Mr. Speaker, with regard to parts (a) through (g), the Department of Finance and the Minister of Finance sought the input of countless individuals and groups of both genders as part of the 2012 pre-budget consultations, including holding a series of round table discussions with community and labour organizations, business leaders, economists, academics, industry leaders, and others in communities across Canada; organizing a town hall meeting; meeting with finance ministers from all provinces and territories; meeting with the non-partisan Economic Advisory Council; sitting down with leading representatives of the other political parties; writing every member of Parliament and senator to ask them for their local priorities; conducting an online pre-budget consultation open to all Canadians; monitoring the pre-budget hearings of the Standing Committee on Finance of the House of Commons; and receiving and reviewing unsolicited written correspondence from Canadians.
With regard to parts (h) through (k), the Department of Finance has committed to perform gender-based analysis, GBA, on all new policy proposals, including the tax and spending measures developed in the preparation of the budget, where appropriate and where data exist.
The key elements of such analysis include integrating questions concerning the different impacts of government policies on women and men within the analysis of policy proposals, ensuring that gender impacts are factored into policy development and decision-making processes by presenting gender implications and substantiating findings with relevant, reliable gender-disaggregated data.
For each policy proposal generated by the department for ministerial decision, finance officials must: complete a GBA template for policies developed by the Department of Finance, conduct a full GBA where appropriate and where data exist and include the main conclusions of their GBA in their notes to the minister.
In addition, the department implements, on an ongoing basis, an integrated GBA approach that includes a senior manager within the department as the champion of gender-based analysis, whose responsibilities include fostering awareness of the requirement to conduct gender-based analysis and facilitating the performance of high-quality gender-based analysis; GBA training for analysts, which is included in the department’s training curriculum and is offered to both new and existing employees; an introduction to gender-based analysis in the department’s new employee orientation session; an internal website that outlines the department’s commitment to gender-based analysis and provides information on GBA training sessions, GBA tools for analysts and managers, and useful GBA links across the federal government; and reporting on the progress made in implementing the department’s objectives concerning GBA work in the annual departmental performance report.
Going forward, the Department of Finance will continue to ensure that gender-based analysis remains well integrated into the development and assessment of its own policies and programs, where appropriate and where data exist, and will continue to challenge other departments and agencies to do the same.
With regard to part (l), as in previous years, the Department of Finance and the Minister of Finance gained valuable insights through the pre-budget consultations and gender-based analysis.