Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have the opportunity to participate in this opposition day debate on a motion that we all support.
There is no question about the fact that we in this House are constantly working at initiatives that bring knowledge and sensitivity to providing economic equality between men and women.
To begin with, I would like to talk about a personal experience that I had in my riding about a year ago. A group of women from the riding came to see me on a Saturday morning. Most of them were on social assistance at that time. They were telling me, first of all, that they were all educated but were victims of a rather rough economy in the last few years. They had their own strengths in terms of entrepreneurship and felt with a little bit of assistance they could start their own business. They asked whether our office could give them some help in starting their own business.
I was not really equipped at that moment in time but said that I would look into what the Federal Business Development Bank did in terms of supporting women who wanted to start in business. Within a month we set up a little conference, women in business, on how to start one's own business.
We expected that at the first meeting perhaps 40 or 50 women would show up, women who would be interested in starting their own home based business, a corner store or a specific craft that they wanted to market or sell.
About three days before the event we started getting letters, applications and requests to come to this meeting. Over 500 women showed up for this women in business conference on how to start a business. During the question and answer period I listened to the frustration that women have in starting their own business. Our educational system is not geared toward being
sensitive on how to help women get into business. Our financial institutions are not geared toward helping women who want to start their own business.
In the statistics in terms of women who are either leaders or at the board level of our major businesses in Canada, as a country we have really not supported women in senior positions in this country.
This first meeting led to subsequent meetings where we brought in executives from among the few women around our city who were experienced in business. We asked them if they would be mentors for others who wanted to start, who wanted to learn, who wanted to advance or who wanted to upgrade their skills. We developed a series. After about four or five of these meetings, and I do not think we had a meeting with less than 300 women, we discovered that this need for a business centre for women was absolutely essential if we were going to really give this area of women's entrepreneurship a real solid footing.
The Minister of Human Resources Development in the last couple of weeks has given us some tentative support for getting this going. It is an example of a concrete initiative.
Right now women owned or partnered businesses employ more people in the United States than all the Fortune 500 companies put together. When we are facing a period of deep unemployment in our country I believe that by making sure that the resources that will support women getting into business are there will go a long way in getting people back to work.
We talked in the last budget about all the initiatives related to small business. We have to be very specific when we go into these various areas that we are sensitive to making sure that whether it be in the banking area or whether it be in special education or retraining that the whole area of women in business is looked at.
As the leader of the New Democratic Party said earlier today, this is an area where all of us are going to have to work at with a little bit more focus. I do not think that there is any way that we can be proud of the record in this area right now.
My remarks are going to be very short today. The message is that we are going to do our best in our industry committee, especially in the area with banks. We will make sure that all of these issues that are related to small business have very special focus, especially on the needs that women require in order to get into the area of entrepreneurship.