44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 31, 2022 10:00AM
- May/31/22 10:40:23 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague.
Women are still under‑represented in academic communities. This discrimination reinforces biases that are deeply rooted but that can be mitigated using active measures.
Instead of strengthening measures that eliminate the systemic barriers that women face, why does the hon. member want to maintain those barriers?
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- May/31/22 11:27:44 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the difference between women who have earned their places and women being appointed to their places is paramount. Women I have spoken to take offence at the fact that they have to be appointed in order to make it to a position rather than earning their place as they should, and they do. The difference is that we are jumping a couple of steps on that.
Eliminating barriers allows women or anyone with an ethnic diversity to get through that barrier in order to earn their own place on the podium. However, we jump that and say we know there are barriers but we are just going to appoint someone anyhow. We eliminate the systemic problems that exist in the first place. UBC, which appointed 60 positions, put out a target ad, meaning it posted a job for women only to apply. The problem when that is done and a quota is filled is that the next ad would say that only people with disabilities could apply and women are excluded. We cannot exclude them in order to get others ahead.
What we need to do is break the barriers down, to your point, so we have more women who want to enter politics who can and are able to then do it on their own merit, because we know—
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- May/31/22 11:32:00 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think it is unappreciated by some in this place that the barriers to entry for women are quite significant and that they will not be broken down unless the first step is to ensure what used to be called affirmative action. That is just recognizing women like me, who are women of privilege by the colour of our skin. If we are going to also want to ensure diversity, inclusion and equity, we need to do more.
I am reminded of one of the really good things that the Prime Minister did, which was to appoint a gender-equal, balanced cabinet.
I vividly recall listening to conservative media commentators. By conservative, I do not mean capital-C conservative: that was not a partisan comment. They were on the national news saying, “Oh, are we now going to have less qualified cabinet members because the Prime Minister is forced to find 50% of them as women?”
It was so insulting, but it was so ingrained that the cabinet ministers in this country, the members of Parliament, are all supposed to be white men, and they were from 1867 until Agnes Macphail was elected.
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- May/31/22 11:43:40 a.m.
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I apologize, Madam Speaker.
We need to do some collective soul-searching. Why is it that women make up only 20% of corporate boards and only 25% of senior management in Canada?
According to an Osler report, a university professor looked at 2,000 senior management positions in Canada. Of the 2,000, he found seven indigenous people and six people with disabilities. That is it. Among senior managers, women's salaries are 56% lower than men's. Visible minority women earn 32% less than white women. That is huge. The gaps are enormous.
It makes perfect sense to try to do something to fix this and ensure that women, indigenous people, members of visible minorities and people with disabilities take their rightful place within our institutions, including universities.
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- May/31/22 11:45:15 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his pleasant question.
I need only give him the Université de Moncton as an example, where the majority of students have been women for years now. We learned recently that in the Université de Moncton's faculty of science, women make up barely 15% of the faculty.
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- May/31/22 12:15:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Mirabel for his speech.
I remind members that this is yet another example of Ottawa's paternalistic approach with Quebec. That is not what my question is about, however, because my colleague did a great job explaining what the federal government is doing.
This morning I explained that if we want to get more women in academia and in other fields, we should be proactive, as my colleague from La Prairie explained so well, and ask why women are less likely to go into certain sectors. I gave an example about how women reportedly had a harder time submitting their research because they were at home carrying a heavy mental load.
How can the federal government be proactive and make life easier for women? It could implement work-life balance initiatives. Essentially, all of this should be set up beforehand. I do not think that university requirements explain why it is difficult to recruit women.
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- May/31/22 1:50:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I get the impression that there was a very superficial or cursory reading of this bill.
Our motion is absolutely not about discrimination. We are all in favour of equity, diversity and inclusion. I would ask my colleague, who focused on women in her speech, which is great since we would all like there to be more women, what she thinks about the fact that, right now, 70% of the medical students at the Université de Montréal are women.
Should there be criteria for reducing the number of female medical students at the Université de Montréal?
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- May/31/22 1:51:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is a great example of a success story. That institution should be applauded, and perhaps we should explore what measures they took to ensure that women had adequate representation, specifically in the medical field. These are the conversations that we should be having, but I am sure it is by no accident that the environment was created and that the culture was created to foster women in those positions, in those halls and institutions.
My thanks to the member for bringing that fact to our attention.
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- May/31/22 1:51:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my thanks to the member opposite for her advocacy.
Colleagues may know that I am the first female engineer in the House of Commons and began as an engineer when only 13% of engineers were women. There was significant systemic discrimination at that time. I experienced it throughout my career. Of course, as I was in construction, that was also quite a toxic environment. I was sad to hear testimony in 2017, as the chair of the status of women committee while we were studying how to get more women into STEM, that this situation still exists.
I wonder if the member would agree that we have not made progress as we should have. Does she have any suggestions as to how we could accelerate getting to equity?
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- May/31/22 1:52:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there is so much more that we could be doing. I certainly identify with the example she gave about being a female engineer in a space that was not necessarily fostered to promote women's inclusion.
I think about many of the women who are also here in this space. I am sure they have also faced some of the discrimination that we are talking about today. I will give a couple of examples of questions that have come my way that really reflect the misogyny that is still in our society today: whether I have earned my position in this place, whether I was offered certain things or maybe had relationships along the way, maybe I was not doing my duties at home or I was really neglecting my children, perhaps, by being in this space. These are the things we have to face when we try to enter these spaces that were not designed for us.
What we need to do is to continue to have these conversations. We need to be bold. We need to be out loud. We need to show women that they belong here, they belong in engineering and they belong in construction across this country.
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- May/31/22 4:36:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened to the member opposite. I do not necessarily share the same concerns in many ways, but the focus of my question is in regard to women specifically.
Women make up more than 50% of the population in Quebec. Would he not see that as a reason in itself to have policies to encourage and have women represented as much as possible, in getting up to that 50%?
Does he not see that as something we should be striving to achieve?
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- May/31/22 4:37:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I believe that those criteria already exist. However, one thing is certain: We must promote access for members of groups, such as women, but I do not believe that we need go so far as to ban and exclude people, because that is not the case.
As I stated in my speech, there are certain groups that, for reasons of their own, are simply not present in an area of activity. We must be careful when we push for something.
However, I agree with the member. We must foster access, but I believe that universities do a good job in that regard. Having experience with universities and research chairs, I believe that people are making a real effort.
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- May/31/22 4:41:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my friend and colleague, the member for Waterloo.
I want to address the Bloc's opposition day motion. I am somewhat surprised by the position it is taking on this issue. I thought it would have been a little more progressive to be open-minded to what I believe is a policy that has been fairly effective over the years. We should be looking at ways in which we can enhance opportunities for minority groups and women, who make up a majority of the population in Canada. This is often not reflected in many different sectors in our society.
I was very proud of the Prime Minister when we took office in 2015. He made a very clear statement about women in politics, and 50% of the cabinet is made up of women. We have a healthier, more progressive government as a direct result of this. Women play very strong leadership roles within our caucus, and in particular in our cabinet. Whether we talk about the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the former minister of justice, we have done some incredible work in the past number of years. It is quite encouraging when we see women leading in many different ways. I do not think it is an issue of trying to find qualified women. The qualifications are there. We have to ensure that barriers are being taken down.
I represent the riding of Winnipeg North where, and I will give some ballpark percentages, just under 40% of people are of Filipino heritage. We have about 20% indigenous. If we factor in other communities, such as my Indo-Canadian community and so forth, we get a sense of why the issue of equality and taking down systemic barriers is so critically important to me as the member of Parliament for Winnipeg North.
For many years, we have talked about issues such as systemic barriers that are in place, and trying to get credentials recognized. We have Ambassador Robles here from the Phillippines, and he has been raising the issue with members of Parliament in regard to getting credentials recognized here in Canada so, for example, nurses can be practising here. There are some gender issues related to that.
When we talk about the importance of diversity, we say that one of our greatest strengths in Canada is our diversity. If we look over a group, or neglect to take the actions necessary to support inclusion and ensure that people are provided the opportunities to take on many important roles in our society, we do a disservice to the whole issue of diversity. We should be taking ownership of it, promoting it and encouraging its development in all aspects in different sectors of our society.
In terms of science and research and the importance of the Canada research chairs program, let there be no doubt that we have before us a government that understands the importance of research and science. We have invested literally hundreds of millions of dollars. If we look at the research chairs position, we are talking about tens of millions of dollars allocated annually and providing well over 2,000 opportunities.
Our post-secondary facilities are capable of attracting the best people in the world to ensure we are getting the research and development based on science that will enable Canada to succeed into the future. I truly believe that it is so critically important that our institutions, whether they are academic or other forms of public, especially those with public dollars, or those in the private sector, be reflective of our nation. If we make that effort in our institutions, we will have a healthier nation.
I remember Dr. Romy Magsino from Manitoba, a person of Filipino heritage who went on to play a very prominent role at the University of Manitoba in the department of education as its dean. Through that, Romy inspired many within the community. There is no doubt he had the expertise and the talents and so forth, but he inspired many others, including minorities who go beyond the Filipino heritage community, and I think that does a great deal.
What message do we send if we are attaching significant amounts of public dollars to an area, such as the chairs of our research, and we are not encouraging and promoting that diversity? I think it is absolutely critical for our youth to see that first hand. That can be very inspiring. We see mentorship programs grow from that. I think there is so much more to do, in making and taking the sacrifices necessary in order to be able to have the diversity that reflects our overall population in Canada.
I look at the University of Manitoba, and it is one of many post-secondary facilities that has greatly benefited by the federal government taking an interest in supporting research here in Canada. Through those dollars, our post-secondary institutions are better able to retain and ultimately educate some of the smartest people in the world, and the research they have done has led to incredible inventions.
A number of years ago, the University of Manitoba played a critical role in the development of agriculture with canola, and I take a look at the role canola has in the world today compared to 30 years ago. The University of Manitoba and the research that is done at our universities are what enables much of the exportation and transferring of knowledge to many different industries.
On that particular point, when we talk about investing, we recognize that our post-secondary institutions have a leading role, but often we will see partnerships. It is just not the public sector that invests in research and science. I look at agreements with places such as Red River College and Magellan Aerospace. We will see classrooms from a college being put into private sector institutions to advance research and technology.
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