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.