Status of Women committee  We're still assessing, and it's ongoing, but as I mentioned in earlier remarks we're fundamentally a facilitator. We can do some of this work, but there are many documents that go to cabinet, many documents that go to Treasury Board, etc. We need everybody to take ownership of ensuring that diversity and gender are considered in initiatives.

Status of Women committee  I'll let Vaughn answer as well, but we get excellent feedback about the tool. I hope this committee found that as well. Especially for people just starting out, it's very accessible. There's nothing we've done since 2009, in terms of our action plan, that we wouldn't want to continue.

Status of Women committee  It's completely mixed. It's reflective of the federal public service at the senior level.

Status of Women committee  Vaughn and her team members have been spending an awful lot of time with the Canadian Armed Forces in the past year because of the importance of this issue and the women, peace, and security initiative. It's definitely something we see continuing in terms of our operational funding going forward, not just with the Canadian Armed Forces but through using that as a model for other like-minded agencies, other security agencies.

Status of Women committee  It gets back to what I—

Status of Women committee  It gets back to what I was referring to earlier. We are planning on doing a better job of monitoring and reporting out on GBA, so that will help.

Status of Women committee  I wouldn't want to say that we, as an agency and as officials, have views about whether or not it should be mandatory at this point. I just wanted to make sure that was clear. We certainly encourage all parliamentarians to take the course and to raise gender issues in the work that they are doing.

Status of Women committee  I talked about the plan in my opening remarks. We are going to be looking at barriers, doing strategic initiatives, upgrading our training and tools, and improving on our monitoring and reporting. That is what we are expecting.

Status of Women committee  Are you asking about the enhanced tools and training, or the strategic intervention?

Status of Women committee  We have just started a process whereby we are trying to identify what those might look like. We are going to be dedicating some of the new resources that we have through budget 2016 towards this work. We are looking for a combination of resources. Sometimes they call it the “low-hanging fruit”; we make sure that we can explain GBA and its importance to Canadians and to federal officials.

Status of Women committee  This is a part of the action plan that I personally am very excited about, because I think we really need to do a better job of explaining to ourselves as federal officials, but more importantly to Canadians, why gender-based analysis is so important. I don't believe that we need to have some formal exercise called “gender-based analysis”, but we do need to ensure that gender considerations are taken into account in all of our programming and policies.

Status of Women committee  Thirty departments have formally signed on, and part of that had to do with our own capacity to reach out to all of them. That's not to say that no gender-based analysis is happening in other departments. It is a government policy and has been for some time. I wouldn't want people to think that one is completely exclusive of the other—that if you're not part of our 30 action plan departments, you're not doing any gender-based analysis.

Status of Women committee  It is mandatory in IRCC's legislation, and that means they do a good job reporting back to Parliament on GBA. One thing we have also talked about extensively is that even if it becomes mandatory, that would not be enough. You definitely still need the leadership, the monitoring and reporting, the analysis of barriers, the checking back in, the improving of the situation, and really the dedication to doing that kind of analysis.

Status of Women committee  Do you mean to ensure that the GBA happens or that...?

Status of Women committee  If I understand your question correctly, do you mean are there barriers to Status of Women being the enforcer for gender-based analysis?