Status of Women Committee on May 3rd, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's your time.

Now we go to my friend Ms. Harder.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I don't know.... Do you have a specific question you want to ask?

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I have some.

Is there a way that Status of Women can specifically target the senior officials of departments in promoting GBA? Have you brought them in when you've actually been doing this GBA? Have you brought them in when you've been dealing with the deputy ministers?

[Justine Akman]

Very recently our minister wrote to her colleagues about the importance of GBA. A letter similar to that went out at the deputy minister level. We have a network of GBA champions, and they just had a meeting yesterday and committed to meeting more often, meaning at least twice a year if not more. That is a committee made up of senior people responsible for GBA across the federal government.

There's a whole range of efforts, and they're also described in the action plan that was part of the response to the Auditor General.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

When people in these organizations come out of this discussion and ask people to get engaged, are we dealing with mostly men or mostly women? Are we finding that it's men and women in an equal balance?

[Justine Akman]

In terms of GBA champions across the department?

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Yes.

[Justine Akman]

It's completely mixed. It's reflective of the federal public service at the senior level.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Okay. We're over to Mr. Fraser.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thanks very much for being here.

I'd like to start off by building on Ms. Harder's initial line of questioning about resources.

You mentioned it's quite difficult to assess what kind of resources it would take to implement the government's GBA mandate. One of the Auditor General's recommendations that Status of Women Canada did agree to was to take steps to determine what the resources would be.

Have there been any steps taken to identify the resources or identify funds?

[Justine Akman]

Yes. It was part of the request that went in and part of the money that will be coming to Status of Women as part of budget 2016.

Status of Women got $23.1 million over five years, with $3 million in the first year and $5 million ongoing. That will not all go to GBA-proper analysis. It's a portion of that, and we're still working that out internally. Some of it will be for the kind of training and tools that we've been talking about, but some of it will also be for working on those strategic initiatives so that we can offer gender experts to other departments to work with them on their policy and program initiatives.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Those are funds that you've identified as a starting point, but you don't know what the total size of the pie will be to fully implement GBAs, if I understand it.

[Justine Akman]

We're still assessing, and it's ongoing, but as I mentioned in earlier remarks we're fundamentally a facilitator. We can do some of this work, but there are many documents that go to cabinet, many documents that go to Treasury Board, etc. We need everybody to take ownership of ensuring that diversity and gender are considered in initiatives.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Excellent. On that note, I think it's a natural segue into the need to build capacity within the different departments.

Do you find the tools that you do have to be useful now, whether it's the GBA online module or the champions network you mentioned? What successes have come from those tools?

[Justine Akman]

I'll let Vaughn answer as well, but we get excellent feedback about the tool. I hope this committee found that as well. Especially for people just starting out, it's very accessible.

There's nothing we've done since 2009, in terms of our action plan, that we wouldn't want to continue. I think those were all great successes. It's a building process, so now we just want to take that and go further.

GBA awareness week is a great opportunity to raise awareness, and there are our gender focal points, ensuring that there are people with real expertise in their area. I can't emphasize that enough. We can do a lot of training at Status of Women Canada itself and we can recruit people from different walks of life, but we really need people who understand that particular policy or program area, as you'll soon hear from our colleague from IRCC. We simply can't develop all that expertise in Status of Women.

If I just take that as an example, it takes years sometimes to learn a policy or program area or to be an expert in supporting small businesses, etc., so we really want to keep pushing that expertise out to the departments.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Sure. Anecdotally, I agree. I found the tool helpful. I think one of the problems that we're coming across when we start talking about GBA is there's a lot of great anecdotal evidence, but we don't have a lot of objective monitoring. The Auditor General made that finding.

Are there any sorts of annual reporting mechanisms within the different departments that you say need to take ownership so we have an idea of the progress they're making before the 2020 report?

[Justine Akman]

It varies from department to department, but there's a great conversation going on in the government right now about being able to report better on its results and outcomes. We're certainly encouraging departments to consider gender and diversity as they think about their outcomes framework.

As well, as I've mentioned, we ourselves are also looking at that, at doing something specific by Status of Women, whether it's an annual report or posting things online. We haven't determined it all yet, but that's the kind of idea we have in mind.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Madam Chair, is there time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

You have 35 seconds.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Very quickly, if there's one missing tool that's not in the toolbox, what would it be to help departments implement GBA?

[Vaughn Charlton]

We can't underscore enough the importance of leadership. It's one thing to have training available, and we can do that all we want, but we know that leadership is that critical piece. When we look at the departments that have been successful in implementing GBA, it's because it came from the top and was taken seriously from the top. It was seen not as something that they were doing because they were told, but because they understood the intrinsic value of doing this type of analysis and were able to translate that to the people who work for them. I think that's the critical tool.

I know I'm going over your time right now, but this is why we want to take an approach whereby we're creating training that is tailored to departments. As you say, we need things that are beyond anecdotal, that really speak to the departments in their language and show them how their own policies and programs can be improved by using GBA.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

All right, Ms. Malcolmson. You have three minutes. Take us home.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you.

I'd like to understand more about how GBA is being applied to policy proposals that are going to cabinet. Status of Women's 2016-17 report on plans and priorities indicated that you will be developing systems to ensure that there is that checklist for policy proposals.

Could you talk a bit about your process and what you're finding?