Good afternoon, members of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. I am both honoured and humbled to be speaking with you today. I am also acutely conscious of the fact that we are just ten days from the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.
As the first woman to hold the dual role of Chief Executive Officer and registrar of the largest professional engineering regulator in Canada, I am profoundly aware of the tragic event that shook our country 36 years ago, as well as the connection it has to the engineering profession.
As we all know, on December 6, 1989, an armed man entered a mechanical engineering classroom at Montreal’s École Polytechnique. After separating the women from the men, he opened fire. Fourteen women were killed that day because they were women and also because most of them aspired to become engineers.
This tragic day should have been a turning point for the engineering community. It certainly compelled the profession to be honest and purposeful about addressing its longstanding gender imbalance.
Since 1989, there has indeed been progress. The number of women enrolled in post-secondary engineering programs has risen, as has the number of women in the engineering profession.
Yet despite steady increases in the representation of women, progress toward gender parity has been slow. To this day, men significantly outnumber women in science and math related careers. In Canada, women make up less than one quarter of the people employed in STEM careers and only about 13 per cent of all licensed engineers are women. In Ontario, that number is slightly higher at 14.5 per cent.
In August, I had the opportunity to speak with Grade 8 girls attending a STEM Camp about my engineering journey and the exciting, rewarding future that science, technology, engineering, arts and math can offer. It was a powerful reminder that encouraging a more inclusive profession begins with moments like these.
Inspiring the next generation starts long before university or licensure. It begins with how we engage young students, especially girls, in STEM. By age six, girls already associate brilliance with boys, discouraging them from pursuing ambitious professions like engineering. However, research, such as that from the University of Wisconsin, makes it clear: Success in math is shaped by culture, not gender. Girls have the same potential as boys. The real challenge is building a world that shows them they do.
As Ontario’s engineering regulator, PEO has a responsibility to promote a profession that reflects the diversity of the public it serves. Creating pathways that welcome everyone into engineering is essential to building a profession that is innovative, resilient and trusted by society.
Through our Anti-Racism and Equity Code, we are removing barriers for historically marginalized communities in engineering, including not just women but also Black, Indigenous, and other populations. We are developing specific strategies to counter any systemic discrimination impacting persons based on gender identity—including women, two-spirit, intersex, transgender, and gender-variant persons.
In an audit of our licensing process, we learned that significant barriers to women getting licensed and staying in the profession are the experience requirements, lack of supports, and a relative lack of female role models (although I would pause to acknowledge that the chair of this committee is herself a powerful engineering role model – a licensed engineer who spent more than two decades working in the profession before becoming the first female engineer elected to Parliament!). If our future licence holders are to reflect Ontario and Canadian society, we must ensure that any systemic barriers to entry and retention are removed. The profession itself also must make sure that strong female role models are visible and celebrated in all aspects of the profession and its work.
At the national level, PEO is an active participant in Engineers Canada’s Inclusivity Taskforce. Together with our colleagues across the country we are defining what an inclusive engineering profession truly means in today’s context. The taskforce will help to clarify the role regulators play in making that vision a reality.
We do not underestimate the challenge that lies ahead. Last year, just 20 per cent of newly licensed engineers in Ontario identified as women. We are still a long way from reaching our goal of gender parity, but I’m heartened knowing that, in the last three years, we have licensed more women than at any other point in PEO’s history. The work is paying off, and we have momentum. Keeping it moving requires commitment from the engineering community as well as from engineering employers, universities and many other key stakeholders.
It took a devastating and tragic loss to bring the challenges of our profession to light. No matter how much time passes, the Montreal Massacre of December 6th, 1989 is still difficult to bear or comprehend. As we prepare to honour the memories of the 14 women who died that day, my hope is that we create a profession they would have been proud of.
Thank you.