FEWO Committee Meeting

     Seeing that it's 3:30, we will start our meeting. Welcome, everyone.

     Today we'll be having academics speak to us. We have a lot of expertise in the room, and I'm expecting everyone to put their thinking caps on.

    We'll start with those who are visiting us via teleconference today. I'll introduce each panel member before they speak, one at a time. They'll each have 10 minutes to make comments to us.

    Our first speaker will be Rosalind Cavaghan, a Ph.D. research fellow at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Her recent work has focused on the European Commission's efforts at gender mainstreaming and the gendered nature of the European Commission's responses to the recent financial crisis.

    Welcome, Rosalind. You have 10 minutes.

    I'd like to thank you for the invitation to speak today. I work as a post-doctoral researcher at Radboud, as you said, but I'm going to talk specifically about some lessons gleaned from a very detailed analysis I undertook of gender mainstreaming implementation processes in the European Commission's Directorate General for Research. I'll call that organization DG Research for short, and these findings relate to the period between 2002 and 2006. I really hope this will be useful for you.

    I want to start by mentioning two key messages that we see in existing academic research, and these relate specifically to implementation problems. I expect that members of the committee are fairly familiar with these, so I'll be brief in my description of them.

    The first widely documented implementation problem is that civil servants or bureaucrats will often argue that gender is not relevant. Most normal people can't understand how gender could be relevant to all areas of policy. Research shows that even if a politician or a civil servant sees themself as pro gender equality, it doesn't by any means follow that they understand the notion that gender is socially constructed or understand that gender inequality is shaped, and in some instances actually maintained, by state policy. This means that gender mainstreaming or gender-based analysis can easily become a very confused and a rather empty policy once it passes from the rhetorical political stages into actual implementation.

    Implementation structures need to be designed with this potential for confusion in mind, and I would argue for three priorities when designing implementation structures to tackle the dynamics I've just mentioned.

    The first priority I see is really clear leadership from management, or high political backing. What I mean by this is that it's very important to develop a clear statement in each area of policy of what gender mainstreaming would actually mean, and this clear statement needs to cover a strategic vision, operational processes, and also impact assessment and evaluation procedures. If these aren't made clear, then gender mainstreaming implementation rather often degenerates into kind of ongoing contestation over what gender means and whether it's relevant here, in whichever given policy area.

    In DG Research, the case I am telling you about, this conceptual policy development work was undertaken through a series of meetings between internal management staff, external gender policy experts, and women's civil society. Because the implementation procedures that they subsequently devised actually joined up those three levels that I've just mentioned—strategic vision, operational processes, and impact assessment—the foundations were laid for a kind of loop of collective work and also learning.

    To elaborate, strategic management staff in DG Research took the EU's rather vague commitment to mainstream gender into all policy areas and they translated it into much more specific terms that were relevant to research policy. Their strategic vision for what gender mainstreaming meant in research policy was science by, for, and on women, so they created a kind of motto.

    That vision was disseminated internally and it was also translated very clearly into tightly specified actions. These included quotas for women in decision-making and an implementation procedure called a gender action plan. This gender action plan was actually a section embedded into existing project management procedures that civil servants already used on an almost daily basis. This gender action plan, this new section, asks civil servants to supply two pieces of information: the number of women participating on a scientific project team and also a scientific project's impact on women.

    This, too, had a very interesting effect on civil servants' practice and knowledge. When I conducted interviews about gender mainstreaming, civil servants in DG Research didn't want to have a conceptual conversation with me, but they all mentioned this one compulsory procedure, the gender action plan, and the obligations that it entailed. They all knew that simply counting women is over-simplistic and they knew they had to actually describe how gender was relevant to a scientific project's content and also its impact.

    This two-pronged understanding in itself represents a small movement towards the kind of comprehension of gender that we need to see developing among civil servants. In interviews staff told me that they often had to seek help in order to fill in this second section of the gender action plan, but that's fine because, actually, the policy's architects had intended for that to happen. They had established an internal network of so-called gender leads, one located in each sub-department. This gender lead participated in bimonthly meetings with strategic management, and they were in turn responsible for supporting colleagues in filling out that section of the gender action plan that I described.

    This tool, the gender action plan, managed to stimulate a flow of information that involved all of DG Research's staff. In essence the local gender lead was channelling the learning that had been undertaken by strategic management when they were developing the policy down into their own sub-department.

    This brings me to the second and third priorities I see when designing implementation structures. The first priority was clear conceptual elaboration, and the second relates to learning processes. Gender mainstreaming really challenges institutions and individuals to incorporate new concepts into their practice.

     I think the second key consideration in designing implementation procedures is that we should attempt to institutionalize ongoing learning relating to the relevance of gender. The gender action plan I mentioned stimulated the circulation of gender expertise and incorporated it into in existing implementation procedures. You need a good policy team if you want to work out how to do this. The work also needs to be properly resourced.

    The third key consideration is high-level political commitment. This needs to take the form of resources and very clear rewards and penalties, which will incentivize active implementation. Civil servants implement policies when the priorities and implementation processes are clearly specified and if it will be good for their career. In DG Research, information on quota fulfillment and the content of gender action plans was actually collected in a database so that you could compare sub-departments and assess their progress. That gave staff an incentive to implement the policy well, because it meant you could actually see and compare actions taken.

    Gender mainstreaming is a very ambitious policy that attempts to tackle gender blindness, which is structurally entrenched. We should, as a result, think of gender mainstreaming as a long-term learning process that needs to be properly incentivized and resourced. My key messages are as follows.

    One, the gender mainstreaming or gender-based analysis needs to be thoroughly conceptualized across all policy stages, including strategic vision, operational procedures, and impact assessment. Collaboration between civil servants and external gender experts will be necessary for that.

    Two, implementation processes should institutionalize a flow of information and knowledge about gender's relevance, from impact assessment and moving back into strategic policy development. When I say that, I don't mean everyone has to reach the same level of expertise, but I do think contact between experts or gender leads should be regularized.

    Three, political pressure, proper resources, and clear incentives are essential to ensure that any policy is properly implemented. Gender-based analysis is certainly no different.

    That's the end of my opening statement. Thank you very much for your attention.

    Excellent. Thank you, Dr. Cavaghan.

    Now we'll go to Ms. Dorienne Rowan-Campbell, a gender consultant who was a member of the Expert Panel on Accountability Mechanisms for Gender Equality advising the government on how to implement GBA and improve gender equality.

    Dorienne, you'll have 10 minutes. You may begin.

     Thank you very much

    I apologize also because, clearly, we didn't do a very good job, because look at where we are today.

    I was very delighted to be asked to be here because, of course, it's a subject dear to my heart, and I have to reiterate some of what we discussed in that accountability report that we did.

    Like Rosalind, I think that leadership is critical, and the leadership has to be backed up. It needs to be leadership at the highest level. I would suggest that in the leadership at the moment, we have a cabinet that is equally made up of men and women, and that gives a very good message to the rest of the public service. However, I was horrified to see a photograph in The Star just after the budget came out, of our Prime Minister with five men. They were all smiling happily and about to go out and talk about the budget and what it was going to do for Canada. On the one hand, we have, for the first time, enough women who could have been in that photograph. I don't know when it was taken, but it seemed to me that someone in the public service didn't realize the message that they were sending out about the importance of equality and partnership, and of women's role in the economic realm in looking at things like the budget.

    The reports that you've had from the Auditor General and Status of Women have shown us that we have a lot of weaknesses in our system and that we need to focus far more on trying to look at not just the awareness-building that comes with gender-based analysis, but actually looking at what instruments we're looking to use and what means of implementation we are going to use. That is something that the MDGs learned, and now they're trying to put it in the STGs. It is something that we also need to do. I'm not an academic in that sense.

    There has to be an accountability framework, and we have slipped. In 1995, we thought we were going to really move on GBA. This report was done in 2005. We're now at 2015, and we're losing our profile as a leader on gender mainstreaming and the priority we give to gender equality.

    I think we have to look at compliance. There is accountability and there is compliance. You can have accountability mechanisms and yet have nothing that forces people to comply. I'm not calling necessarily for mandatory or legal compliance. We might want to discuss that, but compelling compliance is absolutely critical. We've wasted enough time, I think, making people aware of this and saying it is important. They know it's important, and we all know it's important. Now it has to be done.

    There's a very interesting report that comes out of the Pacific, from the Marshall Islands, which are tiny. They decided that it wasn't enough to report on the analysis of the budget, and that what we really should be doing, and all want to be doing, is to change the budget itself, not just how the budget is thought about. We want to change what goes into the budget, and we want to look at the impacts of what comes out of that. If I may, I will send an excerpt of that report, because I think you might find it very useful.

    As Rosalind said, there were three dimensions: the dimension of GBA in raising awareness and understanding the issues and the impacts of budgets and policies; making government accountable for the gender budgetary and policy commitments they undertake; and then changing and refining government budgets and policies to promote gender equality.

    Over the years, that third part is the part that we haven't looked at enough. If you look at the reports, they're about what was done and who did it and who didn't do it. But some of what we need to do is to assess the impact, and for you, as the committee on the status of women, to ask, who are the leaders who say this wasn't done and who recognize that, as a result, poverty was not addressed.

    In our report—and I don't know if it exists anymore—we talked about using the internal tools that the Government of Canada has. One of them was the management accountability framework. We need to find the hooks, the anchor, and what we want to do in the regular way that the government and the public service proceed. We have to find those points of entry, and we have to hold people accountable to use them.

    One of the other things in the report that we had felt was necessary was that every time we have a Speech from the Throne, it should address the importance of gender and gender-based analysis and the outcomes that we want to reach.

    I notice that Status of Women is now talking about GBA+. I'm a little confused by that because perhaps it explains why we are where we are. When we first talked about gender-based analysis, to me it always had to include things like age, class, experience, and culture, because gender is not simply looking at males and females. It's the mapping, it's the layering of each different set of information that gives you a picture about gender. If we weren't doing GBA+ when it started, maybe that's the reason we haven't moved as far along the track as we might and should have.

    Two other elements relate to accountability and leadership. The Auditor General reports on everything. I think we're at a point where if we want to compel compliance, and if we want to move quickly, we need a voice that looks specifically at this issue and reports to you in Parliament and to other women in Canada.

    The third thing we need is civil society. We've had a breakdown in how civil society organizations relate to each other, to Status of Women, and to information that you might want in the commission. We lost the commissioner on status of women when we had that NGO civil society aspect. We don't have the national action committee working. So we need something that pools women's voices.

    I've been really pleased, because all around the world, the people who are pushing most on moving forward on GBA, on gender budgeting, on gender outcomes for equality, are groups of researchers. Rosalind knows that you definitely get a lot of support in the EC from groups who are saying that you must move forward. I'm delighted to see that CRIAW is going to be speaking.

     I was quite distressed when we closed down, because I was one of the founders in 1975 when we thought we needed to make a statement about how we understood and reported on and found information on women in Canada and our lives and our meaning to the Canadian people.

    Thank you. That's your time.

    So, those are three things.

    That's it.

    Thank you, Dr. Campbell. That's it. No problem, we'll catch it on the questions. Wonderful.

    Now we're going to go over to Dr. Cindy Hanson, an associate professor at the University of Regina. She's the director of the Adult Education and Human Resources Development Unit and the president elect of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women.

    Welcome. You have 10 minutes.

    It's a privilege to be here. I'm going to be speaking from a perspective of someone who is a practitioner of GBA as well as an academic.

    Over a decade ago, in 2003 to be exact, I was about one of a dozen or so women—we were all women—trained to deliver GBA by Status of Women Canada. Meanwhile, a lot of changed. GBA has fallen off the radar as far as civil society is concerned. Canada has been widely criticized for its domestic practices in relation to gender equality, including federal cuts to regional offices of the Status of Women. Furthermore, Canada has also been criticized internationally for systemic failures to address missing and murdered aboriginal women, something that was very slow to change.

    As a feminist, an academic, and the incoming president of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, I can attest that both personally and organizationally it's been a difficult time. I think it's time for change and that the key areas that can be addressed in terms of change are the support for GBA and equality work through supports and resources, including evaluations, and by providing increased attention to the way gender is conceptualized and how it intersects with other forms of oppression. After these two points are taken into consideration, GBA can be an important part in transforming programs, policies and, ultimately, structures.

    To do that, I also believe that funding for Status of Women's research needs to be reinstated, because that can mobilize important tools and show that GBA can transform public policy. I will later give you examples of how that can be done. Further to that, engaging women and women's organizations will provide additional insights into the process.

    My experiences with GBA are provincial, national, and well as international. I worked as a consultant with Status of Women way back in 2003, doing training in Newfoundland, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and in South Africa and Indonesia.

    We tried to distinguish our training as different from the GBA training that was being offered at the time by other line ministries, and it's my understanding that this is still going on. I think this is also probably problematic and that perhaps Status of Women should have oversight on GBA training, instead of individual departments doing their own thing.

    Ten years ago, I delivered GBA training using a cookie cutter approach. We had a package of materials that we were set out to deliver, and that's how we delivered them. They were usually delivered in one-off, one day workshops. Those kinds of ways of delivering training are increasingly seen as problematic. As an adult educator, I'm well aware that delivering things with that kind of approach is seen as technical-rational; it deals little with the ethical issues, the political issues, and the social issues that surround the concept of gender and how it can lead to change.

    Of course, I'm assuming that you all know what GBA is and that you all have lots of background information on it because you've been hearing from other people.

    Going back to 2005, Canada's Standing Committee on the Status of Women indicated that legislation and accountability mechanisms were urgently required. Twelve years since then, we're saying the same thing. I don't need to say more on that.

    Let me go back to the way gender-based analysis was delivered, and I'm assuming now that it's online and is still a technical-rational approach to this work. Rather than effecting change or creating short-term solutions, this kind of work does nothing to create change. It might create a momentary shift in the idea that this is affecting somebody somehow a little differently and that you need to do something a bit different, but unless we start to engage in a conversation that talks about the theory behind the practice and how training needs to be supported, nothing is going to change. In fact, as an adult educator, I can say, as an aside, that 40% of follow-up to training comes from what's done after a training workshop. So if nothing is done afterwards, you've potentially lost 40%.

     Gender training can have few sustainable effects without supports at all levels, so the resources need to be provided for both human and financial resources. The evaluations can help the trainers and organizations understand the limits and potentials of gender training and overall what's required for a strategy. Evaluation is an important part of assuring accountability and living up to the international and national commitments required.

    This is where, I guess, there's a little bit of a problem in terms of how we practised GBA. In 2004, Status of Women Canada's GBA unit was contracted to deliver GBA training in South Africa. In South Africa, the Office of the Status of Women falls under the presidency. It's a full department and it falls under the presidency. We were also hired to do follow-up, so ironically we were doing follow-ups and evaluations of a practice that we weren't doing follow-ups and evaluations of at home. That practice, I think, is really important to consider going forward.

    Further to that, I think what's really also important is the transformation of gender and power relations, which is ultimately what we need here, transforming social norms around masculinity, around violence, and around gender. Because these norms are situated within dominant ideologies, we need to understand how they intersect with other ways of being in this world. For example, as a white woman, I cannot understand what it is to be poor, what it is to be an indigenous woman, etc., so I need to broaden the way I do things in order to understand that. I need to understand how gender is interconnected or intersects with other representations of a lived reality. Intersectional links draw attention to the way in which our lives are actually experienced, for example, race, class, ability, belief systems, language, sexuality, and so on. It also looks at how these aspects intersect with oppression, with privilege, and with inequality.

    If you get a chance, look at CRIAW's intersectional feminist frameworks. I've provided a brief that will follow up, and it's got the link in there. The intersectional feminist frameworks analyze the way different factors intersect to create conditions of exclusion.

    Part of the work I did on GBA for Status of Women was also about culturally relevant gender analysis. At this point we were working with 20 different indigenous organizations in Canada. It was during this work that I started to understand how gender inequality were reinforced. Unless other factors are addressed and are taken into consideration, if we continue to treat all women the same, we will continue to do the same. That's why after 15 years of GBA, we still have the same thing to show for it as we did 15 years ago.

    In 2012, I worked with the Saskatchewan aboriginal women's circle and elders in Saskatchewan to do a study about the Indian residential school settlement agreement, the IAP, which is the independent assessment process dealing with the most serious physical and sexual abuses suffered in Indian residential schools, the largest claims process possibly in the world and certainly in Canada. It's still going on.

    Using a gender analysis and interviewing 25 survivors as well as lawyers, adjudicators, and deputy adjudicators in the process, I was able to see that the way the policy had been designed hadn't taken gender into account, because, if it had taken gender into account, the results would have been very different. For example, compensation and loss of opportunity would have been defined very differently. I can give you examples in questions later. Additional efforts may have been put into the way sexual acts were described, the presence of bias in culture and language, and the description of child abuse and sexual assault. It shows the need for the complexity of gender to be addressed. Gender can't be by itself.

    The seriousness of this in addressing Canada's colonial legacy should be a case in point for the need for an intersectional and culturally relevant analysis of policy and programs. Importantly, this study also demonstrates the reasons why Status of Women should reinstate funding for research and advocacy.

     A second study that we did, funded by Status of Women Canada, looked at the unpaid work of women on social assistance in Saskatchewan. The policy was that if a woman's child turned two years of age, she had to look for paid work. It was action research, so what we were doing was trying to show that there is value in unpaid work, and that in fact when women go back to work or into paid employment, they often don't have the supports, and it actually ends up costing them more. It illustrated how gender-based analysis can change public policy.

    Thank you. That's your time, Dr. Hanson. I'm sorry. We'll cover the rest in questions.

    Just as a reminder to folks, the report she was speaking about was sent to you by email and is also online.

    Now we're going to hear from Dr. Olena Hankivsky. We're very pleased.

     You have 10 minutes. You can go ahead.

     Thank you very much for the invitation.

    I'm speaking to you today as somebody's who's been researching gender mainstreaming internationally for more than 15 years now in developed and developing countries and in countries in transition. I have assisted governments and international agencies in the development of handbooks, tools, and guides, and participated in the delivery of direct training in Canada to a number of federal departments and provincial governments. Mostly notably, I worked with Status of Women Canada in 2010, helping to develop GBA+, both conceptually and in terms of training materials and resources.

    I currently hold a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant to examine how different countries are entering into a second generation of mainstreaming equality. One of the case studies is Canada, and I intend to speak to all federal departments and their provincial and territorial counterparts working on gender analysis.

    Today, however, I would like to organize my comments to you in two broad categories, namely implementation and conceptualization. I hope that in the latter part of my presentation I'll be very provocative.

    The message I want to convey is that research has clearly shown what is necessary for the systemic institutional implementation of gender mainstreaming. We don't need to look at this any more. We don't need more investigations. We don't need to be looking at additional barriers. What we need are concrete actions. There are five points around what is necessary for implementation, and each of my colleagues has already touched on some of them.

    First, we need a supportive political environment, support from the highest levels, political champions, and a strong impetus to mainstream so that the responsibility does not lie within one government department such as Status of Women Canada. We need financial and human resources to do the work, especially in Canada where, historically, status has been so incredibly marginalized and under-resourced. It's no wonder we're at this point, really. We have to somehow make this work of high value, not of low value, for those who are being asked to implement it.

    Second, we need training and education. As Dr. Hanson mentioned, this is not a one-off exercise. One has to tackle, in an ongoing fashion, questions such as what is equality, what is equity, and what is gender. Debunk the idea that gender is about women. Now I think this is a hard sell coming from a department that probably needs a name change, Status of Women Canada. Gender is not just women.

    We have to start from where people are with training and education. It has to resonate with the work of those who are applying gender analysis. It always amazes me that there's so little communication across departments. There's a plethora of guides, handbooks, and tools, but no coordination or consistency. We need examples, of course, for each of those different contexts, but there needs to be some consistency across the board. There's a real role for outreach, not just to civil society, but to policy schools. We need analysts in training to understand that this is important work so that they don't get to government and suddenly be told, “Guess what? GBA is part of good policy analysis. It's not an add-on.”

    Third, we need to show a strong evidence base for the value added by GBA. This requires improved data collection and thinking creatively about reaching out to experts outside of government such as civil society and researchers in the field, especially given the time-sensitive nature of requests. Put forward policy challenges to students in policy schools. Have them engage in this kind of collaboration. It works; it's great for the students; and it's cheap. It's free.

    Fourth, there must be accountability mechanisms. If there are no consequences for not doing it, why do it? We know this. There needs to be some kind of legislation and definitely some kind of sanctions.

    Finally, there must be monitoring and evaluation. While we are starting to talk about this, it's often done without a reflection on what is actually the desired goal and outcome. How will we know if GBA has been successfully and fully integrated? What would that actually look like?

     We need to document success stories, and not just success stories in Canada. We need to move beyond that kind of navel-gazing to look at international success stories. I think this is very important.

    Shifting now to the part of conceptualization. I've been arguing for a while now that the preoccupation with implementation deflects from serious conversations about what we are mainstreaming when we are mainstreaming gender.

    To begin, in Canada there is huge confusion with the language of gender mainstreaming: in the Auditor General's report, it's GBA and GBA+, and the Public Health Agency of Canada has sex- and gender-based analysis. They are all very different, and there's confusion. I would also argue that there are inherent limitations in all of these approaches, and I'm going to be provocative and say it's time for a post-GBA and even a post-GBA+ conversation.

    Equality will not be achieved by focusing only on gender or on gender as always the most important or significant factor in analysis. We know from research, we know from evaluation, that gender mainstreaming, gender-based analysis, and even GBA+ do not disrupt gender as a primary focus; nor do they naturally lead to the consideration of other factors.

    Other factors are often just as important as or even more important than gender. This is an uncomfortable truth: differences among women and among men are often as significant as if not more significant than differences between men and women; and men are sometimes subordinate to some women, and some women exercise power over men. This really is a challenge to the work.

    We also have increasingly diverse populations, not just in Canada but internationally. Let's consider the trends in Canada, however. By 2031, 29% to 32% of Canadians will belong to a visible minority. One third will have a mother tongue that is neither English nor French. Canada is already home to more than 200 different ethnic origins. Increasing numbers are identifying with multiple ethnicities.

    What we need is the development of new frameworks. We've been doing GBA for over 20 years now. We need new ways of mainstreaming equality that are better suited to understanding and responding to the multi-dimensional and context-driven nature of oppression and discrimination.

    I would argue that this is a natural evolution of gender-based analysis and even of GBA+. What we need is the language of intersectionality or the foundations of an intersectional framework.

    This is not a new idea. GBA+, for example, talks about the need to integrate intersectionality. What this means is to understand that human beings are shaped by an interaction of different factors—race, ethnicity, indigeneity, class, sexuality, geography, age, disability, and migration status. We need to focus on the relationship and the dynamics of these factors, not assuming that any one of them is a priori more important than another. That doesn't mean gender isn't important, but we have to complicate our understanding of it.

    If we continue to prioritize gender, and in particular while lumping society into two homogeneous groups, men and women, it won't matter how well or systematically we are implementing our mainstreaming strategies, because we're not going to be using the right approach to advance equality.

    Just last week I gave a talk to the World Health Organization in Geneva in which these exact points were being discussed in the context of the new STGs, the sustainable development goals, of which of course Canada is a signatory. I just want to leave you with the point that we have to fundamentally rethink how we are thinking about equality in order to ensure that the new mission of the STGs, leaving no one behind, is actually achieved. This is how Canada will re-establish its international leadership in advancing equality.

    Thank you, Dr. Hankivsky.

    We are going to have a great round of questions. We're going to start with my Liberal friends.

    I believe Ms. Vandenbeld will begin, for seven minutes.

     Thank you very much. I'll be splitting my time with Ms. Damoff

    Excellent.

    Thank you so much for that incredibly good testimony. There are a lot of ideas there that I think we can use for our report. It's very nice to see you again, Ms. Rowan-Campbell.

    I'd like to focus on this idea of compliance. One of the things that we're doing here is looking at whether or not we should have a mandatory system, whether it should be legislated. In this regard, I heard several of you talking about incentives and penalties. Dr. Cavaghan, in particular, you talked about both rewards and penalties, and the idea that there needs to be some kind of accountability. I'd be interested to hear more from all of you about what you actually think that would look like, and whether or not we should go to legislated, mandatory GBA, or if not, what other kinds of mechanisms are available.

    Let's start with Dr. Cavaghan. She was there right to the ready.

    My opinion would be that a legislated approach would be most likely to actually deliver compliance. Having said that, you can still encounter problems. If you look at U.K., where a gender equality duty was passed in 2007, the government was taken to court by The Fawcett Society and found not to have fulfilled the requirements of the gender equality duty, though the court found that the point was moot. The court that the government hadn't fulfilled its duties, but because of the political climate at the time, that didn't matter anyway.

    I think that comes back to some of the points made by the last speaker, Dr. Hankivsky, who said the political climate is incredibly important.

    I'll pass it over to the other speakers.

    May I just comment?

    The Chair: Yes, please.

    Ms. Dorienne Rowan-Campbell: I think that when you go to a mandatory system, sometimes it gets everybody's backs up so much that they don't want to comply. So when we first thought about it in 2005, we thought that it would be a second step if the first stage hadn't worked; but clearly, we're at 2016, and it hasn't worked. I think mandatory compliance is important.

    I obviously have the same feelings about GBA as our last speaker. I actually have never thought about doing a gender-based analysis that didn't look at gender in terms of not just how women relate to men, and that relational set of structures, but also at how women relate to each other, because that's also very important. So for me, that has always been part of gender-based analysis, and where age works, where youth works, where family relationships link into that, I think there's a lot there that we can still keep under GBA, because I think it should come under GBA. It just needs to be done in a different way. I think that once you have people who do understand through that, that we're not just talking about sex.... It's not 15 men and 35 women; oh, we're doing really well. It's really about the relational structure. It's really about where on that graph we move towards equality.

    We might differ about what it's called, but I think we need a much wider and more comprehensive approach to capturing how we live with each other, how we relate to each other, whether it's women to women, women to men, men to men, because without that, we really don't know very much about gender.

    And yes, it needs to be mandatory.

    I have only a couple of minutes left, so I will ask you to be brief.

    Dr. Rowan-Campbell, you talked about reporting, and I am wondering what your thoughts would be on having each department report on gender-based analysis to committee, much in the way that we do with estimates—having a requirement that there be reporting for GBA and that it come to a committee.

    I think that would be very useful. It is one measure of compliance, because you are going to call for it.

    I have worked in a number of countries where we decided that reports had to come to the deputy minister or the permanent secretary, but the permanent secretary and the deputy minister had very little desire to receive these reports, so the reports didn't go very far. If they were to report to you, yes, that could work.

    I also think that there needs to be something or somebody above all of us who has an oversight and can help advise, check, and do a lot of the evaluations—and take on board some of those evaluations, because evaluations are important. That is how we learn. That is how we know if we have an impact.

    Is there time for anyone else to respond?

    No. There are 25 seconds.

    Dr. Hanson, you have 25 seconds.

     I would like to respond very quickly. I think that the PMO could make Status of Women Canada responsible for overseeing GBA+ for all of the government.

    I think that leaving it up to individual departments is problematic. Further to that, I recommend that the Treasury Board and the Privy Council be mandated to reject policies and programs that have not demonstrated GBA in practice. I did send out my recommendations; I am sorry I didn't get to make them.

    We will go over to my Conservative colleagues. Mrs. Vecchio, you have seven minutes.

    The part I was here for was very interesting. You made a comment about making it mandatory. I am going back to what Anita started speaking about as well.

    The AG came out indicating that making it mandatory would probably be the best way of making this work for the cause, yet when Status of Women was here, it was saying it wasn't enough. I understand the leadership is there as well, but we all need to be accountable.

    What would you suggest, other than the PMO? Can you give us some more insight as to how we can make this work?

    First of all, the supports and resources have to be put in place. There have to be accountability mechanisms in place. Status of Women has to have more power or resources in order to oversee the process. It has to be a process where there isn't a different GBA, or whatever it is called, for each department. That is also problematic.

    Before it can become mandatory, if it should, there are a whole bunch of supports, resources, and pieces that need to be put in place.

    Do you believe that the current resources, tools, and guides provided by Status of Women to these departments are good enough? How should they be improved?

    I think I spoke to some of that in terms of the lack of follow-up and the way training is currently done in a technical, rational approach. I think there are a whole bunch of things that need to be done in terms of the resources as they exist now. It is also problematic because it is not just Status of Women that is producing resources.

    Absolutely. That's fine.

    As you were all speaking, one thing I have noticed is that women are all very different. As you indicated, women versus women, women versus men—not “versus”, of course; that is not what I am trying to imply here.... What are some of the challenges you have? What are some of those things?

    How can you look at that data when.... Speaking for myself, a young woman, 45, from rural Ontario, how do you compare me with somebody who is living downtown in B.C. and has never lived on a farm? How do you find...? How would you be able to use that kind of information and get details, when you are dealing with two very different upbringings, or a new immigrant to Canada? How are you going to sit there and be able to recognize...? How can we get the proper tools to make sure that we are evaluating this efficiently and properly?

    There are three issues here. One is what data is available: looking at how data is being collected in this country at all the different levels, and making sure there is enough data to be able to do those disaggregations beyond just sex and gender; and looking at the relationship between other kinds of factors.

    The other thing, frankly, that needs to be done is looking at the tools and guidelines that are there, to see that they explicitly get analysts to think about making those kinds of comparisons.

    Third, I would say that, although I am a big fan of quantitative data and statistics, because I know they move people, we really need to make an explicit role here for qualitative research and civil society engagement. That is where you are going to get other kinds of valuable evidence and knowledge in order to inform that kind of work.

     Absolutely.

    Are there any comments from the ladies who are with us via teleconference?

    I would just like to suggest that one research area that could be supported and needs more money is to get that qualitative research that will give some direction to larger research. It will give you information that you maybe haven't been able to get from that woman in rural Ontario or in downtown B.C.

    Yes, absolutely. Thank you very much.

    Do you think this is the type of information that we should be putting on things like censuses, or doing specific StatsCan information on?

    That would be a dream.

    A dream?

    Voices: Oh, oh!

    Mrs. Karen Vecchio: Well, no, I just need your real opinions, although a dream is fantastic.

    Do you have other ideas on how we can get this going, other than just through StatsCan?

    Status of Women Canada used to fund research. One of the things I'm saying is that this research funding should be reinstated. It's valuable. The study we did with women on social assistance was only done because of that.

    Okay. Fantastic.

    What human, financial, and other resources are required for conducting complete GBA? What are the challenges in gaining access to the necessary resources for properly conducting a GBA? Please be frank and point forward on this one.

    Without knowing what the existing budget is, that's kind of a theoretical question, but I think any of us would probably say that Status as a federal department has been woefully under-resourced. It's been set up to fail. It cannot do the work you're asking it to do with the resources it has. It's a structural failure.

    So you're saying more funding to create a bigger resource is exactly what we need, then. It's about dollars.

    Not only within Status, but within each of the federal departments as well.

    Okay.

    When we're looking at spending money, I recognize you're saying that we don't know exactly, so this may not be what you would be able to speak on, but do you have a ballpark on what we would need to do? There are about 113 agencies we'd be looking at. What kind of dollar figure would we be looking at, not only for the increase with Status of Women but for those departments as well?

    I'm a researcher, so I don't think I could answer that without researching it more.

    I can't give a dollar figure, but we might want to think about the levels of expertise that we need to pay for to get this done. That might be one way of going about it, because if you get people who don't have a lot of experience, it won't work.

    Fantastic.

    Looking at the fact that this is quite a diverse panel as well—as I said, I missed the first few minutes—is there a scenario that's working internationally that you would suggest we look at as a role model? Is there a country that is doing it well that we should be studying and asking how we can take what they're doing and template it for Canada?

    If I can jump in here, I think within the European Union there was a high point in gender mainstreaming. It's now falling off the agenda. Certainly the Scandinavian countries do provide examples of very well-conceptualized policies, but there are always implementation problems. You always have resistance to this policy. It's almost a stereotype to say, but I do think looking at Scandinavian countries is possibly helpful.

    There are probably pockets within Canada of agencies that do it quite well. Your three scholars speaking here probably have more expertise, but I would say that looking for departments who do it particularly well would be a good place to start.

    Mrs. Karen Vecchio: Awesome. Thank you very much.

    We'll go over to my NDP friend Ms. Malcolmson.

    Thank you to all four witnesses. This is really rich.

    I compliment our analyst for helping to find all this on-the-ground expertise. It's extremely helpful.

    I have a couple of quick questions.

    Dr. Hanson, can you talk a little bit more about what we would gain from more deeply engaging the expertise around civil society in some of these processes? You certainly made a compelling argument that siloing it to just the good people we have inside the bureaucracy hasn't gotten us as far ahead as we'd like to be.

    Actually, I think that question would speak to the earlier ones about who might have the knowledge that's necessary.

    Part of it is about what kind of process do we set up. I'm an adult educator, I'm a pedagogue. It's not what we do, it's how we do it. How do we get women's grassroots organizations or grassroots organizations together? How do we talk to them, and how do we include what they say into the kinds of policies and programs that get developed, and how would that look very different...?

    The policies and programs that would come out of that kind of process would be very different. India is a country to look at, for example, where they've done participatory budgeting with thousands of people. In Brazil it was 40,000 people...participatory budgeting.

    There are examples that exist of how this can be done. I think part of it is about finding people who are invested in making those kinds of participatory processes and engaging people in civil society, so that people become engaged in democracy. It's not an act outside of our lives; it's part of it.

    Dr, Hankivsky, can you talk a little more about what we have lost by not providing adequate funding for research within Status of Women, and associated with that, about the capacity that we have inside the department generally? What could we have, if we committed to that, especially around doing some of the post-GBA work that you're suggesting, to make sure that when, for example, we use GBA to assess what kind of infrastructure funding this government should be investing in...all kinds pieces that could be used...? How do we then do the work to find out whether it got the result we wanted?

    We've just talked about the role of civil society, and I would say that successful GBA is a three-legged stool: you need folks in government and you need civil society representation, but you also need the research community.

    I think where there's a really missed opportunity is creating those networks in a relationship with researchers across the country who are working in various areas of policy, who have their finger on the pulse, have the knowledge, have the statistics, have the evidence that can inform the work that analysts need to do on the ground—sometimes very quickly—because this is their work.

    I've always thought it's a missed opportunity not to create those relationships, so when you need the information, you know where to go and who to ask, and it's at their fingertips. It just seems like a waste of time for analysts to be doing work that's already being done so well in academic settings, as one example.

    Dr. Cavaghan, I think we've had a little back and forth on this with some of the ministries we've spoken with. Can you talk a little in big picture terms around what is lost if we don't effectively do GBA ahead of policy or funding decisions?

    Are we at as much risk as I think we are of not having the programs actually target the people who need them and get the best outcomes?

    Yes, if I've understood your own questions rightly, in my contribution, I'm saying that gender-based analysis needs to contribute to the actual vision of a policy.

    Certainly, if you look at a variety of gender mainstreaming, like gender budgeting, where, frequently, when a budget is mainstreamed, it just comes in at the last minute. For example, it gets plugged in and is like a social policy that is actually tackling problems created by top-line, mainstream government policy.

    Did that answer your question, or do you want me to refine that in some way?

    No, I think that's helpful that we really should get further ahead around making sure that programs are targeted in the way that we need to.

    Yes, it would lead to different actions being taken. For example, in research policy we saw new research being conducted that wouldn't otherwise have been done if gender mainstreaming hadn't been quite effectively implemented.

    Ms. Rowan-Campbell, our analyst has included the recommendations that your committee made in 2005 around legislated targets and commitments. I believe I heard you say in your testimony today that you still believe that direction is the way to go, and maybe even more so given that we've had another 10 years of failure.

    Is it fair to say that you would make the same recommendations to this committee as you did to Parliament in 2005?

    I might make some changes, but I think for the core of them, yes.

    We may have different names or slightly different structures because things change, but the intent would need to be the same. We have not done very well moving forward.

    This was the bill to ensure enhanced gender equality outcomes across government, including the use of gender-based analysis, monitoring, and reporting. The bill would call for additional accountability and enforcement measures.

    You also talk about the Speech from the Throne and the budget making very specific commitments around policy priorities and the rigorous application of GBA. You're ahead of your time, or else we're really behind our time.

    I think we've unfortunately fallen behind. I do want to say that when I say GBA, I really mean a great deal more—in fact, even more than what I see in GBA+—and I always have meant that.

    Very good.

    We're going over to my Liberal colleagues, with Ms. Sahota for seven minutes.

    Thank you doctors for being here today.

    I have to say that this is one of the most interesting conversations we've had on GBA to date, so thank you for your research and your words.

    I sense a lot of frustration, and rightfully so, because you have been studying this and advocating for it for a long time. There is a lot of frustration I think among members of this committee as well, because we're trying to figure out how to rightfully implement this and keep from spinning our wheels talking about the same thing over and over again.

    We keep hearing that we're falling behind and that we're not doing as well as we should have been doing 15 years ago. There was a question raised by my colleague about international standards or what's happening across the rest of the globe.

    I'd like to get a better sense of who's doing it right. I heard a little bit about Scandinavian countries. Have any of you researched or looked into these countries in particular and what they are implementing, how they're doing their monitoring, and how it has been a success?

    Anybody can take this.

    I'll just speak to the research that I've done.

    I would agree with some of the earlier comments that no country has it right. I think what we can look at are some good examples and case studies from different countries where the implementation has gone well. I also think it's very true that the train has left the station in terms of really thinking explicitly about factors beyond gender in a more systemic fashion.

    The U.K. for example has an equality act that has rolled all of the different forms of discrimination into one framework that's now being legislated across the country. Now, of course, it's being imperfectly implemented. However, the conceptual shift has happened.

    I think different countries have different lessons. Not any one country has this right. Everyone is struggling.

    I will say three things on that.

    First, I think I gave the example of South Africa where the status of women falls under the presidency. It's also a full department, not an agency. I think those are key foundational pieces in terms of making this sustainable.

    UN Women is now looking at training for gender equality and they've been consulting people. I've been involved in those consultations with gender training experts from throughout the world.

    I think probably the best documents there are the ones coming out of the EU, so I would suggest looking at those.

     I would just add, look at what the Commonwealth has been doing. Some of it's good and some of it's not enough. It covers a number of countries and a number of years. Sometimes what you really learn is what hasn't worked and why, and that in itself is very useful.

    The other problem I have is that once again, in the questions I hear people asking about gender training, including UN Women, one size fits all. We just talked about the fact that it doesn't work, will not work, and that we have to make a shift. This is something concerning which, if anybody has an input into what UN Women is doing, because it will overarch a lot of the SDGs, we should get our words in there very fast.

    Go ahead.

    I would turn the question around slightly. You're asking where the good lessons are, and I hear the other panellists talking in ambitious terms, which I very much welcome, about GBA+ and these kinds of things, but it is useful to think about why the policy hasn't happened.

    Surely it's because of widespread disinterest in the fairness goals that are being discussed. I would encourage us to think or talk more openly about the fact that, certainly within Europe, the majority of the population doesn't identify as feminists, doesn't understand gender, and probably doesn't want this policy to happen.

    We come back again to how incredibly important political will is, and my understanding is that in Canada, potentially there could be political will at this point. That is maybe an area in which Canada could become a leader again. If you're asking on what basis Canada can do this well, I think it might be because you have a moment of political will.

    I'm sharing my time with Ms. Nassif please.

    My question is for Ms. Rowan-Campbell, and it was already raised by Ms. Malcolmson.

    Eleven years after the recommendations made in the 2005 report, what recommendations could we make specifically today to change things?

    I would like to see you revisit all of the recommendations and sit down to discuss which of them, in the current fiscal context and current culture of acceptance, you think would move things forward most. It's not really a judgment that I can make, because I'm very uncertain. We've come out of a time when there's been no interest really in equality, in visiting that sort of approach. We need to see how much wind now we have in our sails and how much we can push forward. I think you would be able to judge that probably a lot better than I would. Then do the things that you can do fastest and easiest; start there.

    So you wouldn't make any changes.

    That is how I would work it. It would be more or less iterative.

    Do I still have time for another question?

    You have 30 seconds.

    What tools could we use to effectively implement the results of our gender-based analysis in Canada's agencies and departments?

    I think there are existing tools, but we'll have to work on doing some more of them. You have the researchers who have already made a lot of headway. CRIAW is doing some work on that. There are a lot of tools. It's a question of bringing them together and harnessing them to the right audiences.

    All right, that's your time. We'll go over to my Conservative colleague Mr. Kmiec.

    Thank you, professors, and thank you, doctor, for the presentation today.

    We've heard from other departments—I have been reading the evidence of the proceedings of the committee—that rely on Statistic Canada data to make many of the decisions on GBA. Is this data too limited, and can you provide some information on other potential data sources out there, quantitative or qualitative—I know that was mentioned as well—that could be used in this type of analysis in Canada?

     I just gave two examples of studies that I had been involved in. They're both qualitative studies. They're community-based studies and they demonstrate that if gender were a consideration, things in the independent assessment process would have been very different. There, we're talking about close to...now they're saying it's over $3 billion of federal money. That's significant.

    The other example was the study on social assistance. In part what's important here is that we're not just talking about gender, but about how people live their lives and the complexities of that and how policies and programs need to reflect those things.

    I would just add that Statistics Canada has excellent statistics; it's a question of the way you use them, what you look for. There is no such thing as an innocent number.

     If you're only looking at very simple disaggregations, you're going to get a certain evidence base. If you complicate the story and look at other factors, you're going to get another evidence base. Researchers across this country are showing the difference when you complicate the story.

    So it's a question of relationship with researchers who know how to use these databases more than of just saying that it's either good enough or not good enough.

    Could I have Dr. Rowan-Campbell answer as well?

    Ms. Rowan-Campbell, would you like to respond?

    I'm sorry, I couldn't hear very well.

    I would agree with what both speakers have said. We have many policy institutes, large and small, across Canada that look at particular aspects of Canadian life, and they amass a great deal of data that can be accessed and can be used. Their expertise can be pulled into the mix. If we are about getting equality, it's equality for everybody, so we need help from all and partnership from all areas.

    Madam Chair, I have another question, then.

    It was also mentioned that Canada was losing its profile on this and that we should look beyond our borders to other institutes outside of Canada that we should be sourcing information from as well—qualitative or quantitative data—on a regular instead of an ad hoc basis, to add to this analysis.

    Where should we be sourcing data from?. That is what I'm asking. I think the example of Brazil was given, which sounded very interesting, by Professor Hanson when she was saying what they've done. Should we be sourcing more data, qualitative or quantitative, from those areas as well to supplement what our department has here?

    I'm not a quantitative researcher, so I don't talk about things as resourcing data, but I think there are many examples out there.

    I also would reiterate what my colleague said here about students. It doesn't have to be about staff within departments, who may or may not have the skills to do the kind of research you're talking about. Maybe it's about relationships with universities and having students doing the kinds of research projects that would get this kind of information out.

    There have been a number of studies about joined-up government and about how IT is being used in communities—I know that Bombay and Hyderabad in India are two such communities—to get the community to respond to what their policy issues are and to have some interchange with people who make policy. We might want to look at something like that. It would be very easy to do in Canada.

     Dyfed, from the U.K., funded a number of programs that looked at joined-up government. I know there was one in Jamaica, and it looked at how you get information from very small communities and move it up through the policy and decision-making chain.

    We do some of that in Canada, too, but these are two examples, and Dyfed should have those reports.

    Now we're going over to my Liberal colleagues, to Ms. Dhillon.

    The question is for Ms. Hanson.

    It's been discussed that GBA is not only needed at the government level, but that also we need to provide the provinces and communities with support for community development and for resources to engage in equality-seeking mechanisms.

    Can you elaborate on how we would go about achieving this goal?

     I think there are many ways in which this can be done. I think it can be done at an institutional level, working with universities.

    It could also be done with national women's organizations who have membership broadly across the country who could be engaged in processes. For example, CRIAW has been working; we get the odd SSHRC funding to do something and then try to do something using intersectional feminist frameworks. We do have relationships with communities across the country. I think that's where there can be an engagement with civil society in moving an agenda forward on GBA.

    Some provinces have been leaders in the application of GBA in their government work. What resources would you see the government providing to enhance GBA?

    The government providing to provinces?

    Exactly.

    I'm not really sure. Is that as it has existed in the past, or currently...?

    Maybe you want to speak to that.

    I think the coordination committee that was set up between the federal level and the provinces and territories got off to a much better start in about 2012. I'm not sure where it's at right now. But putting some resources into developing those relationships helps with coordination, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing, and joint activities. I know there was even a moment when there was consideration of some kind of conference that would feature the work across the country and of getting some funding to do that.

    I think that's a place where some of that creative work can happen and collaboration can happen.

    This is for anybody who wishes to answer. If the committee recommended mandating GBA, what suggestions would you have in guiding the implementation? For example, would you recommend a phased-in approach, or do you have suggestions on how to make it more fully integrated?

    Finally, who would you recommend be held accountable for the implementation—Parliament, or Status of Women, or...?

    Status of Women Canada cannot be responsible unless it's a department and actually has some power or has some status behind it, right? I think that's a starting point.

    I actually advocate for a phased-in approach: providing supports and resources from the PMO; with Status of Women becoming the main government agency overseeing the process, hopefully as a department; FEWO pressing for supports and resources, including evaluations to demonstrate the effectiveness; and Treasury Board and Privy Council being mandated to reject policies or programs that have not demonstrated GBA in process.

    Following that, once it's solidly supported and has adequate resources, then it can be widely applied to policy and programs both locally and globally. Interestingly enough, Canada has been very good at insisting that there be a gender analysis of programs and policies internationally. We've been very good at that. We haven't been as good at doing it domestically.

    Would anyone else like to add anything?

    I would agree with a phased-in approach, but again, I would like the conceptional work to be sorted out first. What are we talking about when we're talking about mainstreaming equality? What tools, guides, and approaches are we talking about? It's about getting all of that sorted out before you move any further.

    Ms. Rowan-Campbell, would you like to say anything?

    I would agree with that also. I also think that there's a role for Treasury Board, because they are very powerful, and we need to be able to hold them accountable. It's very, very important. They influence a great deal, and we need to recognize that.

    I think that some of the things we need to look at when we're doing this phased-in approach is thinking about where we may need to start, who the leaders will be, and who will model change. We should get some of the more powerful departments to take on that role. That's when it's a lot easier to pull others along. If you start with something because it looks like it might be easy to do, you won't get the really powerful departments to follow along on their own very easily. Strategically, I would start by looking at something like the Treasury Board and seeing what anchors you could use to get them on board.

     Excellent. That is your time.

    We will go to my Conservative colleague Mrs. Vecchio, for five minutes.

    I don't know if you also look at data from small business or the private sector. Have you done a comparison of the government departments and our private sector? If so, what are the results, and what are some of the challenges that we have when we look at the private sector?

    Anyone...? Dr. Hankivsky?

    I can't comment on that because I have not really looked at the private sector, other than knowing that it is a challenge to get the private sector to.... Well, maybe not, when you make an economic argument of diversifying views and perspectives within business and organizations as a way of increasing productivity and the bottom line. I know that this argument has worked, but that has not been an area of my focus.

    Dr. Cavaghan, do you have a comment?

    I think I would draw a distinction between what happens in business and what happens in government. For me, gender mainstreaming is about changing state policy and the way the state shapes gender inequality, whereas businesses are more likely to do equal opportunities and to be driven by the kind of profit case that Dr. Olena Hankivsky—whose name we are murdering—stated. The comparison between the private sector and the state can be quite awkward.

    Are there any lessons we can learn from looking at those? I recognize we are talking about productivity, but we also have to look at the productivity of the government. When we are looking at these, productivity can mean the most efficient programs we can have to help all Canadians.

    Taking the profitability out of this, businesses are trying to do what is best, not only for their business. A lot of times there are some corporate responsibilities there as well. Are there any lessons? I will go back to the women on the video screen. Is there any correlation or any education that we can get from that?

    Forget about the profitability here. We have to recognize efficiency. I myself have a staff of women who work very well with me, and one young man. It is also that likelihood of us getting along so well and being able to understand the needs of our community. Do you see the same thing when it comes to business?

    If you ask about lessons, perhaps I would be slightly provocative and say that one of the lessons that could come out of analysis of business is the way that.... When gender mainstreaming is inserted into a liberal agenda—rather than, say, a social democratic one—it can become quite limited and subordinated to aims that are perhaps rather far away from the original aims pursued in something like the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action on women, which is what came out of the UN and started gender mainstreaming rolling internationally.

    That is a provocative response. I don't know what the other experts would say.

    That's okay, no problem.

    I want to continue with Dr. Cavaghan.

    When we talk about the uptake of gender-based analysis in the federal government in the Netherlands, can you give me some general information about that? Where do you see the leadership from, at that level? What have been some of the positive results from the leadership from those levels, and how can we take lessons from that?

    I am really sorry, but my expertise is on the European Union and the European Commission, so I don't have expertise on the Netherlands or the member states specifically. I look at EU-level policy that comes out of Brussels and the European Commission.

    That's not a problem.

    The Netherlands is ranked at number 7 in gender equality, compared to Canada at number 25. Let's take that question and maybe switch it over to the EU—look at it as the EU in general, rather than the Netherlands specifically.

    What departments...? How do they facilitate it? What lessons can we learn?

    The two leaders would be the directors general for employment, probably development as well, and science and research—so there are three, actually.

    Since the financial crisis, however, the EU has been dismantling its gender mainstreaming and its equal opportunities policy by stealth. In terms of lessons about leadership, I would come back again to the political climate. The political climate in Europe is changing away from one where social democratic agendas were, perhaps not dominant, but very present, to a much more conservative political climate, where equality is falling off the agenda and we are having many more problems with the radical right rising in Europe.

    It is difficult to point to the EU as a leader anymore. I don't know what other panellists would say, though, because certainly other panellists are talking also about countries like Brazil and India, where a lot of very interesting things are occurring. Perhaps they can speak about leadership.

    Excellent. That's your time.

    We'll go over to my Liberal colleague Mr. DeCourcey for five minutes.

    It's been an intriguing conversation to have the opportunity to sit in on today.

    I come to this role having previously served in an oversight body at the provincial level, the child and youth advocates office. I had a mandate to develop an education and outreach agenda, based largely around human and children's rights education, to both child and youth-serving agents, government officials, and teachers and children and youth themselves. I was also part of a team that helped implement a child rights impact assessment process into government decision-making. So I frame my questions from those experiences and that perspective.

    Internationally, is there anywhere an ombudsperson's role to manage this sort of intersectionality or GBA+ rollout, or could there be a strengthened role in Canada for that oversight? Are there any educational examples to help not just educate decision-makers and people in government, but also of everyday citizens and young people, so that we're graduating students who have a better understanding of intersectionality?

    I had the chance to work with UNICEF on a rights respecting schools program. It was a wonderful grassroots way to educate both teachers and young people, to expand knowledge around these things. I wonder if there are any examples of that.

    You talked briefly, Dr. Hanson, about an intersectional feminist framework.

    Dr. Hankivsky, when you were talking about intersectionality and complicating the situation, I was thinking, okay, after you've complicated it and destabilized your view of the world, is there a way to put it back together in a rubric for simplification purposes?

    Those are a lot of questions. Maybe I'll start with you, Dr. Hanson, on the education piece.

    These are interesting questions.

    I've actually worked with UNFPA. The UNFPA has done some work in developing a model that would look at human rights culture and gender as a tripod in the way that you would look at all policies and programs. That might be one location where there are some resources on this.

    I can't really speak to what extent this is happening in schools. I'm an adult educator. Certainly, with CRIAW and intersectional feminist frameworks it's happening more on a community level with projects and research that are, by and large, funded from SSHRC or Status of Women Canada. We don't have any core funding, so we're just hanging on.

    There are things happening. I think it would be possibly be useful to have some kind of repository so we'd actually know what's going on, but I can't speak to that either.

    And an ombudsman; maybe you can speak to that.

    I think the ombudsman is a great idea for sure, but I wanted just to speak to the resources.

    I'm also the director of the Institute for Intersectionality Research and Policy at Simon Fraser University. We have developed a number of different primers of how to apply intersectionality to policy analysis and different kinds of research. I also put out a guide, Intersectionality 101, in very basic, plain language, that's been used by a variety of community and civil society organizations. So all of those resources, with concrete examples and illustrations, exist.

    Dr. Cavaghan, do you know of any international example, education-wise or oversight-wise, that we could draw on?

    I do think that the other panellists are saying things that already answer that question. If you want me to name specific examples, certainly within the EU, oversight is continually a problem, because the policy has tended to move on goodwill. That is why the other panellists are perhaps able to cite examples better than I can. There are a lot of problems with gender mainstreaming in the EU.

    Great, thanks very much. That was really all I had for questions.

    Excellent.

    We'll go to my NDP colleague Ms. Malcolmson for three minutes.

    We've heard prior testimony from some of the federal government witnesses, such as Immigration Canada, for which GBA is mandated in their legislation. They're our best story. We've also heard some witnesses say that mandating this is oversimplified, and that of course we need to do training and all of these things, because it's not a magic bullet. It feels like to me that if you mandated it, then there would be more political pressure to resource and train and support, and have leadership.

    I'm wondering if any of the witnesses, because you've all said that mandating would be a significant step that would surely change the outcome, can comment about that inevitability of twinning leadership and training along with the legislative requirement.

     I think twinning would be excellent. I think that is a good example. I think the way it was mandated in that particular department—I know, because I spoke with them—was a bit of a fluke. It happened when nobody was watching. I would say yes, twinning, but there's no magic bullet. There's not one single solution; it has to be a coordinated effort.

    I don't have any thing else.

    Anything from our teleconference?

    It has to be an effort based....

    Ms. Rowan-Campbell, you can respond.

    I was saying it has to be an effort that's based on the different paths that orientation needs in each and every department, because those are the basic tools you need. It's not one-size-fits-all. I think that's important. You need the leadership, and you need training, but it's design training to be very specific. The people build their capacity and their comfort levels because that's important.

    Dr. Cavaghan.

    I agree with what the other speakers are saying. I did mention in my contribution that setting up gender leads, and then putting them in strategic places through a department, is of one of the ways you can have a phased-in stage before it is completely mandatory. You regularize contact between experts and people doing normal implementation.

    Very good.

    We have time for one more round of questions from each party, so we'll start with Ms. Damoff.

    We've covered so much with all of you.

    I only have a few minutes, so I want to go back to reporting. We get the Auditor General's report, who has come back and said that it's not being done well, except by the immigration department. We've also had departments come in and say that things are going great. I'm not saying they aren't doing some good things, but there seem to be inconsistencies. In terms of reporting, I had mentioned going to committee, but are there some effective ways to ensure there's consistent reporting done by the department, so that we can make comparisons?

    Dr. Hankivsy.

    I think there are some resources one can look at as inspiration for the Canadian context. The UN has a swap system that is a basis for all UN agencies to report on how they're advancing gender equality. It's a fairly new mechanism, but it's done wonders in allowing comparisons to be made across different agencies as to how well they're doing. Looking at something like that as a model to tailor for the Canadian context has some potential.

    Does anyone else have any suggestions?

    I'm going to share my time with Ms. Vandenbeld.

    I want to follow up on Mr. Damoff's question about reporting to Parliament and doing it in the way that we do the estimates, where each of the line committees for the departments would have to review the gender-based analysis that a department has done.

    Dr. Rowan-Campbell, one of the things you suggested in the 2005 report was that there be an officer of Parliament specifically for GBA. Is that something that anybody on the panel wants to comment on?

    I'll start with you, Dorienne, or anybody else who wants to comment on the usefulness of that kind of model.

    I still think it would be useful, because you would have to have someone who has competence in the area, which would help to guide quite a lot of what goes on. I would also have to be someone who would structure the way responses would be made, and who would have oversight, and who would be able to work in partnership with the committee. That's important. I think something like that is needed.

     How about videos?

    I concur, and I don't know the language. Part of it is not understanding the language of officer and ombudsmen, and how those differ in practice. Yes, some kind of oversight would be helpful.

    Dr. Cavaghan, in your upcoming publication you compare a successful case of gender mainstreaming with one where gender mainstreaming had less success. What were the main differences in the two cases that led one to be successful and one to fail?

    You could see specific mechanisms through which gender mainstreaming was circumvented. But in terms of the characteristics of the subdepartments within DG Research, it was noticeable that the successful department was already used to trying to corral and administer policy aims that might compete. They were firmly fixed with a complex policy agenda, whereas the subdepartment, which strongly contested and resisted gender mainstreaming, was used to having a narrow focus and had difficulty coping with any kind of internal conflict or learning. They'd had a stable aim with their policy for the best part of 20 years. When you looked at implementation documents that had been created explaining how gender was relevant within that subdepartment, management produced documents explicitly undermining those, saying that gender was not relevant and that their mainstream aims were what was relevant.

    I think this is one of the reasons why I emphasized resistance as a problem in gender mainstreaming. You do have politicians and civil servants who want to undermine policy and will take actions to do so.

    One of the things that came up when we had someone from Immigration here was the need for champions and capacity within the department to be able to implement GBA.

    Would any of you like to comment on how you ensure that you do have the capacity and champions within each department? If we were to mandate it, how do you make sure that follow-up happens, as well?

    It's about resources, really. Resources, the time to do the work well, and also making sure that the people who are appointed to those focal points, the champions, actually know what they're doing. It should not a case that somebody is appointed who hasn't had the proper background, training, or ongoing support.

    When he spoke to how—

    A voice: I think—

    Ms. Pam Damoff: Oh, I'm sorry.

    I was going to say that I think it's also important to ensure—and this point was made by one of the experts you have in the room with you now—that doing gender mainstreaming well isn't a career killer. Within particular parts of the European Commission, it is. People will do gender mainstreaming for a couple of years, and then say, “I've cost myself enough credibility here. I'm moving on to something else.”

     As one of your contributors in the room said, if you're involved in gender mainstreaming you have to make sure that it's high status, that it's going to get you somewhere, and that it's going to be recognized as a positive-expertise valuable change.

    Excellent.

    That's your time.

    We're going over to Mr. Kmiec for seven minutes.

    I thought we were doing a round of three minutes.

    It's seven. You can split it.

    Perfect. I'll be splitting it with my colleague.

    I was going to talk about the compliance mechanisms in the accountability frameworks, because they were talked about a few times. Are there non-legislative mechanisms that work, in any of your opinions, or are they just not worth pursuing at all anymore? Should it be the legislative route?

    We can maybe start with the people over video-conferencing first, please.

    Ms. Rowan-Campbell?

    The question is whether or not legislation is the answer, or whether there are other cultures—

    Or are there non-legislative mechanisms for compliance that work?

     I think you have to have several layers for compliance. Its never enough simply to have a legislative mechanism; that's ultimate, but you have to create incentives so that people want to comply.

    What I found to be quite useful when you're working on gender is to align it within a change management perspective and to see either the champion or a person who is one of the leaders as one of the people promoting various types of change management, and that gender takes a lead in it. Then I find that, quite often, it works very well and is more accepted.

    I also think we need to have it in job descriptions, because if it's in your job description, you're going to need to do it. That's one of the gaps that have been there. A few people have it in their job description. If you're a policy analyst, this is one of the things you do. If you're something else, this is one of the things you do. Your contribution to the task is important simply because it's part of your job. You need to build those in.

    I'll jump in, because you said that the people on the video conference should.

    I concur with the idea about different levels of implementation. I think external evaluation and impact assessment are very important, because then you can get experts who would be able to draw back and think perhaps more ambitiously about what the possibilities are within a policy.

    But I'm certain that she's speaking from the room and also has a specific recommendation as well, so I'll try to leave some time for that.

    I don't think that legislation is the only way. It can't be a stand-alone solution, but it's almost the minimum that you need for success to be realized.

    Okay.

    I would concur with that and add that a piece that hasn't been talked about a lot is the need not only for gender champions but for management that has value for that process. It has to be more than compliance; I think what you need is political will, quite frankly.

    I have one follow-up question and then will hand it over to Ms. Vecchio.

    There's been talk of an ombudsman. I've dealt a lot with the Canada Revenue Agency—a lot: more than I should ever want to. They have an ombudsman, one whom taxpayers can have access to. But an ombudsman without the power to force and compel compliance is just a champion without teeth.

    I'd like to get your thoughts on this—those of the professors, maybe, and then we can go the folks on video conferencing—on setting up, as part of a legislative mechanism, an ombudsman's actual power of compliance to compel departmental personnel to do it properly, to do it correctly either after the fact or during the process. There are many different ways you can organize it, but it's to have the power to compel and to resolve problems.

    I think that kind of oversight is very powerful. It is the naming and shaming, at the very least, but if you actually give that person some teeth, then it can be part of that more oversight, coordinated effort that is sometimes required to bring all the information together.

    In addition to the oversight, we also need examples of how it's making a difference. We also need, then, the stories and the narratives and the research, etc., that are showing how it makes a difference, so that we can move beyond compliance to results.

    Thank you very much.

    I'm going to move on to the thought. Dr. Cavaghan, you mentioned that you feel there is an undermining flow against this becoming successful.

     Professor Hankivsky, I'm looking at this whole thing and I understand why we're having this issue, but I think the biggest issue we have here is about the communication. I believe most Canadians would want to see there be gender equality based on either your sexual orientation or anything like that, as well as your race—a variety of different things. Instead of sitting there and thinking that it's potentially the political will or things like that, we could be doing things better by just communicating, because I think when we talk about GBA, we hear gender. Even on the gender analysis that I had to do on the computer, the first question I was asked was your gender, male or female. Right there it's showing the ignorance and the “Wow, we just took a whole thing on gender, and I just said that I was a female.”

    That was not the question. The question should have been what my sex was. I think we have a huge communication problem here and that we as parliamentarians, as well as the people doing the GBA+, have to make it sound that it's not gender, because the problem is that we've put out there the idea of gender being male versus female, and it truly is not so when we're trying to do this GBA+.

    What would you say we need to do? How can we go forward with making sure that our departments and Canadians know this is not what it's about, because we have marketed it the wrong way for probably the last 20 years?

     I completely agree. Of course, I'm probably the most provocative of the bunch, and I would say that we need different language. It's not about a GBA, it's not about GBA+. It's about mainstreaming equality, leaving no one behind, and looking at gender in relation to other kinds of factors.

    There is resistance to GBA, because it's still thought to be about women. When I've done training in departments and talked about intersectionality, you get a lot more traction for gender when you place it in an intersectional framework. You get a much more nuanced, complex, and realistic understanding of the relational aspects of gender in context with other factors. Look at the social determinants of health, for example. Gender is among many different factors.

    Wonderful.

    We're off to Ms. Malcolmson for seven minutes.

    Any of the witnesses can answer this, but I'm especially interested in the witnesses in the room who have been involved recently with Canadian policy.

    Can you give us some examples of what has been lost? Can you extrapolate backwards to 2005, when we might have brought in legislation around gender-based analysis? How might that have affected investment and policy decisions that the federal government has made? What might have been lost by our being so behind the times?

    I can think that maybe we would have done gender assessments of some environmental projects that are now under way in Canada, and looked at how those projects have affected the lives of women. We can look at migration, such as when a lot of people in the Maritimes moved to Alberta to work in oil fields, etc. All of those things impacted families and impacted women very differently than men.

     I can do a quick follow-up to that. I've heard from a number of people concerned about the size of infrastructure investment that is coming up, and a propensity for us to fund, as a country, megaprojects, big construction. There's the possibility that those investments may buy us traditionally male-dominated workplaces around big buildings, and pouring concrete, etc. Also, without appropriate GBA, these investments may not look at the negative impacts that can sometimes disproportionately affect women, for example, with the macho influence around construction-type towns, where you create work camps that may be 95% men, and the sort of sexual violence that might result from that sexualized atmosphere.

    Are there any thoughts or concerns in that direction?

    There are lots of concerns and thoughts. In terms of how GBA would have impacted those decisions, I'm not sure exactly of the question.

    If a budget is aimed, in particular, towards infrastructure investment that leads to those megaprojects and those male-dominated work camps, might a GBA test have highlighted the need for policies to either protect women affected or, alternatively, to make decisions that might more equally benefit men and women by investing on a more gender-equal basis?

    Sure, and I think that had there been a gender-based analysis done in some of those decisions, some of the services available would be different, and some of the makeup of who's there and who's not there might have been different. I think, generally, it's also about the movement of people and who moves and how that impacts lives. There are lots of global examples of how that has impacted women in very different ways from men.

    We're also talking about quality of life and we're talking about violence. There is a whole bunch of issues that fall within those kinds of changes and when they're made, and who's involved and who benefits from them.

    I think the most telling story is that inequities are persistent and growing, so the tools and approaches that we've had have failed us very significantly across all policy sectors.

     Would the failure to implement pay equity legislation have intersected with that and the fact that we've seen the pay gap grow during this period of economic recession?

    Yes, I would say so, but the question should be, for which women and for which men—not just men versus women?

    Thank you very much.

    I could jump in if there is time. You were talking about budgetary decisions and infrastructure. If you were to include gendered knowledge of economic policy, you would have a different notion of investment, including investment in the care economy and an awareness of the downward pressures from the state cutting back on welfare policies and social services. That has an impact on women's incomes. It certainly hits women of lower social class, and in Europe, of different ethnic minorities. The differences are very significant, but if you don't do any kind of gendered analysis of your economic policy, all of that just goes completely unnoticed.

    Ms. Rowan-Campbell, is there anything to add from your side?

    I would say that one of the initiatives we took from Canada to the world and developing countries was really looking at women, motherhood, safety, and welfare. But it was taken completely out of the context of all of the factors that really affect women, such as getting pregnant, going through pregnancy, prenatal care, aftercare, and the need for work. It focused on one very tiny aspect of women's lives, and I think it was not as effective as it might have been had gender analysis of the program been undertaken before it was initiated.

    Thank you so much.

    I want to thank Dr. Hankivsky, Dr. Hanson, Dr. Cavaghan, and Ms. Rowan-Campbell for joining us today. Your intelligence and experience in this area have been most helpful to us.

    For the committee members, I will excite you by telling you that on Tuesday we will have visitors with us, remotely from New Zealand and Belgium, so we'll be able to hear what's going on in those places in the world—and potentially, Health Canada as well. Unfortunately, the Department of Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces were not available to meet with us, but we'll have an exciting day Tuesday. On Thursday we will begin to draft the report, so start writing your ideas down.

    Thanks so much for your attention today.

    Madam Chair, what reason was given by the witnesses who refused our invitation?

    I will ask the clerk to respond.

     Mostly, it had to do with scheduling conflicts. Their expert witnesses were unavailable until after our deadline for this report; so, unfortunately, they are not able to attend.

    That is unfortunate.

    Yes, it is.

    See you on Tuesday.

    This meeting is adjourned.