Many needs assessments have already been carried out, and it would not be difficult to estimate what it would cost to set up a truly autonomous status of women committee in the federal government with its own investigative powers similar to those of the Auditor General of Canada and the Parliamentary Budget Officer. From that position, then, there would be an independent investigative mechanism within the government to follow and track the adequacy of the budgeting that has been allocated to this particular area of employment and education.
If that were put into place, it would mean, of course, moving to a different funding model for Status of Women Canada, but the benefit of that would be that it would have its own ability to investigate, hire experts, analyze the problems, make policy recommendations, monitor on a very close level, and also have monitoring and oversight capacity with respect to other departments, such as the Department of Finance, such as human resources, and so on, and be able to really sort of advocate for this particular goal of achieving economic autonomy and equality for women, not only in the STEM areas but in related areas where there are similar kinds of problems.
Just pursuant to that point—