Status of Women committee  One of the things I've identified in my presentation is how important it is to have dialogue with civil society organizations. Internationally, it is recognized that in order to have a rigorous gender budgeting process, you need dialogue, engagement, and conversation with civil society groups who are endeavouring to ensure women's full economic security.

Status of Women committee  In my presentation, I did allude to the fact there are very limited consultations with women's organizations. In fact, there is no formal consultation with women's organizations. In addition, it's been very difficult to obtain the gender-based analyses of previous federal budgets, including 2005, 2006, 2007.

Status of Women committee  I would have to agree, but I actually do think there's progress. I need to clarify. We began work on this in 2005. There were other efforts made prior to 2005 to get gender budgeting, or forms of gender budgeting, on the table. I think there is progress. What I began to say before is that Canada has always claimed a really high level of gender budgeting without doing it.

Status of Women committee  I'd say that one of the fundamental principles in CEDAW, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, to which we are a party, states that women should be recognized independently within the family. It's not to say that you don't recognize or understand their contribution to the family, but you should recognize them as an independent entity within the family.

Status of Women committee  I mean there's no coherent analysis or framework that's guiding the gender-based analysis done within the finance department. The tax policy people are doing what they can, but I don't think they're necessarily doing it...and it may not be their job. It may be the job of the senior leadership within the finance department, in conjunction with Status of Women Canada, to say these are our priorities, and this is what we want to achieve in an equitable budget for women.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. I think what Debbie said is correct, and you need a performance indicator. We were sad to see that Canada's report to the Commonwealth finance ministers association emphasized analysis and not indicators. Internationally, Canada claims to do gender budgeting on the strength of its gender-based analysis.

Status of Women committee  I think Ms. Mathyssen is referring to the gender-based analyses that have been done on previous budgets, including 2007, which are not publicly available, or in fact even internally available, in many cases.

Status of Women committee  I'll make a distinction between the pre-budget consultations that are done through the finance committee and the ministerial round tables that are led by the Minister of Finance in the pre-budget lead-up. Our information suggests that more groups, about four to six, appeared before the finance committee in terms of its pre-budget consultations.

Status of Women committee  Sure. Certainly I think other witnesses have elaborated upon income splitting. In our view, income splitting has a number of problems attached to it. Filing a joint tax claim or, more to the point, transferring some of a higher-income earner's income symbolically for tax purposes to a low-income earner or a non-income earner is problematic in that it's a very expensive initiative.

Status of Women committee  I understand that.

Status of Women committee  I think the pre-budget consultation process is perhaps a mystery to many. That is the case for many groups.

Status of Women committee  No, we do not know what the criteria are.

Status of Women committee  They said it was not possible. Not all groups that requested to be included were chosen. Our group was not chosen.

Status of Women committee  To our knowledge, there is no other mechanism. Consequently, there is no possibility of access to the Minister of Finance during pre-budget consultations other than at the consultations held by the Finance Committee. It is truly very difficult to establish a contact, to have some input.

Status of Women committee  Pardon me?