Yes.
Thank you once again for the opportunity to be here. This is an elaborate and detailed process for all of us, so we appreciate having the occasion to come and share with you some of our thoughts.
My thoughts aren't as technical as Armine's or Kathleen's, but they do speak to some of the process issues raised in the two documents we've been given to analyze.
The first thing I'd like to ask is, to what degree did they adhere to the eight steps of gender-based analysis that are outlined by Status of Women Canada? Status of Women Canada undertakes the training of all officials for all departments on gender-based analysis. I would strongly encourage you to ask the Finance officials about this when they come before you.
When we looked at the eight steps of GBA mandated by Status of Women Canada—and we assume that the finance department would have received some training in this regard—it was not obvious to me that most of these steps had been followed. I will provide to the committee the links to the Status of Women Canada website where these eight steps are outlined, but I'll just refresh your memory.
The first step is identifying, defining, and refining the issue. Step two is defining desired anticipated outcomes. Step three is defining the information and consultation inputs. Step four is conducting the research. Step five is developing and analyzing options. Step six is making recommendations, and decision-seeking. Step seven is communicating policy. And step eight is assessing the quality of the analysis.
I think it's incumbent upon you to ask the finance department to what degree they followed these steps and what information they can provide on the efforts they expended to ensure that their GBA was sufficiently thorough and rigorous.
Kathleen and Armine have both said that there doesn't seem to be a clear objective for the gender-based analyses that are currently being done by the finance department. I would entirely concur with that.
Further, I think step two, defining desired and anticipated outcomes, is absolutely crucial to this process if it's going to be worthwhile and if it truly advances the goals of gender budgeting, which is done to determine the impact on women of particular policies, programs, and cuts, and which is then considered in making a decision about whether or not to proceed, given the analysis available to you.
Those eight steps led me to take a different kind of journey in thinking about a framework in which good GBA could be done. I think that both Kathleen and Armine have made reasonable cases that the kind of GBA being done is for the most part superficial. In some cases it is not based on reliable data; in others it appears to have been done after the fact.
This could be incorrect, but I would encourage you to ask the Finance officials themselves to give you some indication of the process by which they came up with certain conclusions about how women were to be affected. Also, where the evidence related to levels of program spending or a particular tax cut suggested that the impact would be negative, you should ask them to describe the process by which the decision was made to proceed. I think that would be a worthwhile exercise for all involved.
In thinking and reflecting upon how good gender-based analysis could be done and the framework within which it could be done in Canada, I referred to a number of documents, including the federal plan for gender equality introduced in 1995. It is really the reason we're talking about gender-based analysis.
In 1995, the Beijing Platform for Action was signed. This was a global document agreed to by over 130 countries. Canada at that time took its own steps to put into place a plan of action called Setting the Stage for the Next Century: The Federal Plan for Gender Equality.
GBA was the main thrust of Canada's effort to comply with the Beijing Platform for Action. So I looked at, in fact, objective two of the federal plan for gender equality, which is women's participation in the economy. I also note that the document that Kathleen shared with you this morning, Economic Gender Equality Indicators, from 2000, is a useful document.
I looked at the World Economic Forum's global gender gap index, which has a series of indicators that measure the degree to which there is gender inequality within a country. They don't measure countries against each other; they measure a gap within a country, which is a more obviously reliable indicator, given the very different kinds of resources and capacities governments have.
I looked at something called the Social Watch gender equity index. That's a newer index that's come from a group called Social Watch, which is a very credible, internationally well-recognized body that's been monitoring countries in terms of particular human rights commitments.
I also looked at the more recent review of Canada under the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. In 2003, a set of recommendations was forthcoming from the United Nations that spoke to aspects of women's economic equality.
As a consequence, I've come up with what I think may be the beginnings of or components of a framework within which we believe gender-based analysis could be done reliably, could be done well, and could be a fruitful and useful exercise for all involved.
I will read my list of items that I think are particularly crucial. I will provide it to the committee along with references to all the documents I have mentioned here.
In my view, a framework in which GBA could be done would ask the following questions, and I should say that I think this list is not complete, but I think it represents the beginnings of a potentially very good set of indicators, if you will, in terms of GBA.
The first is whether it increases women's economic autonomy—i.e., their capacity to generate earned income, and if they have limited or no capacity to generate earned income, their access to non-earned income.
All of the reference materials I've mentioned here, including the global gender gap index from the World Economic Forum and the Social Watch index, look very specifically at women's participation in the economy and also look at what happens when a woman can't fully participate in the economy for reasons of child care, disability, violence, and other kinds of societal disruptions.
So that should be one of the first questions, in my view, being asked when you're looking at the effects of a budget.
The second question is whether it helps low-income women get above the low-income cut-off. Does it actually raise the standard of living, especially for those women who are occupying the positions in the lowest income tax bracket? Obviously you've heard from Armine and Kathleen that it's a very high proportion of women. So one of the questions needs to be whether we are actually facilitating helping women get out of poverty. Obviously no one budget can accomplish that for all women, but there are particular measures, on both the tax side and the spending side, that can make an enormous difference.
As you've heard from both Armine and Kathleen, some of the tax cuts and tax credits in this particular budget—and they're not exclusive to this budget, but in this particular budget and budgets 2006, 2007, and 2008—are non-refundable tax credits. That means that many women who have no tax liability cannot access those tax credits. They're meaningless for those women.
So we have to revisit how you reach women without tax liability and how you ensure that you can get more women out of poverty. In Canada, one of the standards for measuring poverty is the low-income cut-off.
My third item on the list is whether the tax credit, in the instance you're using tax credits, is refundable—i.e., cashable, another way to understand refundable tax credits.
Fourth, does it consider women with limited access to the workforce? Again, a lot of the women who live in poverty in Canada are women who can't fully participate in the economy because of child care, because of disability, because of abuse, because of language barriers, because of a lack of access to training.
So we need to consider what we are doing for those women, both at the federal and provincial levels. Are there things that can be done with a federal budget that will better facilitate their access to the measures required for them to fully participate in the workforce? If that's not possible, and it isn't possible for many women, how do we ensure that those women aren't living in abject poverty?
So my fifth question is, do these measures increase access--i.e., affordability, equality--to essential services on which women rely? Armine made reference to some of those services and programs. They include legal aid, health care, and a variety of other things--education, obviously. I think it's an appropriate question to ask, in part because Canada is a signatory to a myriad of international treaties that speak very specifically to the programming side.
Of course, some of those programs are in provincial jurisdiction. We recognize that. However, historically Canada has had some role in ensuring that those services and programs can be accessed by Canadians wherever they may live in the country. Given the federal government's fiscal capacity, which in many instances rates better than some provincial governments' fiscal capacity, it's still incumbent upon a GBA to ask that kind of question. Does it meet Canada's international obligations? I've named here the Beijing Platform for Action and CEDAW, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
The seventh point, have indicators been developed in consultation with women's equality groups and other experts? That's why I'm reluctant to offer this up as a final list. I think there is a lot of room for consultation and there's a lot of expertise out there, and we're availing of some of it at this table. So I think we need to do this as a somewhat transparent exercise and as something that we can all feel some ownership over.
So the consultation that would have to happen, the dialogue that would need to happen between credible, well-recognized experts and some women's equality organizations that have something to offer in this process, I think, is absolutely crucial to the success of GBA.
Another question is, at what point has the GBA been integrated into the process? Have senior officials been able to respond to the GBA by adjusting policies or spending initiatives before the federal budget is released? Again, that speaks to methodological considerations in terms of how the GBA is being done internally and at what point the assessment is being done. Is there an opportunity to revisit in the event that certain assessments are being made that suggest that women will not primarily benefit?
Our experience, our understanding, and certainly other sessions of this particular committee have looked at GBA accountability structures. We know that often GBA is not well integrated into the overall decision-making process, and that needs to be revisited.
Finally, I would suggest that in terms of a good GBA process, we need to ask which organizations have Finance officials or the finance committee heard from in the pre-budget period.
I've said to this committee before that our access to either the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance or finance committee officials--and by “our” I mean women's equality-seeking organizations--has been incredibly limited to date. As a consequence, in my view, without a more ongoing and rich dialogue between Finance officials and finance committee members and some of the groups and expertise you see here, it's very, very difficult to do good GBA.
So finally, I think it's important to remind you about the federal plan for gender equality. I recognize that the 2008 budget now suggests that a new action plan for women's equality will be developed. I would strongly encourage you to ensure that there is some continuity between the federal plan for gender equality and any new action plan, because otherwise I think, sadly, you'll not be building upon the very, very modest efforts that have been made and some of the analysis that has been done. The federal plan for gender equality, identified as objective number two--women's participation in the economy--outlined a range of measures that they felt were important to women's equality.
I would think that the finance department, at minimum, would be incorporating some of these measures into their current GBA. These include women and housing, Canadian women's relationship to the economy, creating the conditions necessary to support women entrepreneurs, fostering changes to the workplace to promote equitable sharing of work and family responsibility, improving women's access to and progress in the paid labour economy, and onward.
I'll provide all of this to the committee, but in closing, I think what the finance department must do, in consultation with you, in consultation with civil society groups and experts, is develop a rigorous and credible framework, and that will ensure a better GBA process.