Status of Women committee  Thank you for clarifying that. There were some job cuts, but they had no effect on our mandate for Status of Women relating to sexual harassment in the workplace. Our role has been to coordinate policy and provide advice on policies and programs that affect Canadians, not federa

Status of Women committee  I am familiar with the job cuts in the programming area, which is the arm of the department that provides funding for projects and communities across the country. We've reorganized our resources and continue to deliver our services but with a different model.

Status of Women committee  Those are not decisions within my purview. I'm here to implement the policies, not to suggest their content at this point.

Status of Women committee  In our case, the workshops are the same, except that we try to put managers together in the workshop so that we can discuss challenges associated with management.

Status of Women committee  Primarily we encourage informal discussions with your manager to start with. As we are very small and we have very few complaints, I can't say we have a lot of experience managing these types of issues. At this point in time, our experience has been good. The challenge with a sm

Status of Women committee  That's not the case. Our advisory resources are available for any department that wants to get better information about gender-based analysis or tools and resources. Those are the same resources that are available to the RCMP. There's nothing that's been specifically isolated wit

Status of Women committee  Employees will naturally become more knowledgeable in certain fields as they interact more frequently with one department or another. However, the requirements for our assistance are quite variable. It would be rather unfeasible for us to start dedicating portfolios in that manne

Status of Women committee  All of our policy folks are quite solid on the GBA front, but as far as being dedicated to GBA, yes.

Status of Women committee  Actually the primary messenger on this issue is Treasury Board as the employer. We are there to offer assistance only when departments seek some very specific tools or help, as I was mentioning. It's mostly that GBA is a good methodology for examining—

Status of Women committee  Our role has been to provide advice and coordinate policy with respect to policies and programs that affect Canadians, not necessarily the federal workplace. This being said, our primary tool, being gender-based analysis, is a good methodology that any department can apply to pre

Status of Women committee  Yes, we have. I wasn't personally involved, but I can confirm that we have had a dialogue with the RCMP. We've been able to provide them with resources in terms of experts and research on best practices in the policing field. We remain available if they require any form of advice

Status of Women committee  I wouldn't be able to be very specific because these interactions happen at multiple levels. I believe it's been stated already that the head of our agency has spoken with the commissioner. Also, at the working level we have analysts who may have been exchanging information dir

Status of Women committee  Yes, certainly. The first training we provided focused on respect in the workplace and issues of harassment were discussed. It was mandatory training for every employee in the Status of Women department, no matter their tenure. This was followed by consultations with various ind

Status of Women committee  It would depend on when in the year they are hired. However, if they're not getting the mandatory departmental sessions, employees also go through the cycle of mandatory training that is offered through the Canada School of Public Service for new employees or for employees who ar

Status of Women committee  That's correct.