Status of Women Committee on Feb. 27th, 2024

[Queenie Choo]

Thank you so much for that question. There are numerous steps toward the ideal state, of course. One that I think is important, and that I think was mentioned by a previous speaker, is to look at adequate funding to support settlement agencies to carry those programs so that we will be able to provide those support services to the women in need.

The second is to look at how we support entrepreneurship for women in the area of providing maybe a microloan program where a credit rating is not required. As you know, immigrant women, when they come to Canada, don't have any credit rating. Microloan programs or foreign credential recognition loan programs would help kick-start them in their career journey.

The other piece to look at is how to support a workplace that is equitable and free of discrimination. How can we do it better? How do we have a workplace where we provide women with equal opportunity for career development? That's not only from the career perspective. It's also from the governance perspective, with very clear support for diversity in succession planning for the organization in each of those corporations.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much, Queenie. I appreciate your responses to my questions.

Saadia, you spoke about TechGirls Canada, which is to ensure that women enter STEM fields and are treated equitably when they do. You said that immigrant women in STEM earn 55¢ to every dollar that a white male would earn. You also talked a little bit about the ways we can help make this happen—make it more equitable, make sure that women are able to be promoted at the same rates that men are being promoted and make sure they're able to get the same wages that men are getting. Basically, you stand for promotion and pay equity.

I'm wondering if you have any success stories that you can share with us, or anything that you think has actually worked to help a certain woman in this field in the past. I know that you gave some recommendations, but I'm wondering if we can put a face to a success story so that we can better know what we're looking for here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have about 30 seconds to respond. You can do it.

[Saadia Muzaffar]

All right. Thank you for the question.

I am reluctant to share one success story, because immigrant women are often held to a higher standard and told that they have to be exceptional just to get the same treatment that everyone else does. If you're an immigrant woman, you are both invisible, as in you go into a room and are not counted—most people don't know that immigrant women are the majority—and you are hyper-visible. I can't enter a room and just be somebody who is really good at their STEM field.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You are awesome and right on time. You absolutely understand the STEM field if you can get that math done.

We'll now go to Andréanne.

Andréanne, you have six minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for telling us about the various realities women face. They still face significant economic gaps, so they have to overcome major barriers in order to achieve economic equity.

I'm going to start with Ms. Kirkland, because I would like to discuss microloans, which my fellow member Ms. Ferreri was asking about earlier.

Yesterday, I met with people from the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association, and they highlighted how difficult it was for indigenous women to access credit. That's something we hear a lot. Last week, I attended an event put on by the Réseau des femmes d'affaires du Québec to mark International Women's Day, and the subject came up there as well. Access to credit is something that comes up over and over.

You touched on microloans, but I'd like to hear more about the flexibility dimension. That's something that has been called for. It brings to mind something that happened recently, with the Canada emergency business account loans becoming due. Repaying those loans has affected, and will continue to affect, small and very small businesses. By not being flexible, the government is leaving many women entrepreneurs in the lurch, especially women in my region who are being forced to remortgage their homes in order to repay the loan.

What does that flexibility mean for you when it comes to microloans and the services you provide?

[Alison Kirkland]

When we established our fund and were creating the processes and procedures, we wanted to make them as flexible as possible, keeping in mind that there is a need to have some due diligence in the process. There has to be a viable and feasible business idea behind it. At the same time, as I mentioned earlier, we don't require security on a loan. We have also loaned to clients who do not have a credit score because they are newcomers or because they have different backgrounds that have prevented them from building a credit score.

We really look to examine each on a case-by-case basis. That's really what the difference is in our work. One size doesn't fit all, and we have to look at the nuances of each client and business.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Ms. Kirkland, you said that you were trying to become self-sustainable. What does that mean for you? Is there something the government can do? How do you see things? You talked about being less reliant on funding. Did I understand that correctly?

[Alison Kirkland]

Yes, we work with a fund. Of course, we charge interest on the loans. What we're looking to do is to continue to turn those funds over. What is paid out is then repaid, and the interest on the loans is then helping the operations for the work that we do to get those out the door. We really want to ensure that our operations are efficient and effective so that we can continue to build the loan fund and operate and provide the services as efficiently and effectively as possible.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you.

Now I'm going to turn to Ms. Muzaffar. Then, I'll see whether I have any time left for Ms. Choo. If I run out of time, I'll ask her my questions during my next turn, hopefully.

Ms. Muzaffar, you mentioned your involvement with the UN and Global Affairs Canada. What does that mean for you?

When it comes to international co-operation assistance, Canada's feminist policy tends to focus on sexual and reproductive health. Are we doing enough, though, to support women's economic empowerment, since it can make a difference in terms of physical health and financial health? Does Canada's international feminist policy take into account the importance of women's economic empowerment?

[Saadia Muzaffar]

I have noticed that people really love giving women advice, generally speaking. What I'm hearing from my colleagues in this room is that we want to follow that up with specific actions that they can take on their own terms. To me that is really vital. We can't have policies designed to help women when the women are not involved in designing them materially.

In that material reality, I think we need to make room for all kinds of women. Reproductive justice includes women who do not have children. It includes anybody's choice in that system to operate as they might.

I think my suggestion from my vantage point, particularly working with immigrant women, is that Canada's imagination needs to catch up to what these women bring. Canada imagines a lot of immigrant women to be really meek. They're here because they followed their husband, and they can't really communicate well. That is not my experience at all. These women are the primary applicants to come to Canada. They are choosing to come to Canada and make it their home. It is vital that we support them in doing so, because that is good for Canada's economy and for those communities.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I think my time is up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're now going to go online for the next six minutes.

We will have Leah.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you to the wonderful witnesses. What an interesting day we've had so far.

My first question is for Ms. Muzaffar.

I was really taken with your comment about not being able to fit in. I'm one of 10 indigenous people in the House of Commons. I'm one of the only indigenous women in the House of Commons. I know what it feels like to have to be extra good, extra on time and extra studious. It's a lot of pressure.

You also spoke about women coming from different parts of the world being strong and qualified but having to deal with this constant barrage of stereotypes in trying to gain employment. How do you think we can tackle that systemically in the workforce? How can the government support that effort?

[Saadia Muzaffar]

Thank you.

The change that we require has the shape of jobs, but really it's cultural change. Part of culture lives in our institutions. When I hear about women having trouble getting into their fields of work....

By the way, they came to Canada through an application that said that this is what they do. Canada was like, “Amazing! We need you. Come.” They get here and they can't do the work that they're qualified to do. With every single year that goes by with them not doing that work, they are deskilled, so we waste that talent. That makes no sense to me.

One thing we can do is the credential recognition issue, for sure. As a country whose labour growth relies so much on immigration, we really should have fixed this by now and we haven't. I would encourage being aggressive in taking care of these things.

The other thing that I think is important is that women know what they need. I'm going to sound like a broken record, but we need to involve them in creating these programs. If we want to include racialized women and immigrant women....

Immigrant women are at a very particular juncture. I've spoken to women who cannot change their jobs because their immigration status is tied to it. They cannot get out of harassment situations because their immigration status is tied to it. I think we need to account for that.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I have limited time and I want to follow up on the point you made about credentialing.

I used to be a post-secondary educator. I taught in the faculty of education. One program we had was the international teacher education program, which recognized prior training. People who participated in the program would just be required to do a couple of upgrading courses. For example, there were curriculum and instruction courses to learn about Manitoba's curriculum and aboriginal education to learn about histories in Canada. It was a year-long program instead of having to take a five-year B.Ed. program.

How important is it to provide support for those programs so that we don't waste talent?

[Saadia Muzaffar]

Thank you.

Madam Chair, through you, I will raise two points related to that.

I think that when it comes to immigrant women and STEM, prearrival programs and government support of those programs are really underutilized. You want people to go through some of this credentialing work while they're in their home countries and they have a support network. When somebody lands here, a lot of the time they don't have family. They don't have social support, and then we're asking them to do extra work at extra cost to get to do the jobs that they're already qualified to do. That's an unfair deal.

The other thing that I will share is testimony that I heard from a woman who was a doctor. Her husband was a doctor. I met her in Moncton. She was from the Republic of Congo. Their applications said they were doctors and Canada said, “Yes, please come; we need doctors”.

They got settled in New Brunswick, which is an area where it was a priority to bring in health care workers. Neither the woman nor her husband could work as doctors because of the process. They were literally told by immigration settlement agencies that they were wasting their time trying to get credentialed here.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Just to pick up on the credentialing piece and doing training abroad, with one of the programs we facilitated when I taught at the University of Winnipeg, pre-service teachers from Winnipeg could actually do their last year of certification in Thailand, so I know that what you're talking about is possible.

Are there any model programs that you're aware of where they're currently doing what you suggested in terms of training people prior to coming to Canada, so that they can get training around the supports they need?

[Saadia Muzaffar]

Thank you.

The same woman told me that they had moved to Botswana from Congo to work as doctors. They had a three-month course where what was specific about the system in Botswana was taught to them. They had to write a test. It was three months and then they were working.

Her question to me was, “I don't know what Canada wants from me. Tell me what Canada wants from me.”

There are places where this system is working, and I believe that we can make this work for Canada as well.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you very much.

How much time is left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have five seconds left.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair. That's a good clear answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

We're going to go on to our second round.

Due to time, we're going to do four minutes, four minutes, two minutes and two minutes, and that will take us to the time.

I'll pass the floor over to Dominique. You have the floor for four minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Muzaffar, the discussion about credential recognition is fascinating. Obviously, provincial bodies and professional orders are a necessary step in the credentialing process, and that causes problems. We should show these people who come to the country a modicum of honesty and let them know what they can expect, at the very least. It's not necessarily true that they're going to be able to practise their profession. It's incredibly sad.

I don't have much time, so I'm going to turn to Ms. Kirkland now.

Ms. Kirkland, how exactly does your organization work? Does it include organizations in Quebec? Femmessor is a group that comes to mind.

[Alison Kirkland]

Thank you for the question.

Actually, when the fund was disbursed, Quebec got its own women entrepreneurship portion of the funding. We don't disburse in Quebec because there is a specialized fund in that province for its use.