Status of Women Committee on Feb. 26th, 2008

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

We can definitely organize that. Michèle is our top dog on that. Especially when we go into training, we do make sure we are responding to your needs; it's not something we take off the shelf and give to you. If you are looking at the budget, for example, we can work with you to make sure you can work through a budgetary item to see how this works on a GBA. We can definitely do it, any time.

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

That would be wonderful.

Do I still have some time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have one minute.

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

You kindly provided the Treasury Board's new guidelines for submissions. Are you aware of any submissions being rejected because they didn't include adequate gender-based analysis?

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

That's a question you'll have to ask Treasury Board.

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

Oh, okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You still have time.

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

Okay.

In the 1995 plan for gender equality, the federal government was committed to identifying research gaps and anticipating the emerging issues as they may affect gender equality as a basis for development of legislation and policy options. Is the government still committed to this, and how is it demonstrating this commitment, if it is indeed committed to that process?

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

I can't speak for the government. I can only say that we have a wealth of information that we have had over the years. We also are endeavouring, because it is another piece of the mainstreaming puzzle, to make sure the research institutes and research entities inside and outside government are also integrating GBA. That's probably the bigger challenge, and that is an area we are trying to work with. If you're looking at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, for example, or the NSERC, these are entities that do research, and the challenge is to make sure that when they undertake their research they are doing it from a gender-based analysis perspective. That's really where we have been working for a couple years now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

There were two questions asked, one from Madame Deschamps and one from Ms. Mathyssen. Does Status of Women Canada have a manual for training on gender-based analysis? What do you give the department? If we have an idea of what you give the department, perhaps the questions we are asking may be more focused.

I think Madame Deschamps asked the question on the indicator project. Is this a consolidation of indicators that you have seen from the UN, or where did you pick up those indicators? I don't think we got a concrete answer as to where these indicators are coming from. What dollars are allocated to doing that research? You do need to do research to ensure that you've got the right mix of indicators. At the moment, do you know what dollars are allocated to those indicators?

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

In terms of the indicators, what I'd like to suggest is that you actually have a succinct briefing on that project by the researcher.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Who's the researcher?

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud]

The researcher is a member of Status of Women Canada. She has the lead. She leads the interdepartmental committee. I would like to have her give you a sense of what you're looking for, because it's a very technical area.

You will have to ask our coordinator the resource question.

As for the manual, we have a suite of tools we use when we work with the departments to give them training. Indeed, we have a manual now. I might have to break my rule here. The manual is only given at the training and once people are trained. We do not provide the manual before, because people will then say they've been trained. We need to have them in a classroom context to really see them understand what we are conveying in terms of notions of gender-based analysis.

We do not do checklists. There are governments and even provinces that feel that if they're given checklists, everything's done. That was not the approach we took. We took the approach that we are empowering and aiding analysts to do a better job at what they do. The training is for basically adapting the entire process of policy development and program delivery and program development.

It is modular in the sense that it is in the area the client wants. For example, you would be a client. What area does the client want? I think Michèle mentioned last time that if you're dealing with communications people, they're not really interested in knowing the research side of things. We can appeal to those needs. So we have that.

We have little CDs that are self-tutorials. We have a performance measurement template so that people understand how to evaluate things at the end. So there's a whole suite of tools we use with the departments that we could use with the parliamentary committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Okay. So you would be able to take us through the process if we asked you to come back. Thank you.

We now go to Mr. Pearson for five minutes.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks for coming in.

This is in relation to Ms. Mathyssen's comment that she was surprised to learn that maybe some of the things from other countries have shown that productivity could be hurt by some of these things. Some of us work a fair bit in Africa and also in Latin America. And it's true that there have been mixed results from all of that. We've been monitoring it for the last five years. Part of it has been because of a basic prejudice against women being involved in things like micro-enterprises and other things, and people will not buy their products. I think it's something that might lead to those kinds of indications. But they're not necessarily truly economic; they're based on culture. I think that's important to remember.

The Department of Finance has many different areas that are all independent of one another. There are things like tax policy, interprovincial transfers, and so on and so forth. Why was it that the basis of tax policy was chosen as the thing that would have a GBA done? Why was it not the others as well?

[Michèle Bougie]

There are a variety of ways of working with the departments. One of the golden rules we've learned over time is to take the department where it's at. If the department says this is the area we're going to focus on, then that's the area we focus on with them. That's part of the support role. We don't dictate. We work with them where they're starting. Then you work your way through, sometimes past that point and sometimes not.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

That sort of answers my second question. Who makes that decision? It's not you; it's the department.

[Michèle Bougie]

It's the department, yes. Finance could explain to you why they chose to start with the tax policy side.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Is that study on tax policy done? Is the GBA completed?

[Michèle Bougie]

They're not doing a study per se. They're applying GBA to the tax policies where they're able to. They're not any different from other departments that are constrained by the availability or lack of data. Often, no matter which department you talk to, at a certain point you're going to hit the data issue--the big D.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Because of that complexity, is it your view, then, that a GBA could eventually be done for all the different branches of the Department of Finance?

[Michèle Bougie]

The Department of Finance already made that decision, because they opened up training to the entire department as of January. So it's already being rolled out to other areas of Finance.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

You were very good at answering my next question. I was going to ask which areas of activity were trained, but you're saying that it's all areas of Finance Canada. Is that correct?

[Michèle Bougie]

Yes. They opened it up to everybody. They can talk to you about this, but in their view that constitutes the beginning of a mainstreaming process, in the sense that they are going to make their various branches responsible for the implementation of GBA within that branch mandate.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you. I'm done, Madam Chair.

I want to thank you for the stuff from the UN, and the Commonwealth as well. That's what I had asked for, and I appreciate you sending that along.