Status of Women Committee on May 5th, 2016

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I'm sure I'm out of time by now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

You are.

We'll go to my Conservative colleagues, starting with Ms. Vecchio for seven minutes.

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

Thank you very much for being here today.

I'm going to start with you, Gail, if you don't mind. You mentioned the guaranteed income supplement, which I think is important for our seniors, especially our women seniors, but we're also talking—and this is totally off what I was going to talk about, but I thought it was interesting. When we look at employment insurance, and when we look at employment insurance for women, or if we look at family benefits like the maternity and parental leave, has that gone through a GBA as well? If so, what are the results of that?

[Gail Mitchell]

We've done numerous evaluations on employment insurance over the years that have looked at compassionate care and the 14 best weeks. There's a long list of evaluations that have been done. In all of those evaluations, we're looking at gender issues as well, so it's very much a part of how we come to the analysis.

We have under way right now a good, hard look at EI, and we'll be proceeding with a number of changes to it based on what we hear back from stakeholders. We fully expect the research we've done, and the understanding of the challenges and issues that women face, in particular, will frame how we move forward with policy recommendations.

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

Excellent. Thank you very much.

If you don't mind, I'm going to move to the Auditor General. The report noted that the quality of GBA varied between departments, including a lack of necessary capacity for complete analysis. What constitutes unnecessary capacity and what was missing from these departments?

[Nancy Cheng, Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

What we did was look at four individual departments and then compared the way they've analyzed the initiatives. It's quite uneven from one to the next.

In terms of capacity, some of it is the underlying training, and whether people have the full awareness and have been shown the way to approach analyzing the impact between how the program might affect women from men, and that type of thing, in terms of the support infrastructure they might have, and whether they have people they can go to for support. This is within the department as opposed to going to Status of Women.

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

This might seem terrible, but does GBA seem necessary in all departments, or is it sometimes irrelevant? For all departments, should it be looked at the same or are there some departments where it has to be very straightforward? I recognize with the Canadian Armed Forces we absolutely need GBA, and with Service Canada we absolutely need GBA. Is there anything that would say it's not effective in that department?

[Nancy Cheng]

I think our view is that it is important that if a department signs up and commits to it, they need to go through the due diligence. Until you do it, how do you know it doesn't apply?

I think it stands to reason that the member's right. In some portfolios, it's more obvious. In other ones, it's less obvious, but we don't know it does not exist. It's important you do exercises like the ones our colleagues have said. You started out with looking at shelters for women and looking at how family violence might affect women, but until you scratch the surface, and look more into it, you don't get down to the cause and say, “Well, maybe we need to look after the other gender as well”. It is important to give it that due diligence.

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

That's why I wanted to bring it up. Some departments may think it is not necessary, but that answers the question perfectly.

To what degree does the Auditor General believe the accountability mechanisms being introduced by Status of Women strategic plan, such as their enhanced monitoring and reporting mechanism, will improve the implementation of GBA implementation in federal departments?

[Nancy Cheng]

Madam Chair, I'll give a bit of an answer, and I might ask Richard to help me on this one.

When we look at the strategy, we're of the view this would advance the cause. It is important to give it the rigour, but at the time of the audit Status of Women doesn't have the authority as to how departments ought to do that, and we're not necessarily arguing they should have the authority. They are a resource place, so the strategy will help them to provide even further support to the individual departments and agencies implementing the GBA framework.

I'll see if Richard has something more he wishes to add.

[Richard Domingue, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

I have one more thing to add to what Nancy just said.

It's a challenge for Status of Women to gather all the information on how effective GBA has been and how implemented it is across the government. I know Status of Women sought more resources in the last budget to improve their GBA capacity, and hopefully this will help on the reporting side and help assess the effectiveness of the GBA practices across the government.

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

Thank you.

On to Nicole, and I have a question. It's fantastic you've had such great results when it comes to violence against women, especially in our indigenous areas, but I'm looking to find out, what other benefits has GBA been in this portfolio in the department?

[Nicole Kennedy]

In the less traditional areas, such as in economic development, we took even a more vigorous approach to GBA, because we know there is a tendency to support businesses that are started by males. There was a directed focus on ensuring women have the opportunity, as well as the support, to apply and to access the different project lines of funding.

In terms of being able to embed the GBA throughout the department, it has served to inform policy development writ large. The fact that it is a mandatory requirement in all of our policy to do a GBA has been a fundamental building block of why we have a fairly strong history for GBA.

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

You noted that 33 different people are working with GBA. Is there one champion, or is there a specific...we have a health and wellness committee. Is there a specific committee that deals with GBA for INAC?

[Nicole Kennedy]

We do not have a specific committee for GBA, but the deputy minister is accountable for GBA writ large in the department. That then cascades down to the senior ADM of policy and strategic direction, which ensures that across the department, and through all the initiatives, we take a GBA lens to everything we do.

We then have two levels of policy committee where a GBA analysis must be performed before it comes to that policy committee, so we do have a number of checks and balances. Throughout the programs and sectors we have gender-based assessment representatives who get regular ongoing training, and they form a network and support group, and bounce ideas off each other. We have it fairly well embedded.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Now we'll go to Ms. Malcolmson, for seven minutes.

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

I appreciate the witnesses being available. I note your two departments were the subject of the 2009 and 2015 audits by the Auditor General, so we have the most data on you. I also note and applaud INAC, for which the reporting is mandatory. The process is mandatory. You scored the best on the AG's test, so I applaud you.

I want to focus on some of the issues around unemployment insurance. Understanding that women more often than men are likely to work part time, or what we would call precarious work, any modifications to the employment insurance scheme might particularly affect women.

The 2015 budget modified the EI regular benefits with a regional variation. I'm hoping you can tell me what GBA analysis was done on that policy decision and what it told you about the disproportionate effects on women.

[Gail Mitchell]

The recent changes were based on recent labour market data and impacts at those regional levels, so it was in the totality and performance of the labour market over a set period of time. Decisions around changes to it were taken in the aggregate. In the context of research and evaluation of elements of the employment insurance program, and its impact, we do look closely at gender. There's always an appetite to take a hard look at employment insurance, and how it operates, and we continue to do that. We'll be reaching out as part of GBA. A stakeholder view is a very important perspective, and we will be proceeding with that through discussions with experts. We get a lot of input on EI, some of it solicited, and some of it not.

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

With respect, my time is limited, so I'm interested in knowing yes or no. Was a GBA analysis done on that policy decision?

[Gail Mitchell]

I'll have to get back to you on all the elements of the analysis.

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

Great, just a yes or no. I don't need to see other analyses. I was curious to see whether it was applied.

In the past, rejection for unemployment insurance claims was quite high. Six out of 10 Canadians could no longer qualify for benefits, and then there was a policy change under the previous government to further restrict access. It had some new requirements around Canadians having to take any job that was deemed suitable. That might have impacts on the career path, or pay cuts, or having to move. Was there a GBA analysis done on that decision?

[Gail Mitchell]

There were decisions taken previously?

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

Yes, by the previous government around policy changes that would require—

[Gail Mitchell]

Again, I'd have to go back and check on that. I'm not familiar with the decisions under—