Public Accounts committee  No—

Public Accounts committee  What I'm saying is that it is mandatory for all departments in the MC development process to say that they have done a GBA. It's going to be much more intensive now. They'll have to explain that they've done it and what is the impact or what changed. They'll have to show the data.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. You are quite right. It is not mandatory to do these things, but I would say that this time there is a lot of commitment. The government has placed this matter very high on its priority list. There are now structures in place and committees in the three main agencies.

Public Accounts committee  First of all, thank you for taking the online course. That is great. I would encourage all of you to take it, because it really does help people think about GBA, not as a specific resource or program, but as a way of thinking about the impact on men and women. To answer your question about who is responsible for GBA, I do it as a shared responsibility across government departments.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning everyone. I am very pleased to be here with you today. Thank you for the invitation to appear and to talk about our response to the fall report of the Auditor General of Canada. I believe the committee has received copies of the action plan that was developed by Status of Women Canada, the Privy Council Office, and the Treasury Board Secretariat in response to the Auditor General's report.

Status of Women committee  In terms of the main estimates and the RPP, we work with Industry Canada, or Innovation, Science and Economic Development now, as well as Global Affairs on the action plan for women entrepreneurs. We provide some funding to women entrepreneurs and we also have done ministerial-led trade missions and promotional campaigns to encourage women to go into entrepreneurship because we know that is part of the economic security pillar of the priorities that we're doing, and we know that women entrepreneurs are looking for tools and networks and mentors.

Status of Women committee  Yes, that was in the nineties, and it was the last time that there was a very comprehensive survey done on violence against women. Since then, as the minister has said, Stats Can has stepped in and has done its victimization survey on self-reported and police-reported cases. We are trying to work with Stats Canada to beef that up and ask them more questions.

Status of Women committee  You get a baseline in the nineties, but you're absolutely right that things have changed. The methodology of data collection, more awareness, and the increased rates of reporting—because people are more empowered and more aware—are all factors there. This is part of the gender violence strategy, this data piece, and how important this is to know in regard to whether the rates are actually going up or down, and if you are making a difference with your prevention efforts.

Status of Women committee  Sorry, I hope I understand your question. You're talking about the intergovernmental...?

Status of Women committee  As the minister was saying about the FPT meeting....

Status of Women committee  You might have seen that every year we have some money coming from other departments for a couple of years. It is a combination of those, plus we deferred some funding. We reprofiled some funding because 2015-16 was an election year and we knew that with the minister coming we wouldn't be able to spend the money, so instead of having it lapse and go back into the consolidated revenue fund, we deferred it until the minister had time to look at the priorities and decide where the funding should go.

Status of Women committee  By 2018-19 that falls off, so it is not a real reduction.

Status of Women committee  I'll start, and Linda can expand. We allocate resources to leave them flexible for opportunities, such as the cyber-bullying project, so we have invested I think a couple of million dollars.

Status of Women committee  That's $2 million to $3 million over the last year or two.

Status of Women committee  We know that this is an emerging issue. This is something that we worked on with some of the groups to generate some momentum behind it. This is one of the emerging issues that we can get on the radar and get people to talk about, which is one of the things we do with our project funding and grants and contributions.