Status of Women Committee on May 3rd, 2016

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

Will you also correlate that based on the GSRs, the government-sponsored refugees, and the PSRs, the privately sponsored refugees?

[Fraser Valentine]

Yes. That work is led by our research and evaluation branch. They'll do all the multi-regression analyses across the various cohorts as well as with other classes.

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

Thank you.

One area would be temporary residency. How is the GBA being applied to international students applying, and to foreign workers and tourists who are also applying for temporary visas, and how might that lead to a path to citizenship?

[Maia Welbourne]

We do monitor the data of the people who are landing within those various categories. Probably at the more macro level, we're not doing the GBA analysis. When we're looking at developing new policies or programs—for instance, to encourage transitions from temporary residence to permanent residence—that's the sphere within which we would look at the GBA considerations and factor those into the policy development.

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

How diverse is your department leadership in terms of a model or an example? I don't mean that as a loaded question; I'm just curious.

[Fraser Valentine]

Do you mean with respect to gender?

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

I mean in terms of diversity in leadership.

[Fraser Valentine]

I can certainly get you that information. We can provide it to the clerk. We have that available.

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

Thank you.

Do you do any work as well in interconnecting with other departments, such as health? When you're looking at refugees coming in, you must find that there are questions not just about immigration but also about health and mental health. How does that work in terms of self-reporting and self-screening in a foreign nation when someone is in the application phase?

[Fraser Valentine]

Just so I understand the question, certainly when policies and programs are being developed, lots of interdepartmental collaboration happens as those policies are developed. Once the formal memorandum-to-cabinet process starts, there's a very formal interdepartmental exercise that happens. In any proposal, there would be a lead department that would be responsible for it. It very much is the responsibility of that department to ensure that all of the considerations are brought into the analysis.

I can tell you that if our department is participating in an interdepartmental consultation and the analyst or an individual at my level feels that it's important to ensure that a gender-based lens is applied, then that would be brought forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent, and that's your time.

I want to thank Fraser Valentine and Maia Welbourne for joining us today and for the excellent responses that you've given.

There's only one other item that has come to my attention. I believe it was raised that the May 16 week is gender-based analysis week. I know all of you have done your web-based, gender-based analysis as required. I'm not going to put you on the wall of shame. If you have not, hurry up, because what we were suggesting is that maybe we should put that forward to the House.

I believe the clerk has conspired with Ms. Vecchio to come up with the language that's needed in order to make it official.

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

Madam Chair, I have some more questions, because we still have five minutes on the clock.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

If it's the pleasure of the committee to stay a little bit afterwards...?

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

It will be really short.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Okay.

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

Thanks. I appreciate it.

I wanted to follow up on the question around the costs of having a legislated mandate for GBA. Would you be able to describe to us the ways that you may have saved trouble and human resources time by using a GBA test to identify problems or conflicts before they arise?

If I can editorialize, I don't want us to walk away thinking this is a program that we cannot afford without having asked the questions about whether it saves us money too.

[Maia Welbourne]

In a very general way, I would say that at least part of the value is identifying risks or considerations that, if not thought through at the front end of the policy program development process, could be costly in terms of resources because of having to go in after the fact and make changes.

It's almost like avoiding a two-touch. If you figure it out at the outset, you're very clear about what the risks or considerations are and you're able to work that into your policy or program development. Then you're not caught by surprise at the end of the process and faced with potentially having to go back in and make regulatory changes or change the program requirements, etc. At that very high level, when it's done well, it avoids having to do that.

[Fraser Valentine]

In the example that I provided on biometrics in the temporary residence process, that was a third party that we were contracting with through a formal request-for-proposal exercise, and because that gender requirement was identified before we went out with the RFP, it meant that we were able, as Maia said, to be a bit proactive with those requirements.

Had we not done that, we could hypothesize that potentially we would have had to go back and amend the RFP, and then those third-party contractors would have had to make those necessary adjustments.

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

That's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

Perhaps I could hear the motion.

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

We worked on this a few times. I move:

That the Chair present a report to the House that the Committee challenges the Members of Parliament to complete the online course “Introduction to Gender-based Analysis Plus” (GBA+) from Status of Women Canada as soon as possible, preferably before the House rises for the summer break this coming June.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Is there discussion on the motion?

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

It's a great idea.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good. I believe an S. O. 31 qualifies as a report. I did check with the clerk.

(Motion agreed to)

We will see you Thursday for our next regular meeting. Thanks so much.

The meeting is adjourned.