Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 7th, 2023

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Good morning, everyone. I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 83 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(g), the committee is meeting today on its follow-up study of report number 3, “Follow-up Audit of Gender-Based Analysis Plus”, which can be found in reports 1 to 4 of the Auditor General of Canada published in 2022.

I would now like to welcome all of our witnesses.

From the Office of the Auditor General, we have Andrew Hayes, deputy auditor general; and Carey Agnew, principal.

From the Department of Women and Gender Equality, we have Frances McRae, deputy minister; and Leïla Boussaïd, director general, research, data and intersectionality. From the Privy Council Office, we have Kaili Levesque, deputy secretary to the cabinet, operations; and Jennifer Miller, assistant secretary to the cabinet, social development policy.

The fourth group is Treasury Board Secretariat. With us are Graham Flack, secretary of the Treasury Board of Canada; and Annie Boudreau, assistant secretary, expenditure management sector.

Good day, everyone.

I overheard someone saying that they hadn't been in a committee room in a little while, so it's great to have you all here. I appreciate your coming in today. It's certainly our preference that, when witnesses are in the national capital region, they come in, so I thank you all.

Each group here will have up to a five-minute opening presentation, and I'll begin with Mr. Hayes.

It's good to see you again, sir.

You have the floor for five minutes, please.

[Andrew Hayes, Deputy Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General]

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss our follow-up report on gender-based analysis plus, which was tabled in Parliament on May 31, 2022.

I would like to acknowledge that this hearing is taking place on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people.

Joining me today is Carey Agnew who was responsible for this audit.

As you are aware, gender-based analysis plus—orGBA+—is the main tool used by the government to consider how gender and other identity factors can impact the way Canadians experience the delivery of programs and services.

Many demographic factors beyond our gender can impact how we experience life and how we access government programs and services. For example, a person may be part of a visible minority, be Indigenous, be old or young, have a disability, live in a rural setting, or be a newcomer to Canada. Using GBA+, the government should be taking identity factors into account when developing, implementing, or adjusting programs and services.

We found that long-standing challenges that we previously identified continue to hinder the full implementation of GBA+ across government. For this audit, we again included the Privy Council Office, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, and Women and Gender Equality Canada. Although the lead organizations have addressed some of the recommendations from our 2015 audit, many others date back to our first audit of gender-based analysis in 2009.

Despite our previous work and recommendations, it is still unclear whether actions are achieving better gender equality, diversity and inclusion outcomes. We found that the actions taken to identify and address the challenges of undertaking GBA+ did not go far enough.

The Privy Council Office and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat fell short in using their knowledge and the results of their challenge function to advance GBA+ implementation across government.

We also found that there was no approach to sharing information between the central agencies and Women and Gender Equality Canada to track progress of GBA+ implementation throughout government over time. Women and Gender Equality Canada took action by developing tools and delivering training to build capacity across government to perform GBA+.

Despite this, departments and agencies still face challenges that limit the meaningful application of GBA+, such as resources and training on developing GBA+ analyses, but more importantly, the availability of disaggregated data. Without disaggregated data, it is impossible to understand how diverse groups experience inequality.

All three of the organizations we audited identified this issue as a significant challenge. The Privy Council Office, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, and Women and Gender Equality Canada need to better collaborate and ensure that all departments and agencies fully integrate GBA+ in a way that produces real results for all Canadians.

We would be pleased to answer any questions that the committee may have. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hayes. I'm sure we'll have questions for you in a few minutes.

We'll turn now to the Department for Women and Gender Equality.

Deputy Minister McRae, you have the floor for five minutes, please.

[Frances McRae, Deputy Minister, Department for Women and Gender Equality]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that I am here on the traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people. It's where I live and work.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for your invitation to discuss our work that we have under way in response to the Auditor General's 2022 report on the implementation of gender-based analysis plus.

Joining me today from Women and Gender Equality Canada is my colleague Leila Boussaid, Director General, Research, Data and Intersectionality Branch.

I would like to thank the Auditor General and her Office for their work on GBA+. Canada is one of the few countries that have benefited from regular audits on its approach to gender equality mainstreaming.

Created as a full department in 2018, WAGE's role in GBA+ is twofold. We act as a convenor, a knowledge broker and a capacity builder as it relates to women's equality and equality for gender-diverse people; to the application of GBA+ and its evolution to intersectional approaches that take into account the different experiences and interactions that diverse groups of men, women, and gender-diverse people have with systems, structures and institutions.

As our colleagues from the Office of the Auditor General have noted, interest and capacity for GBA+ have grown steadily with time. Canada is becoming more diverse, as we know, which means that we must continue to evolve our approaches to make sure that we remain relevant to the people we serve. For example, Statistics Canada estimates, based on the 2021 census, that approximately 25% of Canadians are racialized and that, 18 years from now, it will be around 40%. That's about two in five Canadians. Based on the 2017 Canadian survey on disability, approximately one in five people in Canada aged 15 years and over, 24% of women and 20% of men, report having a disability.

Based on our responsibility to evolve to meet the needs of Canada and Canadians, and feedback received from the OAG audits, as well as the March 2022 Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology report on the role of GBA+ in the policy process, WAGE has been implementing recommendations to ensure that the impacts of an enhanced GBA+ analysis continue to be felt.

WAGE has taken action to promote a greater understanding of intersectionality by clarifying methodology, updating training and developing a new suite of tools for federal public servants. In addition, we've leveraged GBA+ awareness week, an annual event, to promote greater understanding of intersectionality. The 2023 iteration was selected to reinforce GBA+'s intersectional design. As part of these events, two panels on intersectional approaches were held with deputy ministers leading, and they drew over 2,000 participants.

We continue to support opportunities for collaboration and peer-to-peer learning, enabling GBA+ practitioners to share best practices, and become leaders within their communities of practice and continue to build competency across the federal government, including working with others inside and outside government on ensuring we are building awareness of culturally relevant analysis, using tools that communities with lived experience have developed.

We’ve also built more robust governance structures, including key colleagues at the deputy minister level whose organizational mandates include cross-government leadership in areas such as anti-racism, disability inclusion, and relations with Indigenous peoples, to facilitate strategic coordination.

We're also in the process of revising the cross-government GBA+ implementation survey to address some methodological limitations—including some raised by the Office of the Auditor General, the Senate committee and other experts—because we want to use it to improve our monitoring and public reporting on the application and impacts of GBA+.

We are learning from other countries, as well, as they evolve their approaches. Many other countries at earlier stages of thinking are also learning from Canada.

We’re moving in the right direction, and we are committed to continuing this work because it is about better serving Canadians today, and tomorrow.

Merci.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Next, from the Privy Council Office, we have Ms. Levesque.

You have the floor for up to five minutes.

[Kaili Levesque, Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Operations, Privy Council Office]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to provide you with an update on the steps we have taken in response to the Auditor General's follow-up report on GBA+. I'm joined by my colleague Jennifer Miller, who is the assistant secretary to the cabinet, social development policy.

The Privy Council Office plays a supporting role to the Department of Women and Gender Equality, which leads on the strategic direction of GBA+, as Ms. McRae has just explained.

The main roles of the Privy Council Office are to provide public service support to the Prime Minister, to ministers within the Prime Minister’s portfolio, and to the cabinet to facilitate the smooth and effective operation of the government of Canada.

In the context of supporting cabinet, we provide advice to departments and agencies on policy proposals that their ministers recommend to cabinet.

In exercising our main roles, we are working to enhance the application of GBA+ to help produce better outcomes for Canadians.

The effort to strengthen the application of GBA+ has been undertaken in line with the recommendations in the 2022 report on the matter by the Office of the Auditor General. Our enhancement efforts are summarized in the joint WAGE, PCO and Treasury Board Secretariat management response action plan, MRAP.

For example, to enact the report’s recommendations, PCO developed better tools and systems to document the challenge function. The “challenge function” refers to the role PCO plays in advising and refining products for cabinet, including memoranda to cabinet, MCs. As described in the MRAP, PCO developed a new process for supporting the application of GBA+ in those MCs. The new process encourages the early integration of GBA+ into policy development, helping to counter long-standing concerns that GBA+ is applied too late in the policy process to be impactful.

PCO also developed new tools to guide the integration of GBA+ considerations and disaggregated data into cabinet memoranda. These tools have been finalized in line with set timelines and will be updated regularly to ensure continuous improvement.

Further, to advance the quality and use of disaggregated data in GBA+, PCO continues to co-chair with Statistics Canada a government-wide assistant deputy minister-level advisory committee on disaggregated data. This committee’s role is to strengthen and support the use of disaggregated data across whole-of-government.

In addition, we are leveraging the central position of PCO to encourage the adoption of GBA+ frameworks by all federal departments.

PCO is leading by example. We will be publishing our own GBA+ framework later this month.

One of the key observations made by the Office of the Auditor General concerned the lack of formal coordination among WAGE, TBS and PCO. I am very pleased to report that significant progress has been made towards greater formalization of our existing collaboration and coordination roles on GBA+ among the three organizations. We've also developed a regularized approach to sharing information concerning the implementation of GBA+ in MCs with WAGE. We participate regularly in WAGE-led governance bodies in support of that GBA+ implementation and enhancement. In partnership with TBS and WAGE, we will continue to strengthen our information-sharing practices and systems.

Despite considerable progress, we recognize that further work remains. We are committed to ensuring the rigorous application of gender-based analysis plus in support of sound decision-making.

This concludes my presentation. I welcome the opportunity to answer any questions the committee may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Mr. Flack from the Treasury Board Secretariat, you have the floor for five minutes, please.

[Graham Flack, Secretary of the Treasury Board of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank Mr. Hayes and his team for their work.

We agree with the Auditor General's recommendations, of course, and we are implementing them through a number of key measures, which I will discuss.

Earlier this fall, we shared our observations with WAGE, along with the Privy Council Office, on progress in integrating GBA+ into decision-making processes and areas for improvement. Although there had been exchanges between departments for a long time, that process made those exchanges more official, particularly by putting them in writing.

We indicated that more and more Treasury Board submissions are backing up their proposals with disaggregated data, but some still do not have a plan to track or mitigate the impact of GBA+. This information sharing will become an annual practice and will help identify systemic barriers to the achievement or quality of GBA+.

Disaggregated data is key to planning and understanding the impact of GBA+. This is why TBS continues to strengthen the tools and guidance to encourage the use of disaggregated data where feasible and appropriate.

For example, this past July, we published a privacy information notice to support departments as they plan their data collection for program monitoring, evaluation and reporting. This helps to address concerns that another officer of Parliament, the Privacy Commissioner, raises around the appropriate protection of privacy and information.

TBS will also continue to review and refine the guidance for departmental results reports to ensure that meaningful information is made available to decision-makers and the public.

In addition, TBS publishes best practices on GBA+ program impacts based on a review of the supplementary information tables in the departmental results report. We did this in 2021 and 2022, and next month we intend to publish an update that's significantly more comprehensive in terms of best practices. As part of this update, we will also be providing a new analysis on government-wide program impacts on gender and diversity, and we'll be building on this in further updates.

This will provide a baseline for other departments in terms of their reporting requirements as outlined in the Canadian Gender Budgeting Act, as well as hold the government accountable for the impacts of its programs.

The entire public service must ensure that GBA+ is an important consideration at all stages of the legislative, policy, and program process, not just an add-on.

Significant progress has been made through the use of GBA+. However, the capacity building required for data collection and analytical work is still ongoing and will take time.

I'd be pleased to answer any questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you all very much.

We'll begin our first round with Ms. Vecchio.

You have the floor for six minutes, please.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thanks so much for having me here today and bringing forward this report. I think it's very important that we look at it to see what has happened over the last eight years.

I would like to reflect on this because I've been part of the status of women committee, and I've had the chance to work with many of you. I know that we are trying to do good work at the status of women committee when we talk about GBA+.

In 2016 there was a requirement to “include gender-based analysis plus in Memoranda to Cabinet and Treasury Board submissions.”

In 2018, status of women became a full department. In 2019, cabinet ministers were mandated “to consider gender-based analysis plus”. It seems like we are telling people to do things, but we are finding that long-standing challenges that we previously identified continue to hinder the full implementation. Despite our previous work and recommendations, it's still unclear whether actions are achieving better gender equality, diversity and inclusion outcomes.

Carey, I want to ask you specifically about this because you've have a chance to go through all of this. Where did you find some of the greatest holes? Were they in departments?

[Carey Agnew, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

There were areas or main themes that we found, and we reported on these.

One we talked about was capacity building, along with training and tools. Despite the work undertaken, there were still gaps, and more work needed to be done.

We've heard a lot today about the availability of disaggregated data, its collection and its use. We found that there was much more work to be done on that front.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you so much.

Perhaps I can go over to Frances because we talk about disaggregated data all the time. A lot of the policies we're implementing, whether you're living in rural Alberta.... We had a great conversation about that just yesterday, on carbon tax and the fact that policies do impact different people in different parts of the country, and recognizing those regional differences is really important.

Frances, can you share with me some of the challenges when you enter those departments to say, “We have great tools, so now start using them”?

[Frances McRae]

I'll just go back to the two points that Carey raised. One was on capacity.

We find that we are building quite strong capacity throughout the system. Our finding, though, is that it can't be just a small group of experts. I think, in the past, there was a view that if you had a few GBA experts in your organization, you could manage. I think, with the pace of government and business, there's been a strong recognition that we really need to have everyone who is doing policy and program work understand this, particularly, as I mentioned, given the changing nature of Canada.

With intersectionality, on the capacity piece, it's numbers, but I think it's really competency. It's that intersectional competency, which is another thing the Auditor General raised in her comments; we were not focusing enough on intersectionality.

On disaggregated data, I would commend to you Statistics Canada's work on this. Since the time of the audit, they have done tremendous work, and they have a public annual report that they published last year on disaggregated data.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Absolutely, and I know disaggregated data is really important, but I'm looking at it and, seeing that we just finished Bill C-22, the disability act, I'm wondering how there have been zero reviews. It says, “The Gender Results Framework lacked disaggregated data to monitor progress in advancing gender equality”.

We've just passed a huge bill, yet there has been no framework for disability. I just sit there and think, “what a disconnect”. These are things that are extremely important for those who are most vulnerable.

Switching over to the Privy Council, I think it's really important when we're looking at legislation and policies that there is a GBA put on this, specifically, when I'm looking at women's safety, and those are vulnerable populations.

Can you share me what is being done to ensure, when you're looking at pieces of legislation, especially in the public safety realm, that the GBA lens is being applied?

[Kaili Levesque]

I could not agree with you more. That's exactly what our team does here at PCO, both in social development policy and in legislation and House planning. We have a GBA+ focal point here, but we also start early with the department. If a mandate letter commitment comes forward or a bill is moving through, we look at how we can immediately get involved, from day one, with our GBA+ focal point, and work with WAGE and with others to inform that from the get-go.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

That's fantastic.

As we're looking at this, as a person who works on women and gender equality, we are seeing extraordinary violence in our communities. Whether it's intimate partner violence or domestic violence—we're looking at that—or whether it's random acts of violence that are happening to vulnerable populations, we're continuing to see those escalate.

Can you share with me whether GBA+ has been done on important pieces of legislation, such as Bill C-75, which was in the 42nd Parliament, or on something like our bail reform? Has a GBA lens actually been put on those?

[Kaili Levesque]

I would have to confirm on specific pieces of legislation, but I can tell you for certain that when it comes forward, from when we do that analysis here, we absolutely.... Otherwise, it will be sent back to the department if it's without a GBA+. It's a mandatory element.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I'm sorry, but we're seeing pieces of legislation that are passing and that are making women unsafe. How are those passing through when we know, at the end of the day, it is actually having a negative impact? How is the GBA+ failing safety for women?

[Kaili Levesque]

It's an excellent question, and I'm not trying to be evasive because it depends on the origin of the bills as well, where they're developed and how the process works itself through. Truly, when we see proposals from departments, if they are not adequate in that space.... Frances and I worked together, also, on gender-based violence in addition to GBA+. It is one of our proposals, the Mass Casualty Commission response, and that work is under way. That is absolutely the thrust that's being brought. Intersectionality is key to that, because it's, as you say, not only the question of violence in and of itself but also the question of collocation, rurality, access to resources, local policing, etc. Those all feed into that part and parcel.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Yip, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you for coming. It's so nice to see so many witnesses for this important report.

I'll begin with Ms. McRae.

For the benefit of Canadians watching this, can you explain what GBA+ is and why it's important?

[Frances McRae]

I'd be pleased to explain GBA+.

Gender-based analysis plus is an important tool for us to be advancing equality in Canada. Some of you will be aware that we started with the term GBA, and the plus was added over the years. That was partly because what we're actually asking people to do on gender-based analysis is think about a whole range of issues; it's not only gender.

The concept has evolved quite a bit over the years to encompass an assessment of the various factors that we need to consider in order to design policies, programs and legislation—any initiatives—that reflect the lived experiences and the real lives of Canadians.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Flack, who is responsible for monitoring and reporting GBA+ implementation in a department's operations?

[Graham Flack]

Departments are ultimately responsible for that, but we provide them with guidance on how to do that, and we have updated the guidance over time in response to what we found in terms of weaknesses. Ultimately, it's departments that will do the reporting, though it's within a frame that we provide to them.