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.