Public Accounts committee  Sorry for the long answer.

Public Accounts committee  Madam Chair, perhaps I can clarify a little. The column that's called “Response” is the official departmental response to our recommendation. It is included in our audit report. Perhaps the member is seeking clarification on the action that they're going to take. If they're goin

Status of Women committee  Good question. I don't think I have a specific answer for you. If you are going to go the route of saying that there should be a government policy, then the policy parameters need to be fleshed out. Usually you would have some principles that you want observe. In essence, you wou

Status of Women committee  The PAC also called a hearing on this same report. That just happened recently. They might also try to craft a report. Maybe the two clerks should get together to make sure that your messages are coordinated.

Status of Women committee  The point that we're trying to make is that, if there's extra pressure being put to bear on the requirement to do GBA, that might be positive movement. It's not necessarily to say that we absolutely have to have the law changed and have some legislative requirements. We never rea

Status of Women committee  A couple of thoughts come to mind. First of all, we're talking about the Government of Canada as a whole. At this point in time, the adoption rate is not 100%, and I think I signalled that. There is one area we didn't talk about too much, and it's not specific to one department

Status of Women committee  I think when we look at gender-based analysis, we're talking about policy initiative, how it affects different people. So you don't distinguish the value that we provide, the value is for Parliament, and we don't try to say this would be necessarily for women vis-à-vis men. It's

Status of Women committee  We are looking at the audit of it. We don't propose policies that affect the general public. It is not an area that we would have a representative in.

Status of Women committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. The member's question just prompted me with one of the points that we have noted in our report. Status of Women put forward the GBA+ framework. Between 2009 and 2013, 25 departments committed to implementing that, and five more entered into this commitmen

Status of Women committee  We've made a number of recommendations, which are contained in the report itself. The big one probably is the one that deals with barriers. We have noted a few points as we go along the audit, and we have identified them in the report. We did not necessarily set out to do that, a

Status of Women committee  The audit is a follow-up to a previous audit, so we would have expected there would have been movement in terms of responding to some of the recommendations, more central support, more guidance, and that the results would be better. The report does carry a more negative tone when

Status of Women committee  What we did was look at four individual departments and then compared the way they've analyzed the initiatives. It's quite uneven from one to the next. In terms of capacity, some of it is the underlying training, and whether people have the full awareness and have been shown the

Status of Women committee  I think our view is that it is important that if a department signs up and commits to it, they need to go through the due diligence. Until you do it, how do you know it doesn't apply? I think it stands to reason that the member's right. In some portfolios, it's more obvious. In

Status of Women committee  Madam Chair, I'll give a bit of an answer, and I might ask Richard to help me on this one. When we look at the strategy, we're of the view this would advance the cause. It is important to give it the rigour, but at the time of the audit Status of Women doesn't have the authority

Status of Women committee  Madam Chair, with respect to that particular question, we weren't trying to look at each recommendation and say what elements were recommended or not. We stepped back and asked, “Rolling forward into 2015, given that many more departments have committed to do GBA, what is the sta