Thank you for the question.
The racial equity impact assessment tool is a tool that was pioneered in the United States. There are certain progressive jurisdictions in the United States that have already implemented this tool in policy-making and in program and budget decisions. These are jurisdictions such as Washington state, the City of Portland, Minneapolis.
We took a hard look at this tool, since it has already been road-tested and has had success and there is empirical evidence to demonstrate so. We've looked at that tool and have tried to customize it in an Ontario context.
The tool has a couple of key elements. First of all, we all carry bias as individuals; as professionals we carry bias, given the model that we're socialized into, in the context of the work we do. One thing this tool does is it helps you better understand your bias as you employ the tool.
If you think about a piece of legislation or policy that the government would be interested in reviewing or developing, you would apply this tool at the front end. For those who are policy practitioners, this is not an add-on; it fits very nicely into the policy cycle that most public services execute in this country. The tool allows you to understand that bias.
It also allows you to understand the bias that we respectively carry relative to stakeholder engagement. Many people have much to say on many issues, but because we generally tend to deal with a certain group of stakeholders, those voices aren't coming to the table; the process doesn't allow for it. There are thus open government engagement tools built into the tool to allow for muted or marginalized voices to come to the table and have their say concerning the impact of a particular policy or program.