Status of Women committee  Kathy O'Hara, senior associate deputy minister at Human Resources and Social Development.

Status of Women committee  Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to speak about the measures our department is taking to ensure that gender-based analysis is applied to our policies and programs. We believe that solid analysis on a wide range of issues, including gender, is key to fulfilling our depar

Status of Women committee  I'll quickly do that. I just want to make sure I touch upon the challenge function. So we take this integrated approach to gender-based analysis, but then each policy or program proposal first goes through a DG-level committee, and it gets challenged with respect to a whole ra

Status of Women committee  We have, as I mentioned in my comments, a unit of three FTEs dedicated to that. Unfortunately, I can't tell you what the operating budget is, because that's where some of the training is, but I could get you that information.

Status of Women committee  As I said in my comments, we do it for every policy we work on.

Status of Women committee  I suspect we all do in the sense that any time a policy proposal is submitted for cabinet consideration, all policy proposals go through fairly elaborate interdepartmental consultation processes. So Status of Women Canada is always a participant in that process. That's another la

Status of Women committee  It's the same for us. We work with Status of Women, but increasingly we are trying to build up our own expertise and our own tools. For example, I mentioned the case studies we use during training events. I think we have the capacity internally to work on those, and that's one th

Status of Women committee  I'm not familiar with the study you're referring to, so I'm not exactly sure what the author was referring to. I think over the past few years, certainly with respect to our department, there have been improvements in the employment insurance system, for example, with respect t

Status of Women committee  Sorry, this is with respect to the international convention?

Status of Women committee  Right. I'm not well placed to speak to that directly because I wasn't involved, but if you like, I can get material to you on what exactly we provided in the process. I think, unfortunately, it was before I arrived in the department, so I don't know exactly, but I will undertake

Status of Women committee  It's an ongoing process, but I would try to find exactly what we have provided for you.

Status of Women committee  I couldn't give you a specific example. I think what a number of us have said is that at various points in a policy development process there is what we are all calling a “challenge function” with respect to GBA. The analyst is expected to use GBA when it gets to the next layer.

Status of Women committee  That's an interesting question, because just recently our ADM policy committee looked at this question of gender-based analysis, and that's exactly what came out of that discussion, what they called the intersection. You want to look at female aboriginals, females who are disable

Status of Women committee  Absolutely, yes.

Status of Women committee  I would have to follow up on that. As you know, the EI Commission produces annual monitoring reports. I must admit I have not looked at the last one, but they produce a report every year on the impact.