Status of Women committee  I think what hasn't been said is that when talking about what needs to be done, Canada has been historically known for its role in supporting gender equality and empowering women in low income countries. Around the world, CIDA has been known for that work for 20 to 30 years. Some

Status of Women committee  There is quite a bit of evidence in terms of the impact of microenterprise with women, that by giving them the power and giving them the opportunity, they are able to improve their lot, and therefore improve their access to other services, and therefore improve their health. You

Status of Women committee  It can create difficulties. When I was working in Guyana, for example, during the Bush gag order, we were working on HIV and AIDS and STD programming on behalf of the Canadian government, but we were also trying to figure out who was doing what and what were they doing, and the e

Status of Women committee  Countries are looking to us for that leadership, especially low-income countries.

Status of Women committee  Gender is a determinant of health. The socio-economic aspect of being a man or a woman or a boy or a girl is a determinant of health. Even though we're making progress and even though we're starting to talk about the economics of production and women being productive, you're stil

Status of Women committee  If I could add--

Status of Women committee  Yes. One of the other reasons for success is when there's donor harmonization, and if we're all working to the same drummer, things work a whole lot better in the field, on the ground. If you have a sector like the health sector, all harmonized, and the donors are all thinking

Status of Women committee  Well, we have committed to this and many other agreements that promote women's health and women's rights. Our commitment is to maintain or hold the line on what we committed to last year—at the very least. At the very most, we should be expanding that commitment and putting some

Status of Women committee  Thank you. It's a great opportunity for the Canadian Society for International Health to be here. We are a non-government organization committed to the strengthening of health systems. I personally have worked and interacted with ministers of health, education, family and youth

Health committee  As everybody has been saying, nothing is as disarming as the truth. If there was a report card and if there were indicators, then a whole lot of other things would fall out, because people would be called upon to answer why not. Why didn't we get there? What's going on? There ar

Health committee  When we implement programs, we bring people like Dr. Fanning and Dr. Hershfield in to actually deliver those national TB programs. So we use the best practices that have been used here in Canada, that have been tested out, that have been proven to work. Exactly what Dr. Hershfiel

Health committee  First of all, the idea of imposing versus emulating I think is an important distinction. The idea would be that those are best practices. If everybody is tasked with a report card, then they're going to have to come up with those best practices. It isn't imposing; it's adoption a

Health committee  If you follow along with those steps, it will happen.

Health committee  Thank you. As Rosemary Brown has said, “Until all of us have made it, none of us have made it,” and clearly we haven't made it here in Canada yet. What is stunning, as Dr. Hershfield said, is that the root causes haven't changed. If Dr. Hershfield had déjà vu, I'm sure that Dr.