Status of Women Committee on Dec. 10th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

I call the meeting to order, ladies and gentlemen. We have quorum.

We have a witness from South Africa who's already on the audio waiting for us. Madame Budlender is from the Community Agency for Social Enquiry, and she's a specialist researcher from South Africa. As we know, South Africa is at the forefront in gender budgeting, and we would really like to hear from our international expert.

Ms. Budlender, I hope you can hear me.

[Debbie Budlender, Specialist Researcher, Community Agency for Social Enquiry]

Yes, I can hear very well, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Normally we have 10 minutes for witnesses. So please time yourself by your watch and speak for 10 minutes. Then we will listen to other witnesses. Afterwards committee members will have an opportunity to ask you questions, and they will be very specific that the question is for you.

[Debbie Budlender]

That's fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

With that, I would like to start with you, Ms. Budlender, please. Thank you.

[Debbie Budlender]

I'm going to talk this evening as both a South African and someone who has assisted over 20 countries, as well as international agencies, with gender-responsive budgeting. Some of what I say will be about South Africa, and some will be what I think I've learned from working in other countries, mainly developing countries like Africa and Asia, but also some other parts of the world.

I have seen the notes from some previous sessions, so I will try to respond to some of the issues that have been raised and not duplicate too much what you've heard already.

I was responsible for helping the Commonwealth Secretariat pull together the responses to a questionnaire that went out to all the finance ministries of Commonwealth countries in preparation for the finance ministers meeting. This was a questionnaire that the finance ministers had decided to send to check what had happened two years after they had all taken a commitment to do gender-responsive budgeting.

There was a response from the Canadian Department of Finance in there, and that response said clearly that the Canadian government felt it was doing gender-responsive budgeting. I think it's important for the committee to know that your government believes it is doing gender-responsive budgeting. It feels it's not something new, so that is something to ask it about. It referred in particular to the gender-based analysis that is done throughout federal departments and agencies, in line with the 1995 federal plan for gender equality.

Several of the developed countries, when we ask about gender budgeting, refer to general gender audits. In my mind, gender budgeting is a specialized form of gender audit that adds an extra budget punch to a gender audit. So gender budgeting for me is almost broader than gender audit, in that it does all the other stages but asks the important question about the money.

The Canadian government response was that where appropriate and where data exists, Department of Finance branches can do GBA when they are developing policies. It didn't really go further to say for which policies it had done this. It also talked about distributional impacts of the policies on Canadians from an income, regional, and gender lens that it does whenever possible or relevant. There are perhaps questions for the committee there about when it thinks it is possible and when it thinks it is relevant, because those qualifying words leave a lot of room for manoeuvring.

It also mentioned the pre-budget consultations as an important input into the analysis to ensure policies don't have unintended consequences on our “segment of the population including women”. So it sees that both its own analyses and what women say are important in forming what policies should be given budgets.

Finally, from what I know about Canada, the Canadian International Development Agency has supported gender-responsive budgeting in several countries. I personally have done work that was funded by CIDA in Malawi, the Philippines, and Bangladesh. Other countries where this has happened are Tanzania, Vietnam, Pakistan, and perhaps others.

So there is a sense that the Canadian government is saying it believes in gender-responsive budgeting. That's my first area.

The second area consists of some international lessons, and some of these echo what you've heard already.

The first is that gender-responsive budgeting is always easier to do when countries are using some form of performance- or results-based budgeting. It's easier to do it with that than with line item budgeting, because the performance- or results-based budgeting looks at physical outputs and outcomes rather than treating budgeting as a bookkeeping exercise, which is what used to happen in the old days. That lesson says Canada is in an excellent position to do gender-responsive budget, because you have your management resources and results structure policy, your reports on plans and priorities, and your department performance reports. Those allow you to ask what you're giving money for and how you measure physically what that money has delivered, which for me is an important part of gender-responsive budgeting.

When we started this exercise, everybody thought only of the money, but the money is a promise, the budget is a promise, and we have to check that this promise gets followed through, and we do that through monitoring. You have the reports to do that monitoring if they're presented in the correct way.

The third area I'd like to go on to is South Africa, because it was mentioned in the previous hearings as a country in the lead, and there have been questions in your previous hearings, I know, about what has happened to South Africa.

We started the work in 1995, soon after the post-apartheid elections, and the work was done by a parliamentary committee, initially the finance committee, together with two NGOs. The idea was that the NGOs would do the research, and the parliamentarians would be able to take the facts and figures and use them to push things further because of their political power.

Over a period of three, four, or five years, we analyzed the budgets of every single department, as well as local governments' donor money into governmental fiscal relations revenues. We were there to prove an ideological point: you could find gender everywhere, not just in health and welfare. But we also felt it wasn't our task to do this on a regular basis. That was the task of governments, because there should be an accountability exercise whereby governments should be reporting to us and to Parliament what they are doing with our money.

For two years or so, the National Treasury did include gender-responsive budgeting in its annual budget report, but by about 1999-2000, they became a little bit more reluctant. I put it down to two reasons. First, it was no longer so easy to blame apartheid for anything that was wrong, because they had been in power for five years or so. And secondly, they were saying they'd get on to gender later; for the moment they'd got important budget reforms like performance budgeting, and they must get the important things right first.

At the national level, nothing consolidated is being done, but two of the provinces have institutionalized gender budgeting. Gauteng Province, which is where Johannesburg is, has being doing it every year since 2002--their report's in the annual budget--and my province of Western Cape, which is around Cape Town, has just started doing a gender- and youth-responsive budget. That'll be reported in the budget that gets published and tabled in February/March next year.

Every department is asked to show the allocations they think contribute the most to gender equality and youth development. It's similar in some ways to the South Australian approach, but the important innovation we've made is that they must include a report on what the subprogram that gets the largest amount of money is doing. We made that instruction so they wouldn't just focus on the crumbs they were giving to youth and gender, but they would tell us where the big money was going.

We have a parliamentary committee on women in the national Parliament that is, I think, similar to your own committee. One interesting development over the last three years is that twice a year that parliamentary committee commissions me and pays me out of their budget to assist them in analyzing the budget and preparing their report on the budget and sharing other skills with them. We have a committee that is probably a lot less formally educated than you are, and this sort of support is necessary because of the intimidation of the larger number of documents related to the budget.

That's really all I'd like to say for a start, except to say that something I've learned in working in many countries is that gender-responsive budgeting is not something that happens overnight. You need to persevere. You need to adapt the approach to suit a particular country's budgeting. There's no single recipe with the approach to budgeting. I think you need to keep it simple and unburdensome if you expect civil servants to continue to do it with some attention. The exception in that respect is France, which I think hasn't been mentioned in your committee. Every year France produces a large report related to gender-responsive budgeting; it is tabled together with their budget.

I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to mention to the committee that it is close to midnight your time, and I really appreciate that you have stayed awake to talk to us. You are committed.

We'll start off, then, with the next round of witnesses.

We have Ms. Beckton from Status of Women Canada. Ms. Beckton, are you the only one doing the presentation?

[Clare Beckton, Coordinator, Office of the Coordinator, Status of Women Canada]

Yes, that's correct. I'll do the presentation, and then Hélène will answer questions too.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You will be followed by Nancy Peckford from the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action.

Go ahead, Ms. Beckton, for 10 minutes.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Excuse me, Madam Chair. Out of respect for Ms. Budlender and given that it is midnight, would it be possible for us to ask our questions right now? We could proceed with the presentations later.

[Debbie Budlender]

It's 10:45 p.m. It's not midnight. I'm fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

It's 10:45 p.m., so if you want, we can do the presentation and then ask her the questions. It's only 10 more minutes.

Merci, madame.

[Clare Beckton]

Today we have a deck that we've prepared. It provides a little bit more of an overview; it's not a particular point of view.

What is gender budgeting? It is not a separate budget for women. It is an analysis of how a government finds revenues and how it spends public monies from a gender perspective. This takes into account the effects on the different groups of men and women and deals with their reality. It requires participation not only at the budget implementation stage, but also throughout the entire budgetary cycle and the policy development cycle.

We should now discuss the context. A one-size-fits-all approach does not work for everyone.

We're really saying various approaches exist around the world--you've just heard one--of which none has emerged as the defining one. Some approaches are more suitable to developing countries and economies in transition and are not appropriate for Canada.

Obviously, the political process is influenced by the broader country and government context. In Canada, the budget forms part of the policy planning cycle. Canada focuses on accountability for results.

In Canada we've been focusing on accountability for results, and that particularly came about as a result of some of the continuing work of this parliamentary committee around gender-based analysis--that is, if line departments ensure a solid gender-based analysis of their activities and initiatives, their policy and program objectives, and their resource allocations, it should produce concrete results for women and be reflected in the budget.

These can be tracked through departmental performance reports, such as the management resources and results structure and the management accountability framework. In response to the standing committee's recommendations, the three central agencies are engaged in training activities and the institutionalizing of gender-based analysis in their processes--that's really important--and practices to ensure that departments produce better public policy that will contribute to closing the gender gap.

The advantage of gender budgeting is that it reduces the socio-economic disparity between the sexes. It is not just a question of equality. Gender budgeting may also improve effectiveness, efficiency, accountability and transparency of government budgets.

And so to integrate a gender-based analysis into economic policy the following questions could be asked. Who are the recipients through sex-disaggregated data? How is spending and revenue distributed between men and women? And this would require expenditure and revenue statistics disaggregated by sex. What are some of the long- and short-term implications for gender distribution of resources? Are the provisions adequate for the needs of both men and women?

International experience shows that a combination of tools are used to create analytical models to analyze income distribution, among other things. Examples of some of these tools are the gender audits and gender impact assessments, gender-disaggregated beneficiary assessments, gender-disaggregated policy expenditure incident analysis, and gender-disaggregated tax incidents.

Les bénéfices of gender budgeting--we've just talked about that.

Next is approaches.

There are three fundamental approaches.

First there is the women's budget. This is comprised of some combination of audits of expenditures specifically targeting women (also known as women's budget statements) and recommendations to advance women's equality.

Then there is the gender budget or the gender-sensitive budget. This is not a separate budget for women, but a gender-based analysis of the overall budget to determine differential impacts, with possible recommendations for changes to advance gender equality.

Last, there is gender mainstreaming, a gender responsive budget or engendering the budget process.

As you know, there are various models. We will first talk about Australia and the United Kingdom.

I'm not going to read that part of the deck, but it's there.

I'll focus for a few minutes on Canada.

The three central agencies have committed to integrating gender-based analysis, GBA, into their practices and processes. This will ensure that departments take into account gender considerations in developing policies and programs submitted to the agencies.

As for the government response to the standing committee on GBA, each central agency has appointed a senior official as a GBA champion and the overall goal is to enhance their horizontal policy coordination and challenge functions relative to GBA.

All three central agencies are also pursuing training of all of their analysts, and to ensure, for example, with the Privy Council Office, that the MCs coming before them reflect that the department has done a gender-based analysis. The Department of Finance has conducted a gender-based analysis on policy measures, particularly on tax policy, where data permitted, on tax proposals presented to the Minister of Finance in both the budgets in 2006 and 2007, and training is to be offered to everyone in the department now. That's following the commitment that the deputy made here at the committee.

The departments responsible must ensure that gender-based considerations are included in the budget presentation and provide for allocations of pertinent resources.

So on the line departments, Treasury Board submissions are used by departments, as you know, to obtain programming funds, and now the Treasury Board has required that all of these contain a gender-based analysis. They will be asking questions to ensure that the gender-based analysis was done. The Status of Women also provides gender expertise and gender-based analysis training to departments and central agencies.

Il y a aussi les divers modèles, other models in Canada, and again, I'm not going to go through those because I know you've heard it.

Some headway has been made in Canada. There is close cooperation between the three central agencies.

And by focusing its study on GBA, the work done by this committee presented the opportunity for Status of Women Canada and the central agencies to develop an active partnership approach in addressing accountability issues. And I think we have made considerable progress in that regard.

There is an increased linkage among central agencies, line departments, and accountabilities as a result of the measures we've been working on. And we think that as a result of the training--and also training that will be provided to the parliamentary library's research branch--parliamentarians and parliamentary committees will also be able to play a greater role in respect of gender-based analysis and accountability.

Some challenges have yet to be taken up, among them the collection of sex-disaggregated data.

We know that without accurate and relevant data it's not possible to integrate a gender perspective in the budget process. And also, the data needs to reflect the diversity among men and women.

There is also the assessment of priority areas.

Again, when we're looking, there has been a lot of work internationally on the expenditure side and less done on the revenue side, which includes tax policies. As you've already heard from some of the witnesses, it is more difficult to look at taxation policies.

On the expenditure side in Canada, there may be areas of opportunity that could be explored, such as income support for parents, some of the economic policies, and mental health policies, etc.

We have to successfully move from analysis to changes in policies and budgets.

There are also the limitations of legislative intervention.

We know that legislatures in partnership with gender experts and civil society groups have sometimes played an important role for advocacy, particularly, for example, in South Africa, where our witness is from today. And I think the standing committee should be commended for looking at the issue you're looking at now and for bringing all of the people before you.

We also have the institutionalizing of gender budget tools, and that is one of the things we have been working on in Canada.

In conclusion, international experience highlights certain best practices and certain shared elements. However, Canada must choose what works in its specific context.

We need to look at tools and gender-based analysis training, recognition of gender-based analysis and how it can be instrumental in achieving effective policy implementation--and this is one of the things we continue to work on--political and legislative support, institutional arrangements and funding for government machinery,

dialogue, oversight, reporting of progress, and the establishment of new priorities rather than an increase in public expenditures.

I think it's important to note that it doesn't always mean spending more money when you do the analysis. It may be simply a reorganization of priorities to place the money in a different place after you've determined the impact of where the spending occurs--the time commitment--and initially maybe reveal more gaps and solutions.

There you are. I have finished.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Ms. Nancy Peckford, who is the director of programs with the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action, who has provided an analysis of the national finance for some 10 years.

We look forward to hearing from you, for 10 minutes. Thank you.

[Nancy Peckford, Program Director, Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action]

Thank you so much.

It's a real pleasure to be here, and I'm delighted that the members of this committee have taken on the opportunity to study gender budgeting.

We have been a keen and long-term advocate of gender budgeting, for a variety of reasons. We understand gender budgeting much like Ms. Beckton does here. It doesn't mean a separate budget for women, it is not limited to budgetary allocations targeting equal opportunity policies or promoting women, but it encompasses the entire budget. I think that's why your task is so important today, because you're looking at the global federal budget and how it is undertaken and how to ensure equitable outcomes for women.

We identified gender budgeting as a priority in 2005 after we commissioned a retrospective federal budget analysis going 10 years back. So we looked at the year during which Canada signed the Beijing Platform for Action, in 1995, up to 2004. We hired a researcher, who has appeared before your committee, an economist, Armine Yalnizyan, to do an analysis of key priority areas for women and how they were funded during that period.

Essentially, what Armine has told you and what she found for us is that areas that women relied on for the well-being of themselves, their families, and their communities tended to be dramatically underfunded and, in some cases, cut during the deficit-cutting years. During the surplus years, those moneys were never restored. So what we were left with was a situation in which women weren't able to reliably count on programs and services that were very, very important for the stability of themselves and their families.

During this period when we were doing the study, we attempted to find information about what was being done at the federal level on gender-based analysis—this was in 2005. Sadly, we didn't have a lot to work with. There was no information available. We were able to get a commitment in the House at that time from Minister Ralph Goodale that a rigorous GBA would be done of forthcoming federal budgets, but there was no evidence suggesting to us that a rigorous or high-calibre gender-based analysis was being done.

So we've been, in fact, on an exploratory mission over the last couple of years to better discern what's actually happening within the federal government. We recognize that Status of Women Canada has funded some research that has looked specifically at the impacts of tax policy and other budgetary measures, but we were unable to find any meaningful coordinated effort within the federal government, and particularly within the finance department, around gender budgeting and gender budgeting outcomes.

I'll tell you a bit more a little later about what we understand to be happening now, and I'm sure Clare would be happy to elaborate as well.

We understand gender budgeting to be necessary for several reasons. The United Nations has identified what we call equality gaps in a variety of areas in Canada that really impact upon women's daily lives. These include poverty, violence against women, employment, child care, housing, legal aid, discrimination against aboriginal women, immigrant and refugee women, and their access to employment insurance.

We also understand, and no doubt you've done a very long-term study on women's economic security, that women are located differently in the economy, in particular because of their caregiving responsibilities, and those caregiving responsibilities have an impact on their participation in the labour force. I think it's helpful to recognize for the purposes of this committee that 70% of Canada's part-time work force is female. Women consistently share with Statistics Canada that they take more time out of the work force for caregiving, they take more sick days, they take more family days; and in many cases they're opting for part-time work, if their financial situation allows it, so that they can better balance family and employment.

We should also recognize, and I'm sure you've heard this, that nearly 40% of women tax filers don't actually pay tax in Canada. They don't earn enough revenue to pay tax. This is really important when examining federal budget trends over the last decade, which increasingly rely on the tax system to deliver social policy.

In particular, we note the use of tax credits. This has been a long-term—long-term in the last decade and a bit—way in which the federal government has opted to deliver income relief, but in some cases it doesn't work for women if their tax liability is so limited that the tax credit means nothing to them.

So I think this is an important context in which we're working, and you're working, in terms of the gender budgeting study that is currently under way.

Because of these realities, we have endeavoured to better understand what's happening within Finance. One of the issues is that I think there's a profound lack of transparency within the federal government and the finance department. I think that's because the measures have been so modest to date. It's very difficult to be publicly forthcoming about what you're doing when for the most part, I believe, it has been ad hoc and somewhat arbitrary.

We do understand that there has been some gender-based analysis of federal budget measures since 2005. We haven't looked at whether anything preceded that. Our evidence suggests that it has been extremely limited. Perhaps it has been done; we haven't been able to access that information. We believe, and gender budgeting experts worldwide will tell you, that transparency is a really important part of the process.

To better understand what the finance department is doing, we've filed access to information requests. We've discovered that there has been some gender-based analysis, but often it's very superficial and it's not necessarily taking place within an equality rights framework.

I would refer you to a report by Diane Elson, who is a UN-recognized expert on gender budgeting. She has written a document called Budgeting for Women's Rights: Monitoring Government Budgets for Compliance with CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. I don't know why Ms. Elson hasn't been here with you, but I believe she would be of enormous assistance.

This report suggests that gender budgeting needs to be done within a context that recognizes the ways in which women are disadvantaged in the economy, and particularly in their communities. It may be that you have to zero in on specific constituencies of women.

We're aware that Canada did file a report to the Commonwealth finance ministers meeting, as per their commitment to do gender budgeting. We were able to access a copy of that report, again through an access to information request because we simply haven't been able to get the information any other way. The report suggests that GBA in Canada tends to be limited to analysis and is less focused on outcomes. I think we have to have a shift within the federal government so we also look at performance indicators.

I believe that Debbie is correct in saying that Canada is well positioned to look more specifically at performance-based budgeting. We understand--and I look to Clare to clarify if this is true--that the analysis is not in-depth enough. It does not look specifically at women's location. It's not specific to any government, but without that analysis what you risk getting is a public relations exercise. I think no one wants that kind of analysis. It's not helpful, and it doesn't necessarily advance women's interests. I would strongly encourage the committee to look very specifically at performance-based indicators based upon Canada's equality commitments, both internationally and domestically.

I brought a copy of the 23 recommendations that were made by the UN CEDAW committee on discrimination against women. I believe this set of recommendations is a useful place to start in terms of thinking about what you want to achieve with gender budgeting.

I would conclude with two points. One is that I don't think there has been sufficient leadership. I think Status of Women Canada has certainly done what it's been able to in terms of encouraging the finance department; however, I think the finance department to date hasn't embodied the leadership required to take this to the next level. I think it requires collaboration with Status of Women Canada, but I don't think they're there yet.

I recognize that the tax policy unit at the finance department appears to be undertaking a gender-based analysis, but I don't think that analysis is sufficient in terms of what it's identifying as useful to women. I think if the analysis were sufficient, we would see different measures in federal budgets, and we're not seeing them. We're still seeing a heavy reliance on tax credits, for example, and other kinds of tax cuts, which, I don't think, recognize the way in which women rely on public spending and notions of the public good. So I think that we need a different kind of leadership and a different context.

I would also say that I don't think civil society organizations have been adequately consulted. It's partly a capacity issue, and we all recognize that. Women's organizations in Canada are not well versed in gender budgeting, in part because we don't believe that Canada has been doing it in a very public way. So our inputting into the process has been limited by the fact that it appears to be somewhat obscure.

I would note that last year, only two groups were invited to the ministerial round tables with the Minister of Finance in the pre-budget lead-up, and those were REAL Women of Canada and the Native Women's Association of Canada. That's according to the information provided by the finance department. This suggests to me that the consultations are not broad enough, and you're not speaking to enough organizations that can actually tell you about women's economic and social circumstances. If you're not having those conversations, in my view your gender budgeting work will not succeed. It will not be meaningful, and I don't believe it will necessarily produce good outcomes.

I would also note—and this is my last point—that I believe Parliament should have some oversight here. We see it in other areas. For example, there's an environment commissioner who looks at how departments do their sustainable development planning. I don't see any reason why we wouldn't want to consider something like that for the purposes of gender equality and gender budgeting. Finally—I'm sorry, I'll just make this last point—while Canada has made a good start in having departments submit their gender-based analyses to the finance department, I think we need to go a step further. I don't think relying exclusively on departments to do that GBA is sufficient. In some cases, we don't have existing or functional GBA units within those departments. So I don't think we have enough capacity in Canada, and I don't think we have enough oversight.

I'll stop there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much.

Thank you all for such a full presentation.

We did contact Ms. Elson, and the timing was not working for us.

With that, I would like to start off with round one of our questioning, with Ms. Minna for seven minutes.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank all of you, as well as our guest from South Africa. It's good information. It's good to see where we need to go, and so on.

Let me start with our guest from South Africa, just because the timing is a bit difficult.

Thank you for your input. I wanted to ask you a particular question with respect to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women in South Africa having commissioned you to do an analysis on the budget, I think you said, twice a year. I'm intrigued by that, because for the first time in our country, the Department of Finance, a couple of years back, actually did exactly that, took a look, using an independent body that was paid for by the committee, which would advise the committee on the budget surpluses and things like that

So could you explain to us just a bit more how that works and exactly what your relationship would be with the committee, and maybe give us an example of how that worked?

[Debbie Budlender]

It is required by Parliament that after the budget is tabled, all the committees discuss the budget. This committee, like all the other committees, is meant to submit a report on their views on the budget.

The complication for this committee is that all the other committees are sectoral committees, so they concentrate on the health budget or whatever budget. This one has the whole budget to look at.

What I do is draft a report for them. We then have a workshop where we go through that report. They make the changes they want, and then it gets submitted under their name.

Over the last four or five years, the committee has focused its attention on what it sees as the biggest problems facing women in South Africa--HIV/AIDS, poverty, unemployment, and violence against women. So what I do for them at first glance is look through all the departments that could have an impact on those three issues and pull out what they are promising to do and what budget report they did the previous year.

With regard to the biannual aspect, they usually call me in at the end of the year. This year--in fact, last month--I tried to show them how they could use the annual reports of the committees that get tabled in September to monitor what happened with the budget of the previous year.

It really goes back to what I was saying and what Nancy was saying, that you have you to do this by saying not only what is allocated but also what actually happens to that money and the results that come from it.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you. That's an intriguing way of doing it. I think the parliamentary oversight that was mentioned by Ms. Peckford would go well in hand with that. It would be extending that kind of work from this committee into parliamentary oversight on how we do.

To Ms. Beckton, you mentioned that one of the challenges is getting disaggregated data. But we had a witness just last week who didn't seem to think this was an issue. She thought it was quite accessible; this kind of data is available, it's just a matter of getting it and talking about it.

I wonder if you could clarify that for us a little bit. At the same time, could you tell us if any gender analysis was done on the pension splitting that was part of the last budget?

[Clare Beckton]

I don't know if I'd be able to tell you specifically about any item in the budget. I think that's something you would have to ask the Department of Finance.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

We'll probably ask the minister when she gets here, then.

[Clare Beckton]

I think it would have to be the Department of Finance, actually.

There is a fair bit of disaggregated data in Canada. It is a challenge in other places, but sometimes it's a challenge getting access to it and being able to put it in the right place or ascertaining whether that data is consistent with other data you have.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Since you couldn't answer on pension splitting, to what extent was the expertise of Status of Women utilized in the last budget, if at all, and if so, on what items?

[Clare Beckton]

Ms. Dwyer-Renaud, one of the experts in this area, will answer that.

[Hélène Dwyer-Renaud, Director, Gender-Based Analysis and Accountability Directorate and Research Directorate, Status of Women Canada]

I would preface my comments by saying that the role of Status of Women is really in supporting the departments, such as the Department of Finance. Our expertise is much more in terms of capacity building, in terms of their ability to do a better job at developing their policies and their tools.

We have been able to give the Department of Finance training and support, but really, they have to do the job. They go and get the information, they interpret the information, they provide it. They are very willing and are learning how to do this better, but as I think many of your witnesses have said, this will take a long time.

So we are in a very good relationship with the Department of Finance. They have now committed to having the entire department trained in gender-based analysis.