Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. It's a distinct honour for me to be here today to represent Catalyst Canada. Our goal as a non-profit organization is to help businesses around the world to build workplaces in which women and men of all backgrounds have equal opportu

Industry committee  We don't have a Canadian number, so for this—

Industry committee  I think we should go beyond that.

Industry committee  Let me make a distinction between sponsorship and mentorship. Both are very important in the development of anyone's career, whether it's in the political sphere, the corporate sphere, or the not-for-profit sphere. When you have a mentor, that mentor will talk to you and coach y

Industry committee  No.

Industry committee  It's van Biesen.

Industry committee  In terms of time frame, I would say no more than three years. I would agree with Professor Dhir that we need to look at whether they have a stated diversity policy. Do they have board renewal mechanisms and what are they? What is the content of the explanations, if they're not co

Industry committee  I think you're right. Part of what's going on is that we have to redefine what it means to be qualified for a board. Not that long ago, there was a view that unless you were a sitting CEO or a former CEO, you were not qualified to sit on a board. Therefore, there was a very limit

Industry committee  I'm happy to start with that. Actually, we do a fair bit of work around millennials, so I think as young Canadians become more familiar with Bill C-25, whether through studies at university or what have you, it familiarizes them with what a board is, what senior management is, a

Industry committee  My interest clearly is on promoting diversity at the senior management and board levels. Again, as I said earlier, my lead foot is gender but I support a broad definition of diversity.

Status of Women committee  Good morning, and thank you for inviting Catalyst to be part of the discussion this morning. I've had the chance to speak with some of you before. Catalyst is a global not-for-profit that advocates for the advancement of women in business. I'm going to talk about three areas, s

Status of Women committee  I would say that it's one of a number of ways to go. As I mentioned, I don't think there's any one right way to get there. I do support what's being proposed in Bill C-25 as a step in the right direction. I think comply or explain, as currently defined in the OSC, could be tighte

Status of Women committee  I think the first and most important thing for government is to model through your own behaviour. I think establishing targets, and demonstrating that if it can be done in government it can done elsewhere, is job one. Second, through government, I would encourage companies to se

Status of Women committee  Yes. I think it gets harder and harder to get all the data, but I do think this should be well beyond boards. We should look at the pipelines. At a minimum we should look at the senior executive suite and boards, and if we can go down several levels, fantastic.

Status of Women committee  I haven't heard of any barriers. I think, as with everything else, you'd get push-back from the business community with further legislation. That being said, these are the kinds of issues we've been talking about for so long, and they still exist, so I do think the government nee