Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a pleasure for me to be here this afternoon as a representative of the Treasury Board portfolio.
When I last spoke to this committee in March of 2005, I provided an overview of the significant work we do in support of gender equality. Today I would like to provide you with a bit of a progress report and tell you how we are integrating gender equality analysis and gender issues into our ongoing work.
The Public Service Human Resources Management Agency has a lead role for implementing the government human resources modernization and renewal agenda.
The Agency plays a leadership role in a variety of ways. One of its critical tasks, under the Employment Equity Act, is to ensure that Canada's Public Service is both representative and inclusive. Thus, women's issues are important to us not only because the Act requires that we pay attention to them, but also because they are a key component of our institutional values.
Two of those values, equality and equity, are widely integrated across the Public Service and ensure optimal use of the talents and skills of Canadians, as well as the elimination of barriers to women's full participation in the Public Service of Canada and federal work places.
As part of the Treasury Board portfolio, we work in close collaboration with the Treasury Board Secretariat to strengthen and renew the policy framework of the government. Consequently, our HR policy analysts have the same opportunity to follow the courses on gender-based analysis.
In support of this work and as a reflection of our lead responsibility for HR management in the public service, we are undertaking an exhaustive consultative process with key stakeholders, including unions, to modernize our HR policies. The consultation process helps to ensure that a diversity of perspectives and concerns, including gender equality, are brought to bear on the development of new and revised policies.
In the same vein, the development of new classification standards for the public service of Canada, as well as analysis and gender-related issues are key concerns for us. We want to ensure that the work carried out by both men and women is valued equally. Our efforts to modernize the classification system stem directly from that value.
As we seek to modernize the Public Service of Canada, and as we strive to sustain the delivery of excellent services to Canadians, we are also strengthening our accountability frameworks and incorporating gender analysis. Our efforts are coordinated with those of the Treasury Board Secretariat, under the management accountability framework, which has specific components addressing human resource management as well as values and ethics.
We have developed the people component of the management accountability framework, which identifies seven strategic outcomes. Each outcome has multiple indicators that enable us to assess, monitor, and take into account the overall health of human resource management in the public service.
We are now in the process of collecting and analyzing departmental information from that exercise, and we will be using it to assist departments in improving, among other things, their performance with respect to employment equity and achievement of equity-based goals. We will do this by providing advice, sharing information and best practices, and having workshops and information sessions.
Additionally, we have strengthened our research capacity to ensure that we can improve not only human resource management practices but also human resource planning in the public service, by facilitating the identification of current and future needs for human resource management. Such analysis will continue to include a significant gender dimension as we seek to capitalize on higher female participation rates in our labour force and as we respond to challenges in the areas of recruitment, retention, demands for alternative working arrangements, learning, and career progression of our employees, including persons in all the employment equity groups.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
