Thanks very much, Madam Chair, and thank you very much to the committee for the invitation to appear before you twice in two weeks.
My name, as the chair said, is Fraser Valentine, and I am the director general of strategic policy and planning at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. I am also the functional authority for gender-based analysis at IRCC, meaning that I am the focal point or the centre of responsibility inside the department for GBA. It is housed in my organization.
I'm joined by Maia Welbourne, who, as the chair said, is the director general of the immigration branch. It is the part of the department that is responsible for selection policy on both the permanent resident and the temporary resident side, so it's all of the business lines. Maia is also the departmental champion for GBA.
I understand that your study focuses on the application of gender-based analysis and the ways in which it's being implemented across the federal government to advance gender equality. I'm very glad to have the opportunity to speak to you about my department's approach to, and our experiences with, GBA.
In many ways, I expect that our experience with GBA is similar to that of other departments and agencies that you will hear from. It's also in line with what I know you have heard from colleagues at Status of Women Canada. However, the starting point for my presentation is the one way in which IRCC is different.
As you know, my department is the only one operating within a legislative framework that requires GBA. Section 94 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the legislation that governs most of the lines of business inside IRCC, stipulates that as part of an annual report to Parliament, the minister must include a gender-based analysis of the impact of the legislation.
We feel the application of GBA has accomplished a couple of very specific results. I would like to share them with the committee.
The first and most obvious impact is the analysis contained in the annual report itself. Every year, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship tables a report on immigration, which includes a sizeable GBA section, drawing heavily on gender-disaggregated data about both permanent and temporary resident flows to Canada. These are broken down by immigration class and program, and specific programs and impacts are highlighted.
A second important impact of the legislative requirement in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is that it has informed our application of GBA throughout the department. I would say that it has influenced how we have understood, how we have applied, and how we use GBA across the department. That very much applies both to the tools and the processes that we've developed internally. As well, it more broadly influences the culture that we've tried to foster in the department with respect to the application of GBA.
In addition to the considerable amounts of sex-disaggregated data that we generate, disseminate, and use, I'd like to provide you with a couple of steps that we've also found very useful.
First, we have created a focal point within the department that provides guidance and advice to branches or sections of the department on implementing GBA into both program and policy development. At IRCC, our GBA unit has been established in my organization, the strategic policy and planning branch, and it acts as the functional authority in facilitating, convening, and supporting the application and implementation of GBA.
Second, we believe that good tools and guidance must be available throughout the department. We believe very strongly that it would limit the effectiveness of GBA if the function of GBA were isolated in one specific area of the department.
At IRCC, I would highlight two measures that we've recently taken to disperse the application and use of GBA. First, we've instituted an intradepartmental working group on GBA, which is a bureaucratic term for those of us inside a department talking to each other and bringing together representatives from various branches to serve as an outlet for resource sharing, for best practices, and for knowledge dissemination. Second, we've also developed a new assessment tool on GBA that's used as a practical way for analysts at the working level to support program and policy development at the outset of the policy-making process in assessing GBA implications.
Third, training is important and critical. Our colleagues at Status of Women Canada have helped the federal government in developing a very good online course on the application of GBA, as you have just heard. This is something that we feel is important for departmental staff to take advantage of, even to the point of making that training mandatory for executives in several branches where policy and program issues they deal with most often have GBA implications and considerations.
Finally, the deputy minister has appointed a GBA champion for IRCC. We believe that having a champion who is separate from the focal point or responsibility centre is important to give GBA both function and profile. At IRCC the champion has a key role in promoting GBA across the department to both staff and senior management.
Many of the features of our GBA approach that I've outlined here are not novel in themselves; in fact, they align quite closely with the departmental action plan on GBA, which was developed by Status of Women Canada in response to the 2009 Auditor General report on GBA. At IRCC we are of the view that we have fully implemented and are fully compliant with that departmental action plan. However, in 2015, under my authority as the functional lead for GBA, we decided to conduct a department-wide review of GBA to assess the application and results of the approach and to identify any areas that may benefit from being strengthened. We found four key things that I'd like to share with you.
First, we found that GBA is being conducted at IRCC. We have identified concrete areas where the approach has influenced program and policy development as well as changes to our operations in the field. At the same time, we know that the application could continue to be more rigorous.
Second, we identified that the utility and importance of GBA is understood across the department at all levels of the organization, but we also found that this understanding is uneven and that there is a need for GBA to be better understood by departmental staff across the organization and at all levels of the organization.
Third, we must continue to strive for a broader and more systemic application of GBA in the department and in the field.
Finally, monitoring and reporting mechanisms, including the annual report to Parliament on immigration, could continue to be enhanced.
We are now acting on this review, including through enhanced training that we recently implemented and through communication and promotional efforts, and we've recently put in place a new GBA performance measurement framework.
Overall, I would say that the department is well positioned to be a GBA leader among departments in the system. We have some important pieces in place, but of course we're always looking to improve. We feel it's likely very appropriate for us to continue to assess the application and make adjustments as we go. We don't view this as an end state. GBA is not something you reach and then finish; it's something you apply on an ongoing basis. I often think of it as a lens. The key is to ensure that we can teach our folks in the department how to use that lens, how to focus the lens, and where to focus the lens.
We also feel very strongly that GBA, to be successful, is about culture. As you heard from colleagues from Status of Women, it's about leadership and ensuring that there is leadership in the department, particularly at the top but also among senior management, to ensure that its application is consistent.
I'll now turn it over to my colleague Maia Welbourne, who will say a little bit more about her role as a GBA champion and offer some observations on her experience.
