Status of Women Committee on May 10th, 2016

[Alfred MacLeod]

From our perspective, that would be an area that represents a challenge. If we're looking at changes we could make in how we implement and apply GBA, it would be to the tracking and monitoring, and coming back on a routine basis to see whether in fact the impacts are being smoothed out, or whether they are persistent and require a rethink. That would be one of the areas for further work.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Is there any reporting done by either of your departments to a public body or to a group external to your department?

[Richard Botham]

We report to Status of Women. I don't think we report on our activities to a body outside of government.

[Alfred MacLeod]

We don't report outside. We report on an annual basis to Status of Women, both in terms of qualitative descriptions of what's happened in our program and some quantitative indicators of how many GBAs we have done, or how much training. But no, there's no systematic public reporting on it.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Mr. Nault, sorry for skipping you.

[François Nault]

I don't think we have really measured our output of statistics by gender, but I'm pretty sure from the example I gave that, over time, we have increased the amount of sex disaggregated data available.

As I mentioned as well, it's our seventh edition of “Women in Canada”. In each edition, I think we've tried to improve and add new stuff and new information in that publication. The one that we are doing right now is no exception. There's a lot of new data in it for the first time.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I'm splitting my time with my colleague Ms. Nassif.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

All right. Three minutes.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you for the presentation.

My question is for the representatives of Statistics Canada, Ms. Hudon and Mr. Nault.

Before making a decision concerning a complete gender-based analysis, one of the requirements that a department or agency must fulfill is to examine the quantitative data, such as statistics. Does Statistics Canada communicate with departments or agencies to actively supply them with data, disaggregated by sex and other identity factors, to help in implementing the complete gender-based analysis process? If so, does Statistics Canada provide departments with data in the case of the gender-based analysis process?

[François Nault]

Certainly. Initially, I had the feeling that we were perhaps not being as proactive as we should have been, but, as I said, I have written to all the departments in the last few weeks, and I have many examples of departments that use our data.

At Statistics Canada, we are organized into various specialized divisions. For example, there is the health statistics division, the education statistics division, or, in my case, the aboriginal statistics division or statistics on immigrants. I work directly with departments like Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. I can offer them all the statistics they need for gender-based analysis. We are therefore much more proactive than I had initially thought. Several departments have given us many examples of data they use to do their gender-based analysis.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

I don't know whether I can ask another question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

You have only one minute left.

[Eva Nassif, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

In the case of gender-based analysis, has Statistics Canada collaborated with the departments and agencies so they are able to use the data from its "Women in Canada" report quickly?

[François Nault]

I am going to let my colleague answer the first question, and I will answer the second.

[Tamara Hudon, Research Analyst, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division, Statistics Canada]

I just wanted to add that part of the work we do with the “Women in Canada” publication involves a very extensive engagement process with our stakeholders, because we want to know exactly what kind of data is necessary to be making the decisions that are required.

We do this right from the outline stage, where we engage multiple departments to give us some feedback. We incorporate their feedback there. Then through a second process, we allow our stakeholders to review the draft documents, again adding an additional checkpoint so we can make sure that we're including in the drafts, to the extent we're able to, information that will be used.

An example of this is our work with Immigration on the “Immigrant Women” chapter. There were several points during that process where we were asked to provide information on, for example, admission categories, because that was relevant to their processes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you very much.

That's our time.

I want to thank our witnesses. You did an excellent job. There was a lot of data. I loved the statistics, of course, as a statistician myself, but the examples you provided were very helpful to us. Thank you.

To the committee, we shall see you Thursday when our academics will be here, so bring your smart questions.