Good morning.
Thank you for the invitation to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women to discuss the progress that Treasury Board Secretariat has made with respect to gender-based analysis (GBA).
I am happy to be here to speak on behalf of the secretariat. Normally, our GBA Champion would be making this presentation, however, Jeanne Flemming has recently been appointed by the Prime Minister to head FINTRAC. I would like to assure you that our secretary, Wayne Wouters, is fully committed to moving forward with our GBA commitments.
This time last year our associate secretary, Linda Lizotte-MacPherson, appeared before this committee and provided an update on the steps the secretariat had taken to meet the commitments we made following the committee's report, “Gender-Based Analysis: Building Blocks for Success”. I am very pleased to tell you that since that time, we've continued to make significant progress in entrenching GBA considerations, tools, and practices into our everyday work.
Last year our associate secretary explained the roles of departments and central agencies in applying GBA. I'd like to focus more specifically on the role of the secretariat in the development of programs and policy and in the implementation of gender-based analysis. Afterwards I'll describe what we have accomplished in the last year and where we are hoping to go in the future.
First, departments and agencies are responsible for the development of programs that are compliant with policies, including GBA. Our program analysts have an important challenge function with departments as they assist departments to develop proposals for consideration by Treasury Board ministers. Part of that challenge is to ensure that the department has undertaken GBA in the development of its Treasury Board submission and that the proposal has no unintended gender bias. In the past year, we have continued to foster gender-based analysis, building on our commitments. Those commitments were to train staff in gender-based analysis within the context of our mandate; to screen Treasury Board management policies to ensure there are no unintended gender impacts; to use the management, resources and results structure, or MRRS, to ensure that departments use performance information in the management of their programs, including those with gender-specific objectives; and ensure that the management accountability framework, or MAF, makes reference to assessing analytical capacity and practices in departments.
We are taking steps to embed GBA as a practice throughout the organization. For example, gender-based analysis is included in staff training and undertaken as part of our policy development and oversight roles. Eventually we will be in a position to begin reporting on results and linking program spending to horizontal issues such as gender.
In order to continue moving forward, the secretariat has developed an action plan that outlines how we will ensure that GBA is included in our activities on an ongoing basis. This action plan clarifies the roles of the secretariat's GBA champions, senior managers, and our program and policy analysts in the application of GBA. By doing this the secretariat has taken an important step in bringing GBA into the mainstream of our day-to-day business. Ultimately our goal is to make sure that each program and policy analyst in our organization has GBA “reflexes”, so that in interacting with departments and in providing advice and guidance, they consciously integrate GBA considerations into the work we do every day. I think this follows very much along the lines of the testimony that Dr. David Good gave. For us, we're trying to integrate it throughout the organization so that it is part of our day-to-day work.
The TBS approach highlights our work in partnership with Privy Council Office, the Department of Finance, and Status of Women Canada to advance GBA. We look forward to continuing our strong and productive relationship with Status of Women Canada, and continue to rely on them for their valuable advice and expertise as we move forward.
I'll now just go quickly through our progress in meeting our four commitments. With respect to training, since we last appeared before this committee, the secretariat has actually incorporated GBA into our training for program analysts. All new analysts are required to attend what we call the TBS boot camp. Boot camp is basically our orientation program for anybody new coming into the organization; it basically gives them the tools they need to understand how to do their job. It's a comprehensive learning event that includes specific training on GBA. Furthermore, we've provided additional training to clarify and provide further guidance on the application of GBA in the context of Treasury Board submissions. These learning events have been developed in close collaboration with Status of Women Canada, and they're intended to teach analysts how GBA can be applied to their day-to-day work, in particular in reviewing policies through a GBA lens and being more aware of the supports, resources and tools that can be used to apply GBA to their work. To date over 100 analysts have attended learning sessions, and future training events are already being planned.
Another key step in entrenching GBA was to ensure that it was included in our guide to preparing Treasury Board submissions. The updated guide includes clear reminders to departments and agencies to ensure that their program proposals are GBA compliant and to report their findings in the Treasury Board submissions. Our analysts are then able to apply their training in reviewing submissions, challenging departments and in providing advice to Treasury Board ministers.
With respect to policy renewal, we had committed in 2006 to ensuring that Treasury Board management policies would be free of unintended gender bias, and we're doing this as part of our work in renewing the entirety of the Treasury Board policy suite. The renewal of the policy suite is a joint Treasury Board Secretariat and Canada Public Service Agency initiative to reduce the number of rules, while at the same time strengthening management and enhancing accountability.
One of our commitments was to screen our policies to ensure there are no unintended gender impacts. We have made significant progress in this area and have updated the guidance on developing Treasury Board policy instruments, consistent with the guide for policy-making issued by Status of Women Canada. My directorate is actually responsible for challenging whether or not the policy centres that are responsible for developing policy have actually considered potential gender impacts of both the policy development and implementation stages. Finally, renewed policies are also edited thoroughly to ensure gender-neutral language is used throughout.
With respect to program performance, the management resources and results structure, or MRRS, is a policy that ensures, among other things, that departments and agencies track programs in a structured manner, that departments define expected results for all their programs, that they develop indicators, and that they report on results.
This policy is being implemented in a five-step process. The first step was to take an inventory of the programs of the Government of Canada. We now know there are approximately 3,000 of those. The second step, which we are in the process of completing now, is to develop performance measurement frameworks for each of these programs. Once this is done, then both departments and central agencies will be able to use this performance information to help make better management decisions. The step after we complete getting these frameworks in place is to create a centralized database where this information will be stored. Once that's fully implemented, it will ensure that, across government, resources are clearly aligned with results. It will also ensure that the information is standardized across government, so we can actually properly compare what's going on.
Once the database is complete, we would be able to use that information to help us better understand horizontal initiatives, and one of those uses could be to track government programs that specifically affect target groups, including gender. Because of the time required to collect and input this large quantity of data, developing this kind of functionality is going to take us several years. We certainly remain committed to moving forward with MRRS and to exploiting the vast potential of this tool in assisting us to understand program performance, including in the area of gender impacts.
Our last commitment was to ensure that the management accountability framework, or MAF, makes reference to assessing analytical capacity and practices in departments. The MAF sets out expectations of good public sector management. Since its inception the assessment tool for MAF has become increasingly sophisticated, and it continues to evolve. Departments and agencies use their MAF assessments to pinpoint areas of management that need to be addressed.
One of the areas that is assessed under MAF is the quality of analysis in Treasury Board submissions, which includes the appropriate use of GBA. As I mentioned before, GBA is one of the policy lenses departments are to consider in their Treasury Board submissions, and by doing so, the secretariat is sending a clear signal that we expect Treasury Board submissions to include good-quality, adequate, and sound analysis of gender-based impacts of their proposed programs. MAF assessments for this particular year are not yet completed, but once they are the onus will once again be on departments to address any performance shortcomings.
So in terms of moving forward, certainly we're continuing our efforts to ensure that GBA is part of our business processes. We will continue to train our Treasury Board Secretariat analysts and we will improve that training based on their feedback. We will also continue to communicate the importance of GBA with departments in the development of Treasury Board submissions. And finally, through MRRS and MAF, we are contributing to departmental awareness of the importance in considering and addressing gender in decision-making. It's certainly an ongoing effort. We know that promoting culture change requires attention and effort, and through our own action plan, MAF assessments, feedback from Status of Women Canada, and comments from this committee, we're going to continue our efforts toward integrating GBA in our ongoing activities.
Madam Chair, this concludes my remarks. I would be pleased to answer questions committee members may have.
