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.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
I'll move on to my next question.
Can you tell me a little about the action plans being put in place with regard to the Yazidi women and girls coming in? Has there been a GBA+ analysis done on that?
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
As you know, the Government of Canada has made a significant commitment over the past year to resettle vulnerable people who have been victims of Daesh. We're working very diligently toward that commitment. As we move forward with the situation you're talking about we'll provide further details as we have them.
I am so proud of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in how they are addressing this from a very compassionate place. We know that people who come from extremely traumatized circumstances, whether they are Yazidi, Syrian, or from other extremely war-torn or vulnerable countries, have tremendous needs. That is exactly what we're trying to do by supporting the community agencies, by supporting refugees as they settle to make sure they get those support services.
Let me tell you this about trauma. I don't know, Rachael, if you've ever worked with people who are traumatized. It is an extremely complex process to recover from trauma and all trauma requires compassion. I am so proud of a country that believes in compassion and is putting into place exactly what those people will need when they come to a country that will support them in their recovery.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Is the plan put in place to make sure that we're responding with compassion and with the proper care that these women will need?
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
Absolutely. I am very confident, as I said, in my colleague and in the department to consider the needs of people who have been traumatized, who are suffering many times from post-traumatic stress disorder, who have extreme and extraordinary needs in recovery. I think the first step is getting to a safe place. I am so proud of a country that believes that.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Good afternoon, Madam Minister.
Thank you so much for joining us and the work that you and your entire department and your committee has done.
Gender-based analysis permeates everything we do here on the Hill and elsewhere. I too am very proud of our government leading by example. Certainly the initiatives that you've taken in cabinet, talking about it with your fellow cabinet ministers, is a demonstration of not just talk but also action. Thank you very much for that.
Looking at regional presence, you've mentioned there are nine part-time positions. Do you mind, Madam Minister, to repeat them again?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
The part-time presence will be established in nine other locations: Charlottetown, Halifax, St. John's, Quebec, Regina, Winnipeg, Yellowknife, Whitehorse, and Iqaluit.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Do you see any time in the foreseeable future where there may be a part-time position in the province of New Brunswick?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
Certainly we're not close to additional regional presence. This isn't the end of the road, but we want to thoughtfully assess whether or not we need enhanced regional presence.
There's a very delicate balance between administrative burden and whether or not we're adding any value. Certainly we'll be assessing that as we go along.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Thank you.
In the short term as the Atlantic region we work really well together, so I'm very confident that members in the province of New Brunswick will also be working with their colleagues.
We have heard from other witnesses over the course of the past year, talking about whatever the issue is, whether it's violence against women and young girls, gender-based analysis, that there is a cultural end, a regional difference. I'm really thankful that we are getting regional representation. When you're drawing from your statistics and your reports in monitoring will you be focusing on the regional aspect of that as well?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
Absolutely. Maybe Ms. Akman wants to elaborate a little bit about the plans on assessing the regional presence.
4:15 p.m.
Director General, Policy and External Relations Directorate, Status of Women Canada
Actually, could you pass that to Lucie?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
Sorry, I just keep directing everything to Justine.
4:15 p.m.
Lucie Desforges Director General, Women's Program and Regional Operations Directorate, Status of Women Canada
Our regional offices, as they liaise with the different regions, and we're not limited to those cities that the minister....
4:15 p.m.
Director General, Women's Program and Regional Operations Directorate, Status of Women Canada
Of course we will be present on occasion in other cities as the need requires, but we are definitely taking into account any intelligence that we gather on the ground from these program officers. We are sharing that information and making sure that it is available throughout the agency. Our regional officers have direct and regular contact with their provincial counterparts in the Atlantic and other regions as well.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Thank you.
Just on that, for those regional offices, do you have an indication at this time of how closely they may be working with local universities in terms of the research end? When we have our students looking at public policy or even developing programs, will they also be looking at that from a gender-based analysis viewpoint? If that's not there, how could we help them make that connection?
4:15 p.m.
Director General, Policy and External Relations Directorate, Status of Women Canada
We at Status of Women are certainly working with universities and will be doing more so, as we continue to develop a research plan with the new funding from the main estimates from budget 2016. It's also part of the GBA action plan, and I believe our response to you is that we would be working with universities to ensure that they are aware that our GBA+ training is available online to all of their students.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Okay, thank you.
Will there be an opportunity or anywhere where there may be a pool of funds, not so much an NSERC grant, but some kind of grant that they could apply to for research?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
We have ongoing grants available through Status of Women Canada. About $20 million a year is provided in grants to any agencies that are available. I'm just finding out that we don't fund universities.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
I can say, though, that we work very closely with universities. For example, with the gender-based violence strategy, we were able to pull in researchers from a number of universities who are doing specific research on gender-based violence. The response that we got from the researchers was very touching, actually. They were very pleased to be asked by the federal government to share the results of the research that they've been conducting without a very large audience for a very long time.
We held a two-day conference, a national expert panel on the state of Canadian knowledge on gender-based violence here in Ottawa. We also commissioned three analytical research papers on gender-based violence to examine the issues such as risks, interventions, and future research priorities. We heard time and time again, speaking to some of the questions around capacity at the front line, that the front-line organizations and some of the smaller organizations that are working on mobilizing communities felt that one way the federal government could really support their work was actually collecting data, providing an analysis of that data, and conducting the research to determine what's working, what's not working, and where we go from here.
Many of them felt that for years and years they had not had the type of support needed to actually assess whether or not what they were doing was having any impact at all. In some cases they couldn't assess whether or not their programs might make things worse. They really wanted evaluation, support, and research, so as we move forward into the gender-based violence strategy, certainly that's something that we've been very thoughtful about. How do we work with academics? How do we work with the universities to tap into that research that is happening but doesn't have a very broad audience?
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
I'm sorry, that's your time.
We will now go to Ms. Harder and Ms. Vecchio for five more minutes.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Thank you very much.
I have just a quick response to the point of order. When we're talking about the supplementary estimates, I actually have the ability to ask the minister about anything that might touch her portfolio or be within the realm of her portfolio. I'm not restricted to just asking her about GBA+. You're more than welcome to look that up in the Standing Orders.
I have a question for the minister. You talked briefly before. You said that around the cabinet table there have been several decisions that have been made that have given specific attention to GBA+. In the last year of government, with the policies or the legislation that has come forward, can you give us a specific example of where the GBA+ has been used in a meaningful way to create a difference?
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
From what I hear from people who have been here far longer than I, this conversation on gender has never been louder around the cabinet table, and I am very pleased and proud of my colleagues for doing that with me and taking this so seriously.
Certainly, one example is the renewed approach to indigenous policing. Gender-based analysis helped to identify some of the vulnerabilities faced by indigenous women, but also—and here is where I was talking about moving forward from just counting what happens to women—to identify strategies that can go forward to ensure gender and cultural competency training for officers. As I said of the federal social infrastructure strategy, GBA resulted in the identification of the need for greater investments in shelters and transition housing to better meet the needs of women and children.
As I said, we are looking at how we can analyze the large-scale procurement projects so that we consider the workforce makeup of the industry and find out how we can actually orient procurement processes to consider gender equality and women benefiting from those procurement processes.
Right now, we are also being consulted on a wide range of proposals, including the national housing strategy, the defence policy review, and initiatives related to clean growth and innovation.
Many of these proposals are still in development, but we also have a very important opportunity to monitor how GBA is integrated as they roll out. I think that's a really important point to stress. We are not perfect at GBA yet. This is a first-year effort in terms of the focus that we've had. No other government has focused on gender in the way this government has. We are very proud of our efforts to date, but we know that we still have a ways to go, and part of that is the culture shift.