Thank you, Madam Chair.
We're very happy to be here this morning to have this opportunity to present the department's overview, mandate and priorities. As the chair said, we asked for a little longer because there's a lot of information to present in the deck, so we will do that quickly. I'm sure everyone has a copy of the information.
The purpose of the presentation today is to go over the history of the department, legislation, the mandate and the vision, some of our roles and responsibilities, the resources we have within the department, and departmental programming. We are here for questions you may have afterwards.
The organization, not as it is today but in a different form, has been in place since 1976. It's been around for a long time. In 2015, the first minister responsible for the status of women was appointed. In December 2018, new legislation marked the creation of the new Department for Women and Gender Equality. That is a very important point in time for the department as well. We're transforming from an agency to a department of the Government of Canada.
Page 4 outlines the legislation in terms of the expanded mandate of the department. There are two key features, and I will read them directly from this slide:
Advancing equality, including social, economic and political equality, with respect to sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression (SSOGIE).
Promoting a greater understanding of the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors (e.g., sexual orientation, race national/ethnic origin, Indigenous origin, socioeconomic condition, place of residence, and disability).
This is a very important piece of the legislation. A couple of pieces that complement that are in the Canadian Gender Budgeting Act. The legislation also clarifies the department's role around gender-based analysis which promotes an intersectional lens as well.
Page 5 refers to the mandate. It definitely mimics the legislation we've had presented in that year. More important is the vision. The vision of the department shows a Canada where people of all genders, including women, are equal in every way and can achieve their full potential in our country.
Page 6 outlines the roles and responsibilities of the department. Within the Government of Canada, we play three key functions in terms of leadership for gender equality: convener, knowledge broker and capacity builder.
Convener is a really important role. There are many departments that are having roles and responsibilities related to policies or programs related to gender equality. We bring folks together on that. We leverage resources from all different sections as well. We look at international stakeholders and work with international partners in many of the areas related to gender equality.
Regarding knowledge broker, you'll hear a bit more from Lisa later. There's a lot of information that the department has related to research and expertise on gender equality. We also lead the Government of Canada's gender-based analysis. That's the knowledge piece.
The capacity builder is a really key area of work. It's building the capacity of equality-seeking organizations on the ground. That helps capacity work for community organizations. Members would be familiar with that in terms of the roles of members of Parliament.
Departmental resources are on page 7. We're a fairly small department, but mighty. We always say small but mighty. A program budget for us was around $66 million in the 2019-20 fiscal year, which is through grants and contributions. That's the framework we have in place around the Gs and Cs. It's a small operating budget. We have about 300 staff, not only in Ottawa but in the regions across the country to allow us to work directly with community groups focused on gender equality. As you can see, we have the regional areas in Moncton, Montreal, Edmonton and Toronto, and serve the whole country from those four bases.
I'll spend a couple of minutes on the priorities of the department that we have under way this year. Then I'll turn it over to my colleagues.
We're focusing on four main priority areas. One is strategic action, support and investment to address systemic barriers. I just spoke about that around our programning grants and contributions piece. Partnership opportunities allow us to work with the sector as well as other key partners to advance the priorities of the department.
Commemoration is a really important area this year, and we've been working on it related to MMIWG. That is a very key piece of work for us. We also work with other partners around providing expert advice and guidance.
The second priority is the gender-based analysis, which I spoke about earlier, gender-based analysis plus, working to ensure there's a comprehensive integration of gender-based analysis throughout the policy, legislative, program development and evaluation cycle within the government. Also, we support finance in terms of the Canadian Gender Budgeting Act.
The third priority is looking at preventing and addressing gender-based violence. A key area that we're working on here, which is the federal response, is supporting a gender-based violence strategy within Canada. As we mentioned, Danielle is here, and she supports that initiative within the department.
The last piece is around strategic engagement throughout all of our partners as well as the private sector.
That was a very rapid overview of the department in all of its areas.
I'll turn it over to Lisa now. I think this is an important part of the presentation that this group would appreciate. It is really focusing on research.