Status of Women gave us $426,410 to do a three-year project to determine why women aren't looking at aviation as a career for economic security, all across Canada.
We have now closed our surveys. We sent out surveys all across Canada to students, to air cadets, to COPA, to industry, to the CCAA, to a number of people, and we're bringing those results back. Our next step is to look at all these results—from teachers, guidance counsellors and students—and then do focus groups.
We're going to go across the country. If anyone wants to host a focus group with us, we are looking to find out the answers that come from looking at the survey questions. From the focus groups, we are going to create a tool kit meant for companies in aviation all across Canada. We'll provide recommendations from what we see of why women aren't looking at aviation as a career for economic security. Focus groups will help us come up with recommendations to the companies.
The next phase is going to be for us to work with the companies and monitor them as they implement our recommendations.
The final phase is for us to go back and see whether these recommendations made any difference, whether we're seeing more women come into aviation. Hopefully, we'll just continue to do things from there. The end of this project doesn't stop the push to get more women in aviation.
We bring women in on our cross-country tours. In the morning, we always ask them who's here because they love aviation, and no one says anything. Then I ask who's here because you get a free day off school, and they all laugh. But, at the end of that day, they're all walking around saying they want to be helicopter pilots, air traffic controllers, aerospace engineers. So they want it; they just don't know they want it yet. We're hoping that this happens.