SFEW Committee Meeting
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Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women
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EVIDENCE
Thursday, April 14, 2016
[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
[English]
All right. As I see it is 3:30 p.m., we will begin our subcommittee meeting.
What we are trying to accomplish today is, first of all, to figure out what we're going to study, and then to talk about how many meetings we have left and what the timeline would be for those.
I will open it up for some discussion. I know there have been some discussions that have gone on previously. Ms. Damoff, would you like to start?
I spoke to our clerk yesterday to try to get clarification on what our motions were and what they weren't. My understanding is that we've already passed a motion to do both studies, and it's just a matter of changing the order we're doing them in. I would suggest that we, at the full meeting, bring forward a motion to revoke the motion passed on March 10, and change the order of the studies to study gender-based analysis first.
In terms of a work plan, I know Laura distributed a potential work plan. I was curious in terms of the timing on the calendar. We have a couple of questions and suggestions for witnesses. In terms of timing, this is eight meetings. When would we be able to start GBA?
One concern we had yesterday was that if we asked the witnesses on Tuesday to start on GBA, they haven't had an opportunity to prepare. Is that fair to them? Will it give us the best information? I don't know what the rest of you think. I'm curious when the soonest would be that we could get people who would be prepared, so we could start on the work plan that was distributed.
As you pointed out, Ms. Damoff, we do have witnesses who have been scheduled to come next week, both on Tuesday and Thursday, to speak on the violence against young women and girls study. If we choose to approach the departmental officials to see if they are available to come next week, we run the risk of their saying they wouldn't be ready on time. That being said, the next meeting after that would be May 3.
There is a document in front of you, the green calendar, that shows you when we have our meetings, right up until the summer recess.
If you want to add anything, go ahead.
Yes. I'll add that in order to have a report tabled on GBA before the House rises for the summer, the last meeting with witnesses would have to be on May 19.
If we continue next week with the violence against young women and girls study, that gives us May 3, 5, 10, 12, 17, and 19. That's six meetings. As you can tell in the work plan, there are eight tentative meetings scheduled, but I will emphasize that work plan was made by putting together all the witness names that had been sent to me. I did not cut anyone. In fact, I added a few names of some experts. If you wanted to suggest cutting some of those witnesses, you could do so. Some you may think are more relevant than others, or for some you may just think it's not necessary to hear from them. It's up to you, as the committee.
It is possible to get it down to six meetings if you want, or you could try to invite people for next Tuesday, but it will be tight.
The other thing I will remind the committee of is that you have the power to do as you wish. If you feel that you would like to have all eight meetings, you are able to add additional meetings. You are not required to only meet on the Tuesday and Thursday blocks. Additionally if you feel that you want to extend those meeting times by, let's say, an hour, that's an option as well. That might add enough time to add another panel or to have more people on a panel, but that would then limit the time for questions.
There are options if we do feel that we want to have all of these witnesses come to speak with us. I just want to remind you of those options.
Let me back up a little, then. In terms of your suggestion that we bring a motion to revoke the motion passed on March 10, and move to study of gender-based analysis, what do the other steering committee members think about that?
Ms. Malcolmson.
I think it's a good idea as well if we can get something done in a relatively short period of time and also to try to see what budgetary implications that might have.
Okay, terrific, so we're all good with it.
What does the group think about six meetings versus eight meetings?
Ms. Damoff.
When you've done meeting two and you have five people, we haven't eliminated any witnesses here. I don't understand why a couple of witnesses are on there. We don't think they would particularly benefit the study.
I think we should try to do it in six meetings. If it means cutting some of the witnesses, we can maybe look at where we have duplication. I know we did that on another committee I'm on.
That was one of the things that was passed to us by the whole committee, to take a look at the witness list and try to narrow things down. They asked us to do that for both the GBA study as well as the violence against young women and girls study, which is a little bit more of a substantive list. It is something that we hoped to take a look at today, if we have time. If not, we'll do it at a future meeting.
The one I had a question about, and maybe someone can help, is the assistant secretary to the cabinet and counsel to the Clerk of the Privy Council. I don't know why they're on there and I don't know what they can provide to the committee.
What I did was put on any witness who was suggested by any of the members. You can see in brackets who suggested whom, so Ms. Harder did. If you're inviting the Privy Council Office, I imagine it would send whoever was best to speak to the issue. Perhaps you don't need duplication in terms of inviting Ms. Isabelle Mondou, unless Ms. Harder knows perhaps something that we don't. You could always speak to her. But if you invited the Privy Council Office, it would cover that central agency. I am sure it would send representatives that know the subject matter.
In theory, yes. I'm a little concerned that some of the panels have so many people on them and our questioning is limited, especially for me on the NDP side. I'm concerned that we wouldn't actually be able to dig as deep, so the number of witnesses.... Of course, these are circular arguments.
My biggest motivation is to talk in more detail with the ministries that have been the subject of the recent Auditor General audit, to be able to dig in with them more thoroughly on what would have made a difference so that we can really get the full benefit out of the Auditor General's report. When we did have the AG panel here, it was very clear that they had some ideas but they were not going to get political. So that's our responsibility that the work hasn't been done.
While I have the floor, I'll throw a totally other idea in there. I understand that another committee is also looking at gender-based analysis.
I believe it's the public accounts committee looking at the whole report of the Auditor General. My understanding is that they are not focusing on gender-based analysis specifically.
I see. Okay.
The purpose of my question was just to identify whether there is any overlap and whether we could rely on that other committee's witnesses.
I spoke to a staff member from the chair of that committee because that was my thinking, too. It is going to be studied, but they don't know when. Maybe we should just let them do it, but it was interesting because their focus is more on the money side of it. That was one of the things that I thought would make it better for us to do this one first because, if there are financial implications, then when they're looking at it, they will know what we've recommended.
It doesn't sound like they're rushing to do it, Sheila, so what are your thoughts on the witnesses?
My instinct is to most specifically talk with the departments that have been audited, but also the reason that I put Immigration on the list was that the minister referenced that ministry as one that really has had success. I'd like to be able to do a bit of a comparison. That was my rationale. Beyond that, if we had a little bit of academic advice, that would be helpful to me. I don't know the names the analyst proposed, so I'm not in a position to analyze those.
But I must say, I was thinking of this personally as being quite targeted on the inside of government with a bit of outside academic experience. I wasn't imagining an NGO lens through this, unless someone can say that this is someone who has a very good handle on the public policy side of things.
Would you be willing to go through the list that we have of witnesses and say yea or nay for each one, whether we want to have them? Then from there we'll have an idea of how many we have and whether they'll fit into the six meetings.
To Sheila's point, I wonder if we should look at how much time we want to spend on diversity practices in business, for example.
That's what I'm suggesting, to go through the list methodically and just say, okay, meeting one we have Status of Women, and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. If everybody agrees that we want those people, we'll leave it, and then go to the next one. We'll just go down the list until we come to the end.
The analyst would like to speak.
I would just point out, Ms. Malcolmson, you make a very good point with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. The big difference, though, is that they are legislated to provide a gender-based analysis report back to Parliament, whereas none of the other departments or agencies has legislation guiding them in that way. They can definitely provide an interesting perspective, but it wouldn't be as comparable.
I did include the Auditor General, again, even though we heard from them already, because they had said to us that they usually appeared with the groups they were auditing. It would be more of a collaborative presentation. I included them together, but again that can be changed.
Then, for the academics and experts, those were taken from past status of women committee meetings. The status of women committee studied gender-based analysis and gender-responsive budgeting, probably about five years ago now. These were some of the witnesses who appeared during that study. That's how their names ended up on this list.
Okay.
For meeting two, with the Auditor General, we'll have Employment and Social Development; Indigenous and Northern Affairs; Innovation, Science and Economic Development; and Natural Resources. I think these were the ones that implemented something, or were they the ones that were audited?
We would have the whole two-hour meeting. We'd have a whole bunch of these people here.
Meeting three is central agencies: Privy Council, Treasury Board of Canada, Department of Finance. I think we agreed that unless Ms. Harder can come up with some great reason that we want the Privy Council twice....
Do we need a full meeting with all three of them? Could we do that in the one hour? I don't know what you and Sheila think about that.
Do we need two hours with those three agencies?
Let me just catch up with you here. This is “C. Meeting 3”. Is that right?
You're asking whether all of these should be at one...?
We're saying we'll go with Privy Council Office, Treasury Board of Canada, and Department of Finance. We'll remove the assistant secretary to the cabinet and counsel to the Privy Council, because it's like a duplication. Can we do those three in one hour?
These are all agencies that responded to the Auditor General's report. That's the rationale for their being here.
When we got the AG's report, we had responses from three agencies.
The central agencies are the major operators of government. They play a major role, so I included the Department of Finance because, particularly in terms of budget matters, they are one of the key players. Gender-responsive budgeting is a part of gender-based analysis. I thought they could speak to that.
Can we put them into two different panels, then? They do have different roles. The Privy Council and Treasury Board both were respondents to the AG's report, but the Department of Finance was not.
Can we call one of them panel one and one of them panel two?
I think you could do Privy Council and Treasury Board as one panel, and then Finance as the second panel. They have slightly different roles, and that's particularly why I'm interested in talking to the agencies in an organized way. We already have their written recommendations and responses to the AG's report on GBA. That was my rationale for bundling Privy Council and Treasury Board together.
Let's separate them for now and put them both down for an hour. Then we'll keep going down the list and see where we go to.
I'm sorry, Madam Chair, can I bounce back?
I'm not sure that we resolved meeting number two. Was there agreement that we can get all four of those ministries into one meeting? That's what I thought we agreed.
Five feels like a lot.
For the Auditor General, we already heard from the staff. We spent quite a bit of time with them and, to me, it was pretty clear they said their work was what it was, but if there's anything political you guys are on your own. My instinct is more to separate them from there and maybe call them back at the very end if we have questions of clarification, but I'm not sure—
They're the police that will tell you if the rest of these people are blowing smoke with what they tell you, because they'll say they audited them and it was—
I think they need to be here because if they're not, we can't include anything that.... You know, that's part of the report, so I don't think they need to re-present what they presented—
No, I don't think they need to present. I simply see them as being a check in the system, because we're hearing from the rest of the people on what they were doing and if they don't recollect the facts correctly, the Auditor General will, for sure, come with a correction.
Can I ask a question, then, in terms of timing for presentations?
When these groups are coming in, are they going to each be asked to do a 10-minute presentation, or how are we going to...?
Sheila, my concern is that you have one, two, three, four, so that takes up 40 minutes with presentations and it really leaves very little time for questions.
I think what we really want to do is get in more questions rather than long presentations.
I think when it comes to meeting number two with all of these folks, what we're really wanting to interview them about is what they did on implementing gender-based analysis—
—or what they didn't do. I think we don't even need to have them bring a presentation.
Is it offensive to them if we invite them to come and give us the benefit of their minds, without asking them to make a presentation?
It's probably best that they at least have some time to provide a presentation. Our routine motions currently stipulate that each witness provides a 10-minute presentation, or up to 10 minutes. We can move a motion, or ask the committee if they agree to shorten that to maybe five minutes, if we feel that would give us more time for questions, as an option.
I think it's a good idea, especially because in this area we're going to try to keep really focused on the Auditor General's report. We're not trying to highly raise our level of understanding, so I think in this case it does make sense.
I'd also like to propose that we do split these into two panels. I found the piece in the AG's report that reminds me of the rationale. On page 2 of the report, they say they selected Employment and Social Development, and Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development because they were included in the 2009 audit, and then they did a comparison.
Then for the second two agencies, Industry Canada and Natural Resources Canada, the AG selected them because they committed to implementing a GBA framework in the 2010 and 2012 fiscal years respectively.
There are two slightly different ways that the AG looked at them and two slightly different experiences. I don't think it's going to change the time, but if we did call them in two different panels it might help us focus our questions more succinctly.
You'd want the first hour to be Employment and Social Development Canada, and Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, with five minutes each for presentations, and the Auditor General sits through that. Then the second hour would be Innovation, Science and Economic Development and Natural Resources Canada, with five-minute presentations each, and the Auditor General sitting through that.
That's right. In the report it's called Industry Canada, but you're right that they've changed the name now.
Sorry, Madam Chair.
Before those meetings, because they are going to be very short at five minutes for presentations, would it be possible to get some kind of brief before the meeting from each one of those?
I think that's a great idea, sending their data in advance. They're only going to chat for five minutes, but if they have more data that they want to provide to us, they could send it in advance so that we could have.... I'd love it if we could get it 48 hours before the meeting. It's an excellent suggestion.
Then meeting three would be divided up with the Privy Council and the Treasury Board for an hour, and then the Department of Finance, and potentially some of these people that are in meeting four. Meeting four is Public Works and Government Services, Health Canada, Canada Revenue Agency, and Statistics Canada.
Is the idea with some of these, for example Health Canada and CRA, that we want them to come to say why they're not doing it?
Again, I would recommend that we exclude, because they weren't the focus of the AG's report. I think it would be harder for us to dig in quickly.
Public Works and Government Services Canada was the agency the minister referenced as being one of the success stories, so that was my rationale for asking them what's different about their experience.
I only added Statistics Canada because they can speak to the importance of data that's disaggregated based on gender, which in turn informs gender-based analysis. I don't know if they have any particular strategies for that.
That's the part that we're trying to identify. If they don't have strategies, we also want that to come out in the report.
Here's are thoughts on StatsCan.
If the research isn't done for the questions we have, if it's not available, that does identify gaps. Isn't that part of the intention of the report, to identify recommendations, or research how it could be or where it should be collected?
Before we go any further, can we look at items C and D?
If we're looking at those, because we're trying to do this in six sessions, if it's a possibility, maybe we could combine them. We have the Privy Council, Treasury Board, and Finance in one hour, and then in the second hour are Public Works and StatsCan.
Why don't we finish the list, and then try to figure out how to squish them into six, because there were two different reasons we chose them. The first two in meeting three were respondents to the AG, and then we wanted the Department of Finance to talk about gender-responsive funding. It was a different topic. We'll come back to it.
On academic experts, do we want to see all these people? These are excellent suggestions from the analyst. Do we want to see them?
Do we need all three from the expert panel on accountability mechanisms for gender equality? They're all from the same panel, right?
They're all part of the same panel. During the study on gender-responsive budgeting by this committee, they invited two of the three, or at least two of the three appeared. Maybe they invited all three, I don't know.
Because each of these women bring different backgrounds and have gone on to do different things, I put them down. You could always just invite, for example, the former chair, and cut it down in that way. These were just names that were taken from past reports of this committee, and they spoke in the report about gender-based analysis.
There are, actually, but they weren't on the list. We were talking about that because the policy and research organizations tie into the academics and experts as well, right? There's someone at Carleton. There's a centre for women in politics at Carleton University. It just depends on how many of these outside experts we want to bring in on this.
I would like examples from other jurisdictions. I know that I'm jumping ahead, but if I were going to cut some out, it would probably be in the policy, research, diversity practices, and business section, to condense that down.
Would you make the fifth and sixth meetings one meeting of academics, experts, and people who are experienced in these organizations?
Right, and from there, let's say that you're going to get one of these former chairs, maybe Kathleen Lahey, and then from this group of panel one, pick two or three of those.
What is the Manning Centre here for?
My bias is very much to keep this focus on a government application of a tool that's recognized. If we can identify experts who have worked on this tool or who could give us some outside perspective.... I really want to keep narrowly focused.
Not unless someone can say they are experts on the GBA tool that would be applied here. There are a lot of areas of the committee's work where I would love to hear from NGOs, but this isn't one of them. I think we could raise hopes and expectations that have an impossibility of being applied at the federal level.
They're about electing women. Some of these are great groups, but they're not going to give us advice about the federal application of a tool to these ministries.
There is, but it's not them. When we were looking at Carleton, it was actually Anita who said that there's a centre for women in politics and public leadership at Carleton that she's familiar with, but this is not about political management. To me, that doesn't fit with GBA
Okay. If we could figure out who that individual would be, then we would have this panel of the former chair, Kathleen Lahey, and somebody from the Carleton centre for women in politics.
Maybe combining it even more, I just met Shannon MacDonald from Deloitte. They are doing inclusion in their company and have been fairly successful at including women and people with disabilities. That's what her role is in the company. She also is on a provincial panel. Do we want to take someone like that, where the company has been successful in promoting women?
It's not about promoting women. This is about applying a tool to ministry decisions.
I would suggest that we hang on to that name for other areas of our work, which is certainly going to apply, but I do think, with respect, that if we stay yes to this NGO or this business, then other committee members would very reasonably ask, “Well, what about our recommendations?” If we are going to achieve this on a short timeline, I'd like to keep really focused on our terms of reference.
Sure, and the policy people.
Ms. Sheila Malcolmson: Yes.
Ms. Pam Damoff: From the other jurisdictions, I don't know these groups. Brampton Hospital apparently has done good work. Ruby Sahota did not submit their name.
Sheila, we saw some people speak in New York. I believe it was Charles from New Zealand who spoke about how they applied GBA in New Zealand and were successful. Am I imagining that?
I was thinking that this would be the kind of witness that would be helpful, where there was a government that had included it. I'm sure it was Charles. I actually emailed him and he's now posted in Laos, but someone from UN Women.... We did hear from people in other countries where they've used GBA. They don't call it that, though. It was being used.
I know, but if you like that idea, we should capture it.
The one concern I have is that I don't want to take off all of the ones that Ms. Nassif has suggested. I want to make sure when we're talking about implementing GBA, we're considering French culture as well.
Madame Nassif added two departments of the Province of Quebec, because they have a GBA action plan there. I can send it on to the committee, if it hasn't been circulated already. She added these because she thought they could speak at the provincial level as to how they're implementing it within government.
That's the first two. It may be that only one will agree to appear. It might not be necessary to have both.
I could find other examples, if you wanted, of provincial governments that have implemented GBA, if others exist. Or I could look up other countries. I could look up more countries and provinces, if you'd like to add to the list. I know we're trying to cut, but because we've cut the other panels, if you want concrete government examples, I could do that.
We could look at Quebec, and I like this idea about the New Zealand government that implemented something. I think that's a good idea.
If you could find out who it was, that would be nice, because they did implement it. If I remember correctly, it was mandatory and they called it something else. There were a few things. I remember speaking to him afterwards about it. We'll keep the two provincial ones that Eva put forward and remove the bottom two. We've removed diversity in business, the public policy and research organizations. How many meetings are we down to now?
No, meeting A is two hours. Meeting B is two hours. Meeting three is two hours. We've divided it into halves. Meeting four is only one hour right now. Meeting 5 is also two hours, and meeting 8 is two hours.
Yes. The analyst suggested that we take D, meeting four, which has an hour of Public Works and Government Services with StatsCan, and combine that with the academics and experts, the two that are going to come. You'd have two panels, one for the first hour and one for the second hour.
She wanted to add somebody from the Carleton Centre for women in Politics and Public Leadership.
A voice: If they were a GBA expert.
Panel 1 is Public Works and Stats Canada. Panel 2 is two academic experts, probably one from Queen's, one from Carleton, with the caveat that they are GBA experts.
Can we go back to meeting three, though? Do we need an hour with the Department of Finance? I keep going back to that.
I don't know. I think the topic was gender-responsive funding, and I believe Ms. Malcolmson can comment on what we want to know from them.
The reason I added them was that we could speak to them on gender-responsive budgeting, which is an initiative that has not been fully implemented in Canada but has been mentioned at the international level as a best practice in gender-based analysis. You conduct a gender-based analysis of the budget and the outcome of the budget—how the budget will impact women and men differently. As for whether or not they need an hour, that's up to you to decide. But that is the reason behind having them.
This is a two-hour meeting. We cut this one off, and we said we were going to give one hour to Privy Council and Treasury Board.
Maybe we can rely a little on the analysts for this. My understanding is that Finance, at budget development level, is one of the agencies that's interpreting this tool. Is that...?
Do you mean they're applying it? I don't know if there's a lot of evidence of them applying it on a widespread level in the pre-budget consultations. That could be something you ask them about to get confirmation.
We could also keep it as a bit of contingency because if we look, we have five meetings out of the six, and hopefully everybody's available. That gives us a bit of contingency to move things around.
We're at five meetings. Meeting A is a meeting, and meeting B is a meeting divided into two parts. The Auditor General is there for the whole time, but Employment and Social Development, and Indigenous and Northern Affairs are coupled for an hour. Innovation, Science and Economic Development, and Natural Resources are coupled for an hour, so they get five minutes to speak.
Meeting three is a meeting that has an hour of Privy Council and Treasury Board, and an hour of the Department of Finance. I'm not sure if we need an hour, but we're thinking, okay.
Meeting four becomes an hour of Public Works and Government Services with StatsCan, and an hour of academics and experts, and the former chair Kathleen Lahey. If we can find somebody from the Carleton Centre for Women in Politics and Public Leadership, if they're a GBA expert, that will be the fourth meeting.
The fifth meeting would be the other jurisdictions, where we bring in the Province of Quebec witnesses, potentially the Government of New Zealand, and if you decide there's somebody extra you want to bring in, that's a different jurisdiction that's implemented GBA, that would be the other meeting.
Ms. Ludwig.
For Statistics Canada, because they're part of government, I would suggest keeping them in the briefings as opposed to that. Another option could be that, under meeting number three, the second panel would be Department of Finance, Public Works, and StatsCan, so you'd have three. Then with academics and experts, since you have three recommended, you could have a whole two-hour meeting for them. That could be another option.
I like it better, too. Then your meeting three becomes an hour of Privy Council and Treasury Board, and an hour of Department of Finance, Public Works, and StatsCan. Then the next meeting—
Okay, you're good with that? All right.
Meeting four would be a two-hour meeting of academics and experts.
The last meeting would be a two-hour meeting of other jurisdictions.
That leaves you with an available meeting in case you have to move people around timing-wise. Also if you decide you want to recall something, or if something comes up that's a topic where we think we need a bit more time with these people because we didn't get enough time, or the fire alarm goes off, for example, then I think that's a great plan.
What do you guys think?
I'm sorry, meeting four with academics and experts looks like what was meeting five before, except we only have one person that's a former chair. Can we also do those as two panels, or does it make more sense to keep them all as one? Two of them are academic, and one of them is a former panellist. Were they invited to be part of the panel on the basis of their academic experience? Okay, so they are all academic.
They're experts. Some of them are in academia and some of them are just experts.
I'm going by what everybody's telling me here.
Version one would be delivered and we would consider it at the June 2 meeting. You would actually see it in advance, because you have to read it before the meeting.
It would be a shorter report because of the tight deadline, but at least during that week off I could write it. It would also get translated during that time and formatted and edited. It would be tight, but by the June 2 meeting you could probably review a draft.
Right. Then we would have comments at the June 2 meeting about the report, which you would incorporate, and the thing would be ready to go on June 9.
If you had any changes to the report, then yes, you have the June 2, June 7, and June 9 meetings. That's assuming we sit until the next week. The stars in here mean that you could rise early. At that point, hopefully it could be tabled the week of June 13.
This is a very tight deadline, so we'd have to move quickly.
I believe we have time to return to our originally scheduled program of violence against women and hear some testimony, if we care to, or if you want that time back, it's the will of the committee.
What if we took that meeting to go through our witness list with regard to violence against young women and girls?
Because similar to this one, we've just thrown everybody in there. Maybe we could fine-tune it so that we have a really good work plan, you guys have the summer to get in touch with witnesses, and we can actually nail down who we want to call as witnesses and get a little bit ahead on that. Then we study the report on June 2, and possibly June 7.
The same deal as today, subcommittee and then meet with the whole crowd, or two hours of subcommittee?
A voice: With 101 witnesses...?
The Chair: Two hours of subcommittee: sold.
Next week we have Justice Canada, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, the Public Health Agency, and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada coming to talk on violence against women, as well as Public Safety Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
We're kind of continuing on our theme until we can schedule in all the rest of these and get approval today for the GBA work plan.
After these people appear, we won't deal with this again until September.
Laura, can we get maybe not a report but a bit of a recap from you in terms of an overview of what was said?
I could definitely provide, in the fall, a summary of what we heard. It would be like a background paper to remind you of what was heard a couple of months ago.
The other thing I would point out is that over the summer, things will progress. Some of those departments you may need to hear from again, as especially Status of Women Canada will have new initiatives. It may be that we would have to invite some of these departments and agencies back in the fall.
Okay. The next two meetings will be these ones. May 3 to 19 we're doing GBA, with an extra date in there to....
We have only five meetings set. What do we do if for some reason we only need those five meetings?
I think maybe we should just regroup partway through because we may want to say, “You know what? We could have used more time with Indigenous and Northern Affairs. We'll bring them back to do a little bit more.” Maybe we can hold it for a meeting. How soon would we need to notify?
We can have a meeting for drafting instructions. That would probably be the best thing to do to fill that last meeting.
It would be to provide instructions to the analyst to say what she needs to write and what kinds of recommendations you want to bring in. That would probably be...if you were to do that on the 19th.
I would also suggest a steering committee meeting on the 11th, if we can schedule it, to do exactly what you said, to revisit. We've seen a whole bunch of witnesses, how are we going? Do we need to see anybody again? Is there anything we need to add? If there was somebody you wanted to see, you'd have to see them on the 19th, and you'd only have a week and bit to schedule.
Yes?
I just suggested Wednesday, the 11th, because by then we would have had the first three meetings of five and we would be able to say either we're fine with the schedule we have or we need to recall somebody or add something.
Yes, just to check in. Either that or we could add it at the end of the meeting on the 10th. We're here till 5:30, and then we just add half an hour at the end to catch up.
Thank you.
I just want to get this out there. If you'd like to replace me on the subcommittee—just let me finish this off—I'm actually travelling with my other committee and I do not want to do a disservice to this committee. I'm gone the week of May 9 and I'm gone next week as well.
I have nobody here to replace you. I think you're fabulous.
Ms. Karen Ludwig: And a week in June.
The Chair: Somebody can substitute in for you. Ms. Sahota or someone could come if we have a meeting and just—
But I think we need to have consistency in terms of having a person who's doing new stuff out there.
On the steering committee, do we want someone who's subbed in or someone else who's from our committee?
Could I just ask for clarification on the work plan? I have an idea of how it's all organized. I was just wondering, for the meeting of academics and experts, you had asked me to look into the Centre for Women in Politics at Carleton, and if they have some expertise, to add them. Would you like me to see if I can find one more academic or expert? Typically there are four witnesses per meeting. This is two-hour block. If I find another expert, would you like me to add them to this meeting? It's in your hands.
I think we should have the extra person, even if as we go along we think, we don't need that person. Again, we should have contingency just in case people say that they're not available.
My second question is for the last meeting on examples from other jurisdictions. We have the Province of Quebec, and then you had asked me to look into New Zealand. Do I have the permission of the subcommittee to also add another province or another country to make it a panel of four people again?
Can I add a caveat to that? I'm interested in these if they are success stories. Instead of just examples from other jurisdictions, could we call them GBA success stories? Unless they're actually doing it well, I'm not really interested in taking the time. Someone who has best practices that we could learn from. The same thing goes for the Quebec proposals, we'd want to know that it's implementation that has been commended.
My comment was about when we meet again. My preference would be to do it after, if we can, just because we're already here.
Yes, I think it's a good idea.
An hon. member: I'm sorry; I missed that.
The Chair: It's that on May 10 from 5:30 to 6:00, the steering team would meet to have the quick check back, instead of on May 11.
We're going to start the study on May 3 and work for five meetings. What's the date of our goal to table in the House? Do we want to set that goal?
An hon. member: Is it June 9?
A voice: No, it was June 16.
The Clerk: Is it June 16 that we're considering?
If by chance we find out that the House is rising earlier, is there any way we could do this to get it there for June 9?
We have to have a meeting with production, which includes translation and formatting. At the meeting with production, we can speak to them about what to do in the situation that the House rises early. I can speak to them about that.
It would just be a shame to be a week away from tabling it, to do all this work and not get it done before the end of....
Usually at production they understand that there are tight deadlines and that there are unanticipated elements such as this. They're able to rush something if they have to. I'll consult with them when we have the meeting and tell them about this.
The point that the clerk is bringing is that we need to set a deadline to receive written briefs from members of the public on the study of gender-based analysis. The suggestion is that we set May 12, because then we can incorporate any of that feedback into the report.
Yes, that's fine.
Just in case we have to rise early, should we put it out to the committee that we might need an extra meeting during that week in June, if we had to work quickly? Is that necessary?
We won't know for sure for quite some time. You could always give them a heads-up that it's a possibility, if that's what the committee decides, but I don't think we need to say, block this off on your calendar.
Actually, my question is to the clerk.
May 12 is the deadline for written submissions. Do we have a link or anything to show where they're submitting them?
There are general guidelines for all committee submissions that are received. I believe it's 10 pages, maximum. We can choose to use those guidelines that have been set by the committees directorate or we can choose to set our own, if we want something shorter or something longer.
They would be submitted to me, to the FEWO inbox. Then they are sent for translation, and then they would be sent to each of the members as well.
Could you maybe provide each of us with the details on how submissions can be made? Then if we would like to share it, we can.
Further to that, can the committee choose to advertise or do something to put on our website, some kind of notification, so that it's not only people in our ridings, for example, who hear about the opportunity?
I think that some committees in the past have done press releases. If that's something we're interested in doing, it's an option.
I received a call from another member's office this week saying that they were interested in putting this in their householder to send out to their constituents. That's an option as well.
I'd like to suggest that we recommend to the committee that we do a press release so that there is transparency around people's opportunity to participate.
I very much like that idea. I think we could talk about that at the committee meeting, which is about to begin.
Once the work plan is revised as written, shall we distribute it to the entire committee?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: The answer is yes, so after the work plan is updated it will be circulated to the whole committee.
Is there anything else for me?
Can we instruct the clerk that the evidence and documentation received by the committee from the Office of the Auditor General of Canada on the subject of the 2015 fall reports of the Auditor General, report 1, be taken into consideration by the committee in this study? Can they refer to that previous information?
It's just something that we're including in the report that's going to be provided to the full committee today. All the decisions that we take today have to go back to the full committee for approval. It's just one of the items that we have on our list.
Yes, we're doing that right now.
We talked about the 19th being the day that we would return to the regular—
That's for the subcommittee to consider the witness list. That was the one we're going to be starting up. We can come back to that decision at a later point.
When were we going to come back to the violence against young women and girls study? If we were only going to start it in September—
Yes, we'll figure out what the list is on the 31st, and then everything after that is report writing for the GBA and the review. It will be the first meeting in the fall.
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