Status of Women Committee on Oct. 26th, 2026

[Kathy Borrelli, Conservative, Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore, ON]

Thanks very much.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

It's my pleasure.

We will now move to Ms. Marie‑Gabrielle Ménard.

Good morning and you have the floor for five minutes.

[Marie-Gabrielle Ménard, Liberal, Hochelaga—Rosemont-Est, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses for joining us today as we begin this important study. We already understand just how many avenues we will need to explore.

For the committee's benefit, I'd like to mention that Ms. Kubicek, whom I had the pleasure of meeting not long ago, was named Woman of the Year by the Montreal Council of Women in recognition of the integrity she demonstrates in her work.

Ms. Kubicek, thank you for joining us today.

I'd like to revisit a statement you made regarding the conditions we should keep in mind so that women—and especially young girls, perhaps even before the age of 12, as you suggested—can develop curiosity in and a commitment to AI. I'd like you to elaborate on this topic. What role can the government play?

When it comes to education, we're always trying to find our place. Since the delivery of education falls under provincial jurisdiction, how can the federal government help drive the process forward?

[Indra Kubicek]

To give a bit more on the kind of the work we do, we start with young people in elementary school under the age of 12 years old. They're usually eight or nine years old. Research shows that young girls in particular, if they're not given opportunity and not shown activities and things that relate to things they care about in their lives—particularly when we're talking about technology—are then most likely to think they're not smart enough and not good enough, and they don't see themselves in those pathways.

As well, as we know already, there are not many women role models and mentors for them to look up to, so we need to start that process with the very young. It is known that young girls tend to gravitate towards wanting to work on projects where they see themselves being able to have a social impact in their communities.

We have created a social innovation lab, where we bring young people together using the UN SDGs as a framework and have them think about what problem they see in their own community, or in Canada or in a larger community, where they'd want to solve the problem and how AI could help solve that problem in a responsible way. That piques their curiosity. As was mentioned, that's where everything starts. In fact, for all of us, if we look back in our lives, it's usually curiosity that drove us to do the things we do today. That is very important.

Yes, the government federally is not in charge of education per se, but we are funded partially by the federal government through the ministry for innovation, through Minister Joly's office at ISED. We have been funded in the past to help flow funds to not-for-profit and civil society organizations like ours, to work both in the education system but outside of education as well. We're very aware that some young people learn best in different settings, and they're not necessarily going to attach to the programs at school as the things they care about most.

To give an example of a data and AI project we did with young people, it was around sports and basketball. We went out onto the basketball court with young people instead of making them sit in a classroom behind a computer. We started to ask them questions about who they thought was going to win the game, and why they thought that. Suddenly they realized that they are data scientists and they know a lot of information. We built an AI model with them to figure out who was going to win the game.

I think there are a lot of creative ways for government to fund youth programs. Libraries are an incredible space, where we could have more of this kind of interactive hands-on learning, because that's how young people are really going to learn best. As well, we ran our first parent and youth event during the All In AI conference in Montreal a few weeks ago, to help build trust in the community, with parents alongside young people.

[Marie-Gabrielle Ménard, Liberal, Hochelaga—Rosemont-Est, QC]

I'll continue the discussion with you, Ms. Kubicek.

Once young girls are engaged in discovering or creating different tools with AI, what's the biggest shock for them? What are their greatest ambitions? Could you give us an overall idea of the situation?

[Indra Kubicek]

As I mentioned, usually when young girls are given this opportunity, they realize that they are able to solve problems for communities they care about. For example, some of the projects they've developed lead eventually into some of the things we're talking about in women's health. How did they use technology to help support different women? They talked about girls who were maybe feeling isolated and alone through social media.

All of this is what they're taking in. It's about how they could create more community for themselves. I think young girls really need to be in spaces where they feel confident, where they feel they can trust and ask questions and, again, where they can address the issues that matter most to them. That is what has unlocked their potential to feel that they could then go into a career.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you.

That's all the time we have for Ms. Ménard's questions.

I'll now give the floor to Ms. Larouche for two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses again for joining us.

As Ms. Ménard mentioned, we're beginning a study that is far from over. I believe we'll have to continue discussing this societal issue for a long time to come—perhaps even for the rest of humanity.

I'd now like to address another topic: the rise of AI and, unfortunately, the whole issue of deepfakes. In fact, this was one of the considerations we had when we were planning this study. We know that deepfakes are a growing phenomenon, thanks to AI. Sometimes, deepfakes leave irreversible scars on the women who are victims of this phenomenon. That said, Bill C‑16 came into effect in July and criminalized deepfakes.

My questions will be directed first to you, Ms. Kubicek.

What are your thoughts on Bill C‑16, which led to the Protecting Victims Act, and what additions would you have made to it?

[Indra Kubicek]

What additions would I have made to the law?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

What would you have added to the bill to address the issue of deepfakes?

[Indra Kubicek]

I'm not as familiar with where they ended with the deepfakes. They said that it would be illegal to create a deepfake that was doing anything...mimicking a person in a dangerous and violent sexual way. Is that the gist of it?

I wasn't clear about the question for me. Was it what I think should be added to the law?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Correct. What do you think of this legislation and what would you have added?

I think you responded by saying that it's not as big an issue for you since it has now been criminalized. Perhaps we can come back to this later.

Ms. Flood, what resources related to health care are available to women who are victims of AI deepfakes?

[Amy Flood]

I'm sorry, but I don't feel equipped to respond to this particular question at this time.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

That's fine.

I have 15 seconds remaining.

Mr. Perry, I see you nodding. What's happening with the issue of deepfakes? What other improvements could be made?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Unfortunately, there are only two seconds remaining. The question has been asked, so perhaps one of you will be able to respond to it later.

Mrs. Roberts, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

My first question is for Indra. We're seeing more and more young people turn to artificial intelligence for answers, whether in school, at work or in their everyday lives. My concern is that we're raising a generation that may become increasingly dependent on technology rather than learning to think critically and solve problems themselves.

From your experience working in AI literacy, how do you ensure that young Canadians are using AI as a tool to support their thinking and not allowing it to do the thinking for them?

[Indra Kubicek]

That's a very good question. That is at the heart of all of our work and what we believe in. We need to be ensuring that young people are critical thinkers in this moment—actually, that all Canadians stay critical thinkers and that they use their own human judgment. In all of our programs, this is at the centre of what we're teaching: How do you think critically and not have AI replace your part in the thinking, which you want to keep, but also use it as a tool when it makes sense?

Again, as you mentioned, I think one of the biggest risks is that they're using this in their personal lives. They're asking social, personal questions about their relationships to AI chatbots, in isolation, on their own, at home.

We've created programming, as I mentioned, in partnership with the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, for example. We have young people—because research also shows that young teenagers tend to look up to people just a few years older than them—and we've worked with Canadian content creators in Canada to teach short AI literacy learning experiences through storytelling.

We had, for example, a young Canadian woman in Vancouver who talked about testing, asking a chatbot if she should break up with her boyfriend or not. She actually gave a scenario, and the chatbot told her to break up with her boyfriend. Then she gave the scenario from his view, and it was telling him not to break up with her. The point of the story is that she was trying to explain to young people, “Do not give up your human agency. Do not give up your free will and your own judgment and ask questions like this about your social life to a chatbot.”

Those are some of the creative ways we've been trying to address the problem in real time.

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

I'll tell you why I'm asking this question. It's important to me as well because I'm working on a bill right now that has been brought in front of the House. The education, for me, was speaking to the actual survivors and learning the true aspects of what they had gone through. I don't think AI can replace something like that. I guess that if I hadn't done that and had just used AI, I wouldn't have understood the complexity of the crime.

I don't want the human aspect to be removed. I think people have to understand that, yes, AI is the way of the future, but there's also the fact that compassion and understanding sometimes doesn't come from a computer.

[Indra Kubicek]

One hundred per cent, humans care. Computers do not care about you. This human-centred learning is exactly the kind of thing we're focusing on. What are the human skills that we need to build in this moment?

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

It's true.

I'm going to ask another question because this really concerns me. It's about health care. We heard this last week in our perimenopause study. There's more money funded for research into men's and other diseases as opposed to women's. How is this going to increase the opportunity to get more research done on women's diseases?

Ms. Flood, is it?

[Amy Flood]

Thank you. Yes, I will absolutely, happily, take that.

Yes, I agree 100%. As of now, only 7% of government and public funding goes to women-specific clinical health care and research. The ask right now is to build a national women's health data platform that will harmonize data across the country and give women a full picture of their health. That includes girls. It also includes gender-diverse populations.

Much to the topic you were talking about earlier, women are taking to AI, to social media and to Dr. Google daily to understand and diagnose their own health. Their health care practitioners are not even capable of doing that at present because there's no data; there is no information. That's where the opportunity and risk both lie.

If we can actually have the sex- and gender-disaggregated data that informs AI, we can model that and actually close the women's health gap in Canada. We really need investment and funding into more research.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you, Ms. Flood.

Ms. Nguyen, you have five minutes.

[Chi Nguyen, Liberal, Spadina—Harbourfront, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much to our witnesses for being here today. I think this is such an exciting and important study that we are taking on, and I'm grateful that you are the first experts we've heard from.

I want to start with Ms. Flood.

I know you didn't have a chance to wrap up your testimony at the start, and you were describing or starting to speak about how responsible AI can better protect and address systemic gaps in women's health. I was wondering if you could share some concrete examples. I'll give you about a minute and a half to wrap that up.

[Amy Flood]

Concrete examples, again, go back to filling that data gap. Right now, women's reproductive health is only 5% of the total picture. We're looking at cardiovascular health, cancer, mental brain disorder, chronic pelvic pain and, of course, that hormonal transition through the menopausal journey. All of these health conditions need addressing from a data and a research standpoint. Again, if we don't have the data because women were not included in clinical trials until 1997, then these conditions will continue to progress, and we'll actually use AI to accelerate the health of men and other populations while widening the gap for women in Canada.

We really need that AI innovation, research and commercialization strategy for Canada so that not only are we getting the data to inform diagnosis, treatment and care, but we can also further that economic potential for innovation in women's health. That's not just Apple watches and Oura rings. You're talking about keeping fetuses alive in utero. You're talking about diabetes. You're talking about cervical cancer cures. You're talking about prolonging people's lives through cardiovascular monitoring. These innovations are critical to the lives of women in Canada, and if we don't have the data, we will not be able to power that innovation.

[Chi Nguyen, Liberal, Spadina—Harbourfront, ON]

Thank you very much, Ms. Flood.

Ms. Kubicek, one of the interventions and pieces you were talking about was the role of supporting women entrepreneurs. I was wondering if you could speak to this and to whether or not some of the government interventions, or work that we could be doing, would allow and support women to become more competitive in technology spaces.