Status of Women Committee on Nov. 28th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'll call the meeting to order.

I am pleased to welcome the Honourable Patty Hajdu who is with us today to give us some commentary on the GBA report that we submitted, as well as to answer any of our questions.

Minister, I would invite you to begin your comments. You have 10 minutes.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Minister of Status of Women]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Bonjour.

I am very pleased to be here to discuss the federal government's response to the standing committee's fourth report on the implementation of gender-based analysis, or as we fondly refer to it, GBA, in the Government of Canada, which was tabled on October 7.

Before I start, I'd like to introduce you to Lucie Desforges, our new senior director general of the women's program. We are very happy to have her. Of course, we have Justine Akman, who is the director general of policy, as well.

Let me first thank the standing committee for its excellent work studying this priority issue, as well as all of the witnesses for taking the time to make submissions and appear before your committee.

The federal government believes that gender-based analysis, also known as GBA+, is a critical tool to advance gender equality in Canada. It helps to ensure that government decisions about policies, programs, and legislation are made with a full understanding of their impacts on Canadian women and men in all of their diversity.

The government's commitment to equality including through the use of GBA was underscored as a priority in my mandate letter.

It was further reinforced by the increased investments announced in Budget 2016 to enhance the capacity of Status of Women Canada to support government-wide implementation of GBA.

The government response to your report highlights our commitment to enhancing the use of GBA. It signals our strong agreement with the overall intent of the committee's recommendations, identifies areas where we can enhance our actions, and several areas where more consideration can be given.

On November 1 2016, the Minister of Finance indicated that to ensure the government continues to deliver real and meaningful change for all Canadians, it will submit budget 2017 and all future budgets to more rigorous analysis by completing and publishing a gender-based analysis of budgetary measures.

This is a concrete demonstration of the government's commitment to use GBA to advance gender equality.

As the committee is aware, this spring we released a GBA action plan for 2016 to 2020. It sets out specific activities that the federal government, through my agency of Status of Women Canada, the Privy Council Office, and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, is undertaking to strengthen GBA implementation and accountability in response to the gaps identified by the Auditor General's fall 2015 report. I am pleased to note that the majority of the committee's recommendations align with the action plan, which confirms to me that our priorities and activities are on the right track.

Today, I would like to give you an update on some of the progress we have made in the last few months.

We all agree that training in basic GBA competencies is essential. Status of Women Canada's Introduction to GBA+ online course, which I commend you all for taking, provides a foundation for the common understanding of key concepts and steps of GBA process and is accessible to all public servants and the public.

One of the areas that the committee stressed is the importance of training House of Commons and Senate staff. In May, as part of GBA awareness week, I challenged my colleagues to take the online course. As a result, 588 parliamentarians and their staff have now completed the course. I have also contacted the government House leader and the government representative in the Senate to discuss mandatory GBA training for parliamentarians and parliamentary staff.

An increasing number of departments are making this course mandatory for some or all employees. To date, approximately 29,000 public servants have successfully completed the course. This includes almost 18,000 in the Canadian Armed Forces, Department of National Defence, where the course is being used to support the integration of gender considerations in operational planning, a commitment made by the chief of defence staff.

Status of Women Canada is working closely with the Department of National Defence as they develop more in-depth training tailored to their unique sector.

This is part of the action plan's broader strategic direction to expand training using a cluster approach. This means engaging groups of departments and specific sectors on the development of advanced GBA training and in-depth practical case studies relevant to that sector. Status of Women Canada has successfully piloted this approach with science, economic, and research departments. Training is currently being developed with seven agencies in the public safety and defence sector. We're going to continue to expand this approach in the coming years.

The agency is also reviewing the online course content based on the ongoing feedback that we received from participants. We will be doing a thorough refresh of the course in early 2017 to refine definitions and to incorporate new content, including that related to non-binary gender.

The committee's recommendations also focus on ensuring GBA training is mandatory.

I agree strongly that GBA can't be optional.

As noted in the government response, GBA is now a mandatory element in the new templates that support the development of proposals coming to cabinet, in particular, memoranda to cabinet and Treasury Board submissions. GBA is also required by the Department of Finance on initiatives submitted for budget consideration, and there are new commitments to make GBA of the budget public.

In cabinet discussion, there's an expectation by the Prime Minister that gender impacts have been considered, and that mitigation strategies are proposed where needed. I've been very vocal at the cabinet table to ensure that we are all being deliberate in asking questions, challenging assumptions, and identifying mitigation strategies to deal with intended and unintended consequences.

As a result, many departments are now seeking Status of Women Canada's support to ensure strong use of GBA. This has included engagement on the innovation strategy, the defence policy review, the national housing strategy, proposals related to apprenticeship and other employment programs, among many others.

The demand on my agency related to GBA has increased significantly over the past year. The agency is working with its partners to develop mechanisms to more systematically monitor overall progress in implementing GBA.

This summer a survey was sent to all deputy ministers to gather information on their internal GBA capacity and how GBA was integrated in specific proposals. We're going to continue this survey annually to track progress. Going forward, we will be closely monitoring the combined effects of increased training among officials, the new mandatory cabinet submission requirements, and greater engagement of Status of Women Canada in the development of initiatives. We will closely monitor the action plan's implementation and the impact of these enhanced measures on the rigour and quality of GBA.

In the meantime, we will continue to explore additional means to improve monitoring, oversight and accountability for GBA implementation, including the careful consideration of legislative and non-legislative approaches, and will report back to you by March 31, 2018.

Finally, before I turn to the supplementary estimates B), I want to again thank all committee members for their thoughtful work on this report, which has been helpful in pushing this agenda forward. I look forward to continuing our work together to ensure the government's GBA commitments are met.

I'd like to talk to you about the funds provided through budget 2016 to Status of Women Canada. This represents a total new investment of $23.3 million over five years, $4.2 million in year one and $4.8 million each year thereafter. Supplementary estimates (B) confirm funding of $4.2 million, which was approved by Treasury Board on October 16, 2016, to increase the capacity at Status of Women Canada. These new funds are being used to achieve a number of goals, including ensuring more consistent gender-based analysis across the federal government, which I described earlier.

We're also enhancing the research and evaluation capabilities of the organization, including recent online surveys about priorities for the federal strategy against gender-based violence. Through a short questionnaire on gender-based violence, we engaged expert service providers and front-line workers and solicited their feedback on challenges and priorities.

A number of research papers were also commissioned, and we hosted a two-day panel discussion with experts on the prevention of violence against women and girls.

This enhanced research capacity underscores our commitment to listening to Canadians and taking an evidence-based approach to the design of policies, programs, and legislation. Over the past few months, we have begun to expand the regional presence of Status of Women Canada to better engage directly with local organizations, community groups, other federal departments, as well as provincial and territorial governments.

To ensure a presence for Status of Women Canada in all provinces and territories, we have established new full-time presence in Toronto and Vancouver, and a part-time presence in nine other locations across the country.

This enhanced regional presence will help us to better leverage the agency's investments through collaboration with partners at a local or regional level.

Now I'm happy to take your questions on both the government's response to the GBA report and the supplementary estimates.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you very much.

We will now begin the question period.

Ms. Vandenbeld, you have the floor and you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you.

Minister, I want to thank you very much for coming here.

Our committee did a lot of work on gender-based analysis plus. I want to thank you for accepting the committee's recommendations and for taking action on so many of those recommendations in your action plan.

In particular, I noted that for the budget, and every budget going forward, there's been a commitment not only to do gender-based analysis but also to publish the results. I wonder if you could let us know the significance of that and why that is very important.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Thank you very much for your question.

The federal government, as you know, is very committed to this initiative of gender equality. One of the things we can actually measure our commitment by is how we spend our money. To do a gender-based analysis on our budget is something that not very many governments do. It's kind of a unique thing. It certainly is something that will give us a very good indication in terms of the gender implications of how we're allotting the money that we spend as a country.

This is the first budget ever in which we will publish the results of this analysis. It's a very important step. It certainly will further the strong signal we are giving to departments that they need to consider the implications of gender when they're planning their programs, spending their money, and making decisions on behalf of Canadians, including Canadian women and girls.

I'm very proud of Finance Canada, which has made this commitment. They're leading on the commitment, so it will be happening under its portfolio. We are currently supporting Finance in any way that they need, to make sure they have the tools and the resources they need.

We will also be working closely with the OECD to learn from other countries that are practising gender-based budgeting, to see what we can import into Canada as we begin this very important step.

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

I noted also that you mentioned that GBA+ is now mandatory for cabinet submissions, that this is now a requirement. You also said that there are areas where more consideration could be given.

Could you let us know if there are challenges or barriers that are being faced by government in terms of implementing GBA+?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Absolutely.

GBA has had some version of being mandatory for a long time. Now that I understand this file so much more clearly, simply to make something mandatory will never be effective, unless you have the depth of knowledge throughout the department. That's why I'm really excited about this GBA action plan. What we're trying to do is actually shift a culture and the way that people think throughout government. It is probably easiest to say it's mandatory and then have a tick box where people can say they did it, but there's not really any depth of effort, especially if no one is watching and there's no accountability.

To be able to have a commitment from the Prime Minster to have a full Minister of Status of Women, to have Status of Women have the capacity to support that in-depth knowledge, I think will begin to start to see the success in a far more rapid rate than simply having a mandatory requirement.

Having said that, we've put into place conditions.... I can speak really clearly about the memorandum to cabinet component. What we found was that the tick box just wasn't enough. Now, in fact, there's a separate section that people have to be very thoughtful about in filling out.

Maybe I can turn it over to someone from the department to talk a little about what that's meant for Status of Women.

[Justine Akman, Director General, Policy and External Relations Directorate, Status of Women Canada]

It means we are run off our feet, our phones are ringing off the hook, and departments are asking us—often at the very early stages of thinking on a new policy—how they should think about GBA.

Most important and exciting, I think, from our perspective, is that not only are they digging harder for data—sometimes it's there and sometimes it's not—but they are doing much better GBAs. They are also, I think, starting to talk about mitigating strategies, so not just the impact it will have on women, men, etc., but also how they might address that through the policy process.

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

In terms of shifting the culture and creating more awareness, I noted that you said 29,000 public servants have taken the online course. Being in a riding that represents a number of public servants, I'm starting to see it, anecdotally speaking. People say that they hadn't really thought about it that way but that after they took the course, they had an “aha” moment.

I wonder if you have those kinds of examples or know about areas where that is happening and where there is actual improvement in the culture because of people taking the online course.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Absolutely. I can tell you that, first of all, the kinds of conversations we're having, in general, about gender-based analysis are far deeper. That's because ministers are, for sure, coming much more prepared, because their department is doing so much more thorough a job. Not only are they being held to account for their work but they're actually asking questions about each other's work, which to me is phenomenal, because now I'm not the only one speaking up.

The true indication of the beginning of a culture shift is that the spokesperson for women is not the only person speaking for women, and you start to hear other people saying, “Wait a minute. That doesn't seem like a very thorough GBA. How would that affect this group or that group?”

Also, because of the “plus” component, there is an openness to talking about the aspects of other vulnerable populations, whether it be culture, religion, sexual orientation, or whatever. For me that's very affirming on the large scale.

Certainly, GBA of the federal social infrastructure strategy has resulted in the identification of the need for a greater investment in shelters and transition houses, as well as talking about affordable housing and the impact it will have on women, who are disproportionately heads of single-parent families and households, and their children.

Those kinds of conversations indicate to me that people are starting to understand that this has impact no matter what their portfolio is.

We are using GBA in the analysis of large-scale procurement projects so that we consider the workforce makeup of the industry and ways to ensure that more of these people benefit—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry. That's your time on that question, Minister.

We're going to go now to Ms. Vecchio for seven minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Minister Hajdu, for being here. It's great to have you here to answer questions about GBA+ and the work that was done.

One of the questions I have for you—and I do appreciate the answer to this—is regarding the commissioner. There was a commissioner used and recommended in many of the things we put forward. I personally don't always see a commissioner as being the best source, but what will we be doing for measurements once we have this?

I know with the commissioner, there's the idea that everything comes to that person. They are able to use a system in which they can say that this is what they have seen and this is how it's measurable, and I agree with you.

What was the reasoning in deciding not to have a commissioner, and what measurements will you be using so that we can see how GBA+ is used?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

We definitely know that we need to strengthen accountability and oversight for GBA, but I think the first thing was my appointment as the first-ever full Minister of Status of Women. I can tell you that I've heard throughout different layers of government and our political biosphere that having someone who is focused solely on gender equality is making a huge difference in terms of accountability. Before, a minister of status of women might share the portfolio with another file like labour or health—which, as you know, are massive files that can consume a lot of energy—and status of women would sometimes fall to the side through no neglect, necessarily, of that particular minister but just through the sheer volume of work that particular minister had with another weighty file.

Having a full Minister of Status of Women at the cabinet level drives change from the leadership place. It also provides that accountability to cabinet and government, because there is someone who is watching, essentially. I also have the support of the Prime Minister, who has been extremely adamant that the work I do and my mandate be taken very seriously; so there is certainly that, as well.

Also, I've been working with my colleagues to make sure their officials and ministry staff are also included in the oversight. At every level we have ongoing communication, whether through the deputies, the ministry staff, the chiefs of staff, or the senior officials.

I don't know if you want to speak a bit more about how you see that working.

[Justine Akman]

As I mentioned earlier, we get a lot of questions. We're networking with department officials at all different levels on a memorandum to cabinet at every level of the organization, but very importantly, we're also working on the downstream parts of gender-based analysis so that when the Treasury Board submissions come, and when evaluations are done, you can really make sure the right questions will be asked about gender at all stages of the policy and program implementation.

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

Thank you.

Moving on, looking at the supplementary estimates, we did hear a lot, especially during the study of violence against women, about the need for more funding, and I noted here that $3.9 million will be going in for operating. Now my concern is, is this going to be for operating those sorts of programs, to put more money into the funding of those programs, or are we going to be looking at Status of Women offices being reopened throughout Canada?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I'll tell you how the money is broken down.

As you know, the government is not actually in the business of core operating funds, and I'm sure that you have heard, as I have, pleas for support at the grassroots level for core operating funds. As a matter of fact, when I ran a homeless shelter, I could certainly have used an extra half a million dollars, from any level of government that could have provided it, for core operating funds.

However, that is not the role of the federal government, and it's certainly not the role of Status of Women to provide operating funds. The funds that we spend, though, support that kind of work at the community level. We support provinces and municipalities with the structure and the framework, if you will, to enhance what they're offering at the ground level.

How we've broken down the additional $4.2 million is, first of all, there's $1.9 million to expand our regional presence, for a dedicated research evaluation unit, and to produce more meaningful and informed gender-based analysis. Then $2.3 million is for ministerial support and Status of Women Canada internal services, and $27,000 was also transferred to Global Affairs Canada to support the business women's trade mission.

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

The reason I ask is that I had worked in the field. I worked for a member of Parliament for 11 years, and unfortunately not one time did we have somebody come looking for a Status of Women office until it was about to close down. We had offered at the front-line service those contacts to the ministers, to the departments, and things like that. That's one reason I ask, because I think we need to look at it as a nationwide thing. Every community could, of course, use a new office, because it's such an important issue, but how would we pick and choose where it goes? That's just one of my concerns, those offices, and that's why I was specifically asking that question.

Carrying on with some different things here—I have a lot of things going on in my mind—back to GBA. When we talk about GBA, the choice of not legislating it.... I understand the answer that you gave to Anita. Understanding the mandatory legislation and things like that, it would be very very difficult.

What was the decision not to legislate it?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

As I outlined, the choice to not legislate it happened because we don't feel necessarily that legislation is going to produce any better gender-based analysis at this time. It doesn't mean that we're not open to examining legislation, but in fact, when I draw on my experience in public health and behaviour change, what we know is that first you need to create an awareness of the problem. Then you need to do the education of whoever has the behaviour you're trying to change—in this case the federal government—and then you need to make sure that there are supports in the environment so that people can actually choose that preferred behaviour. Then finally, the legislation can be applied, and you need to have a capacity to enforce that legislation. What happens if you break the legislation, for example?

As I said earlier, what we are trying to do is shift the culture, and we're focusing our efforts right now on the awareness, education, and supportive environment stages, if you will, of changing behaviour, which is to say that what we're trying to do is make sure that people have the awareness to do GBA, the education to do it well and thoroughly, and the environmental supports such as Status of Women, which has better capacity to actually support departments in implementing that gender-based analysis. We're open to looking at whether those things will produce the kind of change that we're hoping for, but at this point we know that it will take more than legislation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

All right, and that's your time.

We're going now to Ms. Malcolmson for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Minister, for being here. We've been looking forward to it.

I have really limited time, so I'm going to try to ask for yes or no answers that align us right into some of the core issues of the work.

With regard to GBA, there is the Beijing Declaration, and several of the Auditor General's reports indicate that Canada has not lived up to its commitment. Your leadership has done a lot of work, which we definitely recognize and acknowledge; however, as my colleagues have alluded to, we recommended unanimously that legislation come into place to implement GBA. We had testimony from witnesses at Immigration Canada about how, when they were legislated to deliver on GBA, it made a big difference to them. Of course, they had to do the training and the culture shift.

I'm very concerned—and I hear this out in the world—that a culture shift doesn't bind the next government, which might have a different attitude towards this. Canadian women can't count on the goodwill of this government and this cabinet to do the right thing.

Again, will your government introduce legislation, as we recommended, before June 2017?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I know that the committee has heard about the legislated requirement of the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada report on gender in its annual report to Parliament on immigration levels.

What we notice in those gender-based analyses is that they're very good at giving desegregated data, but they don't necessarily take it to the next step to say, “Then, knowing what we know, what should we do?” That's getting back, again, to that cultural change.

We want more than the departments to say, “Well, it will affect these women this way, and these woman this way”, or “We know that 36% of women experience this, and 42% of men experience that”. It's important, for sure, to have the data and it's a great step, but what we want is to actually have GBA applied. We want people to be looking at their decisions through the lens of gender. We don't just want them reporting out on what the impacts are, but also on what those mitigating strategies are. Will they change policy?

In order to do that, as I said earlier, it does require a shift in culture. We're trying to work, for example, with departments now at the conceptual idea of programs and policies and approaches because, in fact, when you lay on the GBA at the end, quite frankly, it is very late in the game and sometimes unavoidable in terms of the impacts on women.

What we want to see is that departments progressively move towards using gender-based analysis at the conceptual stage. That's why—

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

I'm just going to interrupt because I need to move on to another area, but I'll just flag that nothing any of our witnesses or you have said would say that legislation would prevent that. Again, we're disappointed that you're not following our recommendations.

I do appreciate your commitment to publish the results of GBA on the budget.

Can you also commit to publicly releasing the analysis of GBA on several megaprojects, which witnesses here also identified as being an issue of concern? Megaprojects can have unintended consequences on women around rates of violence against women. The Site C dam is one federal approval that has been given, and then another approval that we think is upcoming is that of the Kinder Morgan pipeline.

Will you commit to releasing the results of GBA on those two federal decisions?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

All cabinet documents are subject to cabinet confidence, so we would not be able to release those particular analyses.

In terms of your earlier question, I just want to be clear that we have not ruled out legislation and that in March 2018, as we committed in our response, we will report back. We will have a better sense at that time, after having a little bit of a longer period to assess, whether or not we are making progress and whether or not we need to consider legislation.

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

Can you tell me whether GBA was done on the Site C dam and whether it will be done on Kinder Morgan? Whether or not you can release the results, can you confirm—

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I can't actually discuss what happens in cabinet, as you know.