Madam Chair, with your approval, rather than taking the time of the committee to read my entire statement, which has been submitted to the committee, perhaps it might be more beneficial if I were to highlight the key points of my statement for a few minutes.
In Justice Canada, we have a fully integrated model of gender-based analysis. We think this model works well, mainly for a couple of reasons. First, it's built upon the premise that GBA must be everybody's concern, that you cannot build sound analysis unless everyone is sensitized to gender and diversity issues across the department and the requirement to be sensitive is owned by everybody, not just a few. This way, we think that GBA becomes a routine and substantive consideration in all the work we do.
Second, the fully integrated model works because of the extensive building blocks we put in place before we moved to an integrated model. This included 15 years spent developing our expertise and during which time we instituted a special gender and diversity unit, as well as delivered extensive training to our employees. Without these extensive building blocks in the formative years, our fully integrated model would have been almost impossible to implement. We needed this ground work to be done—to evolve as an organization in our sensitivity, in other words—in order for the fully integrated model to function successfully.
My statement contains a few examples of how our integrated GBA justice policy works in practice. I'll highlight two of them.
One example concerns former Bill C-2, on the protection of children and other vulnerable persons. That legislation, you'll recall, contained many important measures, but one of the areas where GBA was front and centre was on the changes to facilitate the receipt of testimony by vulnerable victim witnesses in specific types of offences like spousal abuse, like sexual assault, where women are the primary victims. GBA played an integral role in the development of our better policy in those areas.
Another example concerns the work of the Policy Centre for Victim Issues, which is part of our policy division in the department and which provides the victim lens for all criminal law reform and criminal justice policy development. Again, GBA is an integral part of the work done by this group, where the needs of women as victims are well documented.
Finally, to have a successful, integrated GBA model, one must have employees who are sensitized to these issues. Training helps, and we've done a lot of this over the years, but changing demographics have played a very key role in supporting our goals on GBA.
First, we are witnessing a new generation that views the world globally and conducts integrated comprehensive analysis as a matter of course and with much practicality. Just as importantly, the roles and representation of women in the Department have changed considerably. There are more women than men in the Department and there are now more women lawyers and women executives than there are men lawyers or men executives. Even at the Governing Council table—our most senior executive body chaired by the Deputy Minister—women now occupy one half of all positions. This shift in demographics has facilitated the success of the integrated GBA model.
Of course, there's always room for improvement. We have new things to learn. We continue to evaluate ourselves, we assess whether we have it right, but we feel we're well positioned to face any challenges.
Thank you for your time and the opportunity to appear before you today. I'd be pleased to answer any questions.