Status of Women committee  Can I add to that? I may not have been as clear or as explicit. In terms of an initiative coming forward to cabinet, you may actually have initiatives that will be sponsored by more than one minister. It's not unusual that you would have an initiative that requires two, sometimes three, sometimes four, sometimes five ministers to be participating ministers on an initiative.

Status of Women committee  I think a number of measures have been put in place in terms of trying to ensure there is a coordinated approach on issues. As I said, part of it is this memorandum to cabinet process that we have. I think in some cases as well it is reflected in the cabinet committee structure in terms of making sure you have committees that bring together an integrated perspective, so that you don't have silos in the same way.

Status of Women committee  The documents that go to cabinet would of course be covered by cabinet confidence, in the sense that they're recommendations to ministers. That would be covered by cabinet confidence.

Status of Women committee  The document that would go into cabinet and on which decisions are based is a cabinet document, so that would be covered by cabinet confidentiality. As I say, under the Access to Information Act certain analytical parts of a memorandum to cabinet may be accessible, but normally the decision-making documents for cabinet are cabinet confidences.

Status of Women committee  You mean your question on the silos.

Status of Women committee  I think it's a combination of factors. A challenge always in government is working horizontally. It's an issue we've tried to address over many years. Accountabilities, of course, are very much vertical in terms of departmental ministerial accountabilities to Parliament, so the challenge is trying to work across the system in terms of coming up with accountability structures that ensure you have synergy and coordination happening.

Status of Women committee  The next page. As for the next two charts, the first one tries to give you a sense of how the memorandum to cabinet process works. The initial policy proposal in terms of what comes forward is determined by the government's agenda. Clearly that's set through things like the platform the government articulates, then subsequently in the Speech from the Throne or mandate letters or the budget.

Status of Women committee  We did our presentations on Tuesday, so I think we are quite happy to answer any further questions that you have following Tuesday's discussion.

Status of Women committee  Perhaps I can begin in terms of just the overview. The committee was interested in knowing how all of the pieces fit together in terms of the roles of central agencies and departments in terms of the whole machinery of government around decision-making. The blue and green flow chart that you have in front of you tries to give you some kind of framework in terms of the initial policy development stage, which is at the left-hand side of your paper.

Status of Women committee  The PCO has a policy challenge function role, so as part of the MC process the PCO would ask departments to provide information that would demonstrate the gender-based analysis. It would also, as appropriate, ask them to include a reference or something in the memorandum to cabinet to explain the implications of gender-based analysis.

Status of Women committee  I think we do the best we can in asking departments to provide analysis, data, and information, and incorporate that in the MC, to the extent they have access to it in the department and can include it in the analysis of the proposal being put forward.

Status of Women committee  We'll have to clarify that the tool we use on gender-based analysis is a manual that's been put together for us by Status of Women Canada. We'll just have to make sure that Status of Women Canada are all right in terms of our being able to share that information.

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  Certainly at PCO I think we've taken very seriously the recommendations from that report. In fact we've acted on them in terms of the role of the champion and embedding training. We're trying to improve the training all the time. Each and every year, I think, we learn a little bit more in terms of how to try to tailor the training a little bit better to PCO.

Status of Women committee  I can quickly comment that ministers are certainly supported by departmental officials. Normally, they would be briefed on any item that would come forward to a policy committee and provided with advice from their officials, and their officials would normally brief them on implications.