FEWO Committee Report

Gender Based Analysis: Moving from Talk to Action

A Supplementary Report submitted by the

New Democratic Party of Canada

June 13, 2016

BACKGROUND

The equality of men and women is a fundamental Canadian principle. As the Progressive Opposition, the NDP has always fought against discrimination against women in all its forms. New Democrats have played a leadership role in promoting women’s rights, including: equal opportunity, income security, equal pay for work of equal value, full political participation, reproductive and sexual health rights, supports for caregivers, and many more.

However, despite Canada’s ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, discrimination against women continues to exist in Canada.

In 1995, Canada signed the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action which committed the Canadian government to conducting gender-based analysis (GBA)[1] of policies, programs and legislation in order to understand the impact of all government decisions on women. If the government had followed through on this commitment, for the past two decades policy makers would have used a gender lens every time they created a new policy, program or law.

Instead, as the Auditor General has pointed out in two separate audits, GBA is still only being deployed on a piecemeal and sporadic basis. Out of 110 government departments and agencies, only 27% actually have a process in place to conduct GBA.  In departments that are doing GBA, in too many cases the analysis remains incomplete or lacking in quality.

This is a lost opportunity to promote women’s equality and to prevent policies and programs from harming Canadian women.

Therefore, the NDP agrees with the witnesses who appeared before committee, as well as the Status of Women committee’s conclusions that:

• Women’s equality is harmed when the government does not take into account the impact on women when creating laws, policies or programs.
• One of the principal barriers to implementing GBA across the federal government is the absence of mandatory requirements.
• There is an urgent need to provide the necessary resources to support Status of Women Canada in fully implementing GBA in all departments.

We agree with the committee’s recommendations regarding the need for comprehensive legislation to mandate GBA across the federal government and the need to give adequate resources to Status of Women Canada. However, we believe the report understates the depth of the government’s failure to implement GBA over the past twenty years. We also feel that the report does not adequately convey the urgency of the need to implement GBA now, so that women are not made to wait any longer. In that vein, we offer this supplementary opinion.

THE GOVERNMENT’S FAILURE ON GBA

In 2009, the Auditor General of Canada criticized the government’s implementation of GBA and called for clear expectations and guidelines for departments to conduct GBA.  In 2015, the Auditor again reviewed GBA and found the same government lack of leadership and the same inadequate implementation of GBA.

Despite multiple reports from the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, an Expert Panel on Accountability Mechanisms for Gender Equality, two audits by the Auditor General, and a Departmental Action Plan, the majority of government departments are still not conducting GBA, and where it is being done, GBA remains inadequate.

Gender-based analysis has now been required for the past 20 years but the government has completely failed to ensure that it is done. As Nancy Cheng, from the Office of the Auditor General, told the Committee:

In our 2015 audit, we observed that gender-based analysis was still not fully deployed across the federal government, although 20 years had passed since the government had committed to applying this type of analysis to its policy decisions. In other words, gender considerations, including obstacles to the full participation of diverse groups of women and men, are not always considered in government decisions. This finding is similar to what we found in our 2009 audit.[2]

After 20 years of international and domestic commitments, only 30 departments are formally engaged in GBA, out of a total of 110 government departments and agencies. The Auditor General’s 2015 audit also found that within 4 departments that are a part of the GBA Framework, analyses are not always complete or of an acceptably high level of quality. This observation was made in almost half of all cases of GBA, which is further proof of the government’s failure to properly implement GBA.

Many of the witnesses who appeared before the committee identified multiple failures, as did the Auditor General:

• A lack of government directive, policy and leadership.
• A tight deadline to develop policies and programs.
• A lack of comprehension of the relevance of GBA.
• Ineffective training or a lack of training altogether.
• A shortage of data or an inability to find relevant, reliable and complete. data disaggregated by gender and other identity factors.
• A lack of capacity to undertake the analysis.
• No external reporting by any of the departments.

This consistent pattern of failing to take women’s equality seriously is simply unacceptable.

THE HUMAN COST OF FAILURE

Witnesses described significant consequences for women when GBA is not implemented. As the YWCA stated, “[W]ithout a comprehensive gender-based analysis, allocation of funds remain open to gender bias and unlikely to respond equitably to the needs of women and girls and to fully support the realization of their economic and social potential.”[3]

Many policy, legislative, and funding decisions over the past two decades could have been different if GBA had been done well, and the missed opportunities are multiplying. Would we still be lacking a national childcare strategy, specific economic stimulus investment targeted to women, and a national action plan to end violence against women if GBA had been properly implemented?[4]

LACK OF ENFORCEMENT

Policy and program proposals should simply not be accepted by government if GBA analysis has not been conducted, or if the analysis shows that a policy will discriminate against women in some way. Yet over time government departments and agencies such as Finance Canada, the Treasury Board Secretariat, and Cabinet, have failed to turn down proposals that do not meet GBA requirements. 

This process of challenging proposals to ensure that GBA has been properly done lacks transparency has not monitored by anyone. According to Cheng:

There's very little information, external reporting, on how we're doing in this whole area of looking at the gender aspect of it before policy decisions are taken. Status of Women doesn't always have all the information. Whatever information they have, they haven't quite made it public.[5]

The Auditor General’s 2015 report showed that, although both the Department of Employment and Social Development and the Department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs either failed completely to conduct GBA or left the analysis incomplete, no policy proposals were sent back to the respective departments by Cabinet.[6] Neil Bouwer, from the Department of Natural Resources also told the committee: “I'm not aware of any cases where a central agency has asked us to redo or reconsider our GBA.”[7] The most likely explanation for this is that the central agencies over the past twenty years have not enforced GBA at the level of Cabinet submissions.

In fact, Renée Lafontaine, Assistant Secretary of the Corporate Services and Chief Financial Officer at the Treasury Board Secretariat told the committee: “I want to take responsibility for our challenge function. We needed to adapt it and we needed to set better expectations with departments.”[8]

We understand that since the new government took office, Cabinet has directed the central agencies to require GBA in all Cabinet submissions. We applaud this decision, and urge the government to make it binding on all future Cabinets by implementing mandatory legislation and fully strengthening the challenge function.

URGENT NEED FOR ACTION

We applaud the symbolic gestures this new government has made on gender equality, such as the appointment of a gender-equal cabinet. However, we also strongly urge the government to implement urgent legislative changes that will turn words into action by ensuring that each and every government policy, program and law promotes the equality of Canadian women.

We are pleased that the committee report recommends that the government introduce comprehensive legislation to make GBA mandatory for all government departments and agencies, but we believe the recommendation does not adequately reflect the urgency of the situation, as expressed by many of the witnesses who appeared before the committee.

As Cindy Hanson, Associate Professor on Adult Education at the University of Regina and President Elect of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW), testified: “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.”[9]

Dr. Olena Hankivsky, Professor at the School of Public Policy in Simon Fraser University added that:

Research has clearly shown what is necessary for the systemic institutional implementation [of GBA]. 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.[10]

After 20 years, Canadian women should not be forced to wait any longer. The New Democratic Party therefore recommends that the government uphold its commitment to gender equality by introducing legislation before the end of 2016.

This is especially crucial given the significant new spending announced by the government in Budget 2016. New programs and new spending should not be designed without ensuring that none of them discriminate against women or have negative consequences for women, however inadvertent.

COMPREHENSIVE LEGISLATION

We are encouraged by the experience of the only department that has been successful in the implementation of GBA, and we believe that it provides a model to learn from for other government departments. Citizenship and Immigration Canada has been required by legislation to conduct GBA and report to Parliament on GBA every year. The legislation has had immediate and long lasting effects as Fraser Valentine, Director General of the Strategic Policy and Planning at the Department of Citizenship and Immigration told the committee:

A legislative change is blunt because it's legislation, so the immediate impact was that it required the Minister of Immigration to report annually to Parliament on the application of GBA and the outcomes that were achieved through it. Over the medium term, and in particular working with colleagues from Status of Women Canada, is that the legislative requirement has also influenced the culture of the department because of the annual requirement. We did have to immediately build capacity in the department to ensure we could meet that legislative requirement, which has had a cascading impact throughout the department as a result.[11]

This should be a model for all departments.

Witnesses shared with the committee their view on what good GBA legislation should look like:

• A robust accountability and compliance mechanism with an annual mandatory reporting system.
• Better tracking of and accountability for the “challenge function” played by central agencies and departments.
• A system of accountability that would hold senior federal government officials accountable for the implementation of GBA within their department or agency.
• High-level political commitment and a clear leadership structure with identified roles and responsibilities.
• A strict requirement for all employees of federal departments and agencies to complete GBA training.
• The development of specific training programs and resources that respond to the responsibilities of all departments and agencies.

We urge the government to listen to these witnesses and to take these factors into account when designing comprehensive legislation on GBA.

FUNDING STATUS OF WOMEN

To turn the government’s ambition on women’s equality into a reality, additional funding for Status of Women Canada is required. Multiples witnesses underlined the small size and the limited resources of the Agency. Dr. Olena Hankivsky testified:

We need financial and human resources to do the work, especially in Canada where, historically, Status [of Women Canada] has been so incredibly marginalized and under-resourced. It's no wonder we're at this point, really.[12]

We agree with the committee’s recommendation that the government provide additional resources to Status of Women Canada, beyond what was announced in Budget 2016, to ensure that the Agency has the capacity required to oversee the full implementation of GBA across all departments and agencies. We urge the government to act quickly to ensure these resources are given to Status of Women for full implementation of GBA.

CONCLUSION

The New Democratic Party Caucus looks forward to reviewing the government’s legislation for complete implementation of GBA in all Departments and Agencies, and to working with Members of Parliament from all parties to respond more equitably to the needs of all Canadians.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the New Democratic Party, June 13, 2016