Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you both for being here.
Ms. Levonian, I'm having a little trouble understanding your power to make recommendations and your power within the department. In your presentation, you said that a sentence was included in the income tax policy to ensure consideration was given to GBA: “Regardless of their objective, proposed policies are reviewed for gender and environmental impacts.”
In light of that, how were you able to justify elimination of the Court Challenges Program, cutbacks and changes at Status of Women Canada and the reduction of the GST, given that we know that low-income women will never be able to spend enough to benefit from this measure? Women who earn less than $20,000 a year will save less than $10 in GST. There is no doubt about that.
What is your role exactly? How can you ensure that the impact of policies such as the ones I have mentioned will be minimized? These policies result in significant, dramatic consequences for women. The focus should rather be on protecting women.