Evidence of meeting #83 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was equality.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
With the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Canadian Gender Budgeting Act makes it mandatory that certain data in relation to GBA+ implementation is made public. Can you explain the importance of making the information public?
12:10 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
It's all about sharing information. We want to make sure that best practices are being shared so that departments having problems with capacity or with data collection can learn from best practices that we are putting out there. It's not only putting information out there but also having meetings with people involved in that domain to make sure that they do understand and do exchange.
We have that all the time to make sure that information is provided, to understand the information that is being put out there, and so that we can have an informed discussion amongst ourselves because the goal is always to be able to produce more robust GBA+ analyses.
As I was saying a few minutes ago, we have already published two reports, and before the end of this calendar year, we're going to be in a position to publish the third one. The third one will be more comprehensive with more examples because we have seen improvements in the system.
November 7th, 2023 / 12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
That's good to know.
Ms. McRae, why is GBA+ best applied at the departmental level, rather than through the methods of parliamentary review suggested by bills such as Bill S-218?
12:10 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department for Women and Gender Equality
In terms of the application of GBA+, I think Graham talked about a couple of examples of when it is very important to have the experts within the policy area in government—those who are designing and developing the initiatives—get into the question of who they're designing for, as well as issues of access to various government programs, services and legislation that may apply to them. You will know, if you've seen the report of the standing Senate committee, that they heard from experts who asked the question, “Why wouldn't you just have a few people do this across government?”
The experts and academics in the field are very clear that you need the experts to be where they are. They understand how to apply analysis to the initiatives for which they are the top advisers.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Flack, in your opening remarks, you mentioned that capacity building for data collection is ongoing and continues to be a challenge. I wasn't sure whether that was due to staffing issues.
Can you address that? When will it be up to speed? We heard how it's so critical to have disaggregated data available.
12:15 p.m.
Secretary of the Treasury Board of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Yes.
As I indicated in previous answers, you have to look at this on a program-by-program basis, because the data is often unique to the individual program you're looking at, in terms of the results. You can't go with some generalized data collection that isn't necessarily going to get the information you need for all the individual programs. You need a strategy for each program. That will often involve investments for the program.
One of the critical limiters has been the ability to link it to broader Statistics Canada data, so you can understand its linkages to the broader population. As Frances indicated, Statistics Canada has taken a real step forward with some major investments to allow that to happen.
There's been very steady progress on disaggregated data, but, as the Auditor General's office indicated, we aren't at the end state on this. There's still much progress that needs to come. Again, as somebody who's managed programs in departments, I know there have been some systemic barriers to this beyond the resource one I raised.
Privacy is one. Your counsel will come to you and tell you the collection of that data would be a breach of people's privacy. That's why we issued the guidance to help guide departments through that thicket.
I would say another one, as I indicated in a previous answer, is checking with the communities themselves about whether they're comfortable with the collection of the data. In some cases, they won't be. In some cases, the right answer is to not collect the data—even though it will limit our full understanding of the implications of the program—because individuals feel there would be an undue government interest in specific characteristics they have, which they don't want when they interact with the program.
Those are some of the barriers. I'd say it improves every year, but we are not, in my view, going to get to an end state where every single program has fully robust, disaggregated data. There are going to be some areas where, for that third reason I mentioned, we may not be able to get the disaggregated data.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you.
Ms. McRae, why is it important for GBA+ to be used as a policy tool for the public service?
12:15 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department for Women and Gender Equality
I'm really glad we're going back to the purpose of GBA+. GBA+ is a tool, as I said earlier, to improve our understanding and our ability to tailor programs and services to the needs of Canadians and the people we serve.
With the diversity of this country changing all the time, and the needs changing all the time, we do have to continue to evolve our work. If we are not designing for Canadians of today and tomorrow, really, who are we designing for? We need to understand not just the rudimentariness between, say, women and men. We need to understand what is going on with various groups of women who have other factors that affect how they experience the world and systems around them.
I do want to focus a bit on the systems. Intersectionality is often defined as a number of different identities that come together. I think one of the things we need to be careful about is ensuring that we are also looking at structures, institutions and systems that people interact with. The example that Graham mentioned, of 2SLGBTQI people perhaps not wanting data collection in certain areas, is a good example: Why is that? They may have worries of other things that they've experienced from various systems that actually create their experience of working with government.
I think it's really important that we focus not just on identity but also on the depth of the systems, institutions and structures that people interact with, and how that may be quite different from one subset of a group to another.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you.
I want to thank all the witnesses for coming in today. I appreciate it. We went a little over our time, but I wanted to make sure we had a thorough discussion.
I will now excuse the witnesses.
For others in the room, we will be suspending the meeting to go in camera. If you have no business before the committee in our next session, then I'd ask you to excuse yourself as well.
[Proceedings continue in camera]