Status of Women Committee on May 12th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Seeing that it's 3:30, we will start our meeting. Welcome, everyone.

Today we'll be having academics speak to us. We have a lot of expertise in the room, and I'm expecting everyone to put their thinking caps on.

We'll start with those who are visiting us via teleconference today. I'll introduce each panel member before they speak, one at a time. They'll each have 10 minutes to make comments to us.

Our first speaker will be Rosalind Cavaghan, a Ph.D. research fellow at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Her recent work has focused on the European Commission's efforts at gender mainstreaming and the gendered nature of the European Commission's responses to the recent financial crisis.

Welcome, Rosalind. You have 10 minutes.

[Dr. Rosalind Cavaghan, Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, Radboud University, As an Individual]

I'd like to thank you for the invitation to speak today. I work as a post-doctoral researcher at Radboud, as you said, but I'm going to talk specifically about some lessons gleaned from a very detailed analysis I undertook of gender mainstreaming implementation processes in the European Commission's Directorate General for Research. I'll call that organization DG Research for short, and these findings relate to the period between 2002 and 2006. I really hope this will be useful for you.

I want to start by mentioning two key messages that we see in existing academic research, and these relate specifically to implementation problems. I expect that members of the committee are fairly familiar with these, so I'll be brief in my description of them.

The first widely documented implementation problem is that civil servants or bureaucrats will often argue that gender is not relevant. Most normal people can't understand how gender could be relevant to all areas of policy. Research shows that even if a politician or a civil servant sees themself as pro gender equality, it doesn't by any means follow that they understand the notion that gender is socially constructed or understand that gender inequality is shaped, and in some instances actually maintained, by state policy. This means that gender mainstreaming or gender-based analysis can easily become a very confused and a rather empty policy once it passes from the rhetorical political stages into actual implementation.

Implementation structures need to be designed with this potential for confusion in mind, and I would argue for three priorities when designing implementation structures to tackle the dynamics I've just mentioned.

The first priority I see is really clear leadership from management, or high political backing. What I mean by this is that it's very important to develop a clear statement in each area of policy of what gender mainstreaming would actually mean, and this clear statement needs to cover a strategic vision, operational processes, and also impact assessment and evaluation procedures. If these aren't made clear, then gender mainstreaming implementation rather often degenerates into kind of ongoing contestation over what gender means and whether it's relevant here, in whichever given policy area.

In DG Research, the case I am telling you about, this conceptual policy development work was undertaken through a series of meetings between internal management staff, external gender policy experts, and women's civil society. Because the implementation procedures that they subsequently devised actually joined up those three levels that I've just mentioned—strategic vision, operational processes, and impact assessment—the foundations were laid for a kind of loop of collective work and also learning.

To elaborate, strategic management staff in DG Research took the EU's rather vague commitment to mainstream gender into all policy areas and they translated it into much more specific terms that were relevant to research policy. Their strategic vision for what gender mainstreaming meant in research policy was science by, for, and on women, so they created a kind of motto.

That vision was disseminated internally and it was also translated very clearly into tightly specified actions. These included quotas for women in decision-making and an implementation procedure called a gender action plan. This gender action plan was actually a section embedded into existing project management procedures that civil servants already used on an almost daily basis. This gender action plan, this new section, asks civil servants to supply two pieces of information: the number of women participating on a scientific project team and also a scientific project's impact on women.

This, too, had a very interesting effect on civil servants' practice and knowledge. When I conducted interviews about gender mainstreaming, civil servants in DG Research didn't want to have a conceptual conversation with me, but they all mentioned this one compulsory procedure, the gender action plan, and the obligations that it entailed. They all knew that simply counting women is over-simplistic and they knew they had to actually describe how gender was relevant to a scientific project's content and also its impact.

This two-pronged understanding in itself represents a small movement towards the kind of comprehension of gender that we need to see developing among civil servants. In interviews staff told me that they often had to seek help in order to fill in this second section of the gender action plan, but that's fine because, actually, the policy's architects had intended for that to happen. They had established an internal network of so-called gender leads, one located in each sub-department. This gender lead participated in bimonthly meetings with strategic management, and they were in turn responsible for supporting colleagues in filling out that section of the gender action plan that I described.

This tool, the gender action plan, managed to stimulate a flow of information that involved all of DG Research's staff. In essence the local gender lead was channelling the learning that had been undertaken by strategic management when they were developing the policy down into their own sub-department.

This brings me to the second and third priorities I see when designing implementation structures. The first priority was clear conceptual elaboration, and the second relates to learning processes. Gender mainstreaming really challenges institutions and individuals to incorporate new concepts into their practice.

I think the second key consideration in designing implementation procedures is that we should attempt to institutionalize ongoing learning relating to the relevance of gender. The gender action plan I mentioned stimulated the circulation of gender expertise and incorporated it into in existing implementation procedures. You need a good policy team if you want to work out how to do this. The work also needs to be properly resourced.

The third key consideration is high-level political commitment. This needs to take the form of resources and very clear rewards and penalties, which will incentivize active implementation. Civil servants implement policies when the priorities and implementation processes are clearly specified and if it will be good for their career. In DG Research, information on quota fulfillment and the content of gender action plans was actually collected in a database so that you could compare sub-departments and assess their progress. That gave staff an incentive to implement the policy well, because it meant you could actually see and compare actions taken.

Gender mainstreaming is a very ambitious policy that attempts to tackle gender blindness, which is structurally entrenched. We should, as a result, think of gender mainstreaming as a long-term learning process that needs to be properly incentivized and resourced. My key messages are as follows.

One, the gender mainstreaming or gender-based analysis needs to be thoroughly conceptualized across all policy stages, including strategic vision, operational procedures, and impact assessment. Collaboration between civil servants and external gender experts will be necessary for that.

Two, implementation processes should institutionalize a flow of information and knowledge about gender's relevance, from impact assessment and moving back into strategic policy development. When I say that, I don't mean everyone has to reach the same level of expertise, but I do think contact between experts or gender leads should be regularized.

Three, political pressure, proper resources, and clear incentives are essential to ensure that any policy is properly implemented. Gender-based analysis is certainly no different.

That's the end of my opening statement. Thank you very much for your attention.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent. Thank you, Dr. Cavaghan.

Now we'll go to Ms. Dorienne Rowan-Campbell, a gender consultant who was a member of the Expert Panel on Accountability Mechanisms for Gender Equality advising the government on how to implement GBA and improve gender equality.

Dorienne, you'll have 10 minutes. You may begin.

[Dorienne Rowan-Campbell, As an Individual]

Thank you very much

I apologize also because, clearly, we didn't do a very good job, because look at where we are today.

I was very delighted to be asked to be here because, of course, it's a subject dear to my heart, and I have to reiterate some of what we discussed in that accountability report that we did.

Like Rosalind, I think that leadership is critical, and the leadership has to be backed up. It needs to be leadership at the highest level. I would suggest that in the leadership at the moment, we have a cabinet that is equally made up of men and women, and that gives a very good message to the rest of the public service. However, I was horrified to see a photograph in The Star just after the budget came out, of our Prime Minister with five men. They were all smiling happily and about to go out and talk about the budget and what it was going to do for Canada. On the one hand, we have, for the first time, enough women who could have been in that photograph. I don't know when it was taken, but it seemed to me that someone in the public service didn't realize the message that they were sending out about the importance of equality and partnership, and of women's role in the economic realm in looking at things like the budget.

The reports that you've had from the Auditor General and Status of Women have shown us that we have a lot of weaknesses in our system and that we need to focus far more on trying to look at not just the awareness-building that comes with gender-based analysis, but actually looking at what instruments we're looking to use and what means of implementation we are going to use. That is something that the MDGs learned, and now they're trying to put it in the STGs. It is something that we also need to do. I'm not an academic in that sense.

There has to be an accountability framework, and we have slipped. In 1995, we thought we were going to really move on GBA. This report was done in 2005. We're now at 2015, and we're losing our profile as a leader on gender mainstreaming and the priority we give to gender equality.

I think we have to look at compliance. There is accountability and there is compliance. You can have accountability mechanisms and yet have nothing that forces people to comply. I'm not calling necessarily for mandatory or legal compliance. We might want to discuss that, but compelling compliance is absolutely critical. We've wasted enough time, I think, making people aware of this and saying it is important. They know it's important, and we all know it's important. Now it has to be done.

There's a very interesting report that comes out of the Pacific, from the Marshall Islands, which are tiny. They decided that it wasn't enough to report on the analysis of the budget, and that what we really should be doing, and all want to be doing, is to change the budget itself, not just how the budget is thought about. We want to change what goes into the budget, and we want to look at the impacts of what comes out of that. If I may, I will send an excerpt of that report, because I think you might find it very useful.

As Rosalind said, there were three dimensions: the dimension of GBA in raising awareness and understanding the issues and the impacts of budgets and policies; making government accountable for the gender budgetary and policy commitments they undertake; and then changing and refining government budgets and policies to promote gender equality.

Over the years, that third part is the part that we haven't looked at enough. If you look at the reports, they're about what was done and who did it and who didn't do it. But some of what we need to do is to assess the impact, and for you, as the committee on the status of women, to ask, who are the leaders who say this wasn't done and who recognize that, as a result, poverty was not addressed.

In our report—and I don't know if it exists anymore—we talked about using the internal tools that the Government of Canada has. One of them was the management accountability framework. We need to find the hooks, the anchor, and what we want to do in the regular way that the government and the public service proceed. We have to find those points of entry, and we have to hold people accountable to use them.

One of the other things in the report that we had felt was necessary was that every time we have a Speech from the Throne, it should address the importance of gender and gender-based analysis and the outcomes that we want to reach.

I notice that Status of Women is now talking about GBA+. I'm a little confused by that because perhaps it explains why we are where we are. When we first talked about gender-based analysis, to me it always had to include things like age, class, experience, and culture, because gender is not simply looking at males and females. It's the mapping, it's the layering of each different set of information that gives you a picture about gender. If we weren't doing GBA+ when it started, maybe that's the reason we haven't moved as far along the track as we might and should have.

Two other elements relate to accountability and leadership. The Auditor General reports on everything. I think we're at a point where if we want to compel compliance, and if we want to move quickly, we need a voice that looks specifically at this issue and reports to you in Parliament and to other women in Canada.

The third thing we need is civil society. We've had a breakdown in how civil society organizations relate to each other, to Status of Women, and to information that you might want in the commission. We lost the commissioner on status of women when we had that NGO civil society aspect. We don't have the national action committee working. So we need something that pools women's voices.

I've been really pleased, because all around the world, the people who are pushing most on moving forward on GBA, on gender budgeting, on gender outcomes for equality, are groups of researchers. Rosalind knows that you definitely get a lot of support in the EC from groups who are saying that you must move forward. I'm delighted to see that CRIAW is going to be speaking.

I was quite distressed when we closed down, because I was one of the founders in 1975 when we thought we needed to make a statement about how we understood and reported on and found information on women in Canada and our lives and our meaning to the Canadian people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you. That's your time.

[Dorienne Rowan-Campbell]

So, those are three things.

That's it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you, Dr. Campbell. That's it. No problem, we'll catch it on the questions. Wonderful.

Now we're going to go over to Dr. Cindy Hanson, an associate professor at the University of Regina. She's the director of the Adult Education and Human Resources Development Unit and the president elect of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women.

Welcome. You have 10 minutes.

[Dr. Cindy Hanson, Associate Professor, Adult Education, University of Regina and President Elect, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW), As an Individual]

It's a privilege to be here. I'm going to be speaking from a perspective of someone who is a practitioner of GBA as well as an academic.

Over a decade ago, in 2003 to be exact, I was about one of a dozen or so women—we were all women—trained to deliver GBA by Status of Women Canada. Meanwhile, a lot of changed. GBA has fallen off the radar as far as civil society is concerned. Canada has been widely criticized for its domestic practices in relation to gender equality, including federal cuts to regional offices of the Status of Women. Furthermore, Canada has also been criticized internationally for systemic failures to address missing and murdered aboriginal women, something that was very slow to change.

As a feminist, an academic, and the incoming president of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, I can attest that both personally and organizationally it's been a difficult time. I think it's time for change and that the key areas that can be addressed in terms of change are the support for GBA and equality work through supports and resources, including evaluations, and by providing increased attention to the way gender is conceptualized and how it intersects with other forms of oppression. After these two points are taken into consideration, GBA can be an important part in transforming programs, policies and, ultimately, structures.

To do that, I also believe that funding for Status of Women's research needs to be reinstated, because that can mobilize important tools and show that GBA can transform public policy. I will later give you examples of how that can be done. Further to that, engaging women and women's organizations will provide additional insights into the process.

My experiences with GBA are provincial, national, and well as international. I worked as a consultant with Status of Women way back in 2003, doing training in Newfoundland, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and in South Africa and Indonesia.

We tried to distinguish our training as different from the GBA training that was being offered at the time by other line ministries, and it's my understanding that this is still going on. I think this is also probably problematic and that perhaps Status of Women should have oversight on GBA training, instead of individual departments doing their own thing.

Ten years ago, I delivered GBA training using a cookie cutter approach. We had a package of materials that we were set out to deliver, and that's how we delivered them. They were usually delivered in one-off, one day workshops. Those kinds of ways of delivering training are increasingly seen as problematic. As an adult educator, I'm well aware that delivering things with that kind of approach is seen as technical-rational; it deals little with the ethical issues, the political issues, and the social issues that surround the concept of gender and how it can lead to change.

Of course, I'm assuming that you all know what GBA is and that you all have lots of background information on it because you've been hearing from other people.

Going back to 2005, Canada's Standing Committee on the Status of Women indicated that legislation and accountability mechanisms were urgently required. Twelve years since then, we're saying the same thing. I don't need to say more on that.

Let me go back to the way gender-based analysis was delivered, and I'm assuming now that it's online and is still a technical-rational approach to this work. Rather than effecting change or creating short-term solutions, this kind of work does nothing to create change. It might create a momentary shift in the idea that this is affecting somebody somehow a little differently and that you need to do something a bit different, but unless we start to engage in a conversation that talks about the theory behind the practice and how training needs to be supported, nothing is going to change. In fact, as an adult educator, I can say, as an aside, that 40% of follow-up to training comes from what's done after a training workshop. So if nothing is done afterwards, you've potentially lost 40%.

Gender training can have few sustainable effects without supports at all levels, so the resources need to be provided for both human and financial resources. The evaluations can help the trainers and organizations understand the limits and potentials of gender training and overall what's required for a strategy. Evaluation is an important part of assuring accountability and living up to the international and national commitments required.

This is where, I guess, there's a little bit of a problem in terms of how we practised GBA. In 2004, Status of Women Canada's GBA unit was contracted to deliver GBA training in South Africa. In South Africa, the Office of the Status of Women falls under the presidency. It's a full department and it falls under the presidency. We were also hired to do follow-up, so ironically we were doing follow-ups and evaluations of a practice that we weren't doing follow-ups and evaluations of at home. That practice, I think, is really important to consider going forward.

Further to that, I think what's really also important is the transformation of gender and power relations, which is ultimately what we need here, transforming social norms around masculinity, around violence, and around gender. Because these norms are situated within dominant ideologies, we need to understand how they intersect with other ways of being in this world. For example, as a white woman, I cannot understand what it is to be poor, what it is to be an indigenous woman, etc., so I need to broaden the way I do things in order to understand that. I need to understand how gender is interconnected or intersects with other representations of a lived reality. Intersectional links draw attention to the way in which our lives are actually experienced, for example, race, class, ability, belief systems, language, sexuality, and so on. It also looks at how these aspects intersect with oppression, with privilege, and with inequality.

If you get a chance, look at CRIAW's intersectional feminist frameworks. I've provided a brief that will follow up, and it's got the link in there. The intersectional feminist frameworks analyze the way different factors intersect to create conditions of exclusion.

Part of the work I did on GBA for Status of Women was also about culturally relevant gender analysis. At this point we were working with 20 different indigenous organizations in Canada. It was during this work that I started to understand how gender inequality were reinforced. Unless other factors are addressed and are taken into consideration, if we continue to treat all women the same, we will continue to do the same. That's why after 15 years of GBA, we still have the same thing to show for it as we did 15 years ago.

In 2012, I worked with the Saskatchewan aboriginal women's circle and elders in Saskatchewan to do a study about the Indian residential school settlement agreement, the IAP, which is the independent assessment process dealing with the most serious physical and sexual abuses suffered in Indian residential schools, the largest claims process possibly in the world and certainly in Canada. It's still going on.

Using a gender analysis and interviewing 25 survivors as well as lawyers, adjudicators, and deputy adjudicators in the process, I was able to see that the way the policy had been designed hadn't taken gender into account, because, if it had taken gender into account, the results would have been very different. For example, compensation and loss of opportunity would have been defined very differently. I can give you examples in questions later. Additional efforts may have been put into the way sexual acts were described, the presence of bias in culture and language, and the description of child abuse and sexual assault. It shows the need for the complexity of gender to be addressed. Gender can't be by itself.

The seriousness of this in addressing Canada's colonial legacy should be a case in point for the need for an intersectional and culturally relevant analysis of policy and programs. Importantly, this study also demonstrates the reasons why Status of Women should reinstate funding for research and advocacy.

A second study that we did, funded by Status of Women Canada, looked at the unpaid work of women on social assistance in Saskatchewan. The policy was that if a woman's child turned two years of age, she had to look for paid work. It was action research, so what we were doing was trying to show that there is value in unpaid work, and that in fact when women go back to work or into paid employment, they often don't have the supports, and it actually ends up costing them more. It illustrated how gender-based analysis can change public policy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you. That's your time, Dr. Hanson. I'm sorry. We'll cover the rest in questions.

Just as a reminder to folks, the report she was speaking about was sent to you by email and is also online.

Now we're going to hear from Dr. Olena Hankivsky. We're very pleased.

You have 10 minutes. You can go ahead.

[Dr. Olena Hankivsky, Professor, School of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for the invitation.

I'm speaking to you today as somebody's who's been researching gender mainstreaming internationally for more than 15 years now in developed and developing countries and in countries in transition. I have assisted governments and international agencies in the development of handbooks, tools, and guides, and participated in the delivery of direct training in Canada to a number of federal departments and provincial governments. Mostly notably, I worked with Status of Women Canada in 2010, helping to develop GBA+, both conceptually and in terms of training materials and resources.

I currently hold a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant to examine how different countries are entering into a second generation of mainstreaming equality. One of the case studies is Canada, and I intend to speak to all federal departments and their provincial and territorial counterparts working on gender analysis.

Today, however, I would like to organize my comments to you in two broad categories, namely implementation and conceptualization. I hope that in the latter part of my presentation I'll be very provocative.

The message I want to convey is that research has clearly shown what is necessary for the systemic institutional implementation of gender mainstreaming. We don't need to look at this any more. We don't need more investigations. We don't need to be looking at additional barriers. What we need are concrete actions. There are five points around what is necessary for implementation, and each of my colleagues has already touched on some of them.

First, we need a supportive political environment, support from the highest levels, political champions, and a strong impetus to mainstream so that the responsibility does not lie within one government department such as Status of Women Canada. We need financial and human resources to do the work, especially in Canada where, historically, status has been so incredibly marginalized and under-resourced. It's no wonder we're at this point, really. We have to somehow make this work of high value, not of low value, for those who are being asked to implement it.

Second, we need training and education. As Dr. Hanson mentioned, this is not a one-off exercise. One has to tackle, in an ongoing fashion, questions such as what is equality, what is equity, and what is gender. Debunk the idea that gender is about women. Now I think this is a hard sell coming from a department that probably needs a name change, Status of Women Canada. Gender is not just women.

We have to start from where people are with training and education. It has to resonate with the work of those who are applying gender analysis. It always amazes me that there's so little communication across departments. There's a plethora of guides, handbooks, and tools, but no coordination or consistency. We need examples, of course, for each of those different contexts, but there needs to be some consistency across the board. There's a real role for outreach, not just to civil society, but to policy schools. We need analysts in training to understand that this is important work so that they don't get to government and suddenly be told, “Guess what? GBA is part of good policy analysis. It's not an add-on.”

Third, we need to show a strong evidence base for the value added by GBA. This requires improved data collection and thinking creatively about reaching out to experts outside of government such as civil society and researchers in the field, especially given the time-sensitive nature of requests. Put forward policy challenges to students in policy schools. Have them engage in this kind of collaboration. It works; it's great for the students; and it's cheap. It's free.

Fourth, there must be accountability mechanisms. If there are no consequences for not doing it, why do it? We know this. There needs to be some kind of legislation and definitely some kind of sanctions.

Finally, there must be monitoring and evaluation. While we are starting to talk about this, it's often done without a reflection on what is actually the desired goal and outcome. How will we know if GBA has been successfully and fully integrated? What would that actually look like?

We need to document success stories, and not just success stories in Canada. We need to move beyond that kind of navel-gazing to look at international success stories. I think this is very important.

Shifting now to the part of conceptualization. I've been arguing for a while now that the preoccupation with implementation deflects from serious conversations about what we are mainstreaming when we are mainstreaming gender.

To begin, in Canada there is huge confusion with the language of gender mainstreaming: in the Auditor General's report, it's GBA and GBA+, and the Public Health Agency of Canada has sex- and gender-based analysis. They are all very different, and there's confusion. I would also argue that there are inherent limitations in all of these approaches, and I'm going to be provocative and say it's time for a post-GBA and even a post-GBA+ conversation.

Equality will not be achieved by focusing only on gender or on gender as always the most important or significant factor in analysis. We know from research, we know from evaluation, that gender mainstreaming, gender-based analysis, and even GBA+ do not disrupt gender as a primary focus; nor do they naturally lead to the consideration of other factors.

Other factors are often just as important as or even more important than gender. This is an uncomfortable truth: differences among women and among men are often as significant as if not more significant than differences between men and women; and men are sometimes subordinate to some women, and some women exercise power over men. This really is a challenge to the work.

We also have increasingly diverse populations, not just in Canada but internationally. Let's consider the trends in Canada, however. By 2031, 29% to 32% of Canadians will belong to a visible minority. One third will have a mother tongue that is neither English nor French. Canada is already home to more than 200 different ethnic origins. Increasing numbers are identifying with multiple ethnicities.

What we need is the development of new frameworks. We've been doing GBA for over 20 years now. We need new ways of mainstreaming equality that are better suited to understanding and responding to the multi-dimensional and context-driven nature of oppression and discrimination.

I would argue that this is a natural evolution of gender-based analysis and even of GBA+. What we need is the language of intersectionality or the foundations of an intersectional framework.

This is not a new idea. GBA+, for example, talks about the need to integrate intersectionality. What this means is to understand that human beings are shaped by an interaction of different factors—race, ethnicity, indigeneity, class, sexuality, geography, age, disability, and migration status. We need to focus on the relationship and the dynamics of these factors, not assuming that any one of them is a priori more important than another. That doesn't mean gender isn't important, but we have to complicate our understanding of it.

If we continue to prioritize gender, and in particular while lumping society into two homogeneous groups, men and women, it won't matter how well or systematically we are implementing our mainstreaming strategies, because we're not going to be using the right approach to advance equality.

Just last week I gave a talk to the World Health Organization in Geneva in which these exact points were being discussed in the context of the new STGs, the sustainable development goals, of which of course Canada is a signatory. I just want to leave you with the point that we have to fundamentally rethink how we are thinking about equality in order to ensure that the new mission of the STGs, leaving no one behind, is actually achieved. This is how Canada will re-establish its international leadership in advancing equality.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you, Dr. Hankivsky.

We are going to have a great round of questions. We're going to start with my Liberal friends.

I believe Ms. Vandenbeld will begin, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you very much. I'll be splitting my time with Ms. Damoff

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Excellent.

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

Thank you so much for that incredibly good testimony. There are a lot of ideas there that I think we can use for our report. It's very nice to see you again, Ms. Rowan-Campbell.

I'd like to focus on this idea of compliance. One of the things that we're doing here is looking at whether or not we should have a mandatory system, whether it should be legislated. In this regard, I heard several of you talking about incentives and penalties. Dr. Cavaghan, in particular, you talked about both rewards and penalties, and the idea that there needs to be some kind of accountability. I'd be interested to hear more from all of you about what you actually think that would look like, and whether or not we should go to legislated, mandatory GBA, or if not, what other kinds of mechanisms are available.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Let's start with Dr. Cavaghan. She was there right to the ready.

[Dr. Rosalind Cavaghan]

My opinion would be that a legislated approach would be most likely to actually deliver compliance. Having said that, you can still encounter problems. If you look at U.K., where a gender equality duty was passed in 2007, the government was taken to court by The Fawcett Society and found not to have fulfilled the requirements of the gender equality duty, though the court found that the point was moot. The court that the government hadn't fulfilled its duties, but because of the political climate at the time, that didn't matter anyway.

I think that comes back to some of the points made by the last speaker, Dr. Hankivsky, who said the political climate is incredibly important.

I'll pass it over to the other speakers.

[Dorienne Rowan-Campbell]

May I just comment?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Yes, please.

[Dorienne Rowan-Campbell]

I think that when you go to a mandatory system, sometimes it gets everybody's backs up so much that they don't want to comply. So when we first thought about it in 2005, we thought that it would be a second step if the first stage hadn't worked; but clearly, we're at 2016, and it hasn't worked. I think mandatory compliance is important.

I obviously have the same feelings about GBA as our last speaker. I actually have never thought about doing a gender-based analysis that didn't look at gender in terms of not just how women relate to men, and that relational set of structures, but also at how women relate to each other, because that's also very important. So for me, that has always been part of gender-based analysis, and where age works, where youth works, where family relationships link into that, I think there's a lot there that we can still keep under GBA, because I think it should come under GBA. It just needs to be done in a different way. I think that once you have people who do understand through that, that we're not just talking about sex.... It's not 15 men and 35 women; oh, we're doing really well. It's really about the relational structure. It's really about where on that graph we move towards equality.

We might differ about what it's called, but I think we need a much wider and more comprehensive approach to capturing how we live with each other, how we relate to each other, whether it's women to women, women to men, men to men, because without that, we really don't know very much about gender.

And yes, it needs to be mandatory.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I have only a couple of minutes left, so I will ask you to be brief.

Dr. Rowan-Campbell, you talked about reporting, and I am wondering what your thoughts would be on having each department report on gender-based analysis to committee, much in the way that we do with estimates—having a requirement that there be reporting for GBA and that it come to a committee.

[Dorienne Rowan-Campbell]

I think that would be very useful. It is one measure of compliance, because you are going to call for it.

I have worked in a number of countries where we decided that reports had to come to the deputy minister or the permanent secretary, but the permanent secretary and the deputy minister had very little desire to receive these reports, so the reports didn't go very far. If they were to report to you, yes, that could work.

I also think that there needs to be something or somebody above all of us who has an oversight and can help advise, check, and do a lot of the evaluations—and take on board some of those evaluations, because evaluations are important. That is how we learn. That is how we know if we have an impact.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Is there time for anyone else to respond?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

No. There are 25 seconds.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Dr. Hanson, you have 25 seconds.

[Dr. Cindy Hanson]

I would like to respond very quickly. I think that the PMO could make Status of Women Canada responsible for overseeing GBA+ for all of the government.

I think that leaving it up to individual departments is problematic. Further to that, I recommend that the Treasury Board and the Privy Council be mandated to reject policies and programs that have not demonstrated GBA in practice. I did send out my recommendations; I am sorry I didn't get to make them.