Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure Committee on April 14th, 2016

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

My instinct is to most specifically talk with the departments that have been audited, but also the reason that I put Immigration on the list was that the minister referenced that ministry as one that really has had success. I'd like to be able to do a bit of a comparison. That was my rationale. Beyond that, if we had a little bit of academic advice, that would be helpful to me. I don't know the names the analyst proposed, so I'm not in a position to analyze those.

But I must say, I was thinking of this personally as being quite targeted on the inside of government with a bit of outside academic experience. I wasn't imagining an NGO lens through this, unless someone can say that this is someone who has a very good handle on the public policy side of things.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Would you be willing to go through the list that we have of witnesses and say yea or nay for each one, whether we want to have them? Then from there we'll have an idea of how many we have and whether they'll fit into the six meetings.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

To Sheila's point, I wonder if we should look at how much time we want to spend on diversity practices in business, for example.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's what I'm suggesting, to go through the list methodically and just say, okay, meeting one we have Status of Women, and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. If everybody agrees that we want those people, we'll leave it, and then go to the next one. We'll just go down the list until we come to the end.

The analyst would like to speak.

[Laura Munn-Rivard]

I would just point out, Ms. Malcolmson, you make a very good point with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. The big difference, though, is that they are legislated to provide a gender-based analysis report back to Parliament, whereas none of the other departments or agencies has legislation guiding them in that way. They can definitely provide an interesting perspective, but it wouldn't be as comparable.

I did include the Auditor General, again, even though we heard from them already, because they had said to us that they usually appeared with the groups they were auditing. It would be more of a collaborative presentation. I included them together, but again that can be changed.

Then, for the academics and experts, those were taken from past status of women committee meetings. The status of women committee studied gender-based analysis and gender-responsive budgeting, probably about five years ago now. These were some of the witnesses who appeared during that study. That's how their names ended up on this list.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Okay.

For meeting two, with the Auditor General, we'll have Employment and Social Development; Indigenous and Northern Affairs; Innovation, Science and Economic Development; and Natural Resources. I think these were the ones that implemented something, or were they the ones that were audited?

[The Clerk]

These were the ones that were audited.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Is everybody okay to bring those in?

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Are each one of these panels one hour in length, or two hours?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We would have the whole two-hour meeting. We'd have a whole bunch of these people here.

Meeting three is central agencies: Privy Council, Treasury Board of Canada, Department of Finance. I think we agreed that unless Ms. Harder can come up with some great reason that we want the Privy Council twice....

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Do we need a full meeting with all three of them? Could we do that in the one hour? I don't know what you and Sheila think about that.

Do we need two hours with those three agencies?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I think we could do an hour. What do you think, Ms. Ludwig?

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Let me just catch up with you here. This is “C. Meeting 3”. Is that right?

You're asking whether all of these should be at one...?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're saying we'll go with Privy Council Office, Treasury Board of Canada, and Department of Finance. We'll remove the assistant secretary to the cabinet and counsel to the Privy Council, because it's like a duplication. Can we do those three in one hour?

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

These are all agencies that responded to the Auditor General's report. That's the rationale for their being here.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

She put in two of them.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I'm wondering about why Finance is there.

The analyst knows.

[Laura Munn-Rivard]

When we got the AG's report, we had responses from three agencies.

The central agencies are the major operators of government. They play a major role, so I included the Department of Finance because, particularly in terms of budget matters, they are one of the key players. Gender-responsive budgeting is a part of gender-based analysis. I thought they could speak to that.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Can we put them into two different panels, then? They do have different roles. The Privy Council and Treasury Board both were respondents to the AG's report, but the Department of Finance was not.

Can we call one of them panel one and one of them panel two?

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Would we need a full hour with each one of those?

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I think you could do Privy Council and Treasury Board as one panel, and then Finance as the second panel. They have slightly different roles, and that's particularly why I'm interested in talking to the agencies in an organized way. We already have their written recommendations and responses to the AG's report on GBA. That was my rationale for bundling Privy Council and Treasury Board together.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Let's separate them for now and put them both down for an hour. Then we'll keep going down the list and see where we go to.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Would it make sense to take one of the other agencies and pair them with Finance to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Potentially. If you look at meeting four, you have Public—

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

I'm sorry, Madam Chair, can I bounce back?

I'm not sure that we resolved meeting number two. Was there agreement that we can get all four of those ministries into one meeting? That's what I thought we agreed.