As I mentioned earlier, it's clear that a number of countries around the world have committed to gender equality. Canada is one of those countries. We are lucky in that equality is enshrined in our Constitution, we have the Canadian Human Rights Act, and we have other legislation that helps us in that regard. What we've realized, though, over the last number of years is that even though we have those commitments, and even though progress is being made, there is not enough accountability built into the government. I'm talking about the federal government because this is what I do, but I would say that provinces would say the same thing about the work they do.
We have benefited, on the question of accountability, from consultations we held in the late summer and fall of 2005. We consulted almost 3,000 people in six regional consultations, one national consultation, and an electronic consultation where not only women's groups and equality-seeking organizations but also men and women, interested Canadians, gave us their views. Accountability was one of the issues they mentioned.
The work of the standing committee was key in flagging to us that there is a need for more accountability. When Canada reported to the United Nations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the question of accountability and the lack thereof within the federal system was highlighted, as was the need to have not only more accountability within government as a whole with regard to gender equality but also with regard to accountability regarding gender-based analysis.
Also, after the report of the standing committee, we set up an expert panel to look at the questions of accountability and what kind of mechanisms could be or should be brought in, in order to enable the government to be more accountable. You'll see when you look at the conclusions and the recommendations of that committee, which were tabled in the House last fall, a number of suggestions. One interesting suggestion is that the Treasury Board and the government look at management accountability frameworks. We don't want to blanket the government and try to do it all at once, because that would never work, but we've started our work with central agencies, and they are going to use their challenge functions with departments and others as policies come to the fore, slowly but surely, in order to be able to build that accountability. We believe that with the help of Treasury Board in that challenge function, using gradually the management accountability frameworks of departments, sometimes with one policy, sometimes with all of their policies, we will build part of that accountability.
So that's one kind of mechanism. We are also developing, with Statistics Canada, a set of indicators and benchmarks that will help us measure progress, identify issues, identify gaps, and identify emerging issues and trends in order to be able to help confirm the focus at times, that the focus is right, or to at other times say, “You should perhaps shift to this.” For example, the previous member's question talked about older women who are leaving their jobs. This is a new phenomenon, and that's the type of thing that maybe in a year or two we should be looking at more.
Those are the kinds of things we want to do in order to build more accountability, and not just for Status of Women. Within Status of Women, given what I'm telling you about developing indicators, looking at more accountability for gender-based analysis, looking at using the management accountability frameworks, we are in the process of reorganizing and looking at ourselves to see if we are best equipped in order to be able to meet those challenges with the government.
In a nutshell, that's where we're going on accountability.