Status of Women Committee on Feb. 29th, 2012

[Linda Savoie]

Government programs are such that there are usually people who are happy with them and people who are not. But I would say that the large number of applications we get every time we issue a call speaks to the interest that groups have in our program.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Would you say that the set of clear directions also contributes to better outcomes or stronger evaluations, which you said are now being shared? It sounds as if there is a bit of a downstream process for strengthening the program, getting better outcomes, and sharing the results with other organizations across Canada.

[Linda Savoie]

It's totally our intention. We're only one year into our first attempt at doing this, and the blueprint projects were two-year projects for the most part, although I believe some were for three years. As the experience comes to its two-year point, we will be able to analyze our approach in detail.

So far what we have sought feedback on, on the part of groups, has been the application process and whether it was user-friendly. But as we advance we will be seeking input from groups on how the rest of the implementation panned out. We hope to have a much more coherent evaluation, so that rather than doing an evaluation project by project, we will be able to have clusters of projects doing similar things in different environments and learn something significant from this arrangement.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Is there a mechanism for the Status of Women program to share learning or capture best practices across the country?

[Linda Savoie]

Yes, at this point we've had a couple of calls with groups. For instance, if four groups are working on a similar project, we've had conference calls with them so they can share and know what each one is doing, avoid reinventing the wheel, learn from one another's mistakes, and share resources. Now that we're approaching the one-year point, we will be doing more of these community calls to ensure that a sharing of knowledge takes place.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

I want to congratulate you on this great work.

[The Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you.

I'm sorry, that's it.

Ms. Sgro.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

You talked about democratic participation in the programs you're doing for young women. Are you seeing this done, in particular within the new immigrant community?

[Linda Savoie]

Our projects tend to be with the higher brackets of girls and young women. We fund a number of projects where we are facilitating the integration of immigrant women into school boards, so there is a natural progression. Some of our groups like to see a sequence in which they make women familiar with their school organizations, give them roles as parents where they feel less intimidated, and then move them along the continuum to municipal politics and other forms of engagement. With immigrant women, we've had some specific projects designed to facilitate their integration into school boards.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

But has literacy, when it comes to the political environment—three levels of government and so on and so forth—been part of the projects with some of these immigrant women, or girls in particular? Or does none of it ring a bell when you've got so many?

[Linda Savoie]

With most of these projects that conduct schools to train women in political literacy or engagement literacy, for instance, if they have a special emphasis on one population of women, it will be on aboriginal women...unless there's something I don't recall.

There's not one that comes to mind that has a specific focus on immigrant women; however, when they're happening in large urban centres like Toronto, Montreal, the participants reflect the diversity of the environment where the project is taking place.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

What about young women entrepreneurs? Surely the Status of Women must have some ability to provide funding for encouraging entrepreneurs.

[Linda Savoie]

That would be theme 7, right?

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

At one point I believe Status of Women was funding certain programs along that line.

[Victoria Martino]

Under blueprints for theme 7, we were looking at just that, adapting and creating different supports and programs that would assist women in business to develop and grow their businesses. The theme was not specifically targeting young women in business, but it was not excluding them. It was open to women who owned businesses.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Are you continuing to support those kinds of initiatives?

[Linda Savoie]

We haven't had a call for proposals specifically directed at women entrepreneurs, except for that one a year ago. That doesn't mean we're not going to do some more.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Are you precluded from continuing to offer that within your mandate?

[Linda Savoie]

No. Our terms and conditions allowed us to do that last year. It's a matter...we have the three pillars, three areas—

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Resources.

[Linda Savoie]

Yes, multiple needs, multiple populations.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Understood.

[Linda Savoie]

We also have to study carefully what the right recipes are and consult with other stakeholders, other members of the federal family, to make sure what we are proposing is logical and that it is going to be successful.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Exactly. I think as taxpayers we all want to see that happen.

What is the total budget for the Status of Women?

[Linda Savoie]

For the entire department it's somewhere in the mid $34 million ballpark. I don't want you to—