Status of Women committee  Our research and the research of many others has shown that the quality of decision-making at the board level has gone up and the quality of discussion has gone up. We have seen a greater regard for two things: risk management and corporate social responsibility.

Status of Women committee  The ones that are most talked about would be France and Norway. Norway has had the system in the longest, and they had quite a, I would say, draconian system in that they insisted that companies achieve 40% female representation on their boards by 2008, and if they didn't, they w

Status of Women committee  I do not know of information that looks broadly at GDP or national performance. Again, it's impossible to achieve causation. There is correlation, but not causation. My understanding is that performance has been as good, or better, certainly not worse.

Status of Women committee  There is a tremendous amount of data out there. Again, it's correlation because you can't isolate women on boards and take out all the environmental factors that are happening to the company at the same time, but there is a tremendous amount of data there that shows improved fina

Status of Women committee  I would point to two things. One, Canada should look at some kind of a universal child care model, whether it's the Quebec model or another. Two, through the influence of government, companies should look at making leave mandatory for men. We need to rebalance what child care m

Status of Women committee  What our research has found is that the barriers that hold women back are many of the same barriers that hold visible minorities and people from LGBTQ communities back . One of the first things that needs to be done, whether it's government, not-for-profits, or business, is to

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

Status of Women committee  This government has really set a positive tone, certainly for women within the public service. It has taken a positive step in demonstrating that women should be part of leadership roles and that their representation is very important. I do think, though, as I've spent more time

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 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  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

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.

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  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