Status of Women Committee on April 8th, 2008

[Allison Little Fortin]

I'm happy to respond. Unfortunately, I don't have all of the information.

I know that for each of the provisions there were specific areas where impacts were identified, or there were possible impacts where monitoring was required. To give you one example, the policy work that rolls out of this is the responsibility, to some extent, of the various policy groups. I'm not fully up to date on that. We can get back to you with what has been done.

I can give you a sense, for example, of the evaluation of the impacts of the changes to the selection criteria for skilled workers. As the implementation of the act comes forward, we have been waiting to gather enough data to do a full evaluation of the impacts. We are almost at a stage--and you'll see that in the annual report--to do that. It takes time to actually gather as the people roll through the system.

While it seems as if six years is a long time, because of the time it takes to process and for people to arrive here, we are still not at a point where most of this analysis....

And that's just one example. For me to go through the whole list and respond wouldn't make sense, because I'd use up all of your time. But we can get back to you.

[Peter Oberle]

Perhaps I could add a couple of quick points. We publish a document called Facts and Figures. Certainly part of our data is in that publication. So we do make that available.

One of your questions was whether our research was finished. Our research will never be finished; it's absolutely going to be ongoing. You'll see our research plans in our annual report.

As we learn, as knowledge builds, and as administrative measures are taken, it's a constant exercise to do the research and make sure we understand the gender-based impacts. Again, you'll see that reflected in our annual report.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have about two minutes.

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

In the course of the discussion you talked about the gender-based analysis training through the branches. I kept thinking about the people on the ground who make that first contact, whether it be in an embassy or a community. I'm thinking about the local CIC office in London, Ontario, where despite the fact that they don't have enough staff, they do incredible work--tremendous work.

To what degree do they receive gender-based training, if at all? And how important is that in terms of dealing with those human beings in that very intimate kind of situation?

[Peter Oberle]

I have to let Julie have a chance to jump in on this. She's the author of so much of our training, and she has been so engaged in it. But I can tell you that there is engagement on the front line. Training has been delivered to the front line in a variety of circumstances.

It's also a two-way street. We get some news of where we need to shape policy and promote gender equality from the front line as well, so it's a two-way street.

[Julie Fontaine]

The training at CIC is open to all staff, whether you work in policies, programs, or the front line. Everybody can follow that training. There were a few folks from our region in Ontario who followed it last fall. The effort is coordinated at the national headquarters, but certainly the information trickles down to our region.

[Peter Oberle]

Perhaps I could highlight one example in our annual report as well, where training was delivered to our front line officers to raise awareness about victims of human trafficking, many of whom are women and children, of course.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to be mindful of the time because there's a committee after us. I would request that everybody go for four minutes. If you keep your questions brief, they can answer them.

Mr. Pearson.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for coming. We appreciate the hard work you do. Many of us have had personal experience with your department, and we very much appreciate the efforts you put in.

We realize Status of Women has been working with various departments, and that they have champions. We've heard, though, as a committee, that though efforts have been made, the outcomes are not necessarily as successful as we would have hoped. That's what some witnesses have said.

So my question is more about whether you have monitors in place to make sure we're getting to the sinew of what we're trying to do here. Do you have plans to continue to monitor this to make sure it becomes even more effective?

[Peter Oberle]

Yes, absolutely we do. I'll try to quickly walk you through this and give you a picture of how it works.

There's us, the gender-based analysis unit. We provide support to branches. The branches develop their plans. Check one is that the director general for each branch signs off those plans. So there's an accountability mechanism there.

Policy program proposals come to a central policy committee. There's a second check there.

Overseeing that policy committee is our policy sector, which has an overall coordination challenge role in policies. There's an additional check built in there.

We produce the results of all of that in our annual immigration report. We also build the results into our report on plans and priorities, the departmental performance report. That brings in an additional check.

There's a final thing I would add on the responsibility of my organization. We have a five-year framework. It's 2008, so we have to be turning our minds to what the next framework looks like. One thing we need to do in designing the next framework is to do a stock-taking of this framework. That's something we'll have to take to senior management. They sit on top of all this. The executive committee sees the annual immigration report, the outputs of the policy, and they see what the RPP looks like. Ultimately they'll see the stock-taking exercise and where we need to go next.

Does that give you a good picture?

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Yes, it does.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Mr. Stanton.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Madam Chair, I don't have anything else.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Mr. Stanton requested that I take his time--

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Yes, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

--so I'm going to ask you a couple of things.

Ms. Mathyssen had asked for an analysis and wanted to know if you could supply us with a document on that analysis. If you have that document, please supply it to us. We would also like to have a copy of your training program, as you so willingly suggested.

Mr. Daly, you talked about the GBA that you did for refugees from Thailand, the Korean refugees--

[Jeff Daly]

No, those are the Karen refugees from Thailand. It was on just the pre- and post-selection phase of it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Oh, okay.

The committee has been dealing with human trafficking. It has been a critical issue for us. I looked at your GBA on the borders and how you let women in, etc. Could you tell us how you do that gender-based analysis of the very vulnerable ones, and the pre-removal risk assessment? When you're sending the PRA to third countries, to safe havens or whatever, we need to see that, because it really affects our work.

[Jeff Daly]

I don't think I can get into all the details of how it works operationally, but I can tell you that there was a GBA done on the pre-removal risk assessment. I don't know if the committee is familiar with the results of that.

We have preliminary results. They suggest that PRA has no significant differential impact on women and minors who are applying for protection through the program. Instead, the study shows that there tends to be less and less limitation on access to the PRA program for all clients.

We don't have all the details on the analysis for this yet. That's still ongoing within our asylum division of refugees branch. But that's preliminary information that I can provide to the committee right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

As a final question, has the GBA affected your resources? You don't have to answer that now--I need to give some time the Bloc--but perhaps you could give me the answer later, or submit something.

Madame Demers.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Madam Chair, we must not forget that we have also asked for the list of recommendations that have been made and those accepted for the various programs.

Mr. Oberle, I asked you a question earlier about whether you practised what you preached. Do your employees have pay equity?

[Peter Oberle]

Are we tooled properly? That's our job, to year after year develop and grow our tools. I think we're doing pretty well on tools, although that doesn't negate the fact that we want to continuously improve.

We've built in training packages, one example of which we could share with this committee. I think it's about to go into its third iteration of development.

I'm sorry, your second question was around equity for staff...?

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

I was talking about your own employees. Do they have pay equity? Are they entitled to the conditions that are being sought for employees in other sectors of economic activity?

[Peter Oberle]

Certainly it's a goal of our department as well. I would hesitate to speak on behalf of our folks in human resources, except to say I know that's one of the items they work very hard on. I'd be happy to follow up with an answer to that question, if I may.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you very much, sir.