Evidence of meeting #35 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 video is available from Parliament.
4 p.m.
NDP
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Okay.
I thought all cabinet decisions were going through that lens, but that's—
4 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
All departments are required to do the gender-based analysis, but I can't discuss the contents of a cabinet conversation with you.
4 p.m.
NDP
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
We had a lot of outrage from both of our parties when the Status of Women regional offices were closed. Your critic at the time called the closures “reprehensible”. I asked last week in question period about whether your ministry agreed with the United Nations report that the 12 regional offices should be reopened.
You have given us information today about the re-establishment of the Vancouver and Toronto offices and the part-time offices. Do you consider that to be a fulfillment of the recommendation of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women?
4 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
As I indicated, we've begun to expand beyond the four offices. We know that by having a better regional presence we're going to be able to increase the reach of the agency. We're going to be able to also liaise more thoroughly with local organizations and community groups, and that really important piece, which is to partner with other government departments and provincial and territorial governments to leverage our agency's investment.
Regional presence is going to increase from four to 15 locations, including a full-time new presence in Toronto, two full-time equivalents, and in Vancouver, two full-time equivalents. The addition of Toronto and Vancouver means that full-time on-site service is now available in five of Canada's most highly populated areas. Staff in these two cities are currently co-located with other federal agencies.
The part-time presence will be established in nine other locations. They are Charlottetown, Halifax, St. John's, Quebec, Regina, Winnipeg, Yellowknife, Whitehorse, and Iqaluit. This fiscal year, Charlottetown, Halifax, St. John's, Quebec, Regina, and Winnipeg will each have been visited six to nine times. Going forward, they're going to be visited monthly.
As for—
4 p.m.
NDP
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Sorry, Minister. I'm just going to ask you a final question so I can fit it in.
4 p.m.
NDP
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
If you are able to follow up on that with the details, we would have it on the record.
4 p.m.
NDP
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
That would be great.
We got jammed on this because we're covering both GBA and supplementary estimates. If the committee invited you, would you be willing to come back for another hour for us to be able to dive into some of these topics later?
4 p.m.
NDP
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Right, thank you.
I'll ask just a final one. We talked earlier about shelter operational funding.
If your department would be able to provide us with some of the history of when in the past operational funding was provided federally, that would be great for us to have on the record for our future work.
4 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
All right. You can direct those bits of information to the clerk.
We're going now to Mr. Fraser for seven minutes.
4 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being here. It's a pleasure, as always.
I'll hop right to it, because I have more than I can get to in my allotted time I'm sure.
First, very quickly, as a matter of process, when a memorandum to cabinet comes before cabinet and it doesn't have a GBA analysis at the Privy Council stage, or the Treasury Board, could you describe the mechanics of what actually happens? Is it sent back?
4 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
Yes.
They don't come forward without those components. In addition, when they do come forward with those components and Status of Women feels the work could be enhanced, in fact I'm provided with interventions on behalf of the department. I can then speak to additional considerations that the department may want to consider as they begin the implementation of the particular program or policy.
4 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
This whole process of the analysis will be completed, redone or done in the first instance, before all of cabinet sees it for the first time. Is that the idea?
4 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
If it's turned back because of no work being done, yes. In fact, it would be completed before it comes to cabinet.
4 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Perfect.
You mentioned during your remarks that there was a survey done that highlights the internal capacity of the different departments. Did you get many responses from all the different departments? Was it unanimous?
4 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
Yes, I think we did.
I will turn that over to my officials to speak more about the details of the response.
4 p.m.
Director General, Policy and External Relations Directorate, Status of Women Canada
Yes, we did do that survey. We didn't go to every single department and agency, but we did get very thorough responses. In fact, we were able to follow up. Now remember, we did this survey for the year 2014-15, so we don't have results from this past year. It was a practice run at getting those kinds of results, and it certainly shone a spotlight on some areas that needed some work.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
On that, were there certain themes you saw that crossed departments, where there are capacity shortfalls internally to the federal government?
4:05 p.m.
Director General, Policy and External Relations Directorate, Status of Women Canada
They were the themes that we've discussed at this committee before, so training, access to data, and certainly needing to spread out the information about how to do gender-based analysis throughout the departments, the cultural shift that's required. Those were the kinds of things that were highlighted and that the departments over the past year have been working very hard to address.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
I guess while we're on shortfalls like training, maybe I missed this in the remarks, or maybe it wasn't there. I'm not sure. Are new employees going to be required to go through the training process? We had great success in blasting the tool out. I think you said there were 29,000 folks in civil service who have completed it.
When new people come on board, is this something that we're going to require of departments?
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
Some have, yes. The Canadian Armed Forces, and Innovation and Science have.
Each department would be responsible for making the training mandatory. Certainly I can say from my collegial conversations with my ministers that there's a very strong desire to get this right. Ministers are giving very clear directives to their staff, both at the department level and at the ministerial level, that gender-based analysis must be considered.
What's very exciting, for me, is that I'm starting to see those conversations happen. They're not just about, for example, memoranda to cabinet or those larger policy decisions, but even things like communications tools, some of the programming they're offering, some of the ways they're thinking even about internal processes.
There's definitely a move afoot to understand that this government is very serious about gender-based analysis. People seem very eager to take the steps they need to take to make sure all of their team understands that it is very important.