Status of Women Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2007

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

All right. In your presentation, you said that was put in place in San Francisco in 1998. Since then, have there been any results from the introduction of this gender budgeting mechanism?

[Dr. John R. Bartle]

What they've done, I understand, is they've looked at specific programs. They've looked at six different departments and have had some analysis of their programs to see the impact on gender.

I don't know all the details, but to my understanding, it's not a gender budget in the sense that the budget is done comprehensively, analyzing gender impact. It has been on a piecemeal basis, what I would call maybe more a gender analysis of specific departments' specific expenditures rather than a comprehensive budgetary approach.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

I think your time is done.

I do not know why the bells are ringing. We're going to be checking. We can continue with the question—

[A voice]

No, it's nothing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

It's nothing?

We are told that somebody pressed the bell in error.

We can continue, Ms. Mathyssen, for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. There are a lot of buttons pressed in this place for no apparent reason, I think.

I'm wondering if I could ask a question about CEDAW, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. I don't know to what degree you would feel comfortable in answering these questions, but one of the things this committee had considered was looking at Canada's response to our CEDAW commitments, our obligations.

Firstly, if you have expertise in CEDAW, could you give us a sense of why these commitments were put in place? What do they involve? What was the whole point of the CEDAW protocol?

[Dr. Ellen Russell]

I can't speak to that.

[Dr. John R. Bartle]

I have to confess ignorance on that. I don't know the details.

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

Then I'm going to move on to something else in regard to the information you've provided. It has been very extensive, and there's a great deal that we need to consider and digest.

Is there something that we haven't asked? Is there something in this process that we've overlooked about which you would like to provide some additional information?

[Dr. John R. Bartle]

I would mention three things. I think there need to be well-placed coordinators in the different agencies to do this. There needs to be someone whose role it is, at least in part, so that when people in the agency or department have questions, they know who to go to. It helps if it's somebody within their organization rather than somebody out of central office.

Second, I think there needs to be coordination across the ministries. While you want to let different types of analysis happen in different types of places, it still has to be coordinated. It has to all feed into the same set of numbers. If you have one agency doing something very different from what's being done in another agency, that can be a problem. If the goal ultimately is to have a comprehensive budgetary plan—which is to me what a budget is, a comprehensive plan for spending and revenue raising—then there needs to be coordination among the agencies on how to do it.

Then, third of all, I can't emphasize enough that training is important. I've seen it with a lot of things beyond budgeting. If people don't know how to fill out the forms, they may well put down some numbers and do some reports, but who knows exactly how useful that will be? I think there needs to be a kind of education—professional development, really—so that the people who are doing the work know how to do it and talk to each other, and there's a trading of ideas and a kind of constant professional improvement and development.

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

Thank you.

[Dr. Ellen Russell]

I would like to emphasize something that Dr. Bartle said, which was about the importance of the initial commitment do this.

I'm quite certain you'll hear a lot of very stimulating witnesses who will tell you a lot of important things, and you will walk away and won't be sure what to do, because there are a lot of uncertainties about this. Make the step anyhow. We are only going to figure this out as we plunge in and learn by doing. There are a lot of very accomplished people who are in Ottawa in positions to work a lot of this out and who have not yet been charged with the challenge of sorting through its complexities. But if you make the commitment that we want that information, wonderful things will happen as people roll up their sleeves and work this out.

So I would not be dissuaded, even though your witnesses, as you see them in the next weeks and months, won't have the magic answers for you. We don't need the magic answers. We just need the commitment, and then we'll work it out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Ms. Boucher.

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

Greetings to our two guests, and I would like to thank them for coming here. This is very interesting.

Mr. Bartle, once a country has introduced a gender budget, how can it measure and monitor the effectiveness of that kind of budget?

[Dr. John R. Bartle]

I guess I'd go back to my earlier answer--you see if it altered the basis for making the decision, you see if it affected the decision-making that happened.

That's a hard thing to look at, to know, because I suppose you don't know what would have happened otherwise. But to me, that's how you know if it worked and if it was worth the time and effort to do the budget.

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

All right. You said that some countries had started gender budgeting and that their efforts were not sustained.

In your opinion, why are efforts not sustained? What are the main constraints that countries adopting this type of budget have faced?

[Dr. John R. Bartle]

I think in many cases it was because the goals of the leadership changed and the degree of commitment to gender equity, at least in the form of a gender budget analysis, was not maintained. That's why in the long run they weren't sustained.

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

If a government, whatever it may be, takes the time to prepare this kind of budget and wants it to be sustained, how can it ensure that, once it is adopted, it won't stop there and that there will be continuity from one government to the next?

[Dr. John R. Bartle]

I think that the people who do the budget preparation and budget analysis, and also the spending of money, need to know how to do it. It needs to be part of what they do on a daily basis. That can be done, again, through a variety of means, training incentives, but it has to be incorporated into their day-to-day administrative routines.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have two more minutes.

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

I'm going to share my time with Mr. Stanton.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

That's fine.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Madam Chair, I have one question to direct to Dr. Russell, if I may.

As we've listened today, it has been incredibly insightful, I must say, from both of you. It has given us a much better handle on where we need to go and it has occurred to me to wonder if we're really wasting our time with this.

What I'm hearing today is that there is ample information, that there is enough to start, at least. Are you telling me that really all that's needed here, and even Dr. Bartle alluded to this, is the political will and the culture to proceed? Is that what we're hearing? Here we are, set to embark on this study that could take us months--we're going to go in depth on this--only to come to the very conclusion that we've had presented to us today.

Am I off base on that?

[Dr. Ellen Russell]

I think you could get started tomorrow and do some meaningful work. If you have the capacity to say to folks in the federal government, in the finance department and Stats Canada, “Do your best”, a lot could happen.

Now, you may well get important information going through this--I don't know--but my guess is that you'll walk away having heard the pros and cons, that there is no conclusive information and no guarantee that it'll all work out well.... I still think you should do it, because I think you could make progress, even despite those uncertainties.

Whether you make that decision tonight or five months and many hours of your time later, I think you should still make the decision.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

I have one final thing.

You will know that some of the measures this government has embarked on have been directed to families. How would one consider families in the context of a gender budget?