Status of Women Committee on Feb. 15th, 2024

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

I'm going by Statistics Canada, and they're saying that what you're saying is not relevant, because there are no child care spaces. It burdens me, because my husband passed away at a young age and I was a single mom. I have to admit that it was very challenging. I guess we'll have to question Stats Canada for these numbers, because they don't appear to agree with the statistics you're providing.

My colleague Dominique has one more question, so I'd like to pass it over to her now.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I’m afraid I don’t have much time.

Minister, a few minutes ago, you said that your government invested significantly and will continue to invest in roads. I come from a rural area, and people who live in those regions know that getting around is complicated. There is no public transit. In the Quebec City area, we have a major project we’re really counting on. The project is good for the environment, because it means fewer cars will be making a big detour. The third link is very promising for us, as well as for businesses in Bellechasse and Les Etchemins.

Your colleague, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, said yesterday that investing in roads was over. You represent small businesses, including those located in our rural areas, namely businesses in the rural area of Bellechasse. What would you say to them now?

Do you agree with your colleague about what he said yesterday in the House of Commons?

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

Again, I've seen the investments we've made in this country with regard to infrastructure. We will continue to invest in infrastructure across this country, especially where it's most needed. I appreciate your input on where the opportunities for infrastructure are.

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

Minister, your colleague, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, said yesterday that he would no longer invest in roads. That will have an impact on the business world and small businesses, specifically those located in rural areas.

Do you support what he said?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have 30 seconds.

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

Thank you for that question.

Again, we will continue to invest in the infrastructure that's needed for this country, especially those infrastructure projects that will benefit and help support entrepreneurs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Merci.

We will go on to the final round.

Lisa, you have five minutes.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Minister Valdez, for being here with us today.

I want to talk about some of the other things this government has done to support small businesses. We know it's been a difficult time. You've acknowledged that. Around the world, small businesses have been facing similar challenges. The whole world went through this pandemic.

Maybe you can touch on some of the other things we've done. For example, I think we lowered the small business tax rate by more than a per cent. Can you explain what sort of impact that has had?

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

Yes. Thank you.

We lowered the taxes for small businesses. We also increased the bracket to allow more small businesses to qualify for some of the tax benefits we've had. I think this is certainly making a difference.

Again, the fact that we'll be lowering credit card fees for both Visa and Mastercard means that credit card users and certainly small businesses will be saving close to a billion dollars over five years. These are real savings. That change will take effect this fall.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Has your department done any comparisons of how small businesses in Canada weathered the pandemic as compared with similar nations?

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

As you mentioned earlier, the challenges we face in Canada are not in a silo. Many different G7 countries and many countries around the world are experiencing challenges, especially when it comes to affordability.

What I can say is that yes, entrepreneurs are having challenges, but we will continue to provide supports to small businesses across this country, especially for women entrepreneurs. The focus has been very deliberate on our part to provide supports for them. Again, that's capital. It's access to funding that small business entrepreneurs need.

The second is supporting the ecosystem that supports them with the mentorship opportunities and networking opportunities provided to them, which is very important. Then we're collecting all this through our knowledge hub, which will obviously collect the data that we need.

I think what's really important is being able to share all the positive stories and all the success stories out there. Many success stories have happened across the country as a result of the women entrepreneurship strategy.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

You mentioned mentorship. I think earlier on in your testimony you talked about women having to hold each other up and support each other. What more can we do in this country to foster that communal spirit and foster that companionship and support among women entrepreneurs?

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

I mentioned earlier that I think there's a lot of power in sharing stories of women entrepreneurs. I don't mind sharing another one.

In Winnipeg, there's Feferity Designs. Through the women entrepreneurship strategy, with the SEED Winnipeg funding they received, Kehinde is setting up her business through supports that are helping her understand how business in Canada works and in structuring her business, defining her target market and setting up her business account. These are tangible things that entrepreneurs are getting supports with through the entrepreneurship strategy. It's working and it's really providing the supports they need on the ground.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

I'm going to share the last two minutes with my colleague Ms. Sidhu.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Minister and officials, for coming to our committee.

Quickly, Minister, I know we share the area together. I want to talk about the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub and how it's removing barriers and how it's helping with the leadership opportunities for women.

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

Yes, absolutely.

What's been really good that I've seen with the knowledge hub is being able to have a single point of contact. If you are an entrepreneur who's watching this—because everyone tunes into committee, of course—you can reach out to the knowledge hub and ask questions. You can look at all the success stories that are online. It's pretty remarkable. If they need any guidance or support, it's certainly there.

What I can also share is that I think data is important. Not only have we funded the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub, but also, through our government supports through the Business Data Lab in collaboration with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the insights and analytics that the entrepreneurs have asked for are all there. If you go to the Business Data Lab website, you can have reports right at your fingertips that can help you understand various things. It helps you understand the industry, geography and business ownership. Head over to the Business Data Lab if you're watching this. It's pretty cool.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have 25 seconds.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

That was my last question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Okay.

On behalf of the committee, I would really like to thank Minister Valdez, Francis Bilodeau and Etienne-René Massie.

I know that there have been several documents requested today. We had some questions for which documents were requested, so we will be following up on those, but I would like to thank you.

We are going to suspend for just a short period of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Okay, everybody. Welcome back to committee and to our meeting.

I believe that our clerk has already shared with you not to put your earpiece too close to the mic and to make sure your mics are turned off and on so that we don't get any crazy sounds. We want to make sure that our interpreters don't get any ear problems.

I am very happy to be here today. We have two individuals who will be joining us.

We have, as an individual, Lohifa Pogoson Acker, who is a business owner. We also have, from Wisdom2Action, Fae Johnstone, who is the executive director.

We're going to start with five minutes each for your opening comments, and I'm going to pass the floor to Lohifa. I hope I'm saying that properly.

Lohifa, you have the floor.

[Lohifa Pogoson Acker, Business Owner, As an Individual]

Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here amidst all of you. I look forward to exciting conversations, questions and answers.

My name is Lohifa Pogoson Acker. I'm an entrepreneur, business owner and community advocate from the wonderful city of Hamilton, Ontario. I bring you greetings from the city of Hamilton—Hamilton Mountain, to be exact.

I'd written quite the epistle over the weekend before coming here. I found out on Friday I was going to be coming here.

An incident occurred that shifted my perspective, and I thought I would bring to you a story of a friend of mine who started the entrepreneurship journey with me five years ago. Unfortunately, we ended up in emergency at the psych ward over the weekend—on Sunday, on Monday and again on Tuesday.

I wondered how we got to this point of not supporting entrepreneurs along their journey and at their junctures of challenge. When I hear the minister speak about wraparound supports, I can't help but wonder what exactly she was referring to in terms of wraparound supports. We all know, as entrepreneurs, that our journey is already lonely. Sometimes it is very difficult to reach out, to find resources and to find these ecosystems that I hear mentioned.

When I heard them mentioned, I couldn't help but wonder if I was in the same country that she was referring to—or even the same city, to bring it a bit smaller—because there has been a disconnect throughout the pandemic and there continues to be a disconnect.

I think there is an aspect of entrepreneurship and an aspect of women in business and supporting women in business that we are not being very intentional about. The joy has left the building. I'm not sure how else to say this. The stress has taken over. There are a lot of mental health issues as a result of the joy leaving the building.

We do not see intentional programming to help women remain enthusiastic, to help women remain joyful and to help them find.... Sometimes it's difficult to find a balance, but it's the feeling that you have a balance in managing a home, managing a business and being an active member of society.

I'm hopeful that we can have these discussions today. I can hopefully offer some perspective and some solutions in terms of bringing the joy back into the building for women entrepreneurs, but also, particularly in my case, for black women entrepreneurs.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you for bringing the joy into our room.

I'm now going to pass it over to Fae Johnstone. Fae, you have five minutes.

[Fae Johnstone, Executive Director, Wisdom2Action]

Thank you. It's an honour and a pleasure to be here today.

As was mentioned, my name is Fae Johnstone. I'm a 28-year-old trans woman, and I live here in Ottawa on unceded, unsurrendered Algonquin Anishinabe territory.

In my day job, I'm the executive director of Wisdom2Action. We are a small consulting firm that works predominantly with non-profits and health and social services in the private sector, and though I live here in Ottawa, my firm is based in Kjipuktuk Mi'kma'ki, colonially known as Halifax, Nova Scotia. Although I've never lived there, part of my heart definitely does.

Over the past six years, I've had the absolute honour of leading my firm and helping build a successful business in a difficult and increasingly challenging economic environment as a trans person and as a woman, often defying the odds and often defying expectations as well.

I like to look back to when I was a little bit younger. I don't think most folks in my world would have expected that I'd be here today or that I would be the owner of a successful business.

My firm is a small one, and we predominately employ queer folks, women and folks from other marginalized communities. We lead with our values. Most of our clients are small non-profits that often can't afford the services and supports of larger consulting firms that often are based in Toronto. We help organizations scale their impact and bring inclusion to life in their work while strengthening their connection to the communities that they serve.

As a firm with a social enterprise commitment, we also leverage our platform and resources on 2SLGBTQIA+ advocacy and other causes that are near and dear to my heart and to the hearts of my co-owners.

We are proud to be a living wage employer and to be an inclusive workplace for our team, often employees and colleagues who haven't had access to workplaces with the freedom to be themselves and who can show up as their honest selves in their work environments.

I'd like to speak in my time today to the economic inequalities and barriers facing queer and trans people and business owners. I also want to touch on the threat of rising hate and share recommendations on how this committee and the federal government can respond to both the economic issues and the human rights crises queer and trans communities are facing in Canada today.

I want to start by emphasizing the unequal playing field queer and trans workers and business owners face.

We are more likely to live in poverty and more likely to be homeless. We actually make, on average, less annual income than our cisgender and heterosexual peers. We know that is particularly true for trans and gender-diverse people, where almost 48% of trans people in this country make under $30,000 a year. That means almost half of trans people live in poverty or close to it.

We have made immense progress in the past few decades, but inequity is still our everyday reality. My community is simply trying to survive. Even as our country talks about how much of a champion and a trailblazer we are, I have friends who are struggling to pay their bills. I have friends who are struggling to pay rent and for whom the dream of owning a home is further out of reach for them than it would be for our cisgender and heterosexual peers.

Structural factors make it harder for us to make ends meet. Those barriers are multiplied for Black, indigenous and racialized queer people, disabled queer people and for transgender people as well. We need economic and public policy interventions that lift up our community and improve our social and economic circumstances.

We are also more likely in this age to be targeted by hate. I have too many friends and colleagues in the entrepreneurship and business development space who have been subjected to hate and hate mail. I have had friends who have had the pride flags they display in their coffee shops burned or torn down or vandalized in other ways.

As queer people, we also know that we lose business by being out as who we are. Folks will not come to our shops. They will not buy from our business, and we are often tokenized as just those folks who do queer and trans things. While I'm proud to own a queer and trans business, I have to insist every time that we don't just do the queer and trans stuff, that we're also able to help organizations scale their impact, connect with their communities and do the work they do better.

For some in our communities, that risk is heightened. Just think of the discourse right now around drag performers. These are small business owners and entrepreneurs, and they're receiving death threats for doing the work that they do. They're also having to have bodyguards in front of their events. They're seeing a real risk that they will have their livelihood, their identities, their privacy violated by groups that hate them for being who they are.

I also want to speak to government laws and policies that make some members of our community more vulnerable. We still have legislation that makes it difficult for queer and trans people who are engaged in sex work to do the work that they do. We still live in a context of partial criminalization that makes it harder for folks to screen clients, makes it harder for folks to unionize their businesses and makes it harder for them to be safe and to succeed as entrepreneurs.

In this age, we are seeing a staggering rise in hate, and I'm going to speak quickly and summarize briefly.

I guess what I would say is that we cannot underestimate the threat of rising hate in this country. We need our government to listen up, and we need to make sure that we're responding fully to the threat of anti-queer and anti-trans hate and its impact on our queer people and their businesses.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thanks so much.

We're going to start our six-minute round. I'm going to pass the floor to Dominique Vien for the first six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here today, even if the subject was rather bleak. Indeed, I found their testimony a bit depressing.

Ms. Pogoson Acker, you talked about mental health problems and a very complicated reality. Same thing for you, Ms. Johnstone.

What could actually motivate women to go into business now?