Status of Women committee  MAF started in 2003, and we're currently doing our fifth round.

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  They're actually doing two different but complementary things. MRRS is about the actual results, about program performance and the results of spending. It's about ensuring that your program is actually achieving the outcome you intended, and it's doing so in a way that is effective and efficient.

Status of Women committee  No. MRRS is about programs, right? So you have a given grants and contributions program, or whatever it might be that your particular business line is. You're undertaking an activity, and that activity has to generate a result of some kind. The idea behind MRRS, with a couple of other tools, is to ensure that your program is actually aligned with the objective you're seeking to achieve.

Status of Women committee  Well, it's a fairly interesting, lengthy process, and I don't think I can cover it all in the time we have.

Status of Women committee  Okay, but in 30 seconds, what MAF is doing is that it has a set of indicators, which are basically behaviours we look to see modelled within departments. Under those are a whole host of measures. So there are specific pieces of evidence that would support whether that behaviour is real or not.

Status of Women committee  Again, as part of the strategic review process, the organizations that have been picked to participate in a given year are expected to assess the performance of all of their programs and spending to ensure that they're achieving the purpose for which they were created. Whatever the particular objective is for that program, if the program has as part of its objective a gender-related issue, then it's going to be integrated into the assessment whether or not that program's performance is actually achieving whatever gender outcome that program was looking to achieve.

Status of Women committee  I echo the comments on the training. In addition, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we're very much looking at continuing with our action plan to address the recommendations that were specific to TBS. And we're continuing to work with our tools, MRRS and MAF, to ensure that we are contributing to departmental awareness of the importance of GBA.

Status of Women committee  With respect to Treasury Board, after the policy has been developed it's much the same thing. There are various checkpoints. There's certainly the department. Our Treasury Board analysts work with the department to ensure their submission is as robust as possible. Ultimately, the department decides what to put forward in its submission through its minister.

Status of Women committee  I certainly agree, and I think that's actually the direction we're going in. As I mentioned, I call it a reflex. But again the idea is that when you're sitting there as a policy analyst and you're deciding what advice you're going to provide and how you're going to frame that advice up the line ultimately to ministers, you need to understand, and you need to be able to articulate how this particular program or initiative is going to impact on a whole host of stakeholders and public interests.

Status of Women committee  Yes, in the sense that, as I mentioned before, we are now doing something called strategic reviews. It's a new process that was launched during this fiscal year. We did it for the first time and then put it into budget 2008. Strategic reviews require organizations—and basically we take a certain number each year—to review all of their spending, and in reviewing their spending they're looking to ensure that it reflects government priorities, that programs are performing well, that sort of thing.

Status of Women committee  Those are pretty much the same tools we use. I can think of one example, one particular policy that was being developed. The policy centre went out and actually contracted for a specific gender-based analysis to be done by an expert. It varies, but generally speaking it's what Madam Biguzs talked about.

Status of Women committee  In terms of my specific directorate, what we're challenging on are actually the management policies that the Treasury Board issues to set the standard across departments around how we expect the department to manage in a particular subject matter, whether that's HR, information technology, information management and security, that sort of thing.

Status of Women committee  I'll start perhaps with the first part of the question about the champion and the champion moving on. There are two models that one can adopt for how to embed GBA in an organization. One is to basically make it part of the day-to-day work of everyone in their daily function. Another is to have a specific unit with a head who does that function throughout the organization.

Status of Women committee  It's difficult to put a specific year on it right now. We don't have a specific year on it. We know it's going to take us some years. This is not going to be next year or the year after that. It's going to be a little while before we're in a position to actually start using the information from the database.