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Good morning, everyone.
Today we have before us analysts from the Status of Women who are going to talk about their input into gender-based analysis for the budget.
You each have a presentation of 10 minutes. Are you presenting together? Perfect. They have distributed their presentation in both official languages.
With that, we welcome you. We have lots and lots of questions. Hopefully, if we don't get to questions, as I mentioned, we can submit them. Thank you.
You can begin, Ms. Dwyer-Renaud.
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Thank you, Madam Chair.
[Translation]
Good morning, everyone.
I'm going to share this presentation with Michèle Bougie.
We'll provide an overview of the activities of Status of Women Canada, the central agencies and departments in terms of gender-based analysis, and provide links between that practice and gender responsible budgets. We believe it is always a good idea to recall the role played by Status of Women Canada.
We work to promote the full participation of women in the economic, social and democratic life of Canada in three ways: by building strategic partnerships with federal departments and with Canadian and international agencies; by assisting agencies and departments in applying a gender perspective to policy development; and by funding specific projects through the Women's Program under the Women's Community Fund and the Women's Partnership Fund.
I would like to draw your attention to the Policy Directorate at Status of Women Canada, which undertakes key activities which are directly linked to the implementation of gender-based analysis. I'm going to use the acronym GBA to designate that analysis. In French, it's ACS.
The Directorate carries on two major activities: it helps include gender equality considerations in current and new policy initiatives, and generates knowledge and tools on gender issues and GBA practices.
These activities help influence and shape our work with federal and provincial/territorial partners in identifying and supporting the removal of barriers, and in meeting Canada's international commitments and obligations.
What does helping include gender equality considerations in initiatives mean? This consists in helping departments integrate gender-based analysis into the design and implementation of key government priorities.
We are currently working with key departments on issues based mainly on the areas of focus of women's economic security and prosperity and violence against women. We also review departments' Treasury Board submissions. By that, we seek to ensure, with Treasury Board's cooperation, that gender considerations are made visible throughout the process, beginning with the Memorandum to Cabinet.
This is a recent activity, which began last September. Michèle can give you more information on that subject when she takes the floor.
We also provide expertise to the various departments wishing to implement GBA frameworks. For example, we're currently working with Human Resources and Social Development to reactivate its infrastructure and develop an organizational policy on GBA practice.
Incidentally, the basic driver of these activities is the idea of making the departments accountable within an accountability framework. Many activities may be carried on in the field, but, if the departments don't seek accountability, it will be hard to determine the impact of a practice such as GBA on policy and program development.
Our activities include the development of departments' activity and program architecture. I'm sure you're familiar with this architecture. This is the instrument the departments use to manage resource allocation. This instrument is virtually set in concrete because it is provided for three years. If a department does not consider the impact of its activities on women over three years, it will have difficulty demonstrating the results it has achieved.
The architecture must be reflected in the departments' reports on plans and priorities and in the departmental reports. Here too, we're trying to integrate gender notions in order to see real results. The Treasury Board has data collection instruments. If we don't break down data collection by gender at the outset, we won't achieve the desired results. We are working on this with two departments: Indian and Northern Affairs and Citizenship and Immigration. This is a real breakthrough.
What does it mean to support the central agencies in their mandated responsibilities to assess departmental use of GBA across the government? We continue to strengthen their challenge function through training. Michèle will give you more details on that subject.
As for the government's reporting and accountability mechanisms, we must monitor the departments to ensure they collect data. If time permits, we'll talk at greater length about the Management, Resources and Results Structure and the Management Accountability Framework during the question period. At that time, we'll be able to explain to you, for example, what it means to include GBA in the Management Accountability Framework.
For us, the most important component is generating knowledge and tools on gender issues. We do that by conducting environmental scanning and identifying trends and gaps that may have impacts on gender equality. This eventually helps us target deficiencies in the system. However, it has to be based on data. For that purpose, we're currently developing a set of indicators on trends together with a number of departments. We hope those indicators will enable them to set their priorities and report. This is a long-term project.
Lastly, we're drawing on the research and statistics of other departments and stakeholders to gather quantitative information on the situation of women in Canada.
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Basically, we support the three central agencies in a variety of ways. They also have a GBA steering committee, with the three GBA champions from each agency with our coordinator, so they oversee, they discuss, and they consult. We have a working group with the three agencies to get into the nitty gritty, which is what I'm going to quickly get into.
With the Department of Finance, for example, the training allowed them to do a GBA of tax policy measures in 2006-07, and you have that from last time. It also allows the finance department to consult with other departments, bringing forward items related to the budget to ensure that they're all thinking GBA. Their analysts have to demonstrate that they are actually applying GBA within their work in the Department of Finance across the board. Again, the central agencies will go into details with you, so these are the grandes lignes.
Also, all three agencies are now having GBA training as a central component in their in-house curriculum for staff so that the knowledge is not lost. The Department of Finance in the next few months will be putting up an information site for their employees on best practices on GBA and budgets.
Treasury Board is very technical. As Hélène said, they work with accountability tools. So we've been working on two ends: how to help Treasury Board, through training and experimentation, understand how their tools apply to picking up gender equality outcomes and gender-related outcomes; and working with departments so that they take up their responsibility of articulating their objectives and outcomes in their reporting so that the Treasury Board accountability instruments can pick up the data.
PCO is really intellectual capital, so they are focused on a memorandum to cabinet. Again, we're working with them so that they know how to identify in a memorandum to cabinet if in fact the department has looked at GBA throughout the entire development.
As Hélène said, we also work with the other federal departments, and there's a slide 10, which I'm not going to go into detail in the interest of time, that gives you an idea of what some of the departments are doing. There is a real continuum from gender focal units to networks to business plans to strategic visions and policy guides, and all of them do training. Most of them started with ours, and some have customized for their own needs, but those are all ongoing activities.
I'll pass it back to Hélène, who will conclude very quickly.
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As Hélène said earlier, some processes are very lengthy, and gender-responsive budgets are one of them. It's an incremental process. You need to understand the tools, you need to get the training, and you need to know how to apply it.
It's also incremental in the sense that you can't necessarily apply it to revenue and expenditure at the same time. At this point, the Department of Finance has done actually quite a complete GBA where they have the data to do it. More importantly, I would say to you that although the outcomes and results are yet to come, in fiscal outcomes you don't necessarily see the policy change very quickly. It's more important, from our perspective, that the Department of Finance is thinking outside the box, they're thinking in terms of gender, budgets, and the repercussions. I would have to say, at this point, yes, they are doing quite well.
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As you know, in Canada—at least in the federal government—the GBA policy has been in existence since 1995. So we have some key departments that have been undertaking GBA on their own and producing their own training packages and those kinds of thing. But to be honest, the Treasury Board submission requirements now and the language of Treasury Board call it a compliance, which has given us a boost to be able to go to the other departments now and basically say, this has been in existence for a while, and although you may have had good reasons in the past not to undertake this....
Also, what has been happening internally in Status of Women Canada is that our policy analysts are now reorganized to do the support for each department as the submissions go through the system. This means that when a department comes calling, they are like a client, and we're giving them a suite of services to make sure they can sustain their practice of GBA, so that they don't come back over and over again. This can be a problem with departments; if you're working with distinct parts of a department, sometimes the points don't get connected inside the department.
So this is something we're starting now. It's a new way for us to operate in terms of ensuring that GBA is indeed being fanned out, if you like, to the different departments. It has made a big difference for us to have the central agencies behind us asking for accountability from the departments.
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We don't do training ourselves. We have 11 anglophone trainers and nine francophone trainers, who we have used these past five years.
Right now our suite is ready to go, which is what we offer to the departments. If they say yes, they'd like some training, they go to our trainers bank to find who they would wish to have—the trainers have all been licensed by us. We give support to the departments in terms of the practicalities around the training. We are now engaging them to do training, not by itself, in some kind of....
A voice: [Inaudible--Editor]
Ms. Hélène Dwyer-Renaud: Exactly, but tied to some kind of an initiative. That's important, because we can then see that initiative evolve; we can see them report that initiative to Treasury Board and in their departmental reports.
This is a whole new way for us to move into the departments. And like a small central agency, you need the will of the other partner to do this.
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Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Dwyer-Renaud, you said in your statement that you were trying to establish partnerships. Is there any resistance to that? If so, what is it?
I'd like to know whether you suggested changes to HRSDC to enable more women to access employment insurance. If so, did they consider them?
You said environmental scanning should be conducted to determine trends and deficiencies. Have you detected any deficiencies? If so, which ones?
I would also like to know whether it is possible to get a guide for the preparation of Treasury Board submissions.
Lastly, what measures has the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs taken to enable Aboriginal women to take charge of their lives more easily and to have more resources to do so?
Thank you.
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There was perhaps more resistance to partnerships in the past. The fact that we now have the support of the central agencies acts as a lever in terms of demands and expectations. The departments cooperate to a much greater degree. We tell them that, if they go before the Treasury Board and are questioned about the funding they're going to receive, it would perhaps be beneficial for them to work with us from the outset to develop their submission. I've been working in the field for a long time, and I can tell you that resistance has declined considerably.
As for human resources, once again, that's not necessarily the role of analysts. We want to give people the tools so that they can better analyze the various programs. It's when you impose an option on the departments that there's a real outcry, but if you tell them that we want to help them carry out a given program by re-examining the data and possible impacts, things go better.
We're not necessarily an active voice with regard to key policies. Instead we want to provide officials with tools. We hope that outside researchers and women's pressure groups can make various suggestions because that's not really our work any more.
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I wasn't talking about that system, but about the gender-based analysis system.
I'm going to address the question of deficiencies through the indicators project. That project is based on research on indicators and fields in which it was determined that there really were deficiencies. I can tell you some of those fields. It was determined that additional information was needed in the personal security field. The idea here is to get data in order to be able to develop better policy. Women's security and economic prosperity is another field. An entire set of indicators is related to those themes. These are the two main areas. Under the theme of personal security, we're talking about health and welfare, violence and housing. Under economic security and prosperity, we're talking about income and earnings, labour market participation, segregation, unpaid work and social and political involvement.
That will guide the kind of environmental scanning that we'll be doing based on those indicators. As regards the guide, I don't know whether that's a public document. I'll have to ask and we'll pass on the answer to you. That moreover is a question that you could put to the Treasury Board as well.
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It's a good question. Because of the role we've now undertaken, we are going to have to develop. We have a project right now comparing how we do things in GBA in the Canadian government compared to the European Union. So we're going to use that to be able to see how we can do a better job at monitoring the practice.
Status of Women does that. Our responsibility is vis-à-vis the practice within the departments: how that is happening, what kinds of infrastructures are being created within the departments.
The results vis-à-vis the policies developed with GBA are being monitored by the central agencies, by PCO and Treasury Board. When we talk about MRRS, which is the management of results, resources, and structure, that structure is the responsibility of Treasury Board. We are encouraging and trying to get Treasury Board to collect data from the departments from a gender perspective. When an initiative goes through cabinet, goes through Treasury Board, and then gets reported by the department, we should see the notion of gender woven right through that, and at the end of that, the result it has for women.
That kind of accountability is now being fostered inside the central agencies, and we must say they're very willing to do this. I'm looking forward to your meeting with them because I think they're quite excited to let you know what they've been doing, but it's a real breakthrough for us to have central agencies work with us that way.
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The indicators project that I was referring to has not started yet, so we have not collected this data yet. We are about to start doing so. Child care is under the unpaid work theme.
The concept or notion of child care is also being looked at through our federal-provincial-territorial forum of ministers responsible for the status of women. They are looking more at the caregiving issue, but it's caregiving from children to elderly parents. They are looking at that, and we are participating in that in our position.
The issue is that until we have good information and some options we can look at from that group, there is really not much work being done. HRSDC have indicated that they want to work with us from the GBA perspective on the caregiving work they're doing, so there are some linkages being done that way.
There's an openness from departments—we've talked a bit about the resistance—to work when it comes from a GBA perspective, because they see it as a tool and a methodology, and it has rigour. They can provide good evidence-based information when they are developing policies. We seem to be able to go through the door that way with them.
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Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for coming today.
You said earlier, Ms. Dwyer-Renaud, that there are some areas of research and some challenges with respect to that. You mentioned that we need more information and research on economic security.
Does every department do its own research in terms of desegregated data, or does the Status of Women do some of it? Where does it come together? It's a real frustration.
After the last budget, when we met with Finance, they said that the segregated data was actually not available, but when we spoke to consultants who came before us, they said of course it is and from various academics. I just want to get at the core.
I have a couple more questions, but could you answer that one first?
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I know Finance gets in on the act as well. I know that at Finance there are champions, as you mentioned earlier. A champion could be one individual, but depending on which champion has--I know what it's like in structures, and all structures have their politics, and some champions are more powerful than others, depending on their agenda.
What I'm trying to get at is this. Is there at Finance, or Treasury Board and some of these other places, an actual unit, not just an individual champion, where expertise resides--if one person leaves, there's still expertise behind--with some real mandate? Maybe this is not a fair question to ask you, so I won't go there. Do we need that? I don't get the sense that.... What's driving it to get at the information. The reason I'm saying that is, for instance, some of the items that were in the previous budgets were in fact proper gender-based analysis that had been done. With things like tax credits, we wouldn't continue down that road because they don't favour women at all in terms of a way of doing social policy. I think my colleague mentioned child care and other things. There is a problem, obviously.
I'm trying to get at how Finance and Treasury Board get at those things with you.
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Thank you very much for coming here today, Mesdames.
The debate is very interesting. It's complicated, but less so than one would have thought at the outset. We are getting answers that inform us a little.
Some mechanisms for Treasury Board submissions have been implemented since September 2007. This is quite new, but these analyses were implemented a number of years ago. Would you say that a certain amount of education still has to be done in each department for gender-based analysis to become automatic?
I'd also like to know how many departments, in your opinion, are examining gender-based analysis, and what are the results of that initiative.
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We currently have an interdepartmental GBA committee. It consists of people from the departments where there are GBA duties, whether it be a network, a responsibility centre together with a network or duties. At the federal level, there are 17 who have some kind of capability, which doesn't mean that each department covers the full range of work in the field.
As for results, it's hard to generalize because there are a lot of factors and pressures involved in the departments. However, we know that Citizenship and Immigration Canada officials started working with us on training in 2001. They're the ones who have the most extensive implementation experience. They've become much more sophisticated. So we can see results at CIC.
As we said earlier, this takes time and awareness efforts. The knowledge and expertise have to be disseminated within the departments. We see results in small areas. In terms of accountability, the Treasury Board can now conduct an evaluation. So we can identify the elements much more precisely and determine whether equality-related results have been achieved.
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That remains to be done. I don't know how priorities were set in 1995, or even in 1975, when Status of Women Canada was created, but it's for sure that, since 2005, with accountability and indicators, we've said to ourselves that we need a set of indicators to do what you want: planning based on priorities that are selected fairly, not simply because we get the feeling we should give priority to one field or another. It may seem strange that I'm saying we've done a lot of work on various projects and various issues over the years. There have also been events that were highlighted in certain situations, like those of Aboriginal women and battered women. We have enough data and information to show that something must be done in that area.
I believe that, where we are now, we must detect the systemic deficiencies or issues that are somewhat invisible and that we don't know very well. Indeed, we need better data in order to know them well. That's why we're setting up our indicators project, in order to establish priorities better.
Moreover, Status of Women Canada relies on the government's priorities. If the government has priorities, then we put the accent on gender-based analysis to ensure that those priorities won't have an unfair or negative impact on women.
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I come back to how I was answering Ms. Minna. That's the $64 million question. Does having an infrastructure, a gender focal point inside a department, work better than, for example, a department that doesn't have one but has made it a responsibility for all the officials in the department to have the training to become experts and to put it into their job? Depending on my days, sometimes it's good to have a gender focal point and sometimes it's not.
I've worked as a gender focal point in a department, and you do sometimes get ghettoized in a situation and you're not always part of what is going on in terms of the important issues that you'd like to be able to sink your teeth into, whereas when you have the accountability very high in a department and you have a deputy minister who basically says to all of his or her officials, “You must practise gender-based analysis, I want to see proof of this, and I want to see it in my business plans”...that's the model of CIC, for example.
I think it was Madame Bougie who commented about CIC. You can go to CIC's website, and every year they post their annual report. In their annual report—it's getting better and better—they provide their gender-based analysis as part of the report.
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Thank you, Madam Chair.
I was just looking at the government response to this committee's report on gender-based analysis in the 38th Parliament. There was also a second report that this committee obtained from the minister at that time, Bev Oda.
In the September 2005 government response, the government of the day made reference to an interdepartmental committee on gender equality. Then, in the second response, the government referenced a similar structure, and they called it a steering committee on gender equality. Could you give us an update on where either of these two sit? Is there still such a thing?
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Thank you to both of you for being here. I have many questions, probably more than five minutes' worth, and many comments.
I've been around this dance several times. I'm looking at the recommendations from the 2005 report, and quite clearly, the recommendation that the central agencies be involved was a pivotal one.
I'm also aware of the interdepartmental committee, and I was interested in your response that it meets once a year. In my mind, that's not nearly enough.
I'm also aware that one can put these structures in place. It's a wonderful graph on paper and it looks marvellous, but unless there's a real commitment to make it happen, not much is going to move forward. I look at the four departments that you've highlighted here, and you talked about how Citizenship and Immigration, which is mandated through legislation to do GBA, did a report. But we know that they've dismantled their GBA secretariat. If you look at Health Canada, their focus seems to be only on women's health.
You raised the issue of Indian and Northern Affairs. I have some concerns about that in terms of the consultation processes that are going on and the whole incorporation of the collective and individual rights of aboriginal women there--how you're dealing with GBA there.
I guess my point is, the structures are there, but unless they're really meaningful and effective and used appropriately, I throw up my hands.
You've restructured in terms of your training. You don't do the training any more; it's contracted out to the departments after you certify the trainers. Is that correct?
I guess my real concern is with the substance of the structure and whether in fact it's really working.
The researcher has prepared a number of really good questions, and one that I want to focus on is this. Have you funded research relevant to gender budgets, government expenditure, and government revenues? If so, can you describe what this research involved? Do you in fact conduct your own research on gender budgets? Have you funded analysis of the budget under a gender lens, and if so, I'd like to know who, how, where, when, and do you think this research is important?
I recognize that you're not involved in policy decisions, but many of the policy decisions have a profound impact--in my mind, negatively, at the moment--on women. What's your role in that process?
I have lots of questions and probably a minute and a half left.
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You talked about the European situation. Could you tell us what the European situation is? You could provide a response later, when you're giving us your closing remark.
I think the question that has been consistently coming back to haunt us all is this. You train the trainers and you certify them. Finance, the central agency, does what it claims is a gender-based analysis. Who looks at the analysis? Do you look at it, or does somebody else look at it? Does an economist on your staff look at it to tell us the impact on women?
If you could, just give us that answer at the end, so that I can continue with Mr. Rajotte.
It's Valentine's Day, go ahead.
Voices: Oh, oh!
Thank you very much for being with us here this morning. I'm looking at the recommendations and the report that was done, the response from the government. It seems to me the discussion is quite focused on structure and process and putting in place a system that will ensure GBA.
Perhaps I can go beyond that to get some more information for myself on how it actually works. On page 7 of your presentation you talk about GBA applied to policy measures, particularly to tax policy, where data permitted, on tax proposals presented to the Minister of Finance for budgets 2006 and 2007.
Could you describe for me how that worked and perhaps what the results were?
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Basically, the finance department did what we always do with GBA. You take an issue and break it down into its components in terms of comparative results, comparative situations. It always depends on data, and that's not just for Finance; it's for any department in any country where the data is available.
In some cases, they could look at the exact percentages and ratios. Where dollar amounts might show up higher for women and lower for men, in terms of the relationship to income, the ratio would all of a sudden reverse the situation such that maybe women were actually better off than men, or benefiting more, etc. It was just applying that tool.
But as I said earlier, it became more interesting for Finance to ask, and I hesitate to use the word “philosophically” in economic and fiscal things, but almost with that approach: if there is a discrepancy here, where does it lie, and is it significant? What can we do with it or about it, or do we know enough about it to really distinguish that there should be changes made?
I guess it's a work in progress. If you compare the 2006 to the 2007 analysis, there's a degree of sophistication that has evolved from the first year to the second. They are enlarging; they're not stuck on the numbers as much. They're actually looking at the impact: if someone makes a choice to do this, is it the responsibility of the taxation system to work with that, or support it, or whatever? It's that kind of process that they did for the two past budgets and will be doing for the upcoming one.
They are also extending it beyond the taxation branch. The training is now available for the whole department, so they're looking at all of the different areas and asking, does it actually make sense?
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For many years now, Status of Women Canada, along with Statistics Canada, has come out with a report called “Women in Canada”. It provides a lot of data in terms of different resources, but it never really pointed to a set of indicators.
It's a product that exists in many countries. For example, in Sweden they have a whole product that gives you a set of indicators. Indicators are also used internationally. The UNDP, for example, uses indicators in terms of education and well-being and those kinds of thing. Canada never really had its own set of indicators from a gender perspective.
So the idea was what we could do to start to have this set of indicators. Could we play a role in creating that? The group is made up of people from key departments that have major data collection exercises, so you can think of HRSDC, Health Canada, and CIC. I don't have all of the people there, but these are the people right now who are working with Status of Women Canada to bring forward the idea of what these indicators would look like.
I am not a statistician so I cannot give you expert advice on that. My understanding is that it's not an easy thing to create, but at least you start from what you have. We are collecting a series of data that we know exists already in government. From that, how can we build these indicators? And from that, are there other sources of information we need to get?
My understanding is that once this happens, there will be an opportunity for some consultation. I believe the offer was made that the standing committee could look at the indicators at one point and engage in a discussion on that. That's quite feasible. I believe a letter had been sent to do just that.
For those of you who may remember, there were some consultations across Canada with groups in 2005, and the indicators project was something the groups were asking for as well, in terms of understanding the progress being made in Canada.
We have difficulty really showing the progress being made in Canada, so it's a bit difficult to select priorities and to then work on those priorities, because it should be a feedback cycle that we do. We have difficulty doing that right now without the indicators.
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I don't know. I'm looking forward to those results.
In the past, I'd have to say that I think Canada has been seen as a leader in terms of what the Europeans would call gender mainstreaming. We now have accountability frameworks and we have our central agencies, and that is a point to which a lot of countries have not yet gone.
Interestingly enough, it is, however, at the request of a lot of the organizations such as the World Bank or the IMF. When they go into a country, they do require this type of accountability. In a sense, Canada is doing a very good job at showing we are practising this type of process, if you like, in terms of GPA.
We receive invitations from many countries to provide training. We send our trainers around the world. They're not only in Canada or in the federal government. Our trainers go around the world. Our material has been translated into Spanish, into Russian, into Korean. Michèle was in South Africa a couple of years ago. I was in Korea. We are asked because Canada is seen as a leader in this area.
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That depends on the version.
I'm teasing you a little, but we have roughly seven different versions. The training was created so that we would have a tool that could be adapted to the needs and mandates of the participants receiving the training. We look at all the stages, from policy development to delivery, including program and service development, up to evaluation. So we look at the entire cycle. Afterwards, with the departments, we conduct a needs analysis. What is the mandate? What are the problems? What are the issues? What experience do the analysts have? Are the individuals taking the training researchers, evaluators, and so on?
So we adapt precisely to the needs, which includes the time. To do 10 steps, the training can last one full week, two days, one day, three days, a half day or an hour and a half. As I said, there are now a number of versions. All that's designed to meet the needs of the analysts in their day-to-day work. Obviously, we take a look at the theory and concepts in order to provide the overall social context, but that's really done in order to be able to apply GBA rigorously in the field where the people work.
I'll be very quick.
First, Madame Bougie, earlier in your response to Mr. Rajotte, with respect to the sports tax credit, you said it had been looked at from the family perspective, and I guess boys and girls and families are not.... The problem with that, of course, and this is really the core of GBA, is that lone-parent families are primarily women. And they don't have money, in the first place, to buy the stuff, and therefore they can't claim it and therefore their children aren't.... This is really the core of GBA, when policy isn't looked at properly. It shouldn't have been looked at as a family; it should have been looked at from a gender perspective.
I have three quick questions. I just want to read them, because that way it's easier for everybody.
Does the training in GBA require a formal agreement, known as an MOU, a memorandum of understanding, between Status of Women Canada and the agencies you're working with or training?
Do you maintain any statistics on how many departments have dedicated GBA units or analysts? If so, could you provide that for us? That would be helpful.
What needs to be done to ensure that disaggregated data is available for GBA? Again, that's an issue that has come up over and over again.
How do we ensure that GBA is being appropriately done in the central agencies, and what are the accountability measures there? I think that's important too.
Those are kind of rapid questions. I have lots more, but maybe we can get it together....
To finish off, the importance of understanding how we do GBA, and the broader perspective.... You see, on the one policy, the assumption is that it's family, but it's not. It's also GBA. When you go that route and we get the results, they're skewed, and they're missing a whole population of women. That is a problem.
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Finance can explain in more detail.
On MOUs for training, no, we don't have them.
I'm not sure if you were asking for the number of departments with GBA capacity, because that's the number we said earlier. It was 17 departments. And yes, we'll be providing the list.
On the disaggregated data and how we make it more available, Statistics Canada has a lot of data banks, and they do tend to collect things and disaggregate subpopulation groups and various cohorts. The trick is that departments have to ask for it and departments have to pay for it. When the departments have asked for it, are they asking for questions and things like census runs, or are they asking for the data broken down to meet their needs? So you have different approaches. But the departments have to ask for it in order to get it. And once they have it, they have to use it.
Now, I'm not going to let you off the hook very quickly. I can hear a lot of anxiety and questions, and everybody has a thousand more questions from the answers you've given.
February 26 is budget day, but we can squeeze ourselves into a small room and still have, if we have to, a huddle, our own meeting. We could let you know that on February 26 you might be back, if you don't mind. I am just letting you know, in case the committee decides to do so.
I thank you very much, and I'll suspend the meeting for one minute.
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I'm glad you raised the point.
If we were going to split the motion, I would suggest points one, two, and four could be in the first part. And point three in this proposed motion would be the second part; it would begin with the preamble in the motion as it was circulated. In other words, we go with the amended preamble for points one, two, and four, and the second motion, la deuxième partie, would be the existing preamble plus point three.
I say that principally because I don't see any difficulty with the points and including the changes that Madam Neville has suggested; these would be things we could probably support. Having said that, point three is objectionable, from our point of view.