Status of Women committee  Thank you. I'm pleased to be here today as you launch your study on the economic security of women and their equal participation in the economy. This study is relevant and timely. Significant momentum to address gender disparities has been created, from achieving gender parity in federal cabinet to the commitment to include gender-based analysis in federal budgets, starting in 2017.

Status of Women committee  That's a great question, and it's one that I'd love to give some thought to and get back to you with a considered answer.

Status of Women committee  It's very much a process about the memorandum to cabinet proposals that we're seeing. They're getting better and better all the time, but we're going to be working more and more with departments on mitigation strategies. Once again, if they have good research available to them—and there are gaps, and I just thought of one, women in trades probably would be an area—then what are they going to do with that information?

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  I may invite my colleague, Nanci-Jean Waugh, up again, but I'll do my best to at least start an answer. In terms of entrepreneurs, there were three parts to that programming. There were trade missions. There was the “It Starts With One” campaign, which was a mentoring campaign.

Status of Women committee  We were involved in the corporations act work.

Status of Women committee  We were very much at the time....

Status of Women committee  The papers were related directly to the minister's mandate letter item to develop a federal strategy on gender-based violence. They were examining different aspects of the gaps in data and research that are available, and knowledge transfer, in relation to this specific issue. As I mentioned earlier, we're still doing “Women in Canada”, and the Status of Women will continue to do so.

Status of Women committee  If you recall, part of the action plan on gender-based analysis that came out of the Auditor General's report indicated a few different actions, one of which was monitoring and reporting. We've started this process with the deputy minister survey we mentioned to you, to get at least a starting point on that.

Status of Women committee  Do we have a bullet point on it? Feel free to jump in on that one.

Status of Women committee  We're doing security cluster training and they are also involved in that, so they will be investing in that training themselves.

Status of Women committee  I don't think any of us has been here since the beginning of GBA, but what I can say is that there has been a very large shift. It is a big ship to turn, but in the past year and a half, there has been a very concerted effort by departments to do GBA in a very different way. The new template for memoranda to cabinet asks for GBA to be done in a more extensive manner than it ever has before, so that in itself is a giant leap forward.

Status of Women committee  Yes, we have done fairly extensive international comparisons. For example, last year as a follow-up to the Auditor General's report on gender-based analysis, we did that. Also, I was in Europe last year and had an opportunity to speak to other countries that we tend to look up to for their gender mainstreaming or gender-based analysis, but my personal resounding conclusion, from the analysis that we've done, is that we are, in fact, quite far ahead of most other countries on this.

Status of Women committee  This past year the focus of the new funding for research and evaluation has been to support the minister's mandate item related to gender-based violence. As the minister referred to earlier, we did commission a few studies related to data needs on the issue of gender-based violence.

Status of Women committee  Exactly. We're enablers.