Status of Women Committee on March 11th, 2008

[Louise Levonian]

May I answer your question?

I was not present at all the consultations, but I am sometimes there when groups come in to request changes to the income tax system, and so on. In addition, together with the minister, our department took part in some of the regional consultations. This happens occasionally, but not for all the consultations.

As for which groups we hear from and which groups we do not hear from, I have never heard of a case where we, the officials, refused to hear from a group that asked to put forward its point of view. However, I do not know how the minister's office makes its own decisions.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

In your presentation, you referred to two types of policy: macro-economic policy and structural policy. I think it is easier to apply gender-based analysis to structural policy.

Is this the approach taken in the briefs presented during the consultations? Do the groups speak mainly about social measures?

[Mireille Éthier]

Generally speaking, I think we can say that most of the briefs that are presented to the department by women's groups talk about the specific impact of structural policies—both social and taxation policy. These are really the most identifiable points, which have an impact on individuals rather than on the general financial context. I do think this is the case.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

May I ask another question, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have two minutes.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

You said that this would be coming on the website. We will soon be posting some good examples of gender-based analysis practices.

Could you tell us about some of these good examples that will be appearing soon on the website?

[Louise Levonian]

This is an internal departmental website. We can see whether the cabinet's view on certain issues is posted, but we will find out whether we can give the committee access to the site.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

In concrete terms, could you give us—

[Mireille Éthier]

I think we could definitely find a good example for you. The reason we were talking about good examples is that one of our concerns is that we do not want gender-based analysis to be just a box to be checked and then forgotten about. We want a proper analysis to be done. In order to help the departmental analysts and managers, we thought we would provide some examples of individual income tax policies, for example, that include specific data and for which a proper analysis was done.

I'm sure we could find and show the committee an example of a gender-based analysis that was well done and that covers all aspects of the issue.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I imagine that if you are using the 2007 budget, given that a new budget has been presented in 2008, you will probably not evaluate the measures introduced in 2006 as compared to those put forward in the 2008 budget.

Is this too short a time? Can you determine whether the 2007 budget measures have produced the desired results with respect to gender-based analysis?

[Louise Levonian]

I'm not sure I understand your question.

Do you want to know whether we can compare the 2006 measures with those for 2008? If so, what is it you want to compare?

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Is it possible to measure these things at the moment? In concrete terms, have you had a budget year that was—

[Mireille Éthier]

I think that the comparative analysis...

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You can answer. Only Madame Deschamps can't ask any more.

[Mireille Éthier]

Generally, if we're talking about individual income tax, I think gender-based analysis is based on a model that contains data for 500,000 taxpayers. Of course, part of that is modelling based on the data. For future years, we will be able to validate the analysis that was done, but I think the model is sound and that it provides a good gender-based analysis. We do not really need one, two or three years before we can determine this. There is no doubt that this will produce changes in behaviour. So we may have to review what we did. Generally speaking, we can say that the gender-based analysis is quite sound and produces results quite quickly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

To follow up on what Madame Deschamps asked, you said that you have a template you use for GBA. You said that the department has included a section in the template used for briefing documents. Could you provide that to us? That could not be a cabinet confidence.

[Louise Levonian]

Sure, we can look into it. It's not a template of GBA analysis; it's a template we use to brief on budget measures. It's basically this: issue, background, analysis, provincial impacts, legislative impacts, environmental impacts, gender-based analysis impacts, and so on. It just lays out the titles that go into the analysis, which we ensure is provided to the minister when measures are going forward for the budget.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

If we can have that template, it would be good for us so we know that Finance is doing it.

We now go to Ms. Davidson for seven minutes.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for being here this morning to present to this committee. As my colleagues across have said, we're really grappling with this and trying to get our heads around this. But I think we're starting to get there.

I have just a couple of things. We were given some documents--“Gender Analysis of Budget 2006 Tax Policy Changes”, and also the same thing for 2007. Were those prepared by Finance? They're not titled.

[Louise Levonian]

Yes, they were prepared by Finance.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Okay. I'm going to refer to the gender analysis of budget 2007, and I'm going to the business income tax changes. There are two categories.

Have you found that?

[Mireille Éthier]

Yes.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

There are two categories. The first one is “Reducing the Tax Compliance Burden”. The second one is the “Financial Incentive to Encourage Provincial Capital Tax Elimination”. Under the GBA column, both say that the GBA has not been conducted. Well, one has not been completed, and one has not been conducted due to the unavailability of data.

Could you elaborate on that, please?

[Louise Levonian]

Sure.

First is the financial incentive to encourage provinces to eliminate their capital taxes. Basically, capital taxes are a very inefficient form of taxation. The federal government has eliminated its general capital taxes, but the provinces have capital taxes still in place. Basically, the federal government provided an incentive to the provinces to encourage them to remove their capital taxes. Provincial capital taxes are deductible for federal income tax purposes. We would gain money as a result of their removing the taxes, because they wouldn't be deductible. We said that whatever money we gain from provinces eliminating that capital tax we're going to transfer to the provinces. Because it's a transfer from the federal government to the provincial government, it's very difficult to assess what the gender implications are. What the province is going to spend that money on and what the impact will be is very difficult to assess. I wouldn't even know where to begin to delve into what data you would try to pull up to try to determine the impacts.

The other one was reducing the tax compliance burden. That was basically to help businesses submit their payroll deductions less often than they would otherwise. So it's a simplification measure. Instead of remitting on a monthly basis, companies now remit to the CRA the money they've collected for the government less often. The gender implications of a company having to submit their remittances less often, again, would be very difficult to determine. It's purely a simplification for small business.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Is it fair to say, then, that it's far easier to do the GBA on personal tax changes than on business changes, whether they're cuts or whatever they are? Is that something you think will always be the case, or will there be data collected down the road that will allow this to be done on the business end of things as well?