Finance committee  The delivery model is that we represent and support 38 organizations across the country, located at universities and colleges. They are their own organizations within those institutions, and they hire undergraduate students to go out in communities and deliver programs. Our role

Finance committee  On the first question around girls engaged in science and technology, you're very right, and for your daughters in particular, that is the danger zone in terms of the age for interest changes in science and tech. In Canada, and in fact all of the OECD countries, girls and boys

Finance committee  Yes. That first baseline is not currently at zero. That's an average over the past couple of years, but that would be a significant ramp-up from where we are this year.

Finance committee  Yes...for that level of growth.

Finance committee  Yes. It's science, technology, engineering and math.

Finance committee  Thank you so much. It's so good to be here. I really appreciate the opportunity to address all of you. My name is Jennifer Flanagan. I am the CEO of Actua, which is a national charity. Thank you for inviting us to talk a bit about how our organization is contributing to Canada's

Status of Women committee  I think just adding the “A” is not going to do anything. People ask us all the time if we should shift to STEAM. We've always had arts and design as part of the content that we do. You know, STEM doesn't equal innovation. STEM does not equal, necessarily, the—

Status of Women committee  I think that is essential. We hear from high school students across the country that they have lots of opportunity to get good science and tech skills. They have very little opportunity to apply them. That's the big challenge we have in Canada. We're great at the ideas and not gr

Status of Women committee  We need to figure out how to measure it.

Status of Women committee  I think the work with parents and teachers is so essential, and making sure a component is there. People generally get that, but it hasn't been a component of a lot of these funding programs, so if you're working with girls, if you don't work with their parents and talk to them a

Status of Women committee  It's a really important question. Again, it comes back to experiential learning and to talking with girls specifically about skills and competencies. Those are the things you mentioned, right? They're the things like marketing, communications, and some of the other skills that ar

Status of Women committee  Maybe.

Status of Women committee  It's really important to have that as a priority within any funding pool, for example, including with this new money that's just been announced, to make sure there is a very heavy component on remote communities in there. For example, we have a member at the University of New B

Status of Women committee  That is not my area of expertise at all. What I can say is that we obviously would be supportive of a gender lens on anything. The hope and the optimism that we feel.... I've never felt more optimistic than I do right now, and I've been in this field for a long time. There's a mu

Status of Women committee  Yes. We're very optimistic.