Status of Women Committee on March 3rd, 2011

[David Angell]

Madam Chair, I would like to add something to Ms. Golberg's answer on the terms “gender equality” or “equality between men and women”. According to our analysis, the two expressions mean exactly the same thing. In the United Nations discussions we participate in, they are used interchangeably.

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

Do I have any time left, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Yes, Madame Boucher.

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

Mr. Weetman, why did you feel that it was necessary to send that email and organize a meeting?

[Jamieson Weetman]

Thank you very much for the question.

I just wanted to ensure that everybody was on the same wavelength as to how to best express Canadian policy as made by the minister.

I think it might be helpful, because we've been talking about this specific issue on the DRC and international and humanitarian law, for example, to explain how this conversation was taking place, because I think some of the process here is being lost.

In regard to what happened in this case, there are various ways in which a letter will come to the minister. It's assigned to the minister's correspondence unit. It's then sent down to the experts--in this case, it would have been the person who was working on the desk for the DRC--to draft a response.

The response comes back up to the minister's correspondence unit. It's discussed with the minister's office. They will look at it. They may have some questions about some of the language. They may have some questions about some of the terminology.

In this case, what they did was send it back. They made some suggestions; for example, could we change “international humanitarian law” to just “international law”? This was sent back to the division. That was how the discussion took place.

The meeting was one way for us to bring all the officials together to make sure that we were all aware that we were dealing with the same questions and to provide our best advice to the minister's office. There were follow-up meetings afterward.

Directly after this meeting that is referred to in the e-mail, I spoke with the minister's office and explained to them how we were looking at these terms. There were follow-up conversations with the minister's office, specifically, for example, on the term “international humanitarian law” which explained what the difference is between referring to “international humanitarian law” and referring to “international law”. It was well taken on board. You will see, for example, in recent press releases, the term “international humanitarian law”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Go ahead, Mr. Angell.

[David Angell]

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

If I may just amplify the answer by Mr. Weetman, in the case of the question posed by the minister's office, while in this case the docket was sent to a particular part of the department, in fact there are different parts of the department that had relevant expertise. I was invited as the official responsible for the United Nations, for example, and part of the issue under discussion was what the language might mean in terms of our participation in debates relating to conventions we have signed. The director general for legal affairs was there because of the legal importance of the terms.

So there were different pieces of the department that needed to be brought together to provide the answers that were sought by the minister's office. In addition to that, this was a discussion, as Mr. Weetman has said, that was playing out across a number of issues. So the minister's office used its convening authority, which is one of its principal functions, to bring all these various strands together to have a conversation in order to provide the responses sought by the minister's office.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have a minute. Go ahead.

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

I will leave a minute for Ms. Grewal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We'll go to Ms. Grewal.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is for Mr. Nickel.

Good morning out there, Mr. Nickel. I know that it is quite early in the morning, but certainly all of us appreciate your time. I have a few questions for you.

Is it your experience that DFAIT officials meet often with the minister's staff to discuss policy issues or questions? Can you give us some examples of other issues for which this dialogue took place? And do you consider this to be important and necessary?

[Jim Nickel, Deputy High Commissioner, High Commission of Canada to India]

Thank you very much.

Yes, in fact, these exchanges between the minister's office and officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade are a regular and normal occurrence. In fact, it's an essential and valuable exchanges that takes place between the minister's office and experts in the department.

In the context we're talking about now--the use of language and terminology--the focus there is to find the best ways to communicate Canadian policy to different audiences. In terms of substance, of course, it is a regular occurrence for the minister's office and the experts in the department to talk about policy issues, so the best advice from the officials can be provided to the minister's office and the officials can understand more clearly the desired directions of the minister's office on policy terms.

You had asked about some other examples of where this sort of exchange takes place. It's essentially a daily occurrence in the department and I suspect in other departments across the federal government. When I was in the minister's office, a policy area that had become quite important for Canada, and where the Minister of Foreign Affairs was actively engaged, was Canada's Arctic policy. In that area, we had experts from across the Department of Foreign Affairs--and in some cases, from other ministries--joining discussions with the minister's office to discuss policy directions in that area. That was an issue area that I think was particularly important during the time when I was in the minister's office.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Mr. Nickel.

We have gone well over time on this round.

Ms. Mathyssen is next, for seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank you for being here. I recognize that it may be uncomfortable, but I appreciate your willingness to be here, and I hope we can have a candid exchange.

I want to begin on the language shift in terms of “gender equality” to the term “equality between men and women”. We had a representative from FAFIA here. She was quite concerned, because she indicated that it signalled a “shift in the human and financial resources that are earmarked for work on gender equality”.

Now, while I realize that groups like Kairos, the millennium development goals, maternal and child health, Match, and the Canadian Federation of Teachers are funded out of CIDA, I'm very concerned about the fact that their funding has been cut. I discussed the issue with representatives from the CFT. In addition to educational work, they have done a great deal in terms of promoting gender equality when working on the ground and talking about how greater gender equality and respect for women were important in their work.

So when I see that there is a shift in human and financial resources because of this language change, it makes me very concerned. How important is gender equality in the work done by CIDA, DFAIT, or any branch of government? Can you respond to what the representative from FAFIA indicated to the committee?

[Elissa Golberg]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for the question.

I would maybe back up by saying that in terms of changing the terminology, I read some of the testimony from the previous witnesses on the concern about the shift on the using of terms. In fact, we use the terms interchangeably, and it very much depends on the forum in which we happen to be operating. The United Nations itself recognizes and utilizes the terms interchangeably; equality between men and women and girls and boys and gender equality are terms that the UN itself uses, depending on the circumstances at play.

We could speak for the resources that Foreign Affairs allocates. In terms of our resources, we continue to work actively internationally through our diplomats in the field, as well as through the modest programs that we have available to us.

With respect to the particular area that I work on, for instance, which is crisis-affected states, I can tell you that in the last fiscal year, on issues related to women, peace, and security, for instance, we spent about $32 million on these kinds of activities, $5.7 million of which was specifically around issues related to gender-based violence, and another $1 million that was specifically allocated to follow up on the women, peace, and security agenda. And then we do stuff in the country-specific context. That's just to give you a magnitude of resources. For Foreign Affairs, it's actually quite significant.

In terms of human resource staff, there's staff that exists within David's shop, which he can speak to. In addition to that, I have dedicated officers, for instance, on the women, peace, and security file, in addition to the fact that we are increasingly working--and this is part of Canada's newly adopted action plan on women, peace, and security--towards making sure that more and more of our staff are trained to be able to engage actively and effectively on issues pertaining to equality between men and women and girls and boys.

[David Angell]

If I may continue, Madam Chair, in the human rights policy and governance unit, certainly, the deployment of staff--in this case, three extremely able people working on issues relating to gender and to women--has absolutely no bearing on how language is used. As Elissa suggested, the bulk of the funding comes from CIDA.

We're from Foreign Affairs, and can't comment on CIDA's activities, except to note that the term that CIDA has used continually, and has not changed, is “gender equality”. There has been no change in terminology in the framework documents that CIDA has used.

But for Foreign Affairs, the terms are used absolutely interchangeably and have absolutely no bearing at all, Madam Chair, on resource deployment.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Weetman, in the e-mail that we've been discussing, you indicated issues such as “Child Soldiers, International Humanitarian Law, Human Rights, and R2P”. You gave a recent example of “a fairly extensive set of suggested revisions to a standard docket response” on the DRC and said that “the term 'impunity' in every instance” had been removed, “(eg Canada urges the Government of the DRC to take concerted measures to do whatever is necessary to put an end to impunity for sexual violence...” is changed to “Canada urges the government of the DRC to take concerted measures to prevent sexual violence”).

Now, we've heard very clearly from witnesses that the impunity piece is absolutely essential in terms of a woman's ability to confront those who have committed sexual violence and to know that they're not going to get away with it. Because women in the DRC, as you know, are most vulnerable.

It's very, very clear that there was a concern here. We know that rape is a weapon used to undermine communities and that it has been used extensively in the DRC. So what is the impact of removing the word “impunity”? Why on earth would that shift take place, since preventing sexual violence is not going to deal with the kinds of atrocities that women experience in the DRC?

[Jamieson Weetman]

Thank you for the question.

This is certainly one of the issues that officials and the minister's office were thinking very carefully about. I would go back to the point that these were suggested changes and that this was a conversation that was going on between the minister's office and officials on the issue of whether you should change “impunity” to “prevent”. This was one of the issues that was flagged, that “impunity” means accountability for crimes and bringing perpetrators to justice, which is what we discussed at the meeting and what was discussed afterwards with the minister's office.

This is why you will find in documents such as the ones that have been referred to by Mr. Kessel and others that the term that's being used is accountability for sexual violence, for gender-based violence, bringing perpetrators to justice. The suggestion--

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

Pardon me. You wrote in the same e-mail to say, “It is often not entirely clear to us why [the minister's office] advisers are making such changes, and whether they have a full grasp of the potential impact on [Canadian] policy in asking for changes to phrases and concepts that have been accepted internationally and used for some time”. And we know that is the case: that these are tried-and-true phrases that have been hammered out, with Canada at the forefront.

So why on earth, when you know that these are important phrases, would the minister's office seek to change them? And what did you fear in those changes? You're very clear here that they don't fully grasp the potential impact on Canadian policy.

[Jamieson Weetman]

Well, I think it's exactly because they were important phrases and important issues that we had the meeting and that we had follow-up meetings with the minister's staff. The other part of not being fully aware of whether the minister's office knew all the implications was me saying that I wasn't fully aware, that I wasn't clear whether or not the minister's staff knew exactly what the implications of various kinds of language were.

The meeting was partly for us in the departmental unit to ensure that we knew what the implications were for language and that we could all work together to find language that best effectively and accurately conveyed Canadian policy, and part of the--

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

But the language was changed--

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I'm sorry, Ms. Mathyssen and Mr. Weetman, but we've gone over time again. I've allowed everyone a fair amount of leeway, because I know that we have brought in witnesses from places where they've had to come a distance, so I want to make sure that you get to finish your thought. But we're going way over on some of these.

I'm going to go to the second round. The second round is five minutes. We'll begin with Ms. Neville, for the Liberals.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Let me begin by thanking you very much for coming here. It's not very often that a committee summons members of the bureaucracy or the civil service to come to a meeting, and I appreciate that this is a challenge for you.

I am also finding it very difficult to reconcile some of what we're hearing this morning with the memo of May 7. I'm wondering if you could tell the committee who briefed you prior to your appearance here today, or provided advice, either written or oral advice.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Angell.

[David Angell]

Madam Chair, we have a parliamentary liaison unit that assists any member of the department who is coming to testify, to explain what the process is. That's the full extent of any briefing that I've experienced, other than discussion amongst ourselves.