Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for having me here today. This is my first time submitting as a witness to a committee. I'm really grateful for that opportunity.
I'm going to introduce myself in Anishinaabemowin. I think that's a very important thing for me to do.
[Witness spoke in Anishinaabemowin]
[English]
As I was introduced, I am the former chief of Curve Lake First Nation here in Ontario, a mother of two little boys and the director of indigenous partnerships for business development at Ontario Power Generation.
I have been invited to share my experience as a woman in the energy sector in leadership. I was a lawyer before that, just to share some of my background with you.
Some of the issues that I think are important to discuss are experiences that I've had in starting and raising a family from the very early days of deciding to be a lawyer and start a family and not really knowing what that meant or being prepared for the career issues that come as a result of that.
When I had my children as a lawyer, we were completely reliant on external funding to cover the gap during maternity leave. The legal world continues to march on when you step out of it, just as many careers do. Re-entering the workforce after having children is a significant issue that I think many women have to deal with. Certainly, I have many friends and I have spoken to many women who end up changing careers after those 12 to 18 months off because re-entering the workforce is incredibly difficult. Additional supports for that would be phenomenal.
Moving through my career and my time as an indigenous mother living on an Indian reserve, in regard to being able to take care of my children—and I've spoken about this before—bathing your children in a community where they can't put their face in the bath water because it may be harmful to them is an incredible struggle. I know we've made progress in recent years on getting access to clean drinking water in communities in first nations across Canada, and I'm very proud to have been a part of that. Just keep in mind that those are the issues that indigenous women face.
Then moving through my career, I have now participated in the electrification and energy transition panel in Ontario. I'm on the Canada electricity advisory council federally. Finding scheduling conflicts and the need to balance not just work and additional participation but also being an indigenous mother of indigenous children and scheduling around school times and being able to support a family are incredibly difficult things to juggle. They are things that need to take a lot of time and care. Making sure that there's understanding in scheduling for the priority of being a mother to indigenous children in an education system that hasn't always been supportive of our own choice is a really big issue that I face on a regular basis. So there's making sure that there are opportunities to support women through those transition processes.
In recent years, with the pandemic, I think some of the positive things that I've seen involve the ability to work from home. This has made a significant impact in my life in being able to balance the most important role that I have as a mother and my career. The ability to be there during the day when my kids need me and still maintain a career, being able to juggle that and having a partner who is incredibly supportive but also has the ability to juggle some days in the office and some days at home so that we're there to see our children at the end of the school day is a significant factor that's incredibly important. The more I see opportunities to find that work-life balance and be able to be a mother, the more hopeful I am that I can continue to advance in my career and support the energy transition, which is incredibly important to me personally because of things like climate change.
I don't know that I've taken up the full amount of time that we had, but that's my submission today. I'm sure we'll get into more issues as we address the questions that the committee will have.
Meegwetch.