The ACTEW Blog

Women are driving small business growth in Canada with their dramatic increases in self-employment. As of 2003, Canadian women entrepreneurs were contributing more than $18.109 billion to the Canadian economy each year, said a report released by the Task Force on Women Entrepreneurs that year.

The federal and provincial governments recognize this powerful new demographic group with the Network for Women Entrepreneurs, a program administered by the Canada-Ontario Business Service Centre (COBSC). This step represents a fulfillment of one of the recommendations by the Task Force on Women Entrepreneurs.

The Task Force also recommended other ways of supporting women entrepreneurs so they are less vulnerable to changes in the economy and personal circumstances, and can be even more successful in contributing to Canada and Ontario's economy:

• increase accessibility to training and networks, including online and telephone training for remotely located women,
  
  
• extend the Self-Employment Assistance program to individuals not eligible for Employment Insurance (EI), as has been done in Quebec, and
  
  
• set up a Centre for Women’s Business Research in partnership with private and not-for-profit sectors to examine the effect of government policy on women-owned business.

The Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities has inherited the Self-Employment Benefits program from the federal government through the LMDA. At the same time, MTCU also inherited the eligibility requirements of this program, meaning that individuals must be receiving EI or received EI in the last five years to access self-employment training.

Labels: Issues_and_Trends, MTCU_Updates