Evidence of meeting #14 for Status of Women in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was gba.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Professor, School of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
I would agree with a phased-in approach, but again, I would like the conceptional work to be sorted out first. What are we talking about when we're talking about mainstreaming equality? What tools, guides, and approaches are we talking about? It's about getting all of that sorted out before you move any further.
Liberal
As an Individual
I would agree with that also. I also think that there's a role for Treasury Board, because they are very powerful, and we need to be able to hold them accountable. It's very, very important. They influence a great deal, and we need to recognize that.
I think that some of the things we need to look at when we're doing this phased-in approach is thinking about where we may need to start, who the leaders will be, and who will model change. We should get some of the more powerful departments to take on that role. That's when it's a lot easier to pull others along. If you start with something because it looks like it might be easy to do, you won't get the really powerful departments to follow along on their own very easily. Strategically, I would start by looking at something like the Treasury Board and seeing what anchors you could use to get them on board.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
Excellent. That is your time.
We will go to my Conservative colleague Mrs. Vecchio, for five minutes.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
I don't know if you also look at data from small business or the private sector. Have you done a comparison of the government departments and our private sector? If so, what are the results, and what are some of the challenges that we have when we look at the private sector?
Anyone...? Dr. Hankivsky?
Professor, School of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
I can't comment on that because I have not really looked at the private sector, other than knowing that it is a challenge to get the private sector to.... Well, maybe not, when you make an economic argument of diversifying views and perspectives within business and organizations as a way of increasing productivity and the bottom line. I know that this argument has worked, but that has not been an area of my focus.
Conservative
Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, Radboud University, As an Individual
I think I would draw a distinction between what happens in business and what happens in government. For me, gender mainstreaming is about changing state policy and the way the state shapes gender inequality, whereas businesses are more likely to do equal opportunities and to be driven by the kind of profit case that Dr. Olena Hankivsky—whose name we are murdering—stated. The comparison between the private sector and the state can be quite awkward.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Are there any lessons we can learn from looking at those? I recognize we are talking about productivity, but we also have to look at the productivity of the government. When we are looking at these, productivity can mean the most efficient programs we can have to help all Canadians.
Taking the profitability out of this, businesses are trying to do what is best, not only for their business. A lot of times there are some corporate responsibilities there as well. Are there any lessons? I will go back to the women on the video screen. Is there any correlation or any education that we can get from that?
Forget about the profitability here. We have to recognize efficiency. I myself have a staff of women who work very well with me, and one young man. It is also that likelihood of us getting along so well and being able to understand the needs of our community. Do you see the same thing when it comes to business?
Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, Radboud University, As an Individual
If you ask about lessons, perhaps I would be slightly provocative and say that one of the lessons that could come out of analysis of business is the way that.... When gender mainstreaming is inserted into a liberal agenda—rather than, say, a social democratic one—it can become quite limited and subordinated to aims that are perhaps rather far away from the original aims pursued in something like the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action on women, which is what came out of the UN and started gender mainstreaming rolling internationally.
That is a provocative response. I don't know what the other experts would say.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
That's okay, no problem.
I want to continue with Dr. Cavaghan.
When we talk about the uptake of gender-based analysis in the federal government in the Netherlands, can you give me some general information about that? Where do you see the leadership from, at that level? What have been some of the positive results from the leadership from those levels, and how can we take lessons from that?
Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, Radboud University, As an Individual
I am really sorry, but my expertise is on the European Union and the European Commission, so I don't have expertise on the Netherlands or the member states specifically. I look at EU-level policy that comes out of Brussels and the European Commission.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
That's not a problem.
The Netherlands is ranked at number 7 in gender equality, compared to Canada at number 25. Let's take that question and maybe switch it over to the EU—look at it as the EU in general, rather than the Netherlands specifically.
What departments...? How do they facilitate it? What lessons can we learn?
Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, Radboud University, As an Individual
The two leaders would be the directors general for employment, probably development as well, and science and research—so there are three, actually.
Since the financial crisis, however, the EU has been dismantling its gender mainstreaming and its equal opportunities policy by stealth. In terms of lessons about leadership, I would come back again to the political climate. The political climate in Europe is changing away from one where social democratic agendas were, perhaps not dominant, but very present, to a much more conservative political climate, where equality is falling off the agenda and we are having many more problems with the radical right rising in Europe.
It is difficult to point to the EU as a leader anymore. I don't know what other panellists would say, though, because certainly other panellists are talking also about countries like Brazil and India, where a lot of very interesting things are occurring. Perhaps they can speak about leadership.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
Excellent. That's your time.
We'll go over to my Liberal colleague Mr. DeCourcey for five minutes.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
It's been an intriguing conversation to have the opportunity to sit in on today.
I come to this role having previously served in an oversight body at the provincial level, the child and youth advocates office. I had a mandate to develop an education and outreach agenda, based largely around human and children's rights education, to both child and youth-serving agents, government officials, and teachers and children and youth themselves. I was also part of a team that helped implement a child rights impact assessment process into government decision-making. So I frame my questions from those experiences and that perspective.
Internationally, is there anywhere an ombudsperson's role to manage this sort of intersectionality or GBA+ rollout, or could there be a strengthened role in Canada for that oversight? Are there any educational examples to help not just educate decision-makers and people in government, but also of everyday citizens and young people, so that we're graduating students who have a better understanding of intersectionality?
I had the chance to work with UNICEF on a rights respecting schools program. It was a wonderful grassroots way to educate both teachers and young people, to expand knowledge around these things. I wonder if there are any examples of that.
You talked briefly, Dr. Hanson, about an intersectional feminist framework.
Dr. Hankivsky, when you were talking about intersectionality and complicating the situation, I was thinking, okay, after you've complicated it and destabilized your view of the world, is there a way to put it back together in a rubric for simplification purposes?
Those are a lot of questions. Maybe I'll start with you, Dr. Hanson, on the education piece.
Associate Professor, Adult Education, University of Regina and President Elect, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW), As an Individual
These are interesting questions.
I've actually worked with UNFPA. The UNFPA has done some work in developing a model that would look at human rights culture and gender as a tripod in the way that you would look at all policies and programs. That might be one location where there are some resources on this.
I can't really speak to what extent this is happening in schools. I'm an adult educator. Certainly, with CRIAW and intersectional feminist frameworks it's happening more on a community level with projects and research that are, by and large, funded from SSHRC or Status of Women Canada. We don't have any core funding, so we're just hanging on.
There are things happening. I think it would be possibly be useful to have some kind of repository so we'd actually know what's going on, but I can't speak to that either.
And an ombudsman; maybe you can speak to that.
Professor, School of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
I think the ombudsman is a great idea for sure, but I wanted just to speak to the resources.
I'm also the director of the Institute for Intersectionality Research and Policy at Simon Fraser University. We have developed a number of different primers of how to apply intersectionality to policy analysis and different kinds of research. I also put out a guide, Intersectionality 101, in very basic, plain language, that's been used by a variety of community and civil society organizations. So all of those resources, with concrete examples and illustrations, exist.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Dr. Cavaghan, do you know of any international example, education-wise or oversight-wise, that we could draw on?
Post Doctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, Radboud University, As an Individual
I do think that the other panellists are saying things that already answer that question. If you want me to name specific examples, certainly within the EU, oversight is continually a problem, because the policy has tended to move on goodwill. That is why the other panellists are perhaps able to cite examples better than I can. There are a lot of problems with gender mainstreaming in the EU.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Great, thanks very much. That was really all I had for questions.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
Excellent.
We'll go to my NDP colleague Ms. Malcolmson for three minutes.
NDP
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
We've heard prior testimony from some of the federal government witnesses, such as Immigration Canada, for which GBA is mandated in their legislation. They're our best story. We've also heard some witnesses say that mandating this is oversimplified, and that of course we need to do training and all of these things, because it's not a magic bullet. It feels like to me that if you mandated it, then there would be more political pressure to resource and train and support, and have leadership.
I'm wondering if any of the witnesses, because you've all said that mandating would be a significant step that would surely change the outcome, can comment about that inevitability of twinning leadership and training along with the legislative requirement.
Professor, School of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
I think twinning would be excellent. I think that is a good example. I think the way it was mandated in that particular department—I know, because I spoke with them—was a bit of a fluke. It happened when nobody was watching. I would say yes, twinning, but there's no magic bullet. There's not one single solution; it has to be a coordinated effort.
