Status of Women Committee on Nov. 28th, 2016

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

That's good news.

[Justine Akman]

Yes, and it is more important from our point of view because we always remind people that we are not going to be the experts on everything. That's a very dangerous road for us to go down. However, we've done extensive training with the science cluster in the past year and, as Vaughn said, I think we've set an excellent foundation for people who are involved in those kinds of projects to be asking the right questions.

Whether or not Status of Women itself is an agency and whether the employees that we have in the agency have intervened in a cabinet proposal or not do not necessarily have an impact on the quality of the gender-based analysis at the end of the day.

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

I have two questions related to your ministry coming out of the November 18 United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. I'll note that in paragraph 24 they say:

The Committee notes with appreciation that the Ministry of Status of Women is currently working with other Ministries to develop a federal strategy against gender-based violence.... However, the Committee is concerned about: ...The lack of a national action plan, bearing in mind that the strategy will only apply at the federal level;

That's one, and the second is:

The lack of shelters, support services and other protective measures for women victims of gender-based violence, which reportedly prevents them from leaving their violent partners....

Does your ministry have a response yet to those two suggestions or criticisms of the work that's been happening over the past year? Are there active staff proposals that would help reassure the United Nations in time for their next report that these have been achieved?

[Justine Akman]

First of all, it was a very successful appearance before CEDAW earlier this fall because of the many actions that the government has taken, including the inquiry on missing and murdered women.

In terms of it being a federal strategy as opposed to a national one, I believe when our minister appeared in front of the committee earlier she explained the distinction. As far as we understood it at this point, it was very important to get the federal House in order on this issue before trying to go out with a full national strategy. That being said, we've been working extensively with the provinces and territories to ensure that there is good communication and collaboration with other levels of government. In fact, at our FPT meeting in September—the ministers' federal-provincial-territorial meeting—there was an agreement to do a common monitoring and reporting framework on gender-based violence, and also an agreement to work very closely together on different initiatives. Certainly provinces, including Quebec, in particular, have expressed a very strong interest to collaborate right down to the level of doing joint funding to ensure that the gaps that are out there are being addressed.

In terms of shelters, I believe this committee is aware that there was greater investment in shelters both on and off reserve as part of the first phase of infrastructure funding. We have been working very closely with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and with Infrastructure Canada to look at the future in the context of the national housing strategy.

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

I'll note that Status of Women appeared before CEDAW's committee that examined those things and still made these two recommendations. They found that these two areas were inadequate. Is your department now taking action in order to meet the recommendations of this UN committee?

[Justine Akman]

The federal strategy, as the mandate letter commitment said, will be a federal one, but we are working very hard with the provinces and territories to ensure that there is national-level monitoring and reporting out on gender-based violence. As I mentioned, there has already been an increase in shelters, and we're anticipating that hopefully there will continue to be further investments in this area.

Both in terms of the national housing strategy...and as you're aware, the minister did an extensive engagement strategy related to the federal gender-based violence strategy. We heard from Canadians from coast to coast to coast about shelter needs in that context as well, both on and off reserve, and in the north. We're very aware of the gaps that exist.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good. That's your time.

We're going to Ms. Damoff for seven minutes.

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

Thanks to all of you for being here and also for all the work you do at Status of Women. I think the minister said that you make a little bit go a long way, and I think we all recognize that.

That actually leads me into my first question. We made a lot of recommendations in our GBA+ study. I'm going to put you on the spot a bit. Do you have the funds in your department to implement those recommendations? The minister said that you're being pulled in many directions on it. Do you have the resources there to do the work that needs to be done?

[Justine Akman]

The difference that budget 2016 made is enormous, certainly, in order to be able to increase our own capacity. Again, as enablers, we feel that right now we have our hands full and we're doing what we can. The question is, what is the perfect number of people?

What will be really important is that all federal departments don't have just one gender focal point, which is what had happened previously. It was often delegated to a fairly junior level in a department. A proposal going to cabinet would be quickly run by that analyst, for example, and given a yes or a no, or a green light, and off it went. Our job, really, is to encourage departments to build their capacity across the board at all levels of the organization, both in the policy fields and in the implementation fields, etc., to ensure that this is top of mind for people going forward.

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

I think all of us saw you as a resource for the departments. They could come to you to help where it was needed, but it was certainly not for you to be implementing it in each department.

[Justine Akman]

Exactly. We're enablers.

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

Yes, exactly.

I noticed that in the report the minister did she talked about updates and enhancements to the training tool. I wondered if you could give us a bit more information on what is happening on that front.

[Vaughn Charlton]

Yes. The course, as you see it now, is actually version two of the course. We launched it in 2012 and then closely monitored the feedback we got on it to make sure that it was meeting people's needs. Then we did a more formal evaluation, and based on that, we changed the content. I think it's always been our intention to keep refreshing that content, because things change, we learn more, and we start doing things better.

We do intend to take some of the committee's recommendations into account in terms of enhancing the definitions of sex and gender to include more content on non-binary gender. We are also working with different types of departments. One thing we always want to do is to make sure we're expanding the content so that it reaches more functional communities. I can't say exactly which ones those will be, but I think we would certainly like to add some content on non-binary gender.

On intersectionalities, I think that's something we're hearing a lot. People want more of the plus, so it's about the “+” in GBA+ having a more intersectional approach. We'd like to enhance the content in that way.

We're also developing a series of micro-learning tools. Those are three-minute videos that are meant to facilitate uptake and retention of key concepts. We're hoping to be rolling some of those out in advance of GBA awareness week in May.

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

One of the comments that I heard from some of my male colleagues was that they weren't sure how many men had gone through the development of the tool. I want to make sure that's part of what you're doing as well. When they looked at it, they were looking at it quite differently from how I perceived some of the questions.

[Vaughn Charlton]

Absolutely. We try to take the feedback on. When people do that evaluation at the end, it's not just going into the void; we really do look at it. We are looking at things such as who's taking it, and language differences too, whether it's making sense.

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

You recently gave some funding to Equal Voice to try to increase participation of women in politics.

Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

[Lucie Desforges]

The minister announced about $1 million to Equal Voice to support and enhance the participation of women in democratic institutions. As for the details, if Madam Chair agrees, I could call upon my colleague, Pascale Robichaud, who could give you a bit more detail about what this project entails.

[Pascale Robichaud, Director, Strategic Partnerships and Operations, Women's Program and Regional Operations Directorate, Status of Women Canada]

Yes, we gave roughly $1 million to Equal Voice for a three-year project to look at some of the barriers in the different legislation—provincial, federal, and municipal—so that women can participate better in federal, provincial, and municipal politics. That may be in terms of the way you vote, the voting system, or if there is child care in some areas. It's different ways of looking at the barriers and the legislation to see how we can come up with a better approach for women's participation.

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

Do you know how they'll be using that data? They'll be doing this over three years. Will that, then—

[Pascale Robichaud]

They will do a needs assessment; they'll have to do that. They will also be working with other organizations that were funded under that theme in order to come up with the best questions, have a good portrait, and look at the set of actions to implement.

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

That's great, thank you.

In the estimates there was some money being put towards research and evaluation. Could you give us a bit of an update on the progress to date on that?

[Justine Akman]

This past year the focus of the new funding for research and evaluation has been to support the minister's mandate item related to gender-based violence. As the minister referred to earlier, we did commission a few studies related to data needs on the issue of gender-based violence. We also were able to support an expert panel—two days of academics speaking about the gaps and needs for information and data and research related to gender-based violence.

In the meantime, we continue to do “Women In Canada”, which is an international best practice in terms of collecting gender-disaggregated data. It comes out in different chapters on different themes. We've also recently done a business case on supplier diversity that we're hoping to make public soon.

Our attention now is focused on doing a strategy for the research going forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's your time.

Now we're going to Ms. Harder, for five minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you very much.

I'm sure we're all aware of what's being reported in the media with regard to the military and the assaults toward women that are taking place there. Can you tell us a bit about the actions being taken by Status of Women with regard to responding to this?

Are there any actions being taken? Is there a role to be played by Status of Women?

[Vaughn Charlton]

Thanks for the question.

I think it was in January that the chief of defence staff issued a directive on fully implementing the women, peace, and security initiative, the United Nations Security Council resolution 1325. It encompasses a whole bunch of things, and one of those is gender-based violence. It's about encouraging women's participation in the military, in peacekeeping. We were invited to be a part of the working group that developed the action plan that came out of the directive. Gender-based analysis plus has been a key aspect of how they're looking to integrate a competency, not only as part of recruitment but also as part of Operation Honour, which is their response to sexual misconduct in the military.

We've certainly had a chance to meet with officials many times, and we've heard the chief of defence staff's commitment to GBA. He really does see it as a way to spread a basic competency to have that baseline awareness of gender issues. While we aren't directly engaged in the activities under Operation Honour, we do see GBA capacity as being one small piece of, first of all, shifting that culture and gaining greater awareness, and on a broad scale, rolling out those skills that are needed to appropriately address those types of issues.