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Canada’s Prime Minister Releases Landmark Report
on Women’s Entrepreneurship
Task Force members toast the release of the Task
Force’s “Report and Recommendations.”
(Left to right) Senator Catherine Callbeck, Vice Chair;
Member of Parliament Sarmite D. Bulte, Task Force Chair
and Member of Project Tsunami’s Global BrainTrust; and
Member of Parliament Karen Redman.
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien with Tsunami’s
CEO Virginia Littlejohn.
Ottawa, October 29–At a glittering reception in
Parliament, attended by hundreds of women
entrepreneurs from across Canada, plus policymakers,
corporate sponsors and academic experts, Prime
Minister Jean Chrétien released a landmark publication
on policies to strengthen the women entrepreneurial
sector of the Canadian economy.
The “Report and Recommendations” were the outgrowth
of an 11-month study undertaken by the Prime Minister’s
Parliamentary Task Force on Women Entrepreneurs,
comprised of legislators who were former entrepreneurs
themselves. The Task Force’s mandate was to:
• Examine the unique challenges faced by women-owned
businesses by considering the factors required to
encourage women’s entrepreneurship, assessing
existing resources, identifying gaps and areas for
possible future action, and evaluating best international
practices and their appropriateness to Canada, and
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• Provide advice to the federal government on women
entrepreneurial policy issues.
In addition to meeting with women entrepreneurs (WEs)
and experts across Canada, Task Force members met
with Tsunami and WE organizations and experts in the
UK and US. The Report demonstrates the value of
sharing best practices internationally, as many
recommendations build on British and American
initiatives.
Among the recommendations were working with Project
Tsunami on an online conference between the US,
Canada and the UK to continue sharing best practices,
and preparing extensively for participation in the OECD’s
Women Entrepreneurial Best Practices Forum in Istanbul
in June 2004 (for which Tsunami’s CEO is Co-Chair. For
more about these recommendations, see page 2). Other
recommendations include:
• Coordinating Support for WEs–Establish an Office of
Women’s Business Ownership (OWBO); create Women’s
Business Centers across Canada; convene a National
Women’s Economic Forum; develop a long-term national
strategy and implementation plan to fully integrate WEs
into the Canadian economy; publish an annual report
concerning the status of and support for Canadian
business owners; and have the Prime Minister establish
a mechanism within 18 months to monitor and track
implementation of Task Force recommendations.
• Advocacy–Work with OWBO to develop a national
strategy which will enable WEs to participate fully in the
Canadian economy; include their contribution in research
and data; and create a National Women’s Business
Advisory Council to advise the Prime Minister on
economic issues and policy recommendations.
• Capital–Ensure better access to financing, including
for firms without collateral; establish new guidelines for
financing creativity, ideas and innovation in services,
products and processes; and develop genderdisaggregated
data that highlight the number of loans
made to women-owned businesses.
(Continued on page 2)
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Cover of “Report and Recommendations,”
the final report of the Prime Minister’s
Parliamentary Task Force on Women’s
Entrepreneurship, published on
October 29, 2003.
About Tsunami
Project Tsunami, Incorporated
(www.projecttsunami.org), is a non-profit
corporation based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA,
that is a global accelerator for women’s
entrepreneurship. It was designed to help
create a tidal wave of economic
opportunities in the U.S. and abroad, by
identifying and connecting key women
entrepreneurial leaders, facilitating the
sharing of best practices across countries,
and helping to link effective programs with
resources. It uses 21st Century technology
to make a clearinghouse of resources and
best practices available to its powerful
global network of leaders and multipliers,
who then disseminate this information
widely to their members and stakeholders.
The organization began its work with a
major seed grant from the Ewing Marion
Kauffman Foundation, which funds
innovative programs that foster
entrepreneurship.
Tsunami is an outgrowth of two major
international conferences on women-owned
small and medium enterprises put on by
the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) in Paris in 1997
and 2000, for which Tsunami’s CEO Virginia
Littlejohn served as Senior Advisor. Project
Tsunami influences policies, practices and
programs that expand the WE sector by
concentrating on 6 core strategies:
1) WE research, data and statistics;
2) Entrepreneurial education and training;
3) Access to finance;
4) Access to networks and to corporate,
government and international markets;
5) Technology as an entrepreneurial
enabler, and
6) Constituency building and advocacy.
We are also anaylzing how these areas
impact high-growth women entrepreneurs.
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