Thank you, Georgina.
First of all, legislation with no control mechanism cannot work. It has to include obligations for the departments. There will be an action plan for all departments and agencies, which will have to define their own measures and results with a view to achieving equality for women.
Under the action plan, departments will be required to prepare annual progress reports, which will be submitted to the House of Commons by the respective ministers. The legislation would require all departments to adopt an action plan and then achieve their objectives.
Our report also states that there should be a complaint mechanism, since there would be sanctions. A commissioner or ombudsman could oversee implementation of the act, supported by the annual reports, of course, similar to what is done for other legislation. The Official Languages Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act are examples that come to mind. It is very clear that the Canadian government cannot put up a building without first doing an environmental assessment.
The same thing would apply with the legislation we are talking about: it would impose an obligation on all departments and agencies to carry out a gender-based analysis for all their programs, set annual objectives and measure results. The analysis would require the commitment of resources. Officials would be required to do what they are already doing under the official languages and environmental legislation, for example.