Status of Women Committee on March 23rd, 2017

[Meena Ballantyne]

I was telling some of the members before the committee started that we are absolutely delighted from a public policy perspective to have this gender statement, and not as an add-on but as an actual chapter in the budget. It really is historic. There's a lot of work to do in terms of improving it for next year and the years after. What it does show is that the push by the Auditor General's report on GBA+, your report on GBA, and the government's commitment to doing GBA and taking it seriously have really pushed everybody within the bureaucracy to take it seriously.

They've made it mandatory for all MCs and all Treasury Board submissions to have GBA in the documents. When you think of the minister's mandate commitments, every part of this policy cycle has GBA, from consultations to policy development to programs—because now we're going to have to look at it in the departmental results framework and the performance reporting and the indicators. That work is just beginning. We're at the very early stages, but it's all moving in the right direction.

To have this kind of statement...and it acknowledges that there are data gaps. There's no question that there are lots of data gaps and we all need to do better, which we are going to try to do. The work of all these past years has led to this. We're working with the OECD, which is mentioned in here as well, to help us with this—gender-based budgeting, learning from other countries, learning from the OECD—and internally, we're working with Finance very closely.

As the minister said, at Status of Women our phones are ringing off the hook because everybody wants to work with us now to ask, “How do you do a good GBA? How do we collect the data? What are the diverse stakeholders that we should be talking to?” The system is in overdrive right now. The analogy I use with our team is that the government is like a big ship. To try to turn it in all those facets from consultations to program evaluation at the end is going to take some time. But we're moving in the right direction and there's no turning back now. To me, it's irreversible. It's fantastic.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

Of course, the reason that we want to do GBA+, and want a gender lens on policy isn't for its own sake, but because we want to see in the end result an improvement in the material well-being of women and girls in this country.

When I went through the budget, I noted that having a gender lens seems to have had a tangible result in terms of what is in the budget, not just in the areas like child care, housing, homelessness, and flexible working hours. If you look at the section on international relations and trade or you look at tax policy, in all of these sections there are references to women. Do you think that's because we did use a gender lens on the budget? Is that a direct result of having looked at every area of the budget according to its impact on women?

[Meena Ballantyne]

Yes. In the budget-making process, departments produce MCs, which now have to have the GBA, and then the Department of Finance does its own analysis as well in producing this. Absolutely, it's because of all the GBAs that are being done. There are some areas that we know aren't done as well as they could be or should be, but to me it's a direct result of it.

One of the things that we did last night was look at how many times women are mentioned in this budget. I think it was 270; I don't have the exact figure. It was almost once per page that the word “women” was used throughout this budget. We did some analysis of previous budgets where it was a much lower number.

All of that to say that the differential impacts are being highlighted and wherever they can't be, the need for data is being highlighted to say we need more data on this and we need to figure out a way of getting it.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

This is actually a perfect case study on the impact that GBA+ can have on policy-making.

When we did our GBA+ study, we talked about the challenge role of Status of Women, of Finance, and of the Treasury Board. Could you talk a little about the way forward in terms of how Status of Women Canada will maintain this momentum to make sure that now the legislation coming out of the budget and all of the recommendations and policies will continue this gender lens on policy-making?

[Meena Ballantyne]

My minister's mandate letter has five commitments that deal with GBA. She has to report on that, which means that gives us the lever to go to other departments and ask them to work with us. As I said, now we're in demand. We're working with everybody. There's a desire from everybody.

Status of Women Canada did a survey on GBA+ last year and 30 deputies reported to me to say that these were the barriers to GBA in their departments, this was how they had organized themselves to do this work, and this was where they were going in terms of their minister's mandate letter commitments and where they were going to apply GBA. I reported on the results of that to the public service management advisory committee, which I think is 43 deputies chaired by Yaprak Baltacioglu, the secretary to the Treasury Board.

Everybody is working together. There is no question that the momentum is going to be sustained as we move forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's very good.

I agree there is momentum and I'm happy that our committee was able to help push forward with the GBA+ from the report and our challenge in the House, of course.

Pursuant to Standing Order 81.4, the committee will now dispose of the main estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018, minus the interim estimates the House agreed to on March 21, 2017.

OFFICE OF THE CO-ORDINATOR, STATUS OF WOMEN Vote 1—Operating expenditures............$15,608,148 Vote 5—Grants and contributions..........$20,580,000

(Votes 1 and 5 agreed to)

Shall I report these votes to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Ladies, I would like to thank you again for your wonderful work. I'm sure you will be very busy. We are moving in the direction of good and we will continue to support you as the committee.

The meeting is adjourned.