Status of Women Committee on May 12th, 2015

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

We will resume the meeting.

The lights signalling a vote in the House are flashing, but we aren't very far so we'll wait for confirmation.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Let's give the first round of questions to the government party, as usual, and once it is confirmed…

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

I would need unanimous consent to stay and give seven minutes to Mrs. Perkins in the first round of questions.

The vote will take place at 12:35 p.m.

So the vote will be at 12:35. There will be only one vote.

[Susan Truppe, Conservative, London North Centre, ON]

We'll have time, yes.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Okay.

I want to welcome Ms. Savoie, who is joined by Ms. Ballantyne and Ms. Lapointe.

Mrs. Perkins, you have seven minutes.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and welcome to all of you. Thank you for being here.

I'd like to ask you about some of the funding that the women's program has provided through grants and contributions since the 2007 timeframe. How much funding has been approved to support Canadian women and girls across our country? Second, how are their issues being addressed?

[Meena Ballantyne]

Thank you very much for the question.

I think everybody knows that the women's program is our grants and contributions funding, which is the majority of the funding for Status of Women Canada. Approximately $19 million has been spent over the past few years, and this is the plan for the coming year as well.

Usually we fund about 300 projects. If you calculate since 2007, we've funded more than $162 million in the areas of violence, economic security, and democratic participation. I think that amounts to about 300 projects.

What we are trying to do is make it easier for applicants. We have an online system, for example, which people can go to and put their submission into. We also provide support so that people can call somebody in the women's program to be walked through the application process; we're trying to make it easier for applicants.

We're also doing targeted calls, as we mentioned earlier, in terms of having priorities. If the priority one year is more on the economic side, as you saw, rather than the violence side, we try to find that balance.

We also have the continuous intake, whereby at any time, should an organization wish to access funding, they can call us, they can work with us, and we can work with them on the project to see whether it's possible to fund it.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much for that.

Can you please explain how the government has designed the women's program to reach specific issues across Canada. I'm not really sure how many and how diverse those issues might be; that's why I'm asking the question. Could you give us some general idea of what is being funded?

[Meena Ballantyne]

Perhaps I'll turn it over to Linda Savoie, who is the director general of the women's programs, to give you a little more detail on that.

[Linda Savoie, Senior Director General, Women's Program and Regional Operations Directorate, Status of Women Canada]

Thank you.

The design of the program is fairly flexible. We're fairly nimble, because we have quite broad terms and conditions that allow us to make investments in the three priority areas that you heard of this morning, which are economic empowerment, leadership opportunities, and ending violence. These priority areas in fact are aligned with what is being done internationally as well. So we have a fair bit of flexibility.

We have a program that is designed not to work directly with women and provide them programming, but rather is designed to change systems. We like to say that we fix the systems, not the women. That's what the program attempts to do. We would work more likely at identifying barriers to progress, identifying sources of risk, and helping people to work together to identify the improvements that need to be put in place.

Basically, that's the program design and the way we address those needs. I could go on endlessly, but I'll let you—

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

We were discussing earlier what has happened to funding since 2007, but for the projects that have been submitted to you since 2011, how are the numbers looking? And have the ones you have received been beneficial for the women's program?

[Linda Savoie]

In any given year we receive, I should say, anywhere from 400 to 700 applications. If I look since 2011, I would say we've received approximately 2,000 applications for funding. We have a success rate that varies from one in five to one in seven, depending on the year. We fund approximately 100 new ones each year. Because our projects tend to be multi-year, we often say that we have about 300 on the go at any given moment; that's the number that Meena Ballantyne was referring to.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Does that include the STEM programs that have been out there?

[Linda Savoie]

Yes, that's correct.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Do you have number of applications that have been received for the fall 2014 call for proposals, and the amount of investment that's been made to date on that program, or is that just too current? I'm not sure.

[Linda Savoie]

Yes, I have those numbers.

For the fall call, we received 161 applications. At this moment in time, we have approximately 30 that have been approved. While it's the fall call and you may expect that that it would be over by now, but it's not necessarily because things that had potential and that were close, but not necessarily sufficiently aligned, continue to be developed with the groups. We're hoping to get a few other projects out from this fall call.

As a point of interest, what was really interesting about the fall call was that it was an open call. We set the topic, which was economic, and we were not any more prescriptive than that because we wanted to get a sense of what was important in the communities across the country.

That allows us to go gauge what is of interest in the different parts of the country. Is it more entrepreneurship, is it more skilled trades, and so on and so forth? The early figures I have is that 30% of the project applications related to entrepreneurship and 40% related to skilled trades and technical professions.

That was interesting to us because we had not set that out. We just let them come to us with what was of interest to the communities.

[Pat Perkins, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

Is that the major trend or shift that you're seeing?

Is there anything else that has come in through this intake that you've found to be a little bit more ground-breaking and new in that regard?

It would be nice to understand if the group of witnesses we are hearing from are consistent with the majority of what you're getting?

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

I'm sorry to interrupt you. Your time is up.

I will now suspend the meeting.

Then we will come back and vote on the main estimates.

The meeting is suspended

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Good afternoon. We are resuming our discussion.

First, I would like to thank our guests who stayed here during the vote.

Ms. Freeman, you have five minutes.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, thank you to our witnesses for still being here. We do have a brief moment so that I can ask a couple of follow-up questions from the minister's appearance.

We were talking about the GBA+, which, from what I now understand, is really an online tool. Can we know how much it's being used and can we even know who's using it? It's open to parliamentarians and ministries and people like that, so can we know who's using it and how much it's being used?

[Meena Ballantyne]

It's on our website and anybody can access it. Even international communities, whoever wants to, can access it. It takes about 2 1/2 hours. I did it on my iPad at home, sitting on my porch, and it was really fantastic. When you finish the course, you can request a certificate that we would sign and send to you, and so far around 1,500 certificates have been sent. A lot of times people just go on it and don't request a certificate, so we're trying to figure out how we can find out how many people are actually taking it. We think it's underestimated because we've heard, for example, that the deputies and ADMs in the Alberta government have been taking the course. It's sort of mandatory for them because they find it's a really good way of learning about the competency.

As I said earlier, we're also trying to work with the Canada School of Public Service to make sure they can give it as part of their core curriculum, and then they will be able to track it as well, so we can find that out.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Did you say that the Government in Alberta was using this specific tool as a mandatory tool? Is there anybody else that's using it as a mandatory tool?

[Meena Ballantyne]

I'm not aware of anybody out there. What we're doing at Status of Women is saying that it's a mandatory tool here, one that every employee, whether they're in the corporate sector or in communications or policy or programs, has to take as part of being at Status of Women Canada. What we're trying to do is to have the same done for the entire public service and make it a part of the core curriculum.

We should have better and better stats as we move along.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

How do we know it's efficient now?

[Meena Ballantyne]

Pardon me.