Evidence of meeting #99 for Status of Women in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Thank you so much.
I'm now going to move over to Paula Huntley.
Paula, you have the floor for five minutes.
4:40 p.m.
Paula Huntley Business Owner, As an Individual
Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for the opportunity today to speak on this topic, women's economic empowerment. Any topic that speaks to human rights, equality and family is a discussion that should always be at the forefront.
First, let me say what a privilege it is to be in this room today, to not only contribute to but learn from the different perspectives at the table.
Increasing the power of women has been a long-standing conversation for many years. As a woman who has had many paths through life, there are days when I see us moving forward and then days when we're still talking about the same issues—economic wage equality, removing barriers to work and making sure that we are represented at all tables when decisions are being made.
As we explore ways to expand women's opportunities, we also need to make sure that we are always focused on women's resilience.
For over 20 years, I have been a business owner, a sole proprietor of services. After COVID, my longest-running business could survive no more, and I closed the business after 20 years of work. I continue to run a second business, a consulting company, as a sole proprietor. It had its challenges through COVID, but over the past five years, I have looked at ways to recreate and combine services while also ramping up my brand of who and what I stand for in my community.
As a businesswoman, I still feel challenged to do more, so in October 2020, I decided to run for municipal government and became a councillor for the Town of Kentville. This gave me the ability to show women that all things are possible. I'll note that our council is a seven-member team with five women and two men. I continue to work at promoting women supporting women, creating sustainable programs to help women and children, and creating yearly businesswomen events to celebrate our successes, and I continue to be a mentor when an ask is called.
One of the things I wished for was a 1-800-number support system to help me with ways to look at grants and ideas for creativity, and to connect me to an economic partner who could cover all my inquiries in a one-stop conversation or conversations. Support systems need to be in place in every community, not just through our government, as they would help eliminate time challenges for help. In running a home-based business, I can tell you that the worries are very real, not about other employees, in my case, but about family, health care, the mortgage, and life challenges. I think that all these challenges probably gave me a fear of showing a side of failure, and now I do not take time off work. I work every day to eliminate the fear of no income.
I also worried about this: If I had no work—and with my husband not being able to work anymore because of a disability—what would I do? The saying “the struggle is real” is one I lived with. I will add that, in addition to all of this, approximately eight years ago I had several concussions, and the last one affected my learning and thought process capabilities.
Challenges are good to keep us fresh, but knowing that there are easier options could move more women forward without worry. If there were any suggestions I could make, they would start here.
Give women a relief during maternity leave. The percentage of pay needs to be larger than 55%, and wait time needs to be decreased. If they decide to stay home for several years, whether it's due to a child care challenge or as a way to teach and be available to their families, love and care begin at home, and this can help children's growth in school.
With regard to equality of pay between women and men, many companies do not post a wage grid for their employees. This should be a must, as it will push companies to show diversity, equality and inclusion while being fair to all employees with regard to wage paid for number of years worked.
Another suggestion is free training for all courses that employees may want to take. This will allow all parties to make their own decisions on whether they want to move ahead. It will eliminate barriers of time and money, while showing a commitment from employers to associates. It is becoming more challenging for employers to hire for their needs, so this is an idea to create a proactive approach, rather than a reactive one, on how to keep employees.
Another suggestion is a female mentorship program in schools in grades 9 to 12. I have the opportunity of being in a mentorship strategy program in which we visit schools, and I see so many opportunities to speak, teach and learn from the next generations. To carry it further, it should be a course built into the curriculum. Here is where we also have an opportunity to build sustainable volunteerism for our communities. Moving forward, it would be great to see road show meetings to do focus groups for our female youth. Their opinions matter in helping us create future policies and change current policies.
Thank you so much for this opportunity to share my voice.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Thank you very much.
I will remind the committee that we do have some committee business. I'll try to maximize the time we have for questions and comments.
We will begin our first round of six minutes with Anna.
Anna, you have the floor for six minutes.
February 29th, 2024 / 4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Anna Roberts Conservative King—Vaughan, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to both witnesses for being here this afternoon. My first questions will be for Paula.
Paula, thank you for coming. You come from one of the best parts of the world—Newfoundland. My late husband was from there. I love visiting it every time. Welcome.
What was the impact that COVID had on the business that you had to close?
4:45 p.m.
Business Owner, As an Individual
I think some of my thoughts will be like those of many employers, for sure.
As a sole proprietor, I found that COVID took away, first of all, the plan I would have had. Maybe I wanted to hire employees to help my business grow. It stopped that whole plan completely. There was a second piece I was looking at. It was a slow growth, but it was the time in my business to raise what I would charge as an hourly rate. When COVID hit, the first thing I had to do was put everything on hold. I had to think about there being no growth in that piece, but also about where I was going to be able to get funds to carry the household.
I'm an extrovert. I love to be around people. It really put me in a quandary. People say to try to think outside the box. Well, my thought was that, I guess, moving forward, there's no box anymore. I took two weeks to put my head down and think: What talents do I have? To give you an example, I did 40 years of hiring, coaching and training staff before what I do now. I wanted to be able to bring that talent and show people how to apply for work. When COVID hit, employers didn't have people to work. What was happening was that employers had so much work to do but fewer employees. I then said to them, “Let me help you. I will do your interviewing. I will do what you need.”
I was able to put a few pieces on the plate with that. Did it help through all those COVID bumps? It wasn't bad, but I think the biggest thing for me was the fear: Where do I go from here?
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Anna Roberts Conservative King—Vaughan, ON
I'll jump to my next question, just because of my time.
How has the cost of living affected your business? You talked about hiring. How has that impacted your business growth?
4:45 p.m.
Business Owner, As an Individual
For the type of business that I have as a consultant, a lot of times for the jobs I do it's an hourly wage. You have to speak to a client about what your charge is per hour. Initially, that cost should have been raised a bit so that I could cover the cost of living for my own household. However, as soon as you mention that it's gone to $25 more an hour—that's just to pick a number—whereas before it was, “Yes, we'd love to have you help us”, now it's, “Let me think about it”, because that business owner or that homeowner has their own worries about what things cost.
So do I. I have lost business. We have fewer clients. I think it's on both ends when it comes to inflation.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Anna Roberts Conservative King—Vaughan, ON
I understand that you're part of the Mentoring Plus strategy. Can you tell us a little bit about that program?
4:50 p.m.
Business Owner, As an Individual
Sure. I was introduced to the Mentoring Plus strategy almost three years ago. The goal is that we go into schools. I thought, yes, this is where it's happening. Get into schools and see where the ideas are and whom you can help.
I think I probably get more out of it than the students do, even though I know they have fun. They are listening. We go in as mentors and they get to ask us questions. They think that when they come out of school, they have to go to university, but many of us did not go to university. We chose a path, which could have been eight or nine paths, to get us to where we are today. It opens their minds and shows them where the possibilities are.
It's totally amazing, after Mentoring Plus is over, how many students come back and ask, “Do you think you could mentor me? Could I be a co-op student for you?” That's what it's about. It's the success of knowing that you've helped somebody. The mentoring piece is a huge factor for our students in schools.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Anna Roberts Conservative King—Vaughan, ON
During your business experience, were you able to access any government programs?
4:50 p.m.
Business Owner, As an Individual
I have two comments on that. One is that I was not able to because I don't have any employees and a lot of that was just not applicable.
Second, when I was growing up, my mother always told me, “Paula, you are a Canadian citizen. You work hard. You pay your taxes. Nobody owes you anything.” What it did was make me think that I had to do this on my own. I had to try to figure this out before pushing the button and asking somebody for help. That's a hard pill to swallow when you're not used to doing it. I think there was a fear of asking, first of all, because there was the unknown of whether I will get it, and if I don't, what happens next? At the time, no, I was not able to get anything.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Thank you very much.
We're now going to move on to our next six minutes, with Lisa Hepfner.
Lisa, you have the floor for six minutes.
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
Thank you very much, Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses for being here to talk to us today. It's really important to hear from you, and it's been very interesting so far.
Wendy, you were talking about the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub quite a bit in your opening statement. I think it's a really valuable tool. I think it was in our last session that a constituent of mine was here testifying, and she'd never heard of this. She thought these were assets or resources that she could really use, but she didn't know where it was and she had never seen it before.
How do we reach people? How do we reach business owners across Canada and let them know what resources are really available and what they can get out of them?
4:50 p.m.
Founder and Academic Director, Diversity Institute, Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University, As an Individual
That's a really important question.
Just to clarify, the knowledge hub is focused on linking ecosystem players. For example, our focus is on connecting the women's enterprise organizations of Canada, financial institutions and so on. We don't actually provide the direct services to the entrepreneurs. That's what the local women's entrepreneurship organizations are doing.
I just wanted to clarify that we do have some assets that we developed during COVID, because these were such desperate times, such as the “See it. Be it.” campaign and the Ask/Give platform. However, generally we work with the organizations that are serving the women—Coralus and so on.
I would say the biggest problem we observe is fragmentation of the information. While there is a fantastic Innovation Canada website where you can go and type in some information and it will tell you where things are, we need intermediaries that are in the local community that can connect women's organizations to the assets that they need. Having worked with a lot of those organizations, what I would observe is that the exception might be Atlantic Canada, where people seem to play nicely in the sandbox and they are all connected together. If you go to Volta and you don't belong at Volta, they'll send you to the women's entrepreneurship centre at Mount Saint Vincent University. There's a lot more collaboration among the ecosystem partners that I observe in Atlantic Canada than, say, in Ontario. I think B.C., Alberta, and Manitoba have their own particular ecosystems.
Knitting those things together so that if anyone comes in one door.... If you go to BDC and they say you don't earn enough money so they are not interested in you, they would say, this is the community you're in and here are the resources. If you go to the Mount and you go in the door and they say, no, you're not for us, they would tell you where to go. We need a better mechanism, in my view, for knitting the assets together, because I agree with you that there is a ton of stuff out there to support entrepreneurs generally, women entrepreneurs, Black entrepreneurs and so on, but lots of people don't know yet about the sources of those services.
Does that answer your question?
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Lisa Hepfner Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON
Absolutely.
Sort of in the same vein—and this is probably a question for both of you, because you both touched on mentorship and training—another thing we heard is that women feel isolated, particularly women entrepreneurs who are running their businesses. They're often in their own homes. They don't have access to a wide network of coworkers they can get information or support from or even just chit-chat with, which is also important in our day-to-day lives.
Paula, I was really interested in your idea of having a class specifically on mentorship, but maybe both of you can talk about how we can alleviate some of the problems of isolation among women entrepreneurs.
4:55 p.m.
Founder and Academic Director, Diversity Institute, Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University, As an Individual
You go first.
4:55 p.m.
Business Owner, As an Individual
Thank you. I love that question.
I think the one thing we have to remember is that we have to lift each other up, and it has to be intentional. It's not just about, “I have two friends who just started a business. Did you hear?”, and then you say, “Oh, great.” No. What you need to say is, “Let me connect you.” For example, I'm part of a connector program. That allows me to introduce three of the people I know who are very closely related to the person the connector program wants me to meet. That's how it's shared.
Moving forward, what happens is that, for the next three to four months, we say, “It's coffee time. Where are we going?” Everybody got the email. We keep connected, because if you succeed, I succeed. I'm going to share your success with everybody I know. That is how I win in helping us move forward. That's how I feel.
4:55 p.m.
Founder and Academic Director, Diversity Institute, Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University, As an Individual
It's eharmony for women entrepreneurs.
4:55 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
4:55 p.m.
Founder and Academic Director, Diversity Institute, Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University, As an Individual
Someone else can ask me more.
I do think that we need a combination of face-to-face and electronic connections. Someone may be in Hamilton and doing something that is relevant to someone in Cape Breton, and we need better ways to link those things together. I think COVID helped with the shift to digitization, but we haven't exploited it to the extent we could.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Thank you so much.
We're now going to pass it over for the next six minutes to Andréanne Larouche.
Andréanne, you have six minutes.