As Madame St-Pierre mentioned, she and I both were involved in the consultative process. Actually, in my capacity at Peacebuild, we conducted the national consultations over the course of the summer. It was welcomed by members of civil society. We were very pleased that it finally happened. The plan was many years in the making, let's put it that way, so we were very pleased to see it.
I think that, overall, representatives of civil society see it as a starting point. It's something to improve upon. It's not as strong, I think, as we would like it to be. But as I said, it is a starting point. So beyond the obvious omission of the word “gender”, which I think has tremendous analytical implications for implementation, and the dedication of new resources to making sure that it is implemented across the Government of Canada, there's also no designated person right now, as far as I know, to see that this will happen. That's another element of resources that is lacking.
As far as I understand it, it's in Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Affairs is responsible for overseeing the coordination and implementation throughout the departments. Each department is to set up its own mechanism for evaluating what's going on in their respective department. That's my understanding.
It's my own personal opinion--and I think a number of members of civil society might also say this--that it is a starting point. The voice in the document is definitely passive. It's not terribly proactive, or as proactive as we would like it to be. There's certainly an element of leadership, let's say, that is lacking.
It's not surprising that we are reflecting Canadian interests in the document. It's about training Canadian personnel and making sure our capacity is up to speed. I find it to be very internal or inward-looking in terms of its orientation, and it doesn't reflect any leadership on the issue--or as much as I would like to see. Because we see, in the wording of the document, words like “the Government of Canada encourages”, “supports”, “promotes”, when it could be a lot more active and a lot more engaged and really be a leader on this issue.
Going back I think to issues of resources and making sure that it's properly implemented and evaluated, maybe some greater clarity about lines of accountability and monitoring over time.... Some civil society actors suggested the possibility of perhaps introducing performance evaluations of each government unit, where responsibilities to implement the plan could be tied to their performance vis-à-vis these indicators.
We also might want to look to the States, which has an ambassador for global women's affairs in the Department of State. Why can't we have here, maybe in a cabinet-level position, someone who is responsible for the leadership, monitoring, and implementation of this national action plan?