Status of Women Committee on April 3rd, 2008

[Prof. Marilyn Rubin]

The budget has to be in place by 2010, and they have been working. I think they have run into challenges, the challenges that have been faced in many other places, and one of the challenges has been getting different departments within the Korean government to actually understand this. It's interesting to me that this was a legislative mandate. This mandate actually came out of the Korean legislature, and I find it very interesting that in a lot of the information that comes out of Korea, the people in the National Assembly refer to the other branch of government as “the government”. I'm not used to that, because in the United States, when we talk about the government, we talk about all branches of government. We don't just differentiate and talk about, for example, the Congress and then the government. We usually talk about the executive branch.

They are trying to do this. They've had a lot of analysis done by women in local government. They've had a large number of women's organizations working on this for many years, but nothing has been done yet because this is for 2010, so that's what they're working toward. They're working toward putting this in place by 2010.

I don't know if Janet saw things differently.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

[Janet Veitch]

Could I just add a similar point to support Marilyn's point about funding the government machine? Status of Women Canada has a lot of this expertise embedded within the government, but I understand that cuts have made it very difficult. Funding cuts in Status of Women Canada have made it very hard for them to do the excellent work they have been doing for a number of years. They were always considered by the international feminist community to be leaders in the field and gave Canada a fabulous reputation, but the cuts made a big difference to their ability to deliver that to you, I think.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

We will go now to Madame Boucher. It will be for four minutes, because we have a time constraint for some business.

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

I will split my time.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, mesdames. That is very interesting.

Some previous witnesses said that gender budgets weren't being introduced as a result of a lack of political leadership. Some said that it was as a result of a lack of data. The further we advance on this issue, the more interesting it becomes and the more we would like to have a solid foundation, but it seems to be a very big issue at the national level. You are at the municipal level.

Are you encountering any reluctance regarding gender budgets on the part of decision-makers? Despite their good will, are parliamentarians, leaders or any administrator afraid to put forward certain measures because they think this is too big an issue?

[Prof. Marilyn Rubin]

When you're dealing with a municipal government, it's very different from when you're dealing with a national government. Even at the municipal level there has been a concern that this is a very large undertaking. That's actually why San Francisco started with a few departments. In fact, they're wondering now, having to make a decision, whether to ask all departments to do this or just start with some departments. This is a concern even at the municipal level.

My background is a little bit different from some of your other witnesses. My background really comes out of a budgeting background, and I've worked in other budget reforms over the years. Whenever there is a budget reform, everybody throws up their hands and says, “We'll never be able to do this”. Some of them have been successful and some of them haven't.

I don't think it's bad to not necessarily do everything at once. I don't think it's bad to start perhaps in some departments, not necessarily women's departments, and use experiences there to then build on that, because then there is at least something that says to departments that this is what's been done and these are the problems they have had and this is how they've solved them, and we can go from there. Doing it incrementally, to me, is not a bad idea.

I don't know how Janet feels about this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Bruce, for one minute only.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It occurred to me that we have a motion coming up in the near future that discusses the whole question of utilizing legislation to enshrine some of these important principles to, of course, support the objectives but actually to put some stronger accountability mechanisms in place.

Have there been any lessons learned by your approach to any such measures?

[Janet Veitch]

One thing we did find was that we enacted a sort of gender equality duty in Northern Ireland alone a few years earlier than the one we've just enacted in the U.K. One of the things we did there was focus too much on process. Every government body had to submit its gender equality scheme to the Equal Opportunities Commission. What happened was that people got bogged down in doing that.

What we've tried to do with this current gender equality duty is to make it output focused rather than input and process focused. That would be the key lesson, I would say, that you should try to learn from that. Don't make it so that people have to just tick boxes, but to think about outcomes and closing specific equality gaps. I think that's the key thing that makes our law useful.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

That's very helpful. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

For the last question, we'll go to Ms. Neville, for four minutes.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you.

Thank you very much to both of you for your presentations this morning. They've been very helpful.

I want to follow up on Mr. Stanton's question. My question is similar to his. It relates to the legislation.

You just talked about looking at outputs. I'm also interested in knowing what you do as it relates to compliance with the legislation. Are there any sanctions in place for departments as it relates to gender budget initiatives, and if not, should there be?

[Prof. Marilyn Rubin]

May I take that first?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Yes, please.

[Prof. Marilyn Rubin]

One of the interesting things in San Francisco was that when the board of supervisors passed their resolution in 2003 requiring governments to put together the impact of the budget cuts on their services, there were no sanctions. So one of the questions, to me, has always been, what kinds of sanctions should there be? It's almost like when you have a government in the United States that's using all sorts of performance measures and doesn't tie those performance measures to any kind of budget allocations.

But there has always been hesitation to do that, about what kinds of sanctions you place, how strong those sanctions should be, and whether those sanctions should be tied to your future budget allocation. I think that's a very serious issue to be undertaken.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Or tied to performance, as you indicated, performance review.

[Prof. Marilyn Rubin]

Yes.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I'm just waiting for the other comment.

[Janet Veitch]

If I may add quickly to that, under the gender equality duty, it is possible for individuals to seek judicial review if they believe the gender equality duty hasn't been complied with. We've produced a tool kit for individuals to use at the local level to try to enforce the gender duty. That's one thing.

Secondly, we have a well-established auditing process. There are audit commissions for all public bodies, which then make reports to Parliament, and there is a parliamentary select committee that oversees all that work. So although it doesn't have equalities as a central issue, because it's overseeing all the auditing work, it will look at this as part of that.

So it's not adequate, but there are some steps towards it.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much.

To our two panellists, if you have any final statements to make before we say goodbye, I'd invite you to do so. I thank you profusely for being here and for giving us your time.

Janet, would you like to go first, followed by Professor Rubin?

[Janet Veitch]

Yes.

The main thing I would hope you would do is look at some of the work that's going on internationally, where I think there are some very successful examples of gender budgeting that you can simply adapt to the Canadian context.

I know that Diane Elson, if she'd been able to be here with me today, would have said it's the triangle of having progressive elected politicians, effective government institutions and trained officials who understand gender analysis, and active and informed NGOs. That triangle is the most effective way forward. If you can address those three issues, those are the ones that I think you should be focusing on.

I could say a lot more, but I'll stop there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Professor Rubin.