For many years now, Status of Women Canada, along with Statistics Canada, has come out with a report called “Women in Canada”. It provides a lot of data in terms of different resources, but it never really pointed to a set of indicators.
It's a product that exists in many countries. For example, in Sweden they have a whole product that gives you a set of indicators. Indicators are also used internationally. The UNDP, for example, uses indicators in terms of education and well-being and those kinds of thing. Canada never really had its own set of indicators from a gender perspective.
So the idea was what we could do to start to have this set of indicators. Could we play a role in creating that? The group is made up of people from key departments that have major data collection exercises, so you can think of HRSDC, Health Canada, and CIC. I don't have all of the people there, but these are the people right now who are working with Status of Women Canada to bring forward the idea of what these indicators would look like.
I am not a statistician so I cannot give you expert advice on that. My understanding is that it's not an easy thing to create, but at least you start from what you have. We are collecting a series of data that we know exists already in government. From that, how can we build these indicators? And from that, are there other sources of information we need to get?
My understanding is that once this happens, there will be an opportunity for some consultation. I believe the offer was made that the standing committee could look at the indicators at one point and engage in a discussion on that. That's quite feasible. I believe a letter had been sent to do just that.
For those of you who may remember, there were some consultations across Canada with groups in 2005, and the indicators project was something the groups were asking for as well, in terms of understanding the progress being made in Canada.
We have difficulty really showing the progress being made in Canada, so it's a bit difficult to select priorities and to then work on those priorities, because it should be a feedback cycle that we do. We have difficulty doing that right now without the indicators.