Status of Women Committee on Feb. 28th, 2008

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Committee members, we have before us today Dr. Claire Young, who is the senior associate dean and professor, Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia; and by video conference, we have Dr. David Good, professor at the School of Public Administration, University of Victoria.

Welcome to you both. I am sure you have had a lot of time to review the budget as well, and if you want to make any comments on that, or if the questions come around to it and you are in a position to answer, we would appreciate it.

Both of you have a presentation, I presume, of 10 minutes each? Shall we start with Dr. Good?

Would you be happy to go first, Dr. Good?

[Dr. David Good, Professor, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria]

Yes, I would be very pleased to go first.

Can you hear me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Yes, we can hear you. Thank you.

[Dr. David Good]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before the parliamentary committee on the status of women.

While I'm a professor here at the University of Victoria, I should note that I did spend 30 years in Ottawa working in the federal government. I was assistant deputy minister in a number of departments, including HRDC. I worked in the Privy Council Office. I was assistant deputy minister in Fisheries and Oceans, and I've also worked in the Treasury Board.

In those jobs I did have opportunities to be engaged quite intimately in the development of budgets, both as a big spender in HRDC and as a fiscal guardian in the Treasury Board. So I'm particularly happy to be here this morning, and I will limit my comments to under 10 minutes in order to provide time for questions.

I understand that the committee will be calling witnesses from the central agencies, particularly Treasury Board, Finance, and the Privy Council Office, in the future to examine this relationship between the question of gender-based analysis and budgeting, which I think is an important topic.

I think we should remind ourselves at the beginning about the fundamental nature of the budgetary process and how one can increasingly ensure that other inputs and other aspects affect the budgets.

Let's remember that the budget is fundamentally an analytical process as well as very much a political process. We have certainly seen that in the budget that came down a couple of days ago as well as in all budget processes.

Let's also remember that when we look at budgets we really want to look at both the expenditure side and the tax side. Both of those sides do have major implications and ramifications with respect to gender. They have differential impacts, depending upon what those measures might be, on the expenditure side and on the tax side--differential impacts in terms of impacts on men and women in various policies.

One way to think about the budgetary process and one way to think about gender-based analysis and how it fits into the process is that in any budget there are, of course, many actors. So one must think not just in terms of who the guardians are, primarily the Department of Finance and the Treasury Board, but also think in terms of the spending and advocate departments and how gender-based analysis and implications can focus on them.

As well, there are of course the priority setters, and they are having increased influence on the budget. These are basically those individuals who reside in and around the Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council Office who are impacting at the front end of the budget process and affecting very much what those priorities may well be. So that becomes very important.

Another point just to observe is that as much as we would like to think that budgeting is totally comprehensive and that each year in the budget governments look at and examine the whole base of the budgets, the reality is that budgeting is fundamentally incremental.

If we look at the budget from two days ago, we see that while the government is spending $244 billion, the amount of new allocations in one year is only about $1.5 billion, and that's really where all the focus and all the attention is directed. So in the fundamental question of looking at broader expenditure policies, or for that matter, all of public policy, the tendency is oftentimes just to look at the increment. We need to examine the fundamental base as well. That's a huge and very difficult challenge, and I can come to that again.

The last point--and I think it's good news for gender-based analysis--is the fundamental fact that budgets are attempting to become more performance oriented. We are trying to look at the performance of budgets, what results we get from them, and what the impacts are that become part of it.

I think this is where gender-based analysis can fit in, because we know that budgets can differentially impact on different genders, male or female, and on different groups within those gender classifications. As we begin to look at budgeting more in terms of performance, in terms of what outcomes and outputs and results we achieve from those, we can begin to look at the various policy analysis that's required.

My line on this whole area of gender-based analysis and linking it to budgeting is that we need to see gender-based analysis as a fundamental part of this policy analysis. Really, the whole idea is to do your homework in advance of actually announcing and in advance of actually deciding on what these new expenditure or tax initiatives might be, and to ensure that this is not done in isolation but that it becomes a fundamental part of what one looks at in terms of public policy.

Any public policy analyst in the government working on budgets or on policy issues will be looking at many factors that go into a final decision with respect to a budget initiative, be it on a question like income splitting, changes in EI, changes in health care policy, changes in various initiatives in transportation, or whatever. The impacts will be multiple, and there will be a great number of them. The impact it will have on various genders will only be one of many factors, all of which need to be weighed and analyzed, and hopefully all of which will lead to better-informed decision-making.

My own sense, from reading the reports and from my research, into where things are in Ottawa.... Let's remember that gender-based analysis was basically put in place about 10 years ago in a formalized way within the Government of Canada. The general view, from my perspective, is that we probably have enough rules and enough procedures around this activity. I think what we need now are more incentives.

My own sense is that gender-based analysis needs to be viewed as an initiative to facilitate productive and informed interaction among key players, whether in the policy-making process, the legislative process, a regulatory process, or in this case in a budgetary process. I don't think this is something that can be undertaken simply by a special unit within various organizations, be it in the Treasury Board, the Privy Council Office, or line departments.

Nor do I think we should be spending excessive amounts of time trying endless coordination exercises across government to coordinate these various units. I don't think the emphasis in gender-based analysis should be to ask for more coordination and action plans, and I don't think we should be focusing as much on how we monitor to see whether this is being done.

There is a fair amount of work, from what I gather, with the current requirement within the Treasury Board that any Treasury Board submission requires that a gender-based analysis be undertaken, and that of course it also be required in general ways in the submissions related to MCs.

I think what you want to avoid in the long run is the check-off list, the view that after the decision has been taken we can check off the list to see whether there was in fact a gender-based analysis. What you really want to do is to ensure that it's integrated into the decision-making process and becomes a part, along with many other factors, that weigh into decisions.

If I have one word of caution, it is not to make gender-based analysis so special and so precious that it becomes fundamentally isolated within government. It needs to be integrated within things.

This brings me to two final comments that I simply want to make.

To do this, leadership is absolutely critical if one wants to integrate this kind of analysis, work, and sensitivity within the policy and decision-making processes of government. It requires leadership at the highest political levels, and certainly the leadership by the Prime Minister becomes fundamental. Whom he or she chooses as his minister for the status of women, for example, makes a fundamental difference, and how that minister for the status of women actually operates, and whether he or she is generally perceived as a strong minister—and oftentimes they are not the most senior ministers within the government, although they are very skilled people.

It makes a difference, when issues go before a cabinet committee or to cabinet, if the minister for the status of women or some other minister asks the fundamental question whether there has been a gender-based analysis done of this policy issue. When those sorts of things happen, people listen. Senior public servants listen, and other ministers listen. Certainly when a minister is supported by the Prime Minister—not just through a mandate letter to have this undertaken, but supported verbally and supported up and down in their profession and in their work to ensure that these things are undertaken—that can make a difference.

I think it also makes a difference when, as in the case of the previous minister, the Minister of Finance makes a public undertaking to undertake gender-based analysis.

What I'm getting at is that leadership is important; it's not just what the manuals say and not just what the documents say.

Leadership, of course, is also important at the public service level, and that requires strong working relationships among the deputy ministers, the assistant deputy ministers, and the central agencies to ensure that this gets its proper place within things.

Lastly, there has to be a demand for things. I think the tendency in so much of this is to work so much on the supply of it as to forget about the demand.

Kevin Lynch, the Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet, gave a very interesting speech the other day. He talked about the fact that there might not be enough emphasis now on the demand side for public policy coming from the public service, recognizing that it comes from many, many sources. So working on the demand for good analysis, any strong minister, any strong department, clearly wants to know the ramifications of what they're doing, be it a tax policy...[Technical difficulty--Editor]

Let me just conclude, Madam Chairman, with a couple of comments at the conceptual level.

I think the words matter. A former Prime Minister once said, “The words make a difference,” and I think we need to get the concepts right when it comes to gender-based analysis.

First of all, we've been using words, as I read them, called “gender budgets” and “gender budgeting”. I think we should be careful with the use of those words.

If we look at the budget from the other day, I wouldn't consider that to be a gender budget. I wouldn't consider it to be gender budgeting. There are many other factors that go into budgets. To call a budget a gender budget, I think, is a bit of misnomer as to what is in it, because there are many other factors. And it can also be from the point of view of the fiscal guardians in the system who are looking at many other factors: interest rates, investment, impact on aboriginal peoples, impact on homelessness, what it's doing for climate change, what's happening with our northern expenditures, what implications this has for national unity, what implications this has for big cities, small cities, rural municipalities, etc. There are many, many factors, and to simply call it a gender budget or gender budgeting, I think we should be careful with that.

I will also simply note that I see that the term “gender auditing” has now crept into the nomenclature. I think that's quite an interesting topic, and I'll just leave it at that.

With the more recent terminology that I've seen, called “gender-based budgets” and “gender-responsive budgets”, once again I think we should be careful. To say that a budget is gender based is a factor and it's one of the inputs into the budget, but I think it's a far cry to say that all budgets ought to be necessarily gender based. There are many other factors that will enter into the budget.

What I would like to see is a gender-informed budget, a budget that is informed by analysis, informed by priorities, informed by dialogue, informed by thought, and informed by debate, so that the gender implications of what is being done are looked at, analyzed, thought about, and brought to bear in the budget.

So I just raise that in terms of the kind of terminology being important in the way we think about our budgets and this important matter of gender in society.

Let me stop there, Madam Chairman. I don't want to take up any more of the time, because I know questions are important to the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much. You have created a lot of questions by your final comments.

We'll now hear from Dr. Young.

Dr. Young, I understand that you have received copies of the GBA analysis that Finance had done.

[Professor Claire Young, Senior Associate Dean and Professor, Falculty of Law, University of British Columbia]

Yes, I have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Like Dr. Good, can you give a little background on yourself?

[Prof. Claire Young]

I am a tax law academic. I have worked for governments in the past, consulting with the Department of Finance and, more recently, with governments in Singapore, the U.K., Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand, and so on, about the issue—to put it bluntly—of taking women seriously in tax policy.

My position and my comments today are probably a bit more specific than Dr. Good's, as they are simply coming from the tax law perspective, but I promise to make them easy.

As I mentioned, I'm delighted to be here and I'm particularly thrilled that Canada has taken this step to apply a gender analysis to budget measures, as have many other countries. For reasons that will become apparent, I believe such an analysis is key to ensuring that women are not discriminated against in comparison with men in our tax system.

As I mentioned, my starting point is tax law and policy. I'm a tax lawyer, an academic who focuses on tax policy, and my comments today will be about the tax system.

As mentioned, I was given copies of the 2006 and 2007 gender-based budget analyses. Both of these documents go a long way toward recognizing the socio-economic realities of women's lives and how tax measures, especially what we call tax expenditures—and I'll return to that point in a minute—may affect women differently because of those socio-economic realities.

So as the analysis acknowledges, women tend to earn less than men and have considerably less wealth than men. We know, for example, that more women than men are the primary caregivers of children. We know also that single, elderly women over 65 are far more likely to live in poverty than elderly men. We also know, of course, that women are not a monolithic group; for example, aboriginal women and women with disabilities all have incomes well below those of other women.

So why is the tax system so relevant? Well, it's important that we view it not simply as a revenue-raising instrument; in fact, we use the tax system to deliver all manner of subsidies to Canadians.

Let me just give an example to make my point about how we use our tax system as a spending program. I am not talking about collecting tax revenue and then reallocating it to various programs. What I am talking about is how tax breaks that result in forgone revenue by the government are simply taking the place of direct spending programs. For example, in 2007 we spent $780 million on the child care expense deduction, a tax deduction designed to help families with children whose parents work outside the home and need child care for their children.

To put it another way, Canadians paid $780 million dollars less in taxes than they would otherwise have paid, because they were given a tax deduction. That figure represents the tax revenue forgone by the federal government. The tax system in this instance is simply being used to deliver a subsidy intended to partially defray the cost of child care.

Now, the government could have taken that $780 million and built more child care facilities; it could have subsidized existing child care facilities; it could have given every Canadian with a child a subsidy, a direct grant to help cover some of the costs. But the decision was made to deliver the subsidy through the tax system.

I'm not saying the government should have taken any of these steps in particular; those decisions are yours to make as politicians. But when you look at tax breaks such as the child care expense deduction, the first question should be, is the tax system the best tool we have to accomplish this particular policy?

That's the background to my main point, namely, that we have relied over the years more and more on the tax system to deliver sophisticated social and economic programs; and I believe that the gender analysis currently being applied to new budgetary measures also needs to be applied to our current tax rules. That's my basic point. You need to look, as Dr. Good said, at the whole package. It is simply not enough to look at new measures; the current measures, those in existence right now, must also be subject to the same scrutiny.

If you look at the current tax rules through the lens of gender, then all kinds of questions are raised. Let me just give you a couple of simple examples, and the point here is just to let you think a little bit about where it would lead you if you applied a gender-based analysis to some of these rules.

Take, for example, registered retirement savings plans, what we call RRSPs. These were everybody's favourite savings plan until the current budget. Basically the government is saying we want to help people save for their retirement, so we're going to do that by subsidizing that saving. In fact, the tax expenditure for RRSPs is one of the largest annual personal tax expenditures, with a projection of the value of the tax break being over $16 billion for 2008.

Perhaps more importantly, the RRSP was actually designed with women in mind. The idea was that because fewer women than men had access to workplace pension plans, the RRSP would allow them to build up their own personal pensions. That's a laudable policy, but when you look at the RRSP from the perspective of women, women are clearly not getting their fair share of that $16 billion tax break, that expenditure. One problem is, of course, that because women earn less than men, they have less discretionary income to contribute, and we see this when we look at the statistics.

Another issue is that the tax break for contributing to an RRSP is a tax deduction, and a tax deduction is worth more to those with high incomes, those who pay tax at a high tax rate. To give a simple example, if you and I each contribute $10,000 to an RRSP, and I have a low income and pay tax at an average rate of 10%, while you have a higher income and pay tax at an average rate of 40%, I save $1,000 in taxes that I would otherwise have paid, but you save $4,000 in taxes you would otherwise have paid. Put another way, we both make the same contribution, but as the person with the higher income, you get four times the subsidy that I do. Frankly, you actually may need it less, because you have the higher income.

I won't go into all the statistics, but when you look at the tax statistics, you can see that while more women than ever are actually contributing to RRSPs, they're getting significantly less of that $16 billion subsidy than men, in part because they have lower incomes.

Let me give you one more example that I think raises some questions about the fairness of the current tax rule when you look at it from a gender perspective. I'm talking here about what's called the spouse or common-law partner tax credit.

Taxpayers who support a spouse are entitled to a tax credit of just over $1,000 a year, although that credit is reduced once the spouse's income exceeds approximately $700, and eventually it's phased out as the spouse's income increases further. Far more men than women claim the credit, and they tend to be men with high incomes who are supporting their spouses.

When one looks at the measure from the perspective of the spouse--usually the woman--several issues arise.

First, the measure is clearly designed to promote economic dependency in the relationship, and this has led women's groups and others to argue for its repeal, given the adverse impact on women's autonomy. There is a tax cost--that is, the loss of that $1,000 credit--associated with working outside the home, and that is a real disincentive to women who may wish to work in the paid labour force. I can comment on this in the context of income-splitting later on if there are any questions about that.

Second, while the measure is justified on the basis that the ability of the taxpayer--generally the man--to pay is reduced because he has to support his spouse and thus should be entitled to some relief, others would argue that in fact he's better off, because the spouse is providing work for free in the home in the form of child care or other household chores, and it would cost the taxpayer considerably more than $1,000 to replace that household labour.

Finally, some would argue that if we are to have such a subsidy, surely it should not go to the economically dominant person in the relationship, but rather to the woman who has no other income.

As long ago as 1970, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada, the Bird commission, recommended the repeal of this provision. Similar provisions have been repealed in most countries now, including the U.K., where revenue resulting from the repeal of the credit was used to fund a new children's tax credit.

My final comment relates to the current documents that I took a look at. One of the points often made in the gender budget analysis of 2006-07 is that while women may not benefit as much from certain tax proposals in tax dollars saved, they may benefit slightly more if you look at the issue as one of percentage of tax paid.

So, for example, when you look at those documents, changes to the child tax credit mean that women actually save less than men in terms of taxes payable—so they're not getting as much of the subsidy—but if you look at it from the perspective of percentage of tax paid, both men and women are in roughly the same position.

I suggest to you that the raw dollar figure is a much more important measure of fairness than the percentage of tax paid. And the reason is this: the measures we're looking at may be embedded in tax legislation, but they are actually social programs, and the tax system is simply the mechanism of delivery. We need to think of them as social or economic programs—the child tax benefit, the child care expense deduction, the GST tax credit, and I could go on. We need to think of them as social or economic programs, and when that's the focus, then how much one receives as the benefit is what really matters.

To evaluate a benefit by reference to a percentage of tax paid is somewhat incongruous. What really matters to the recipient is how much they save in terms of actual taxes they would otherwise have had to pay. And as we see from the 2006 and 2007 gender analyses, women are getting significantly less of a large number of these tax subsidies.

To conclude, my main message to this committee is that the gender analysis currently under way is a terrific start, but I believe it's incredibly important that the analysis be extended and applied to the current tax rules as well as to new budget measures.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much.

I'm sure the committee members have a lot of questions.

We'll start off with Ms. Minna for seven minutes. Go ahead.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And thank you to both of our experts this morning. I'm pleased to hear that Mr. Good has a lot of experience at all levels of government. That certainly helps us to ask some questions, and also to Ms. Young.

Dr. Good, you said we need to look at the naming, at what we call the budget—names such as “gender-based”—and that we need to look at other ways, maybe “gender-responsive”. And you mentioned that there has been a gender-based analysis applied to the most recent budgets. You also mentioned that it needs champions.

Where is the real power lever to make sure that a real gender-based analysis—and I'll come to what I mean by that in just a second—is actually being done, and not superficially being done in a sort of okay manner?

To be honest with you, the ones that were done on the previous couple of budgets were not real. Either they were not done properly, or the political decision was made that it didn't matter, that they intended to go forward to favour men anyway. Do you know what I'm saying?

So at what point is that fundamental decision made as to whether a proper gender-based analysis is being done, and who has the power to make sure it is being done? I guess you have said the Prime Minister has, but what would be the structure?

[Dr. David Good]

That's a very good question.

If we're going to look at gender-based analysis just as a piece of paper we look at after a decision has been taken—and I've looked at the gender-based analyses of both the 2007 and 2006 budgets—I don't think that's going to be good enough. The comments Dr. Young has made are very important with respect to tax policy. Let's focus on this for a moment, because in some respects it's really the most difficult.

My observation is that to really have good gender-based analysis, you need both of what I would call the spenders and the guardians there together—in other words, you need the tax policy analysts in the Department of Finance and you need the program people in the line department—in some kind of process that's going to examine what the ramifications and what the options are. For a number of the tax policy initiatives—and we have a large number of tax expenditures in the social area and across all other areas—the tendency has not been, in the past, to have a great deal of interaction between the departments and tax policy. It tends to be created largely in the Department of Finance, for a whole set of very significant and important reasons.

If there is one reform we need to take, it is to open up the process in a more fundamental way, so that one can examine what the options are when one wants to undertake a particular initiative and see whether or not there are better ways of doing it: direct expenditure options; the use of credits as opposed to deductions, because then we can avoid some of the upside-down subsidy implications; the use of refundable tax credits, which allow people to receive things who are normally not part of the tax system, whether they be rich or poor, male or female. There is whole set of other options. Direct expenditures can be used quite effectively with regard to that.

I think there's no doubt really, when it comes to tax policy, where the power resides. It resides with the Minister of Finance; our system operates that way. But if there's one thing we need to do in tax policy, it is to ventilate the process and to engage much more in that decision-making process. It tends to be extraordinarily technical, it tends to be left to the experts, and it tends to be dominated in particular by the Department of Finance for a whole set of institutional and important reasons.

If there is one thing that's needed, it is a greater examination of these things by the relevant departments.

For example, examination by HRDC with regard to a whole set of issues involving retirement becomes very important. And on the health issues—we use tax expenditures a great deal in that area—much better interaction across that ministry with the Department of Finance becomes very important in the process. And the ways and means by which we can do this when beginning to look at new budgets and the new initiatives that are undertaken become very important.

As to the broader question of how we do this, with the base of existing tax expenditures or with the base of existing expenditures, that becomes quite another matter. We can discuss that perhaps later in the meeting.

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

Just by way of comment, the reason I asked that question is that I know where the power resides, having been in cabinet and having been on the Hill awhile. It is with Finance. Quite often Finance tends to foster and train people and place juniors and others from the finance department into all kinds of other departments, and they tend to control a lot of stuff through their little tentacles. I know that's where it is, and I just wanted to get that sense.

I want to go to Dr. Young for a moment.

One of the things we're grappling with here, Dr. Young, is this. We've been talking about gender analysis—and actually Dr. Good got to the point of it, that it's been done after the fact. And yet in the last two budgets we have $1,200 going to families—it's supposed to be universal child care—which of course we know is not benefiting the majority of women. The work income supplement is structured in such a strange way that some low-income women don't get it. We know where income splitting for seniors has been sitting: it's primarily with the well-off seniors. Now, in the last budget, we have a $5,000 tax-free saving, which again is going to benefit those who have money to put away.

It seems that irrespective of what is being said.... Tell me if I'm wrong here. Is my mind reading this totally wrong, that despite what is being said now about analyzing, the analysis is not being done prior and therefore is not affecting policy?

[Prof. Claire Young]

I agree with you. I'll just make a couple of points here.

I completely agree with Dr. Good about the power of Finance, and with the honourable member.

There's a second point, which is that people quite mistakenly believe that tax law is highly complex. It's actually not. You should take my basic tax course; it's a lot of fun. There is this myth that essentially tax law is so complex and difficult that it has to be handled by Finance. My response is that the $5,000 new savings plan that you mention has actually nothing to do with tax law; it has to do with a decision to permit people to save money tax-free. Essentially, another way of doing it would have been to cut a cheque to various people you wanted to benefit and to say, here's the subsidy, but it's actually delivered through the tax system.

To your point about its happening after the fact, there is no question that this is the way it's done. I don't believe that Finance took gender into account in the budget in any particular way—the current budget or previous budgets—because there's no evidence of it. They have now been called to account, to a certain degree, but as you say, it is after the fact.

But I've been doing this for a long time, and just doing the analysis is a real step forward, because it never used to be done. Now you as politicians and others can say, excuse me, the new savings plan actually is not fair because, as you mentioned, you need to have disposable income to save in order to benefit from it.

So we now know who wins and who loses. Ten or fifteen years ago we weren't talking about that, and at least we're talking about it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We'll go to Madame Demers.

Vous aurez sept minutes, s'il vous plaît.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Dr. Good and Dr. Young, thank you very much for being here with us today. For people who have never worked in finance or taxation, what you tell us is both very interesting and very confusing. Today, you have provided information that has nothing to do with finance but a great deal to do with common sense. I think your information will be very useful to us.

Dr. Young, you say you studied the taxation systems of a number of countries, and the measures those countries take to ensure that women and other groups receive their fair share of tax dollars. In your view, what country has implemented the best measures to benefit those groups? Have those measures had any effects? Is so, would they be applicable to Canada?

[Prof. Claire Young]

Gosh, that's a tough question, and I'll tell you why.

The countries that do best are the countries that try to take social spending or social programs out of the tax system. Our tax system is replete, as I say, with spending measures. The countries that spring to mind to me are Scandinavian countries in particular and some of the other European Community countries. To a certain extent, the U.S. does not deliver social programs through the tax system, but it doesn't, of course, have as many social programs as we have. I think you'd look more to Scandinavia as the first thing.

The issue is that you have an identified policy, and then the second step is to ask what the best way is to accomplish that policy. My point is that when you embed it in the tax system, what happens is that all the constraints within that system can result in an adverse impact. It's primarily because the tax system itself is based upon levels of income, and to the extent that women tend to earn less than men, using a vehicle such as a tax deduction is a problem.

Dr. Good mentioned that if you use the tax system, going to refundable tax credits or just tax credits is a step in the right direction. But I believe that, for example, if you wish to reduce the levels of poverty experienced by single, elderly women over 65, perhaps the tax system isn't the right tool to use.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you.

Dr. Good, you said that one current problem is that gender-specific analysis is carried out by small, isolated units in departments, while it would be preferable to have a structure making it possible to do those analyses in a more comprehensive manner. The analyses must also be done in advance, and must be well thought out. Then they have to be put forward and distributed to the various departments.

How do you envisage that kind of structure?

[Dr. David Good]

I think the form it would take is the building and rebuilding and strengthening of our policy analysis capacities within departments. And this is primarily handled in the strategic policy units and in the policy analysis components of departments. To a certain extent, this function was eroded about 10 years ago when the government, of course, in a fiscal crisis, had to undertake an enormous amount of reduction across all of government. But it has been rebuilding, and I think it's rebuilding quite well. But what I do think it needs is a better balance of individuals and a better balance of capacities within it.

It was mentioned earlier that Department of Finance officials will sometimes move from Finance into departments. And I think this is very important. My own experience, when that happens, is that quite often the expertise that can come into line departments from even tax policy people, from policy analysts, and from others from the central agencies can be extremely useful in helping position that analysis and position the work of setting out the priorities. So the interactions--and this is my point--between the line departments, whether Human Resources and Social Development, Canadian Heritage, or Health Canada and so on, and the Privy Council Office and the Department of Finance can be done at a sophisticated and high level so that the analysis and the facts can make a difference.

It's through the interaction across the issues that things get resolved, in my view. It allows for the spending perspective, the program delivery perspective. It allows the people who are closest to the client and who are most sensitive to those sorts of issues to deal with those in the Department of Finance and other central agencies who might be a little less sensitive to these issues, largely because they're focused on issues of broader concern and on different kinds of concerns.

I think the interaction within government becomes very important. What I'm arguing against is the splendid isolation of these units, either within a ministry or across ministries and departments. They need to be integrated into the policy analysis capacity so one can examine all the ramifications.

I have one final word. If there is one thing that has some political resonance, I think it is the question of gender. Gender has implications as to kinds of individuals and where these individuals are, where they vote. So there should be a demand for this kind of analysis to know the ramifications and how this will affect men and women. How will it affect older women, younger women, single women, poor women, soccer moms in 905, women in remote communities, farming women, and this sort of thing?

There's a natural incentive here, I think, that can be used and should be exploited. Just to repeat, I think it's through the interactions between central agencies and ministries that this becomes important, and not in isolation where these units are set.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you, Ms. Demers. Your time is up.

We now go to Madame Boucher. Sept minutes, s'il vous plaît.

I understand that you are probably going to be splitting your time.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you for being here today. Your comments have been very useful.

We have always been told that the Department of Finance was "the" essential structure. Yet you tell us this is not quite so. You said that we should not be looking only at changes to the tax system. How can we incorporate gender-specific analysis in all departments so that everything is automatically looked at through a gender lens? If gender-specific budgeting involves mote than the taxation system, what other departments should be involved?

Ms. Young, that question is for you.

[Prof. Claire Young]

This is actually more Dr. Good's bailiwick, but I'll put it to you that if you are, for example, determining that you wish to help defray the costs to women with children of child care, surely Finance shouldn't be the department that designs the program, so to speak. I think that's the problem. Presumably there are other departments in the federal government—and I'm not familiar with them all, obviously—that deal with the programs themselves.

It seems to me, as Dr. Good has said, that there's a kind of gap whereby a decision may be made that we wish to deliver more funds to women with children for a variety of reasons, but then when it's done through the tax system, it is as I mentioned really constrained by that. Surely there are other government departments with officials who have expertise in child care, expertise in the experience of women with children, families with children, and so on.

[Dr. David Good]

Let me make another observation on the same question. The issue isn't just one for governments; the issue is one for all of society. It's for think tanks, it's for universities, it's for advocates of fields, it's for political parties.

When a political party does an analysis, if they do an analysis, and indicates that what they'd like to see happen is interest deductibility on mortgages, which happened in 1979, or more recently that we should now have a deductibility program with respect to child care, which is really a tax cut, the question one raises is how much analysis went into that statement, which then becomes the party platform of the individual party.

It's very difficult for a public service. Their job is to speak truth to power and to argue that there will be a better way. But when these issues become flagged as the campaign commitment of the political party, it becomes very difficult to argue that there are other ways of doing it that may be better. Public servants will do that, and I've seen it done, but in the end most political parties—not so much years ago, but particularly today—want to live up to their campaign commitments.

What I'm arguing for is not just analysis within government; it's also that analysis within political parties, and among others who shape the party platforms of candidates and things of that nature, become extremely important, so that we can elevate the level of the policy debate. As Dr. Young has said, we can then be examining whether or not direct expenditures in a number of these areas might be much better than what we call backdoor spending, which has upside-down subsidy impacts, and which doesn't reach people, and which has differential implications because of the way it's run through the taxes. These debates and this analysis need to take place not just within government but within political parties and other influencers of public policy and directions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Mr. Stanton.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning to both of our presenters. These were excellent presentations.

I have one question quickly for Professor Good. How long has it been, Professor Good, since you left public service? How many years ago did you go to the University in Victoria?

[Dr. David Good]

I came to Victoria to this hardship post, leaving the senior public service, seven years ago. Since that time I've had the wonderful opportunity to reflect on some of these issues and have done a number of books, including most recently one called The Politics of Public Money, which the University of Toronto Press has just published. If you will grant me, I can even show it to you here. I know this probably shouldn't be done, certainly in the House of Commons, but I hope you'll allow me to do it here.