Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, the day after International Women’s Day, many, many women are still far from equal with men. Here in Canada some women are achieving their dreams, but many are not and this is particularly true for non-white Canadian women. There have been some advances recently and today I want to highlight one.
This past January our government joined eight other provinces and territories when it announced changes to our securities rules. Following the lead of Canadian securities regulators, we’ve adopted voluntary disclosure rules for publicly traded companies. They will now be required to report on their strategies to recruit more women to their boards and senior management. They’ll be required to disclose the following: the number of women on the board and in executive officer positions; policies regarding the representation of women on the board; targets related to the representation of women on the board and in executive officer positions; any consideration of the representation of women in the director identification and selection process; and any consideration of the representation of women in executive officer positions when making executive officer appointments.
Rather than imposing quotas, which some women see as tokenism and which businesses often view as interference, this “comply or explain” approach is designed to increase pressure by government, investors, media and the public on big firms to make them take steps towards gender equality. A company is not required to have any particular gender diversity policies, practices or targets in place as part of its corporate governance practices, but if it does not it must disclose why it has not done so.
The voluntary disclosure approach contradicts a recent action by Germany. They just passed a law which requires that 30 percent of a company’s director seats be given to women, but a recent study from the United Kingdom states, “voluntary targets are the way forward,” and that “legislating to ensure that a certain number of women are appointed to board positions will not solve the underlying reasons for failures in the boardroom gender diversity.”
So how is the North doing in this area? Well, not well. In 2013 in the three territories, an inventory of northern co-management boards identified a total of 34 boards with a total of 210 members. One hundred seventy-six, 84 percent, were males and 34, 16 percent, were females.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
Nine boards were composed exclusively of men and 18 boards had only a single female representative. The land and resource management regimes created through the settlement of our comprehensive land claims have given Aboriginal governments equitable representation and co-management, but have not promoted gender equity and board membership.
A strong case can be made for regulators and government nudging corporations and boards towards greater diversity at the highest levels. There’s ample evidence that companies and boards with women in decision-making positions are more profitable, better governed, more internationally competitive and more responsive to financial crises. In fact, the data suggests the more women, the better the performance. Recent studies in the United States have shown women perform better than men when forced to make decisions under stressful situations. In fact, one study showed that when the stress level was higher, men took greater risks compared to the routes women chose.
I truly appreciated the support from my colleagues on Friday for women and International Women’s Day, but without more women in decision-making positions we are only paying lip service to women’s equality. Thank you.
