Status of Women committee  Department of Finance officials had no negative reaction. They simply wondered what these budgets were and what they should do. They also asked for our help. Once the training has been given, it does take some time to understand what needs to be done and how to do it right. I'm

Status of Women committee  I must say that we did not encounter this reaction at all within the department. I know that does not really answer your question.

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  I think that Treasury Board, as part of the memorandum to cabinet process, places a great deal of emphasis on this analysis. You heard about that last week, when Mr. Wild appeared before the committee. It takes some time before we see change.

Status of Women committee  I must confess that I do not know the answer to that.

Status of Women committee  I would not want to diminish the Department of Finance's role, but I do think it is mainly responsible for the budget process. That is where the department has some influence. We are not responsible for the machinery of government outside the budget process. When we receive submi

Status of Women committee  I am sorry if it didn't get to you in the proper format. I think we had a request to submit it, and we submitted it through our parliamentary affairs person. But I will make sure that this doesn't happen again and that it is very clear next time.

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  Generally speaking, I think we can say that most of the briefs that are presented to the department by women's groups talk about the specific impact of structural policies—both social and taxation policy. These are really the most identifiable points, which have an impact on indi

Status of Women committee  I think we could definitely find a good example for you. The reason we were talking about good examples is that one of our concerns is that we do not want gender-based analysis to be just a box to be checked and then forgotten about. We want a proper analysis to be done. In order

Status of Women committee  I think that the comparative analysis...

Status of Women committee  Generally, if we're talking about individual income tax, I think gender-based analysis is based on a model that contains data for 500,000 taxpayers. Of course, part of that is modelling based on the data. For future years, we will be able to validate the analysis that was done, b

Status of Women committee  That is an excellent question. We could certainly provide you with the list of all the groups we heard from. We reviewed the briefs generally, and we reviewed particularly those presented by women's groups. There was not really a common theme that cropped up in all the presentati

Status of Women committee  What was also important in the exercise on gender-based analysis was raising the profile of it in the department. By having this training, by naming a champion, and by forcing people to think about it, they started to realize that it adds value. In some cases, the reaction was, “

Status of Women committee  A lot of the non-refundable tax credits are also credits that can be transferred to the spouse; they're based on family income, such as the credit for medical expenses, for example. Some can be transferred between the parents and the children, as in the case of tuition fees. Then