I have not seen a meta-study that correlates budgetary responses with movement in the global indicators like the human development index, the gender development index, or anything, but it's very clear just from looking at the correlations that such a study would produce the evidence you are looking for. I have no doubt about that.
The other aspect of that, of course, is that if I can sit down with the limited micro-simulation software that Statistics Canada is willing to let the public have access to and pinpoint exactly which groups, at what ages, at what income levels, gain or lose if we change a particular provision--a spending provision or a tax provision--by a few dollars, a few hundred dollars, or whatever, and look at where they fall and who the winners and losers are, then you know the Department of Finance can do that, probably even on a bad day. So the information is there. Canada has the expertise. Statistics Canada and the Department of Finance together have the technical capability to do that.
Being able to continue is very much a function of political will, and I believe that is what happened in Australia and why its gender budgeting has become more of a symbolic gesture, as compared with some of the Nordic countries.
The real question is how to do this. Let me just go back to talk about the tax expenditure budget, which is a huge undertaking that was mounted by the Department of Finance in a very short period of time in the late 1970s, when it was realized that a lot of spending measures were disguised as tax measures and were escaping the rigours of the budgetary process. A team was struck within the Department of Finance and it was charged to develop a tax expenditure budget and come up with a justification for why it identified these items. It was done in a very short period of time, and it has continued ever since then.
So the ability is there. It seems like a huge undertaking, but that's partly because it's a huge undertaking to even make it okay in the budgetary process to talk about gender issues. There's almost more of a social obstacle to overcome rather than a technical obstacle.
When it comes to implementing gender budgeting, however, I would say that it should be a joint effort of Status of Women Canada, the Department of Finance, and an outside advisory group of experts, an all-party panel, that can bring perhaps through changes in government some moderating effect that could be described as academic objectivity, although we all understand that not everyone is going to agree as to who's really objective. I think some structure like that would get it going.
If this committee felt it was too hard to take on the whole thing at once, I would say do an in-depth study of income splitting of retirement income. I have micro-simulated what would happen if income splitting were carried out for all incomes for all taxpayers in Canada, and the effects would be absolutely devastating--annex A, the curve, would become much more dramatic in a year.