalyst initiative. Two of these fund managers are Sandpiper Ventures and The51, both with a goal of investing in women and gender-diverse founders.

In addition, over 26,400 women entrepreneurs have been supported through projects led by the WES ecosystem fund, which includes helping more than 10,000 women start new businesses and helping more than 12,000 women grow existing ones.

Our government has developed support programs to provide support to women entrepreneurs with intersectional identities. Under the Black entrepreneurship program, over $25 million in loans has been disbursed through the loan fund to help address systemic barriers faced by Black entrepreneurs, and 20% of those clients who were approved for loans were women.

This year, our government also launched the 2SLGBTQI+ entrepreneurship program—the first of its kind in the world—which seeks to address the barriers faced by entrepreneurs who identify as 2SLGBTQI+.

Our government is also supporting the indigenous women’s entrepreneurship initiative, which aims to empower indigenous women entrepreneurs by providing tailored resources, mentorship and funding opportunities.

Together, these initiatives are helping thousands of women entrepreneurs reach their business goals and build on measures our government has already introduced to ensure that doing business in Canada is as easy as possible.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to your questions, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Perfect. Thank you so much. You're right on time.

We're going to start our first round of questions of six minutes each, and I'm going to pass the floor over to Dominique Vien.

Dominique, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Minister, welcome. Congratulations on your appointment, and I thank you for being here today.

The study is not yet done, and a few women came to see us to talk about the difficulties they had as women accessing the world of entrepreneurship. It’s something that requires more effort from women, namely because of the mental load they carry in today’s world. They work more and more and, when they get home, they start a second shift.

We heard that businesses founded by women don’t survive as long as those owned and operated by men. What can you tell us about that?

How do you see this problem, and how can we solve it?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you for the question.

I agree that women entrepreneurs have many different challenges, whether those are juggling the household responsibilities they have or taking care of their families. You mentioned that many different entrepreneurs, particularly women entrepreneurs, are challenged when it comes to opening a business, scaling up their business and starting it.

Our women entrepreneurship strategy has three pillars, which I mentioned.

The first is providing capital for them so they can get the financing and funds they need to grow.

The second is that we're investing in the ecosystem. What really helped me as an entrepreneur was having like-minded women help me whenever I needed some advice and counsel. That's what the ecosystem provides for women entrepreneurs: guidance, counsel, mentorship and networking opportunities. Having someone they can count on, if they do not have that in their circle, is what the ecosystem provides.

The third pillar, which is the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub, is a way for us to gather data and information so that we can continue to improve on what we're offering to women entrepreneurs and to improve on the service.

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

Minister, I don’t have a lot of time left.

I’d like to talk about the cost of living in our current context. It’s a very modern-day issue. The higher cost of living affects women at home, as well as family life, of course, but it also affects women who own businesses.

How can you help these entrepreneurs, given that the cost of living has exploded and is putting the brakes on many initiatives, especially among these women?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you for the question.

One of the things I'm very proud of in particular in terms of helping all women enter the workforce, whether as entrepreneurs or working full time, is our $10-per-day child care program, which helps them choose between becoming entrepreneurs or entering the workforce. That's really important.

As far as making it affordable for small business women entrepreneurs is concerned, we have lowered taxes for small businesses from 11% to 9%, and we recently secured agreements with both Visa and Mastercard to lower credit card transaction fees, which will save a billion dollars for small businesses over five years.

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

Minister, you talked about day care. I come from Québec, and I had a very positive experience in that respect. However, when it comes to day care services throughout the country, many people are struggling. There are questions about your program’s implementation, specifically when it comes to accessing child care spaces.

How can we talk about this being a solution when women can’t easily access day care spaces?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I think that's a great question.

Not only have we invested in ensuring that we're lowering the price of child care down to $10 a day across the country, throughout all provinces and territories, but certainly part of that investment is ensuring that we're putting funds towards increasing the number of spots for children in those different provinces and territories, so we're reducing child care fees but we're also putting funds towards building the infrastructure for more child care spaces.

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

Minister, a woman whose name I have unfortunately forgotten told us that, among businesses, executive positions are mostly occupied by men.

Is this issue of interest to you, given that women represent 52% of the population?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Absolutely. We know that across the country there are many pay gaps. You see it in corporate pay and you see different pay gaps in entrepreneurship and in different small and medium-sized businesses.

Our government has put forward the 50-30 challenge, which is an initiative that asks Canadian organizations to commit to achieving gender parity and significant representation in other equity-deserving groups on corporate boards and in senior management positions. As of February 7, 2,450 participating organizations of all sizes have already signed up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

That's excellent. Thank you so much, Minister.

Marc, I'm going to pass it over to you. Marc Serré has the floor for six minutes.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being with us today and for the work you’re doing for small businesses throughout the entire country.

We heard from witnesses and economic development agency representatives throughout the country. I come from Northern Ontario, where the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario, or FedNor, operates. FedNor makes it a priority to support women in entrepreneurship.

How does your department work with economic development agencies to help more women become entrepreneurs, especially in rural areas?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I am actively working with all the economic development ministers to ensure that we are continuing to help support women entrepreneurs. We've taken an all-of-government approach to help ensure that we are providing supports to women entrepreneurs and those under-represented individuals.

I think the one thing I really want to stress is that we're trying to level the playing field to ensure that there are opportunities for all individuals in Canada to be able to seek entrepreneurship. As you are probably aware, there are a lot of newcomers who come to this country, and they want to start businesses and scale up their businesses. I've met so many of as I've travelled across the country, and I'm really proud of the work we've done to help support them.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you very much for the work you do with economic development agencies. It is important.

Witnesses told us on several occasions that one of the barriers for entrepreneurs and their businesses is lack of capital. They told us they have trouble accessing funding.

Through the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy, what has the government done to support women and provide access to capital to start or grow their businesses?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

When it comes to capital, that is the number one thing that small business entrepreneurs need to start up, scale and grow their businesses. As I mentioned in my opening, we've committed $55 million through our women entrepreneurship loan fund to provide loans of up to $50,000 to women entrepreneurs of diverse backgrounds through five loan administrators across the country. These administrators also provide additional wraparound supports for them.

I have met a few of them, and they've been able to share with me some incredible stories of how they've been able to help women through the pandemic. Sometimes they offer different flexibilities that women need during this time. Sometimes women have challenges, and they might need to, say, skip a payment for one particular month. I think it's really important that we provide women flexibility and provide an opportunity to still have a little bit of stress relief when they need it, and then they'll continue to help them and support them as they continue to grow their business.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

Also, we heard from other witnesses that in Canada, the Fortune 500 companies, for example, have a lack of women on their boards. We had Minister Bains in 2017 looking at a strategy around that, and I want to see an update.

What can we do better as a government to ensure that we have more women with leadership responsibilities in Fortune 500 companies? We know that stats show that companies do far better for their shareholders when there are women at the corporate board table.

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you so much for the question.

I've already mentioned the 50-30 challenge. I can't tell you how much of a difference this has made.

The reason for that 50-30 challenge is that organizations are seeing that this is a priority, and they're stepping up to say that they're going to demonstrate through their leadership and through their boards that they're going to bring more women and under-represented groups into the workforce.

The other piece of it is that in relation to pay gap reporting, which I think is very important, we provided $3 million through budget 2018 over five years to introduce pay gap reporting as a pay transparency measure for federally regulated private sector employees with 100 or more employees to reduce those wage gaps.

This is important because those organizations have to publish their pay gaps to raise awareness as a whole as to what they're doing to step up and support women in their workforce, and of course increase the number of women participating as well.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Excellent.

Along the same lines, as you know—you're just newly a minister—our government and the Prime Minister have ensured that we have 50-50 women representation on the federal cabinet for the first time.

We've heard that a lot of decisions have been made in a positive way because we have more women at the federal cabinet table. Can you explain the benefits you see by having 50-50 at the federal board table, from a government perspective?

[Rechie Valdez, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I think representation is very important.

Yes, the Prime Minister, since 2015 has had gender parity in cabinet, which is very important.

I think having those voices and having more women at the table to make those voices.... Even here in our FEWO committee, it really demonstrates the power of having those voices and how important it is when it comes to policy-making.