Mr. Speaker, I would first like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with my excellent colleague from Vancouver East.
The equality of men and women is a fundamental Canadian principle. Over a decade ago now, I worked on pay equity in Quebec. Quebec has pay equity legislation. I was fighting for gender equality over 10 years ago, and now, unfortunately, I have to do the same thing here at the federal level, because it has not been achieved. The federal government has a long way to go in this area.
The NDP has always fought against discrimination against women in all its forms. Examples of things the NDP has fought for include equal opportunity, income security, equal pay for work of equal value, full political participation, reproductive and sexual health rights, supports for caregivers, and many more.
Unfortunately, despite the ongoing battle, discrimination against women continues to exist in Canada. I want to give a little bit of historic context. Twenty-two years ago, in 1995, Canada signed the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which committed the Canadian government to conducting gender-based analysis. I made reference to this type of analysis, known as GBA, earlier. Unfortunately, successive governments have not lived up to that commitment.
Furthermore, as the Auditor General has pointed out in two separate audits, GBA is still only being deployed on a piecemeal and sporadic basis in Canada. Out of 110 government departments and agencies, only 27% actually have a process in place to conduct GBA. In those departments that are doing GBA, the analysis remains incomplete or is lacking in quality in too many cases.
Many witnesses appeared before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, and the NDP agrees with much of their testimony. Let me give a few examples. One witness said, “women’s equality is harmed when the government does not take into account the impact on women when creating laws, policies or programs”. It was also said that “one of the principal barriers to implementing GBA across the federal government is the absence of mandatory requirements”. Here is another comment: “There is an urgent need to provide the necessary resources to support Status of Women Canada in fully implementing GBA in all departments.” That just makes sense.
The NDP agrees with all of that and with the committee's recommendations regarding the absolute need for comprehensive legislation to mandate GBA across the federal government and the need to give adequate resources to Status of Women Canada.
I would like to come back to the reports of the two auditors general. In 2009, the Auditor General of Canada criticized the government’s implementation of GBA and called for clear expectations and guidelines for departments to conduct GBA. That was in 2009.
In 2015, the Auditor General again reviewed GBA and found the same lack of government leadership and the same inadequate implementation of GBA. In other words, we were no further ahead.
Nancy Cheng from the Office of the Auditor General said in committee, and I quote:
In our 2015 audit, we observed that gender-based analysis was still not fully deployed across the federal government, although 20 years had passed since the government had committed to applying this type of analysis to its policy decisions. In other words, gender considerations, including obstacles to the full participation of diverse groups of women and men, are not always considered in government decisions. This finding is similar to what we found in our 2009 audit.
After 20 years of international and domestic commitments, only 30 out of 110 government departments and agencies are formally engaged in GBA. The Auditor General’s 2015 audit also found that within four departments that implemented the GBA framework, analyses are not always complete or of acceptable quality. This observation was made in almost half of all cases of GBA, which is further proof of the government’s failure to properly implement GBA.
Several witnesses gave us a list of failures, as did the Office of the Auditor General of Canada. One of these failures is the absence of government directives, policies, and leadership. There were also the tight deadlines for developing policies and programs; the lack of understanding of the relevance of GBA, which serves as the basis for action; ineffective training or a lack of training altogether; a shortage of data or an inability to find relevant, reliable, and complete data that is disaggregated by gender and other identity factors; a lack of capacity to undertake the analysis; and no external reporting by departments.
This is a consistent failure to take women's equality seriously in government.
I will now ask a few questions. Had GBA been properly implemented would we still be lacking a national child care strategy? Would we have specific economic stimulus targeted to women? Would we have a national action plan to end violence against women? The questions have been asked.
For years, government departments and agencies such as Finance Canada, the Treasury Board Secretariat, and Canada have failed to turn down proposals that do not meet GBA requirements. Something is missing.
Cabinet has directed the central agencies to require GBA for all submissions to cabinet, and we applaud that decision. We also urge the government to bring in legislation to make it binding on all future cabinets. Action is needed. We need to pass legislation to strengthen the challenge function. We need a law. We need action, and not just rhetoric. The government must put its words into action. It must implement urgent legislative changes to ensure that each and every government policy, program, and law promotes the equality of Canadian women.
We are pleased that the committee report recommends that the government introduce comprehensive legislation to make GBA mandatory for all government departments and agencies. However, that does not adequately reflect the urgency of the situation.
Cindy Hanson, associate professor in adult education at the University of Regina and president elect of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, reminded us that, back in 2005, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women indicated that legislation and accountability mechanisms were urgently required. We are hearing the same thing 12 years later. Where is the urgency?
Olena Hankivsky, a professor at the School of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University, said that we do not need more studies. What we need is real action, and we need it now.
Canadian women have waited 20 years and should not be forced to wait any longer. The New Democratic Party therefore recommends that the government uphold its commitment to gender equality and introduce legislation by June 2017, which is soon.
The government could follow the example set by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the only department that has been successful in implementing GBA. It is required by legislation to conduct GBA and report its results to Parliament every year. The effects were immediate and long-lasting. Fraser Valentine, director general of Strategic Policy and Planning, told us that the legislative requirement to produce annual reports influenced the department's culture and that the department had to build the necessary capacity immediately to meet that requirement. This had a knock-on effect throughout the department.
I would like to mention one final point raised by witnesses and the NDP. If we want to achieve equality, there has to be oversight. That is Status of Women Canada's role, but it has limited resources.
The government must ensure that Status of Women Canada has the human and financial resources it needs to do the job properly, and the NDP is ready to work with the government to make that happen.