Status of Women Committee on Oct. 26th, 2026

[Indra Kubicek]

Yes. I think one of the things that are known is that women entrepreneurs aren't necessarily technology companies. Women have many different SME businesses that they run as a sole proprietor or as a small business, so the kind of training they need may differ. They're already going to be starting from a later start because they're not running a technology company, compared to what we consider the “normal” kind of entrepreneur.

I think the government really does need to build programs in order to have them figure out how to improve their administrative processes. How can they not need to hire more people into the company if they're running it on their own? How can they market better? How can they find more customers? Those kinds of programs are not necessarily the same things as what we see with the start-up community entrepreneurs, who are in tech, scaling up an R and D technological company. I think that would be of real benefit, government funding programs like that.

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

Thank you very much.

To the colleagues from CCI, I want to ask you this: Given your involvement in the AI council, trust is a component that's really critical, and I wonder whether you could speak to what that could look like. I know that I'm hearing from a lot of women who are not there yet in terms of trusting that AI can be serving good. I would love for you to talk about what that looks like and what you're seeing.

[Skaidra Puodžiūnas]

What we're seeing from our pan-Canadian innovator community is that the perspective they're building from is looking at their localized communities. Again, the innovation that they're building is reflective of the needs that their communities need.

One thing that Indra said, which I think really resonated for us, is this concept of decentralized community building, and I think that's exactly what innovators want. They want to be confronted with decentralized problems and outcomes-based opportunities. The more opportunity that innovators have, in the thick of a challenge that government presents, or the more articulated or accessible a problem is to an innovator, the more they'll find ways to tackle it and to solve it, because that's exactly what entrepreneurs do.

For Canadian innovators, it is about having greater exposure to the problems that are facing Canadian legislators and Canadian communities. I really just want to double down on the point of bringing them into the conversation and allowing them access to concrete datasets. I would also totally “plus one” what Amy was saying in terms of the right kinds of datasets. I think those are exactly the kinds of demands and opportunities that would help our innovators do a better job of innovating for communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dominique Vien]

Thank you very much, Ms. Puodžiūnas.

I'd like to thank all four of you for making yourselves available today to discuss this important issue with us.

I'll now adjourn the meeting for a few minutes so we can go in camera, and we'll resume immediately afterward.

Thank you very much.

The session is suspended.

[Proceedings continue in camera]