Status of Women Committee on Nov. 28th, 2016

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

Since our time is very limited now, I just want to go back to the regional offices, since this is a concern of mine.

I have run a small business, so I want to understand what percentage of funding will be used for utilities and things like that, over the money that could actually go into programming and funding for programs that would benefit all, whether it's the GBA+ program or.... I want to know how much we are going to spend on lights, as a percentage of that, compared with putting up posters saying we want violence against women to stop. Is it going to be 10%? I would like to know what the cost of programming versus running an office is going to be.

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

We'll get you the percentage of the total budget. It is a tiny per cent of our total budget at Status of Women Canada.

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

What I'm looking for is less than 10%. It should be—

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

I don't know. I can't make up a number, but we'll definitely get you the number.

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

That's okay. I'm hoping that this is kind of what we are looking at, less than 10%.

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

It's very small. It is necessary, in order to support the community organizations that are often the recipients of the grants and make sure that they have what they need and that we understand the work they are doing, but I can tell you that this is not the majority of the expenditures.

I would say that more than half of our budget at Status of Women is given, in the form of grants, to organizations that are doing exactly what you are talking about, working on the front lines, piloting new approaches, and looking at systemic change across all three of our priorities, which are the economic success of women, women in leadership opportunities, and ending gender-based violence. The focus of Status of Women is very action-oriented. I am very proud of this tiny, mighty agency that does so much with so little.

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

Yes, and I respect where you are coming from on that. I just think it's really important, because we know that feet on the ground are important, but we don't need just a site for people to come and lobby. We need to make sure that the work being done there is exactly the opposite, that programs are going out the door.

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

Just so you know, the expanded regional presence and the part-time positions.... Toronto and Vancouver are sharing office spaces, and the expanded regional presence is visits, so there is no overhead in terms of extra offices that we are funding throughout the country. We are really trying to be very thoughtful and balance the needs of community groups to have face-to-face contact with a program officer and a support person, but also to make sure that the majority of our money is spent in communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's excellent. Very good. I did promise the minister that I would keep to her time.

Thank you very much for being with us and answering our questions. At this point, we are going to give you the opportunity to leave, but your cohorts will be with us for the next hour so that we can continue our questions about supplementary estimates and the GBA report.

I'll suspend while the minister exits.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're back.

We are going to start our questioning again. Do you guys have additional comments for us that you want to make at the beginning, or can we just continue with our questions?

[Justine Akman]

Please continue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Okay, very good.

We're going to start with Mr. Serré for seven minutes.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for being in front of the committee answering our questions.

I have a few follow-ups on the comments from the minister and comments that were made earlier. When we look at the work that you do and the work that you continue to do, and the work that our government has done, I'm really proud of the work that we've done. When we look at the equality of the cabinet, the fifty-fifty ratio, and when we look at the full status, as the minister mentioned, of the department and minister responsible, not combined with another ministry.... We look at our minister going across the country, and in fact the world, promoting equality, as our Prime Minister has done, and there is also the murdered, missing, and indigenous women and girls inquiry. This is something significant that the previous government did not want to look at.

I'm a bit concerned about the line of questioning earlier. You also mentioned in one of your statements and your comments about your phones ringing off the hook from other departments or other ministers, which is the very positive engagement that the government has. From your perspective, I want to know how those changes, which have happened in a short period of time, 12 months, have made a difference in your work as you try to integrate all of government, ministers and departments, at the federal level?

[Justine Akman]

As you're aware, as part of budget 2016, Status of Women obtained new resources for gender-based analysis. We've been able to not just staff up, but to staff up thoughtfully, in trying to bring people into the Status of Women who have expertise in different areas; that is, people who have expertise in the security sector, the science sector, the economic sector, and the labour market sector, etc. We've been reorganizing internally in order to give the best support we possibly can to other departments, but more importantly we still see ourselves very much as an enabler.

We're not doing the gender-based analyses ourselves, but we are greatly enhancing and using those new resources to enhance our training suite so that other departments are learning from each other. We have what we call the cluster approach where we bring like-minded departments together so that they can learn from each other in terms of gender-based analysis and we work with an organization at the Department of Foreign Affairs. It's a learning centre and we do this training there. Yes, it's had an effect on the agency but we're finding all sorts of creative ways to ensure that we continue our role as an enabler. What's really important is increasing and enhancing capacity in the cultural shift that the minister was speaking about across all federal departments.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

With that work obviously in the last few years, there was a $5-million cut in the budget, which we are now looking at addressing.

We've heard the last witness, DAWN, who spoke about women and girls with disabilities. Have you looked at focusing on that element of disabilities as we look at some of the programs, other funding, or within the federal government? DAWN was very specific on some statistics about disabilities. Do you have any additional information that you're working on to help women and girls on the disability side?

[Justine Akman]

Do you mean information in terms of research that we ourselves have?

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Yes, for programming and then for staffing.

[Justine Akman]

The “plus” in gender-based analysis plus encourages people, other departments, and analysts, to look at all different aspects of diversity.

Lucie, do you want to answer from the funding side? I believe Status of Women has funded DAWN in the past specifically.

[Lucie Desforges]

Okay.

Thank you for your question, Mr. Serré.

Through the women's program, we have in fact provided funding to DAWN.

Since I have been in my position for just three weeks, I cannot describe that process for you. We do work with that organization though, with respect to our calls for proposals. It has submitted various proposals in the past and we were able to consider them. We do have projects with that network.

If the committee would like, I could provide further details on this later on. Unfortunately, I do not have them with me now.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

I also wanted to ask a question about best practices.

Can you expand a bit and provide some examples that some of the departments have made on the best practices that can be shared?

[Justine Akman]

I should have introduced Vaughn Charlton, who is the GBA manager at Status of Women.

[Vaughn Charlton, Manager, Gender-Based Analysis, Status of Women Canada]

Thanks for your question.

The minister has covered a few of the good practices we're seeing and hearing about, and I would say that there are a lot of GBAs that look very promising, which we're going to be following.

We're trying to do some work on the security side with the Department of National Defence and the RCMP. It has become interesting to use GBA as a tool to look at recruitment processes so that when we're looking at how, say, to create a job description for a particular job that has been totally male dominated, we look at how the job description itself might be limiting. We talk about having neutral criteria or having a merit-based approach. Those are some of the more public things I can talk about that aren't bound by cabinet confidence, but certainly there is the infrastructure example.

On procurement, for sure we are seeing movement on this. As Justine mentioned earlier, we're seeing departments not just give us data, but they're actually identifying mitigation. If it is about, say, first nations policing, maybe we're going to think about recruiting more indigenous women into policing as a mitigation strategy where GBA is helping them find solutions to enhance programs.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

The minister talked a bit about some of the challenges and barriers to the GBA. Could you expand on some of that? The minister mentioned some of the barriers to implementing GBA.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Unfortunately, that's your time. I'm sorry.

I wanted to welcome Anik Lapointe. I didn't introduce you earlier. I welcome you and am glad to have you here.

I'm going to share time with Ms. Vecchio.

I have one question; I don't normally ask a lot of questions. On the Canada research council hiring process, it was brought to my attention by some of the women there that in their hiring practices they don't post the jobs. There are different criteria for women who have been on maternity leave; they're only allowed to put on their CVs their last five years of experience instead of their holistic experience.

I wonder if you can comment on any changes that might be happening in the science area to address these things, because of the GBA implementation.

[Justine Akman]

Thank you.

I'm not sure about that; it is in the purview of a different minister. We have been working with the science departments on all manner of different issues, but on that particular one, we've committed to working. We also have met the researcher who has brought that issue forward.