Public Accounts Committee on April 19th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Now we move back to the government side.

Mr. Lefebvre.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

I'd like to take out the action plan you have provided us.

My first question is, from 2009-16, was this action plan similar, or was there an action plan?

[Meena Ballantyne]

Yes, there was a departmental action plan that was tabled with this committee in 2009. This one is different. With the other one, we were starting out in terms of engaging with departments, and we had—

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

You mean in 2009, or in 2015?

[Meena Ballantyne]

In 2009 we had a phased implementation working with various departments. From 2009-15 that's what all of us did. We worked together with the departments. What we found was that we still need to continue to do that, work with departments, but we're adopting things like a cluster approach. We're taking all the science departments and bringing them together, so they can learn from each other in terms of sharing best practices, and what's worked with the health department, public health agencies, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, or security.

There are differences from the last action plan to this one.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

I'm seeing target dates. We have the response to the recommendations, we have the action plan, and we have the target dates. Some are open. On page 2 we have ongoing, and then on page 3 a lot are ongoing as well. Is it possible to provide us with fixed dates as to when the action plans are going to start to be put together, or are these already put together and these are going to be ongoing all the time?

[Meena Ballantyne]

Yes. For example, on page 3, where we're talking about having these various governance structures to monitor this, it's having the steering committee with the three of us meeting with folks, or having our champions network. Those are meetings that have started, and we're going to increase them in some cases.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Chair, just to make sure of that, I know that there are also some documents that we'll be providing, so can we can keep tabs on what is going on there so we can see the progress on this?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We can also put that into the report.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Yes, please.

Mrs. Zahid has a question.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

My question is for Mr. Linklater. Further to our discussion on making GBA a mandatory requirement, it has been more than 20 years since Canada committed, as part of the 1995 United Nations fourth world conference on women, to analyzing gender-specific policy impacts on women and men before making any decisions on policies, legislation, and programs throughout all the government departments and agencies.

I think the Auditor General's report shows that we have made fairly minimum progress in the last two decades. This is I guess unsurprising, since it seems that GBA is more a request of a government department, rather than a requirement mandated by PCO or the Treasury Board.

What consequences are there if managers do not have their performance or that of their department measured and evaluated based at least in part on their implementation of GBA? Of course, implementation will be incomplete and spotty.

I have to ask, if PCO is not going to make GBA mandatory, just how seriously should we take your commitment to its wider adoption? As you mentioned in your opening remarks, the Prime Minister's mandate letter to the Minister of Status of Women called for GBA to be applied to proposals for cabinet decision-making. Is this enough to make GBA mandatory? Or do you need further policy direction on that?

[Les Linklater]

I don't think we need further policy direction. What we do need is a focus on implementation.

As the audit has pointed out, progress has been limited since 2009. The tools that we're looking at developing and the processes that we're putting in place across government have to be more meaningful and also ensure that we are working with departments to gather the data that's required, the disaggregated data, for them to improve their policy development process, and then, as proposals are coming forward either to the cabinet table from a policy perspective or to Treasury Board for implementation, that our analysts have the training to be able to challenge departments on the GBA systematically, and that we're documenting systematically that challenge function, which we have not been doing to date.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

So you think that you really don't need any further policy directives?

[Les Linklater]

I think that in terms of the tone and the expectations that the Prime Minister has set, and the fact that the Minister of Status of Women is at the cabinet table to challenge all policy proposals that are coming through for ratification, there has been a significant improvement in raising the profile of the need to do this. The fact that the minister has written to our colleagues and we're putting in place the more rigorous oversight among the central agencies around these processes I think is going to help us with information sharing and also bring along departments that have been struggling with the barriers to advancing GBA.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We now move back to Mr. Albas, please.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to go back to the discussion we were having earlier regarding Statistics Canada.

You were suggesting that Status of Women is working on a set of tools that could be dispersed. One of the challenges I have.... I sit on the pay equity committee right now, and we've heard from a number of departments. They know that the situation of pay equity has gotten better in the last 10 years, but no one has been able to identify why. They're not able to tell us.

I think that one of the issues—again, I think it was described as “complex stuff” that we're dealing with—is that we don't necessarily have the data, or the explanation behind the data, to be able to adequately address the issue. When is this Statistics Canada project that you're working with going to come to fruition? When is it going to be made available to different departments?

[Meena Ballantyne]

I should clarify. The Statistics Canada project that I was talking about is the “Women in Canada” publications that we've been working on since—I can't remember the exact date—before 2009, I think, in terms of having reports on sex-disaggregated data for gender, with overall stats on women and then in specific populations.

What I think you're referring to is something in the departments. As my colleague Monsieur Paquette was saying, each of the departments is also looking at sex-disaggregated data in their departments for their policies and programs.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

The suggestion I would make here is that I do see an opportunity for Status of Women to embed a small operation, and then be a liaison with all the different agencies. Rather than their trying to establish that in-house, you have a go-to hub of information that will help with gender-based analysis. To me that's a logical step.

You mentioned earlier regarding the Province of Alberta that it's mandatory for ministers to take gender-based analysis training. Is that correct?

[Meena Ballantyne]

I believe so. I'll have to confirm it. I certainly know in the Alberta civil service all deputy ministers, ADMs, and senior management have to take this course. I'm not sure about the ministers, but we can get back to you on that.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Yes, that would be helpful. Again, if we're going to take a whole-of-government approach—and this government seems to continue to say that they want to do that—why would you just make it whereby the Status of Women minister was that check and balance at Treasury Board or whatnot? Why wouldn't you want every minister making those same demands of their deputy ministers and the deputy ministers of their senior staff? That's how you build accountability and direction.

Getting back to the barriers side—maybe I'll ask this of the Auditor General's office—I don't disagree that an absence of mandatory government requirements is an issue, but I would also say that even if you put in place.... I used to be a municipal councillor. We always used to say if you can't enforce a bylaw, if it's an information gap, a capacity gap, a lack of management training, how do you solve that? You can require all you want, but if the capacity isn't there to be able to bring each department to an adequate level, where it can lead off with that department, from a management perspective what would be...? I think we all agree gender-based analysis is a critical tool, but from a management perspective how does just making it a requirement do it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We'll start off with our Auditor General's department, please. Mr. Domingue.

[Richard Domingue]

Mr. Chair, I think you're right: mandatory requirement would not solve the GBA issue by itself. Training is key here. I've mentioned the word “reflex” a few times. When departmental officials design policies, what's important for them is not so much that there's a requirement, they should fill the box and do a GBA, what's important is that they do a good GBA, that they think by themselves that there's a requirement to do that. As I said, it varies greatly from department to department. Again, we're not there to promote a policy decision. That's not my job. If the government were going to say mandatory requirement is only part of the solution, you need training, you need a proper challenge function at the centre.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Going back to PCO and Treasury Board, we have the Canada School of Public Service. It was founded to help create excellence in the public service, do academic publishing, and whatnot. Have we or any of your offices asked for a study to be done? The side-of-the-desk issue, where things always get shunted to a side of the desk.... To me it would be nice to have some quasi-independence from people who know management within the federal public service who could look at the issue. Has there been any contemplation of asking them to do a report on this?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Reply very quickly, Ms. Ballantyne.

[Meena Ballantyne]

We are working with the Canada School of Public Service in making our training, our online course, available as the core curriculum for all policy and program officers. They're going to be rolling it out for us, but I think you're referring to a study.