Thank you, Madam Chair.
I think there could be a number of objectives. Obviously, the first one is to ensure that the gender budgeting that's being done now is done in a meaningful way across the board. My understanding from the last time that we met with the Department of Finance is that they're not using gender-desegregated data as part of the basis, which already gets you down a different kind of road. I remember that was one of the questions asked, I think, by one of the witnesses or by one of us at the time. I do remember that issue coming up.
Listening to experts would allow us to see how it's being done or not done, because if we're not going down the right track, we will find, five years from now, that we actually haven't been doing it—not really in a meaningful way that matters. The other thing is that it hopefully allows us to see which department, if any, is actually trying it, aggressively or not. Because my sense has been, government-wide, that there are some stellar examples, like CIDA, and there are some others that just talk about it but don't really do it. I think we maybe need some pressure on how it should be done, and what the outcomes, when they've done it right, can be. For instance, I think we should look at gender-based budgeting and how it impacts things as part of our study.
We should probably identify three or four areas that we can use as templates to show, when it's used, this is what happens. I thought, as a suggestion, we could use poverty and working women, and how gender-based analysis actually affects the outcomes of policy for eradicating poverty; women in the legal system--it's not that big, but it's an area of critical importance in terms of women being able to access the judicial system and how they are treated when they are in the system; women in the military, including the spouses, but also the soldiers themselves; and racialized women would add the other element. If we could look at those four that I'm suggesting, and break those areas up, then we could say we are doing gender budgeting, but we are applying it as we learn it to these areas with experts. What would the outcome be if it had actually been used right?
I think there are people out there, like the women who were just mentioned recently, who could work with us to actually help us see, so we could focus in on a number of areas and identify the problems in those areas. I think that would allow us to be concrete and at the same time specific.