Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to speak with you today about this important government commitment.
I also wish to thank the Auditor General of Canada and his office for their report and recommendations.
Thank you also to my colleague from Status of Women for outlining the overarching framework under which we will work collaboratively together, and with all federal departments and agencies to improve the implementation of GBA across government.
As was noted, we are seeing a renewed commitment to GBA within the federal government. This is evidenced in the Prime Minister's mandate letter to the Minister of Status of Women, which instructed our departments to work together to ensure GBA is applied to proposals for cabinet decision-making.
With this renewed commitment, the recommendations of the Auditor General's report are coming at an opportune time to provide an assessment of the progress we've made as well as the challenges that remain to fully implementing our GBA commitments across government.
The Privy Council Office supports cabinet decision-making through providing leadership, coordination, advice, and analysis on policy, program, and legislative proposals. In this role, we play a critical challenge function in ensuring that departments and agencies take into account all relevant factors, including gender, in the development of policy and program proposals being submitted for consideration by cabinet. This is done to ensure that the impacts on diverse groups of women and men are given due consideration in decision-making.
While the audit found that we have made efforts to promote and support GBA, and to clarify our guidance to departments and agencies in this respect, the audit also provided us an opportunity to reflect on how we can do better. You will have seen our proposed actions in the plan we've distributed.
My colleague from Status of Women has highlighted a number of areas for joint action, so I will focus on some of PCO's specific commitments. As she mentioned, one area we are looking at is enhanced tools and training.
Acknowledging the need to build our internal capacity with respect to GBA, we have already moved forward on making GBA training mandatory for all PCO employees who are tasked with playing a challenge function, as well as for executives. This will ensure that PCO employees are able to meaningfully engage with departments and agencies on GBA, making sure that the gender and diversity impacts to proposals are clear, that these inform policy options, and that any appropriate mitigation strategies are identified.
To support this work, we've committed to further strengthening our guidance on the inclusion of GBA in proposals to cabinet. We will ensure that departments and agencies are linked to relevant tools from Status of Women, and encourage their use.
The process of the audit also made clear to us that we can improve the documentation of GBA and PCO's challenge function. To this end, we are developing a policy consideration checklist, which will include GBA as a mandatory section. Rather than a checking-the-box exercise, we see this as a tool to help departments walk through the key considerations required when drafting policy or program proposals. Our goal is that this will be used to identify gender and other diversity impacts early in the policy development process, when they can meaningfully inform the development of options, mitigation strategies, and advice.
Finally, we are committed to continuing to work with Status of Women to identify good practices in GBA, as well as to identify departments and agencies who are struggling to meet their GBA commitments. For these, we will continue to link them with the support required—for example, by reaching out to Status of Women on key policy files—as well as to encourage them to build their internal capacity, recognizing the strong and renewed mandate for implementing GBA moving forward.
Strong and effective GBA practices have guided government over the years to ensure greater equality between women and men in all areas of government programming. We will both continue and strengthen our efforts to ensure that policy and program proposals are meeting the needs of all Canadians.
Thank you for your time. I will now turn to my colleague from the Treasury Board Secretariat.