Status of Women Committee on Feb. 14th, 2008

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you.

You also referred to the trainers. I think you said you had trained so many francophone and so many anglophone people who were going to be doing the training in the different departments.

Do they go to the three agencies, or are they available to all the departments?

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

They're available to all the departments. We've had them for quite a few years now. We did a train the trainer program about three or four years ago. Those trainers have been available to all departments, and they are actually available even to the provinces and territories. We have had NGOs come asking for our trainers. That case was interesting, because they wanted to be trained to be able to converse with public servants in the face of the bureaucratese that Michèle talks about. They have been training inside the central agencies as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

We now go to Ms. Mathyssen for seven minutes.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And thank you so much for being here. I think slowly but surely the mystery is unravelling, and the web is becoming clearer.

I have some quick questions. It seems that Status of Women Canada has a great deal to do in terms of monitoring the departments. From what you described, it sounds like an incredible body of work that you do.

Do you have enough people to do this? How many people at SWC are available to do this monitoring? How effective do you feel you are with the staff you have?

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

We now actually have more staff than we used to have to do this, because of the merger of the three sections—I think I was starting to say that a while ago. The directorate now has 15 people, and I think about 10 of us do this kind of work now. We used to do just capacity building, and now, because we are integrating departments, issues, and the capacity building, we've gained people to help us do that.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

You talk about the fact, in regard to economic security, that we need a lot more information. As you know, this committee looked at the economic security of women—older women, younger women. You talk about their personal security, the need for housing, unpaid work, social and political interaction.

Madame Demers mentioned employment insurance, but did you look at child care as well and at the impact the lack of child care has? What kinds of things are you telling the Department of Finance about these very important things? Gender budgeting isn't—none of this is—going anywhere if it doesn't really create security for women.

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

The indicators project that I was referring to has not started yet, so we have not collected this data yet. We are about to start doing so. Child care is under the unpaid work theme.

The concept or notion of child care is also being looked at through our federal-provincial-territorial forum of ministers responsible for the status of women. They are looking more at the caregiving issue, but it's caregiving from children to elderly parents. They are looking at that, and we are participating in that in our position.

The issue is that until we have good information and some options we can look at from that group, there is really not much work being done. HRSDC have indicated that they want to work with us from the GBA perspective on the caregiving work they're doing, so there are some linkages being done that way.

There's an openness from departments—we've talked a bit about the resistance—to work when it comes from a GBA perspective, because they see it as a tool and a methodology, and it has rigour. They can provide good evidence-based information when they are developing policies. We seem to be able to go through the door that way with them.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

It sounds as though we have a long way to go in terms of policy when it comes to caregiving and housing, if that information hasn't been gathered. We have a lot of work to do in regard to the policies government develops. I appreciate that. I'll certainly keep that in mind.

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

I should say that the work on the indicators is also building on data that's already been collected. A lot of data is being collected on housing. A lot of data is being collected on caregiving. It's putting all those pieces together, which is, as you may know, not an easy task inside of a bureaucracy. We're trying to pull together all of these banks of data people are collecting.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

How am I doing, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have two minutes left.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I'm quite curious. I know you're the watcher, and you're doing the watching in terms of the department. When Status of Women Canada was reorganized or restructured recently, and there were layoffs and cuts to programs, was there a GBA done for the watcher by the watcher? Did you look at what impact the changes would have?

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

It would not have been something we, at the GBA level, would have been involved in or asked to do.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

That's odd, inasmuch as those changes would have a profound impact on women and equality. Was there never any thought of perhaps looking at the impact of those changes?

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

I couldn't answer you in a direct way because I wasn't part of that process. It's not something I can answer very clearly. Having been a member of the staff, I know it was not necessarily worked that way or done that way.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I understand, but I think it would have been interesting to ask, before we did this, what the impact would be.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

To answer Ms. Davidson, you said there is a definition, and it is used consistently throughout. Could you provide us with the definition? We are confused as to what the definition is as well.

We now go to the second round.

Ms. Minna, go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for coming today.

You said earlier, Ms. Dwyer-Renaud, that there are some areas of research and some challenges with respect to that. You mentioned that we need more information and research on economic security.

Does every department do its own research in terms of desegregated data, or does the Status of Women do some of it? Where does it come together? It's a real frustration.

After the last budget, when we met with Finance, they said that the segregated data was actually not available, but when we spoke to consultants who came before us, they said of course it is and from various academics. I just want to get at the core.

I have a couple more questions, but could you answer that one first?

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

That's what the gender equality indicators project is trying to get at. There is a myriad of data collection going on everywhere in the government. I can't speak for the Department of Finance, but my understanding is that they will collect it where they can. I would say that is probably the situation for many departments--that they will do it where they can. We're trying to burst that bubble and understand that better ourselves through the gender equality indicators project.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Is Status of Women pulling the strings together? I don't mean pulling strings to make people do...but knowing what everybody is doing. Someone has to be doing oversight, otherwise everybody is off in their own little corner. If Status of Women Canada is doing the oversight, what are the accountability measures and the power it has? At the end of the day, what are the consequences if stuff isn't being done or it's not coming together? Do you have the power to actually do something, or does that power reside with Treasury Board? If Treasury Board has it and you don't, then we have a different issue to deal with. I just need to understand. My sense is that we don't have a core somewhere.

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

The core for the programmic data, I would say, is at Treasury Board. The Treasury Board, under that management of resources and results structure, requires data collection and requires data to be given to the different departments. They can probably give you quite a good briefing on that system. That is what we call programmic information, which is a fairly important term of information because it's on any program that exists in the federal government.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

It's not broader in terms of--

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

It's not broader exactly. It's not the societal-type of.... That's what that gender equality indicator project is trying to do. It's trying to combine both the programmic information and much more of that societal information that we're trying to pick up.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I know Finance gets in on the act as well. I know that at Finance there are champions, as you mentioned earlier. A champion could be one individual, but depending on which champion has--I know what it's like in structures, and all structures have their politics, and some champions are more powerful than others, depending on their agenda.

What I'm trying to get at is this. Is there at Finance, or Treasury Board and some of these other places, an actual unit, not just an individual champion, where expertise resides--if one person leaves, there's still expertise behind--with some real mandate? Maybe this is not a fair question to ask you, so I won't go there. Do we need that? I don't get the sense that.... What's driving it to get at the information. The reason I'm saying that is, for instance, some of the items that were in the previous budgets were in fact proper gender-based analysis that had been done. With things like tax credits, we wouldn't continue down that road because they don't favour women at all in terms of a way of doing social policy. I think my colleague mentioned child care and other things. There is a problem, obviously.

I'm trying to get at how Finance and Treasury Board get at those things with you.

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

I think that's the $64 million question, because there's an ongoing debate about this. That project I was mentioning about the analysis that's being done between the Canadian experience and the European experience is on this question of whether, let's call them, gender focal points--it's an expression we use--are useful inside of departments or not.