Very recently I was at the World Trade Organization Public Forum, and the gender and trade agenda was a big theme. Canada's chief economist was on a panel precisely on this issue, talking about data. One of the things she said was that one of the best things, and the farthest from where we are right now, is having these big sets of panel data at the individual level that can be tracked over a long time to see the long-term impacts, not just on households, but on individuals within households. That's blue-sky thinking at this point, but some of the funding that's included in the budget could go some distance to meeting those aspirations.
I said earlier, Canada's not in this alone. We're not the only country that's trying to do this. The gender and trade unit from the U.K. was just here last week talking with the Ministry of International Trade Diversification precisely on this issue, because everyone's trying to get this right. Similarly, international organizations such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development are also trying to get this right. They've developed something called a gender tool box, which is studying precisely this: the impact of potential free trade agreements on countries. In that case it's only been tested in west Africa, so it's looked at the economic partnership agreement between the European Union and the East African community to see what the impacts would be.
I have a host of criticisms about that, because it's focused only on the formal economy and only on women as economic actors, and so on. Everyone's groping around in the dark on this issue. Unfortunately, I don't have the answers except to say there needs to be a multi-dimensional approach. Like I said to your colleague, we need to think about employment and wages, certainly, but also about impacts on consumption of public services. Also, we need to start thinking beyond women entrepreneurs and women as economic actors, and instead think about the multiplicity of roles that women play in the economy.