Let me make a comment before I switch to the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour.
I attended the GBA+ analysis issued by the Auditor General, and I think Ms. Ballantyne was there for it. Treasury Board, obviously, has a challenge function, and there is a role for your staff to play and each individual department. One thing I think might be helpful is having some sort of mandatory training for ministers, so that they can better challenge in order to make sure that GBA+ is being incorporated.
Minister of Employment, thank you. I appreciate your comments. You said, “While the overall assessment of proactive legislation was very positive at the time, there was little consensus on how to implement the recommendations.” Those were your words from earlier.
Last night we had two groups, the Canadian Bankers Association and then a group that represents many of the large employers from the federally regulated workplace, representing two-thirds of employees, who had deep concerns about issuing a new proactive, independent framework because there would be a new bureaucracy in place, new rules, a new mandate. They think there's much more to be gained by speeding up the current processes, seeing more funding, perhaps making use of the pre-existing labour programs and harmonizing with them.
Are you set already on a particular model, or are you looking to see how you can improve the system? We had StatsCan come in last night, Minister, and we heard from them that they have a number of gaps that make it very difficult to assess why these wage gaps exist and why they persist. From what I saw and heard from them, there was not convincing evidence that proactive legislation is the silver bullet that we might utilize.