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.