Status of Women Committee on May 3rd, 2016

[Fraser Valentine]

The functional authority means that I am the lead in the department for the entire organization. I'm accountable for the policy and the organizational capacity. The GBA unit is housed in my organization, but as I said earlier, the application is very much considered to be a responsibility throughout the organization. Maia, as the champion, has the pompoms, so we felt it was important to separate my role as the challenge function.

It's a bit of carrot and stick. I want to make sure it's done, but we also wanted to have somebody who could promote the use of GBA in a manner that demonstrates its effectiveness and also make connections in a way that I might not be able to as the lead functional authority. I can tell you that we work very closely together, which is why we're here together today.

[Maia Welbourne]

If I could just add to that, I think one of the things that I ideally would like to achieve as champion is to create an environment where there are in fact multiple champions across the organization.

Fraser was talking a bit about the training and the mandatory training and so on, and I think that's important and great, but we also develop opportunities for learning—for instance, in celebration of GBA+ awareness week—that are very hands-on and allow the use of case studies and are very interactive.

A very critical point has been made here a couple of times. Being able to show a difference that has been made through the application of a GBA+ analysis is really critical. It's important to have that opportunity to sit down with analysts and talk through the difference it made, and almost to do the counterfactual sometimes. For example, “This is where we ended up, and if we hadn't done the GBA+ analysis, this is where we would have ended up, and this is why it would have been unfortunate and ineffective.”

Again, I think for a lot of people the proof is in the pudding. If you can have those conversations about cases in which it obviously made a difference and you can have that conversation about real-life application of the thinking and the analysis, it makes a huge difference. Then you have people who are believers, so to speak, out in the system, who can then disseminate it further.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you. That sounds like an excellent model.

I am sharing my time with Ms. Sahota.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Over to you, Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I'm really enjoying a lot of your discussion about the way you've implemented GBA into policy. You've talked a bit about the caregiver program and how doing GBA has affected that policy and also about changing the dependent child age of 19 to 22.

How about providing it immediately to PR? Is that something your department had input into for the ministry? If so, was there a GBA done on that policy when it comes to spousal sponsorship?

[Maia Welbourne]

Yes, absolutely. It's fair to say that we do the GBA analysis as a matter of course when we're developing new policy proposals.

In terms of the conditional permanent resident initiative, I think what came up through that analysis was the fact that this condition could place some spouses, many of whom are women, in situations of vulnerability. That's why there was a specific exemption introduced at the time that allowed spouses who were subject to abuse or neglect to be exempted from the condition.

Again, that's a pretty concrete example of where the analysis led to an understanding of a risk that was part of a proposal, and a measure to mitigate that risk was introduced as a result.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

How much more time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

You have 40 seconds.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

On TRVs, I've been having a big issue with them in a lot of areas.

Women often don't get the opportunity to travel under TRVs because they perhaps don't have a job to claim, but they are housewives and take care of their children, so they do need to return to their families. That's not enough to show that they would come and they would leave. I find myself in a predicament. Is that something your department is looking at in terms of whether it is disproportionate for TRVs?

[Fraser Valentine]

I don't actually know the answer to that question, so let me go back to the department. I will be happy to follow up with the clerk on that. I don't know if it's an area that we're investigating in any detail, so I'll find out.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Sure. You can get back to the clerk.

That's your time, Ms. Sahota.

We'll go over to Ms. Harder for five minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Can you tell me why you're the only department where it is mandatory to do GBA?

[Fraser Valentine]

No. I mean—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

It was kind of the obvious question out there. Someone had to ask it.

[Fraser Valentine]

Yes, it is an interesting.... I think that there was a constellation of factors that led to an interest in including it as a mainstream requirement through the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

I anticipate that some of it was probably because at the time that the 1995 Beijing declaration was going through, there was a lot of discussion, both inside government and out, about gender generally and the application of a gender lens inside and outside the state, both in domestic and international fora.

IRPA—that's the acronym—would have been in development around that time. What I anticipate happened was that there was an opportunity, the stars aligned, and it was included, but I can't tell you if there was an individual or a report or a particular trigger that resulted in its inclusion.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

Overall, it looks as though you guys have done a very good job. It's very good to see you have a champion or a carrot and a stick; I think that's probably quite complementary.

There perhaps are some resource limitations or other inhibiting factors involved in this process within your department. I'm wondering if you can comment on that at all.

[Fraser Valentine]

Resources are always finite, so leadership is pretty critical in this regard. You need to protect some resources to have a dedicated focal point and team. Our department and others in the system have made that decision.

In my organization I have an analyst who is responsible for this pretty much full time. Throughout my organization I also have the expectation that my directors and their analysts—for example, in cabinet affairs—are applying GBA, and the resources become a part of their ongoing and daily business.

With respect to training, though, we did consider whether or not we should make that online course mandatory for all staff in the organization. I will share with you that the decision to not do that was in part because of a resource consideration—time, mostly. We thought that as a first step in terms of a mandatory requirement, we would focus that training on those individuals in the department who would have a lead role, rather than on everybody across the entire organization.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

As your department is the only one that does this—to the extent that you do, I should say—I'm wondering if you would be able to attribute a dollar amount with regard to how much it costs you to be able to do GBA on an annual basis.

[Fraser Valentine]

No, we don't as a department account for the time individuals would spend on the application of GBA in that way. We're not required to report in that way.

It would be very challenging to come up with a global figure. If I were to disaggregate further down, I could identify in my organization a certain quantum, but that would largely be staff time—i.e., their salaries—which for all intents and purposes are embedded in their responsibilities across a whole number of accountabilities.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

That's fair.

Ms. Welbourne, you said earlier that you increased the age of a dependent from 19 to 22. I'm just wondering how that relates to GBA. Why is it that a GBA analysis would lead you to make that change?

[Maia Welbourne]

Just to clarify, this is actually an initiative that is in our minister's mandate letter, so it is something that we have not yet done but are exploring doing in the future.

The idea there is that, yes, a dependent child is currently defined as 19 or under. The mandate letter commits us to exploring the idea of raising that age to 22.

What I think we're going to do as we consider options is take a broad GBA+ lens. As I noted, we're going to test the new tool that has been developed in our strategic policy area. We'll look at things beyond gender, at the impact this change may have in terms of other identities—ethnic identities, age groups, etc. Culturally speaking, for instance, in some areas of the world it is more likely to have unmarried children stay longer in the home with their parents than it is in other areas.

It's just getting a sense of what—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's it for time.

Now we'll go to Ms. Ludwig for five minutes.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you for your presentations.

During the entire presentation, a question about the Syrian refugees came to mind. Recently I welcomed four families, one of them a family of nine, and I was picturing, when you were talking, each of these families. I'm wondering how the GBA analysis impacted particularly the application process and the implementation in terms of Syrian refugees to Canada.

[Fraser Valentine]

I would answer your question in two parts.

First, with respect to processing and settlement, I can't speak directly to processing because I wasn't abroad and as close to that. With respect to settlement, I know that when families arrived through either the government assistance stream or the privately sponsored stream, there were additional resources put in place to provide access for women and young girls in particular to understand their rights under Canadian law. Those sessions were held separately from sessions for their male peers.

Also, I know the moms and the kids were also separated to try to allow them to have those discussions as peers. The cultural impact was new, and it was felt that it was very important to do this very soon after their arrival.

Through other immigration streams, a lot of that work is done pre-arrival. We were able to engage with the International Organization for Migration to offer those kinds of pre-settlement services. That wasn't an option with the Syrian movement because it was done so quickly. Instead, it was done immediately once those folks landed.

The second part is with respect to the tool that we have developed to monitor the outcomes for this population with respect to their settlement outcomes. I know that the GBA lens has been applied and there will be sex-disaggregated data collected across a whole number of variables so that we're able in the short, medium, and long term to present the data in that way.