Finance committee  I just want to make it clear that as professional public servants we don't talk about the advice we gave to the current government or the previous government.

Status of Women committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'm pleased to be here. I'm very pleased to be here with you as part of this discussion. It's important for your committee, but it is also important for the Department of Finance. First of all, I want to express my regrets. I'm terribly sorry

Status of Women committee  Well, it's gender neutral. It affects families. I have to say that, as you may recall, Ms. Minna, the commitment to pension splitting came out on October 31 as part of the minister's tax fairness plan, not as part of the budget, so there was not the same sort of analysis for bud

Status of Women committee  As I mentioned, there were three initiatives in the tax fairness initiative when the minister dealt with the income trusts. At that time.... There was not a budget before the announcement, so that analysis was not done in detail, as it would have been in some information for the

Status of Women committee  It benefited families. It didn't benefit anyone unless there was a couple involved who had a pension. Secondly, there was a substantial addition to the age credit, which was particularly helpful for women. Thirdly, there was a half-point reduction in the corporate tax rate. Th

Status of Women committee  Those who have pensions, yes.

Status of Women committee  It's true that single men or women would not benefit from that initiative.

Status of Women committee  I know this is a subject you discussed with colleagues from CIC. Again, where we're starting from is focused up until this date—not exclusively, but largely—on the personal tax side, where we could make such breakouts on the gender basis. We're not equipped to make it quite as ef

Status of Women committee  No, that hasn't been the case. Again, this year was the first time we did our own gender analysis, and in that case we did engage with other departments to work with us on it. So I think we made an important step this year and we will be building on that in future years.

Status of Women committee  I'd be very pleased to do that, Madam Chair.

Status of Women committee  I attended a meeting with Clare Beckton, the coordinator of Status of Women Canada. We work very closely with Status of Women on the work we do—and Mireille, you may wish to comment on a little bit of that. They help us in our training, and actually they encourage us to share ou

Status of Women committee  Not directly, as regards the Department of Finance. The Treasury Board usually has responsibility for making commitments that significant. As I just told your colleague Ms. Minna, we had the opportunity, in the context of the last budget, to work in cooperation with the other dep

Status of Women committee  I can't really speak about other government programs. Madam Beckton perhaps would be better equipped to talk about that. I can tell you about some of the measures in our last budget. Again, our focus is on the overall economic health of the economy, the generation of jobs. We

Status of Women committee  To supplement their programming for women, for the benefit of women.

Status of Women committee  No. The point I had wanted to make was that they certainly have a strong interest in maintaining the leadership with us on gender-based analysis.