Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue 10, Evidence - March 12, 2012
OTTAWA, Monday, March 12, 2012
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 4:02 p.m. to monitor issues relating to human rights and, inter alia, to review the machinery of government dealing with Canada's international and national human rights obligations (Topic: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security).
Study on issues of discrimination in the hiring and promotion practices of the Federal Public Service, to study the extent to which targets to achieve employment equity are being met, and to examine labour market outcomes for minority groups in the private sector.
Senator Mobina S. B. Jaffer (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable senators, I now call to order the eleventh meeting of the Forty-first Parliament of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights. This committee has been mandated by the Senate to examine issues related to human rights in Canada and abroad.
My name is Mobina Jaffer and, as chair of this committee, it is my pleasure to welcome you to this meeting.
[English]
Before I continue I would like my colleagues to introduce themselves, starting with the deputy chair.
[Translation]
Senator Brazeau: Senator Patrick Brazeau, from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Ataullahjan: Senator Ataullahjan from Ontario.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I am Senator Nancy Ruth from Toronto.
Senator White: I am Vernon White from Ontario.
Senator Meredith: Senator Meredith from Ontario.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable senators, we are undertaking today a study which has been proposed by our colleague, Senator Nancy Ruth, who wanted our committee to follow up on our November 2010 report. In anticipation of the first annual country report on the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, our committee will examine more in depth the implementation of this resolution in Canada and abroad.
[English]
Resolution 1325 was unanimously adopted by the United Nations Security Council on October 31, 2000. This resolution focuses on the impact of armed conflict on women and girls, paying special attention to repatriation, resettlement, rehabilitation, reintegration and post-conflict reconstruction.
In September 2009 our committee commenced its study on the implementation of the resolution, which led to the tabling of a report in November 2010 entitled Women, Peace and Security: Canada Moves Forward to Increase Women's Engagement.
This report makes 26 recommendations, highlighting areas where Canada and other UN member states can provide concrete resources, specialized personnel and programming that make a difference on the ground for women in conflict and post-conflict states in three areas. Area number one is supporting women's participation in all levels of decision making, in all matters pertaining to peace and security. Number two is building gender-sensitive peace and security institutions, and number three is strengthening justice systems to ensure fair results.
This report was supported by a subsequent report tabled by our committee in December 2010 entitled Training in Afghanistan: Include Women.
This report included 14 recommendations that urged the Government of Canada to support women's rights in Afghanistan post-2011. This report also urged our government to design and implement gender-sensitive training in light of its new role in Afghanistan, which has shifted from combat to training.
We have a panel in front of us today that is not new to our committee. The International Development Research Centre, or IRDC, has always been very supportive of our work. Ms. Duggan has appeared in front of us at other times, and I welcome Ms. Duggan and Mr. de Boer. We look forward to your introductory remarks.
[Translation]
Colleen Duggan, Senior Program Specialist, International Development Research Centre: Madam Chair, members of the committee, I would like to express my thanks for the invitation to speak with you today on the issue of women, peace and security and Canada's contribution to the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 and related resolutions.
[English]
My colleague John de Boer also welcomes this opportunity, particularly since he now heads the IDRC programs that fund many of the projects relevant to today's testimony.
As many of you know, IDRC is a key part of Canada's aid program, supporting research in developing countries to promote growth and development. Knowledge and innovation are core tools for empowerment. As such, they are critical ingredients in the quest for greater prosperity, security and equity. IDRC encourages sharing this knowledge with policy-makers, other researchers and communities around the world. The result is innovative, lasting local solutions that aim to bring choice and change to those who need it most.
The centre has a long history of funding research in the area of gender equality and integrates gender analysis across all of its programming. Through IRDC's support of high-quality applied research, the centre complements Canada's international efforts to implement Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, and has done so since the resolution was adopted in October 2000.
The centre does this by working with developing world researchers at local and national levels to build rigorous scientific evidence that can inform the development of sound public policies. IDRC-supported research and analysis also informs multilateral policy dialogue, including discussions with Canadian, international and civil society organizations, which I will speak about in a moment.
The role of locally relevant research and effective, evidence-informed policy dialogue is particularly crucial in fragile states and conflict-affected countries where past attempts at policy-making have often failed. Indeed the World Bank's recent report on conflict, security and development reminds us that no fragile or conflict-affected low-income country has yet achieved a single Millennium Development Goal.
In these situations, women and girls often suffer disproportionately from the economic and social consequences of political unrest and violence. New ideas are often needed to understand and address the drivers of conflict and violence and to explore opportunities for change. IDRC's experience in working with researchers and policy-makers in developed and developing countries indicates that well-grounded, rigorous research can influence public policies for the good.
Let me speak directly to the role that research plays in providing evidence to support the strategies included in three of the four thematic areas that make up Canada's action plan: prevention, participation and protection. I will not comment on the fourth area — relief and recovery — since, as a funder of research for development, our engagement in this area is peripheral.
In the area of violence prevention, research highlights the different challenges that men and women and boys and girls encounter in conflict-affected situations. Issues of sexual violence are key among these, given the importance of this phenomenon in the 1325 agenda, as well as IDRC's own track record of supporting research on preventing sexual and gender-based violence and redress for survivors.
While recognizing the importance of international justice mechanisms such as the International Criminal Court, IDRC recognizes that strengthening local- and national-level mechanisms for justice and redress for victims of sexual violence also needs to be a priority. Over the last decade, the centre has invested more than $7 million in applied research that examines the nexus between sexual and gender-based violence, impunity and options for redress. That research has taken place in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The evidence generated from some of those projects has been groundbreaking. It has also influenced policy agendas in exciting and sometimes unexpected ways. For example, the idea of gender-transformative reparations — that is, remedies that address conflict-related violence and the socio-economic factors that render women vulnerable to victimization — was first described by an IDRC-supported researcher in 2007 in a publication edited by Navi Pillay, who is now the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Gender-transformative reparation has since reappeared as a guiding principle in high-level UN policy documents and regional human rights jurisprudence. It has also become part of the policy dialogue on issues of reparations for women in fragile and conflict-affected countries. There is evidence that this new knowledge is influencing pilot reparation schemes being implemented by UN agencies in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
In Guatemala, research has informed policy discussions in a different way. Claudia Paz y Paz, the lead researcher of a study on state-level policies for reparation, has since become that country's attorney general, and in that capacity she continues to influence and implement laws that codify redress to women who have been victims of violence.
As noted in Resolution 1325 and Canada's own action plan, the participation of women and girls in policy-making processes that favour peace, security and justice is critically important. It can ensure that women's voices inform the decisions that will affect their future and the well-being of their families and communities. Over the past five years, IDRC has invested $3 million to generate new knowledge in Africa, Latin America and Asia in this area.
Our experience indicates that meaningful representation, participation and, by extension, inclusive long-term development are difficult to achieve if gender and power dynamics are not considered. Research on democratic governance in Sierra Leone, Egypt and Kenya is focusing on women's participation in political decision making, the judiciary and the public sector. It is also exploring ways in which state institutions, political parties, civil society and kin-based social organizations can be influenced to advance women's choices and entitlements as citizens.
While it is usually the most egregious accounts of rape in war that we hear about in the news, not all violence experienced by women and girls in fragile and conflict-affected settings is sexual. The strategies for protection enumerated in 1325 also include efforts to protect women's and girls' rights by helping to ensure their safety, physical and mental health, economic security and equality.
In understanding the importance of women's economic empowerment and how it affects their access to productive assets, IDRC has supported Colombia's National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation in its exploration of the differentiated impacts that land seizures were having on peasant women. This initiative broadened issues-based research capacities and fostered dialogue between researchers and decision makers. It also contributed significantly to the formal organization of different generations of peasant women's groups in that country.
The footprint of that new knowledge and those sharpened policy capacities are evident in the equality provisions for women in Colombia's new land restitution law. That law establishes conditions for returning land to those individuals and families who have been forcibly displaced.
More than a decade ago, IDRC-supported researchers in Africa began examining the complex and fluid nature of urban violence in societies transitioning from authoritarianism and fragility to democracy. While transition often brings with it hope for a new status quo, it also carries new challenges. This is particularly true for women and girls who find themselves entangled in the pressures and violence that emerge in both domestic and urban public spaces.
Recognizing that the world is now predominantly an urban society, IDRC, in collaboration with the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, plans to launch a new initiative on violence and poverty reduction in urban areas. The initiative will generate new knowledge on what works and what does not to reduce violence and inequality in urban areas facing chronic insecurity and underdevelopment. It will also emphasize innovative, gender-differentiated solutions to urban-based violence.
I hope that some of the International Development Research Centre projects highlighted today illustrate how the centre is providing critical evidence in support of many of the strategies that make up Canada's action plan. Through our ongoing funding of research, we work to complement Canada's collective actions in implementing the plan. That research supports the objectives of prevention, participation and protection of women and girls in fragile states and conflict-affected countries. Indeed, IDRC remains committed to innovative and rigorous research that helps address gender-based violence in security and injustice.
[Translation]
We thank you for this opportunity and will be pleased to answer any questions you may have in English or in French.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Duggan. I take it, Mr. De Boer, that you will not be making a presentation but will be answering questions.
I would like you to describe further what you mean by "gender-transformative reparation."
Ms. Duggan: Some of the earliest work looking at state-level reparations schemes has focused on our understanding of reparation for harm done in the sense of financial terms. Often reparation that comes in the form of compensation in financial terms is not always appropriate or enough for women who have been victims of violence.
The reasons for these are many, but some of the things we can think about are the social and economic barriers that women encounter in the developing world. Often women do not have control over their own finances. They do not have a bank account. They have problems around mobility to go and pick up or withdraw what might be a financial settlement in terms of compensation.
There has been a line of research that understands that when women suffer violence in the context of conflict, it often reverberates through their lives in many ways. Obviously, it can have a financial impact in that it may reduce their earning capacity because if they are seriously injured, they can no longer go out and earn a living. This is especially difficult for women, for example, who are farmers or who work tilling fields, or for women who depend upon their physical capacities in any way to earn a livelihood. That can have a significant impact upon them.
Often women who have been victims of violence are also significantly traumatized, do not have much faith in national-level mechanisms for justice, and do not even feel that they can approach courts or that they will be listened to seriously. Their confidence in their own justice system has been shaken, as has their confidence in their ability to seek redress through traditional avenues towards justice.
Often women are traumatized. They continue to relive the trauma, particularly sexual-based violence, and they need to access both primary health care and mental health care services. Again, avenues to those may not be open to them, depending upon the state of the national health system or the resource base in a country at that time. Therefore, we need to be thinking in a much more creative, broad, multi-faceted way in terms of what women's and girls' needs might be when they have suffered these forms of violence. Sometimes a cash payout is not enough.
The "transformative" aspect comes in when you look back or when you are investigating the motivations and the reasons why women have been victims of violence during conflict in the first place. Often we start to uncover the conditions in which they have lived, often as second-class citizens — conditions in which they have not had sufficient protection from security forces or other forms of protection. Therefore, they have been vulnerable.
After conflict, when we are looking at rebuilding societies, to send women back into situations like this where they are living with long-term legacies that will continue day-to-day for them and their families, we need to think about reparation in a way that it will help them make a step forward as citizens of that society, help them gain greater space in terms of their democratic dialogue to put forth and claim those rights. It is thinking about reparation in a way that is transformative. It is not just continuing the status quo of some women who have been second-class citizens before a conflict. We do not want to recreate that. We want to create a better society. Reparations have been seen as a way to bridge and to help to create those conditions in which women become fuller citizens.
The Chair: In your presentation, you spoke about the Congo and Guatemala. Can you give us an example of where it has worked well and where there is still work in progress?
Ms. Duggan: Guatemala comes to mind. The big challenge with any state-level reparations is that most countries are challenged to put in place public policies of this type because there are resource and capacity implications. So many states are struggling even to be able to put in place administrative reparation schemes of that type. Guatemala is one country that has struggled to do that, and they have learned a number of things about what type of reparations and social services could be offered to women.
For example, some women victims were offered financial compensation, and there were payments forthcoming to them. It was not a lot of money, when we think of ourselves, but it is a lot of money for a poor woman in Guatemala. In one case, for example, the cheques went out, and the ministry in charge thought that it would be an excellent opportunity to go to the villages in question, have a bit of a ceremony, present the compensation and recognize the suffering of those individuals. Evidently, in many cases, those individuals did not want to be recognized as having suffered sexual violence because they were stigmatized within their own communities. Therefore, public ceremonies, as well-intentioned as they are in a case like that, are something that you do not want to be thinking about doing. That is a good practice. That is the lesson that has been learned there.
In the same sense, unfortunately, those first cheques went out with probably an accountant who thought that he or she was doing the job in an excellent and official way but scored "victim of rape" on the bottom of the cheque. How would you go to a bank and cash a cheque like that? When we talk about bringing a gendered lens to something, that is the kind of thing we need to be thinking about, and lessons have been learned in Guatemala now. In that country, they have also thought about women's property rights and women who have been victims of sexual and gender-based violence as to whether they can be prioritized in land reform and land tenure processes, particularly the women who are single heads of households. That is another way that they have thought it through, looking at the most vulnerable first and the reasons for their vulnerability.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, I would say, not to overemphasize what the contribution to research would have been in that country, the concept of gender transformative reparations has been important for changing the policy dialogue and for feeding and enriching the policy dialogue of UN and other multilateral and bilateral actors in that country who are thinking about what reparations would look like. The work that has come out of those projects has very much informed thinking around the types of projects and programs that would be designed under the auspices of organizations like UNDP and UN Women.
Senator Andreychuk: It seems that we are using buzz words too much, for example, "transformative," et cetera. I do not think it means much to women who have been in the situation. For all our good intentions, too much of what I hear is "what we will do," "how we help," "how we assist." It seems that if Resolution 1325 will have any effect, it will be the responsibility of the government to have a dialogue with the people. Sierra Leone is a case where the leaders were going to be charged and everyone else would go to the truth commission. Neither has worked well because the people who have suffered were not integrated.
That is one thing I would like you to comment on. Are we not getting too policy-oriented at the UN level, and forgetting how to really assist people? They should tell us how they want to come out of war and be given some space to do it. That is my first question. It is a little bit of devil's advocate, but I think it is necessary in Resolution 1325.
Ms. Duggan: That is an important question and comment. It is often very easy for us to fall into the trap of falling too much in love with our own concepts and ideas.
I think that the language of transformative gender reparations is a language that does speak to some of the multilateral actors, and, arguably, to some of the governments who were thinking about these schemes.
Does it say much for the actual victims? Probably not, but one of the big difficulties with something like reparation, again, goes back to what our thinking was probably 10 years ago when we started to think about what would this would look like. What we basically had was tort law type thinking, namely, compensation in proportion to the injury done. People started asking questions like, "How do I measure that? How do I measure harm?" There are legal formulas for measuring harm around women's income generating capacities, but how do I measure, for example, a woman's lost opportunity to have a family life because she is unmarriageable simply because she had been a victim of sexual violence? That is why we need to have a dialogue at the national level around the kind of conditions that women are living in, and we need to link that forward and somehow help women move forward in their status as citizens, actually make gains rather than just putting them back where they were.
Would I use that language if I were in Sudan talking to a group of survivors? No, I probably would not, but I would have in my mind, as someone who has worked in programming on these issues, either together with a ministry in those countries, of the need to look at the harm that was done in the past and compensating people for that, and the ways I can actually transform these women's lives and make them better. That is where it comes into play.
Senator Andreychuk: That is what is troubling me because when you travel in Africa you do meet with NGOs who deeply believe that Resolution 1325 can be a good tool. However, using language that says, "How can I transform their lives," is the essence of the problem, to me, that we are now working towards at the UN and the reports. In fact, by listening to what the people want — the people who are in a culture that has gone to war will go back to that culture — how do we allow them to grow and change?
I say that because Senator Jaffer and I know that in East Africa it is not a question of tort law. It is often a question of compensation. They do not look at guilt or innocence. They look at loss and reinstatement in the society.
We have Resolution 1325, and we have told the UN to take women's issues seriously. We have demanded that everyone look at the national reports, et cetera. However, throughout all of that, it seems the best examples I have seen are the ones where women who have come out of war band together, know what they want and do not want and then ask for assistance, rather than the other way around; you have suffered, so how do we reinstate you. They know their societies and what the art of the possible is, and hopefully with 1325 they have more levers to accomplish that. I have not seen that occur yet.
Ms. Duggan: I am very sympathetic to that because I think that with agendas like 1325 it is difficult to bring it down to a level where it can actually be operational. Resolution 1325 is a very broad and ambitious agenda. How do you bring that down from the level of lofty language to actions that actually make a difference for people?
It is a challenge, and one we face every day at IDRC because we also have to look for ways in which the research that we support can be communicated in a fashion that it speaks to people and they can understand its utility.
Going back to the work on reparations, I would say with some of the earliest work we did on that in 2005-06, the women who worked on that project were women from those countries who had made it through. There was a series of case studies where they spoke to those women and found out what would make a difference for them.
To cite an example, in East Timor, the research team went to women and asked, "This is what has been offered; these are the options that have been put forward of what might make a difference. Does that resonate with you, or would you be in a condition to access that type of compensation? Would that be enough?"
In that case, for example, women said, "That is very good, but what worries me from day to day is that my children are still not going to school. It also worries me that if I go to that office and I pick up this compensation, I have self-identified as someone who has been a victim of sexual violence. It would be much better for me, for example, if I could also access some other services. If there are education programs in place for my children, you would be looking after a major stressor for me in my day-to-day existence."
That goes to the creative way in which we need to be thinking about linking up social services. The challenge is trying to do something like this on the ground, especially when working with the UN and other multilaterals; everyone has their little piece of the pie, and it is hard to see how it fits together.
When we talk about gender transformative reparations, that is really meant to say that there are many pieces that do fit together; there are economic pieces, social pieces, pieces around health systems, pieces around educational services and livelihood and income-generation pieces. We need to think about it in a much more holistic way rather than expecting someone to accept a compensation payment for $10,000, which we know in some cases, such as in South Africa, some women went home and the male power holders in the household immediately reached over and put their hands on it. It is very difficult when women do not necessarily even have control of how they are running their households.
When we look at this in a different way and offer them different services, they can choose what makes sense to them. Evidently, that needs to be married with policy-makers. Policy-makers in those countries do not have an inexhaustible resource base; they need to think about what is possible and feasible in different situations. Therefore, it may look different in different countries.
Senator Ataullahjan: Thank you for your presentation. In light of the committee's recent report on women in Afghanistan with regard to their participation in capacity building and gender-sensitivity training, practices and more, what is the current state of women's engagement in that country? What role has Canada played post-2011?
I was very alarmed last week; I was in Pakistan, and reports came in about Hamid Karzai basically declaring women as second-class citizens. How should we react to this? What do we do for the women of Afghanistan?
Ms. Duggan: I cannot comment directly on what the Government of Canada's formal response should be; I would leave that to the Government of Canada as a policy-maker to do. In that particular case, if I am not mistaken, I think I saw in the press a declaration from the minister on that situation. I think Canada's position is quite clear.
From our perspective at IDRC, we have supported some research in Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, it is a very difficult endeavour, not the least because research infrastructure in Afghanistan has been so embattled after years of war. Research capacities themselves are very low.
Engaging women in that research is also very difficult. There is a small swath of university-educated women who are in a position to engage in research. Evidently, when you move out of the capitals, doing research in Kabul is obviously quite different than trying to do research in Kandahar. There is a lot of diversity there.
I think we have had some successes and probably some disappointments, like most policy actors in Afghanistan, but it is something we remain committed to.
Senator Ataullahjan: As a Pashtun woman, I am very interested in the state of Pashtun women in Afghanistan; they suffered terribly under the Taliban. Are you aware of any programming that is specifically in place for Pashtun women?
Ms. Duggan: I am not aware of any programming that we are supporting for Pashtun women. Perhaps Mr. de Boer is aware of something currently available.
John de Boer, Program Leader, Governance, Security and Justice Program, International Development Research Centre: From an IDRC perspective, no, we do not have any particular programs in Afghanistan focusing on that. Our work has focused on the National Solidarity Programme and the micro-finance initiatives, two larges initiatives that have claimed to change women's lives, particularly their economic security, and evaluating whether or not they have made an impact. That is where our efforts have been focused for the past three or four years.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Thank you for being here. Who else in government is pushing 1325, in terms of either policy analysis or practical implementation?
Ms. Duggan: I would assume that the committee is aware of Canada's action plan for 1325, which is —
Senator Nancy Ruth: That is a document.
Ms. Duggan: Yes, that is a document with a series of actions that are mapped out to be undertaken in different departments across government. There are Foreign Affairs, CIDA —
Senator Nancy Ruth: Let me interrupt you here for a minute. When you are gossiping with your pals who work at CIDA and these other departments, what are you hearing about the implementation of 1325 in their departments? Do you have any evidence, formal or informal, that in fact stuff is happening?
Ms. Duggan: I certainly see things happening.
Senator Nancy Ruth: For example?
Ms. Duggan: For example, across the departments. Afghanistan has been a huge recipient of Canadian aid, so I think there are different departments that are active in Afghanistan as one country among many.
However, I also understand that Canada's action plan calls for a series of reports. The first interim report, if I am not mistaken, is due out in the autumn, so I would wait to hear what progress is being made then. The departments and agencies involved in the action plan will be reporting up against it. That is forthcoming, but I have no further information on that.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Are you involved in preparing for this upcoming report? Or have you heard of other agencies of government like yours that have been asked to report back?
Ms. Duggan: I have spoken to other agencies. For IDRC's part, we are in constant contact, on a staff-to-staff basis, with Foreign Affairs on different aspects of our programming, depending on what desk it is and what programming is involved, but we do not formally participate in the interdepartmental group that is attached to the action plan. We report to Parliament through the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Fair enough.
I want to turn to Colombia, because you were there. There was an announcement from CIDA maybe a month ago, saying that they were going to support programs where there were Canadian financial interests. I am thinking of the Canadian mining interests in Colombia, which are quite extensive.
Have you been able to share your knowledge of women, peace and security with those mining companies in terms of best practices? They all have some commitment to social and corporate responsibility. In fact, there is an agency that deals with Canadian corporations in Colombian investment. Have you spun your knowledge out?
Part of the problem for me always with IDRC is that I am no academic; I never was. I am a practical person. I want to see it done. We come from different worlds. I want to know how your knowledge is being used with Canadian mines and CIDA's money, which is backing up those operations. How does 1325 get in there?
Ms. Duggan: I can speak to, for example, a line of research that IDRC supported about 13 years ago, which was known as MPRI, a large initiative that was looking at how communities can work in a constructive way alongside mining industries that are in their communities. That was an IDRC initiative. A lot of best practices came out of that. Mining companies, in particular, were involved in that. Much of that research has continued to inform the way that mining companies think about things like social accountability. Again, I say that was 13 years ago. Since that time we have had some reorganization of our programming architecture within IDRC. Happily, it is something we are always revisiting, that we revise every five years, and we listen to the people on the ground in terms of what the priorities are for them for research.
In the case of Colombia, we have a regional office for Latin America and the Caribbean, which is located in Montevideo, and our director does travel to Colombia.
Senator Nancy Ruth: This is like a spider web coming out of Ottawa to Colombia, or at least to this regional office, saying: Who are the researchers, doing what, what are you hearing, and then what happens to this knowledge? How do you direct this knowledge? How do you ensure that women are getting the fair shake they deserve?
Ms. Duggan: Particularly in the area of mining or in general?
Senator Nancy Ruth: Even Colombia. Let us take one country, mining in Colombia. If what you are doing is putting your spider web out to collect knowledge here and there from all these researchers who are feeding into some central group, then you bring it back here and you are looking at the rest of the world — because IDRC does that — how do you put it all together, spin it back and push the envelope?
Ms. Duggan: Again, going back to the role of the regional offices we have, we are a fairly decentralized organization as well. We have regional offices throughout the world, and our regional offices play that important role in spinning it back out.
What regional offices will do, for example, is they will often take the research in a place like Colombia, which is relevant to Colombia. Do not forget that often research that comes from other areas of the world is the value added of an organization like IDRC. It is learning good practices across different regions. Our regional office in Montevideo, a typical function they would have would be to get that research into the circles in which it needs to be in a place like Colombia.
Mr. de Boer: If I may just complement that answer. When it comes to issues of governance, security and justice, every five years we come up with what we call a programming plan, which identifies what our core priorities over the next five years will be. These core priorities are determined through extensive scoping studies, negotiations, conversations with people, both in a particular country or region as well as with international stakeholders.
As for the next five years, our focus is largely concentrated on issues of access to justice, particularly on issues of sexual violence and impunity. When it comes to governance, we are looking at political settlements. There, when it comes to women, peace and security, we are asking the question: How we can get women at the negotiating table and help set the conditions for that? When it comes to issues of security, we are looking particularly at the impact of reintegration programs, et cetera.
The short answer to your question on mining-related issues and IDRC's particular value added on that is that it is not directly within the scope of our programming currently because it has not been identified as something we necessarily are engaged in. It is not a priority area, particularly because of the limited resources. Our program was set up in 2011, essentially.
This is why some of the issues we focus on, which are heavily consulted, may not speak directly to, say, the mining concerns or extractive industries, but we certainly do speak directly to issues of youth violence, issues of narco-trafficking in the Americas, issues and key strategies to deal with urban violence, particularly as it affects women. Choices have had to be made in terms of programming areas, but we keep START, DND and our Government of Canada counterparts in close contact on those issues.
Senator Nancy Ruth: The urban violence thing interests me a great deal, and I am particularly interested in seeing the transfer of that knowledge back to Canada. People have said to me over the years, since the IDRC was created, that it is interesting that we do so much to help countries abroad develop and not our own.
What have you learned about some communities that might have some relevance to Inuit education or Aboriginals still on-reserve? I know you stick over there and do not come home, but I am just saying that it is an issue for many people who have to pass your budget every year.
That is my comment. I hope this gang stuff can be fed back into the process here, for sure. I hope that when you design it, wherever you are designing it, it has relevance to cities in Canada, or wherever in Canada gangs exist.
The question is really about measurement. How do you measure your success? Often IDRC uses the phrase "enriching the dialogue." It is great to participate in UN discussions on anything and everything, on national, regional, states and so forth. However, over what period of time do you measure your work, how do you measure it, how do you know you are successful, and what are the criteria in changing your direction? How do you do that?
Ms. Duggan: Before I tackle that question, senator, I thought I would come back to your comment on youth violence and the gangs issue. Where does this fit in Canada? How can this research also help Canadians, and what is going on in Canada?
One of the programs we have ongoing right now is a partnership between IDRC and the Social Science Research Council. That brings together universities in South Africa, Colombia and a third country that escapes me right now, and universities in Canada, looking at the issue of youth violence and at the different strategies used by different government ministries and different services for youth to keep them in school and to keep them out of violence.
In the case of Canada, much of that is focused on the North and on Inuit communities and the particular problems faced by youth in those communities. That is one way we are bringing research back to Canada.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I am going to stop you there. Nunavut has I do not know how many people; 50,000, 60,000. Canada has 33 million. It is out of whack. Regarding the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, it takes so long for any academic to even get a grant to do work that I would rather have you talk to the cops.
The Chair: May I put you on second round, senator?
Senator Nancy Ruth: Yes, you may.
Senator Meredith: Thank you for your presentation. I will pick up where Senator Nancy Ruth left off with respect to the youth violence issue because it is near and dear to my heart. As we struggle — and my colleague Senator White is with me and has seen first-hand the issues around youth violence and how it is becoming quite an epidemic right across this country — one of the things our office is looking at is a national strategy on youth and how we implement programs to deal with at-risk youth right across this country — tat is, a program that would look at government policy and how we look at corrections, health and human resources and how these all come together to improve the quality of life for youth. As you look at violence and poverty, they go hand and hand.
You mentioned in your report that the United Kingdom is not immune to this, given all the violence that has taken place there and how they are also looking to collaborate. Can you expand on that with respect to the initiative that you are undertaking with the United Kingdom? In the last part of your presentation, you stated that IDRC is in collaboration with the United Kingdom and that the Department for International Development plans to launch a new initiative on violence and poverty. Will you tie that in for me, please?
Mr. de Boer: Thank you very much for the question. With that particular program, we are currently in the final stages of negotiating a memorandum of understanding with the UK Department for International Development on launching a competitive call for proposals that focuses on what works and what does not when it comes to initiatives that not only reduce crime or violence but also tackle the issue of inequality and poverty. As you mentioned, they go hand in hand.
After doing quite an extensive study, we recognized the mano dura policies or the hard-fist policies that focus simply on crime prevention issues and have detrimental impacts, particularly on women, but in other areas it scares away investors and has multiple negative impacts. This is a co-funded proposal with the United Kingdom. We are trying to get other donors on board. We have had conversations with the Government of Canada on this to try to develop an idea of what works and what does not.
What is the evidence base for what works, considering the dynamics? As with the previous question, there is a lot of difficult talk in terms of throwing around concepts, but we do not know what works. This is the first step. It is a four-year program that will focus on the Americas, including the Caribbean, on sub-Saharan Africa and on South Asia. Those are the initial areas where we will be collecting evidence. We will test that evidence. We will also bring it forward and contribute to global dialogues on urban violence and also urbanization and bring these communities together, the urban planning community, which can understand what positive urban planning has in terms of crime prevention, and the poverty community. A lot of these communities have been operating in silos, and that is part of the problem.
Senator Meredith: I look forward to that because it will impact dramatically on our urban centres as we see the growing number of young men and women who are dying on our streets.
My next question is about practicality here, and Senator Nancy Ruth raised it as well. With respect to the urgency of the matter in the implementation of 1325, in your opinion, have enough resources, and enough at the highest level of the United Nations, been put in this to ensure that we are not just talking, that there is desire to see 1325 implemented? In terms of the mechanisms, the resources and the goals, has enough effort been placed on this, or are we just creating another report? We look at Canada's national action plan and we are saying that it is coming out in the fall. Has there been enough emphasis placed on this?
Ms. Duggan: That is interesting. Actually, Mr. de Boer and I were discussing that on the way over. Of course, I think that levels of commitment across different UN member states will be different. I think it also comes back to Senator Nancy Ruth's question around measurement. We now have a situation in which we have Resolution 1325; we have related resolutions. We have resolutions that talk to us about indicators, benchmarking and how to track this. There is nothing left to be done now but to do it. That will be the challenge.
One of the big challenges is that you have 132 signatories to Resolution 1325 and you have a growing number of countries that are putting together action plans. These are countries, again, which are very heterogeneous. Some countries are in the throes of conflict. You have countries that are not in conflict but that are major contributors to humanitarian programming around alleviating the effects of conflict. It will be somewhat difficult to get some comparability across those because you will have quite different action plans.
I agree that it is going to be a challenge, but in terms of Canada's own contribution, the fact that we have a national action plan is a tremendous positive step. I think the fact that we have a Senate committee that is looking at this in a very sensitive and serious way and monitoring it is also a very serious and significant step.
Regarding whether enough resources have gone in, I would not have data to back it up, but I think we have seen a significant upswing in member states' concern around these issues. There was significant concern when 1325 first came out and a certain amount of movement and momentum. It has been interesting that between 2005 and 2007 you would maybe have seen a bit more of a downward swing. There has been an upward swing again, and I think some of that may be attributable to things like the DR Congo, the world's outrage around what is going on there, people's ability to bring those issues of sexual and gender-based violence into the spotlight, and significant things like these issues being discussed more frequently among the G7 countries. We are seeing them appear in different policy fora, not just in the UN policy fora, because they have implications for international peace and security. They have far-reaching implications for many member states not only for our peace and security but also for the resources we are putting into this.
Mr. de Boer: I will say an upswing, but we also need to look at the facts. Look at women in particular who have been involved in peace negotiations, like Shadia Marhaban, from Aceh; she is one of 12 women who have been involved in any peace negotiations. The reality is that women have, most of the time, been excluded. Why is it important that they be included? It is because that is where the rules of the game are established. That is where, in the Afghan case, they set who is in and who is out. That is where they determine what are the core services that we will provide, what is the nature of the police force, what is the nature of the justice institutions. It has dramatic implications. Has enough been done? Absolutely not. Are more resources required? I think the answer is simple: Yes.
There is momentum that we can build on and initiatives like the national action plan. Canada is one of 34 countries has a national a plan. There should be more increased dialogue between the U.K. and Canada, between the Nordics and Canada on how to move forward on this in a collective and meaningful manner. That is where evidence can help perhaps facilitate speed on that by showing what works and what does not when it comes to this.
Senator Hubley: First, my apologies for missing part of your presentation. You mentioned Guatemala in one of your remarks. The example I would like to give you does not necessarily pertain to Guatemala, but it might be a situation that may be in other countries as well. You probably know that the homicide rate in Guatemala is staggering. When we are looking at women as victims, it is an area where less emphasis may be put on the murder of a woman versus the murder of a male.
There is an organization of professional women who wish to work within that community to resolve some of those issues, or at least to put forward some challenges to the government. We talked about resources. I would like to talk about the mechanisms that might be available to an organization that is trying to do justice within a community for the women but may need the extra support that they may be able to find under Resolution 1325.
Ms. Duggan: It would depend on the case. For example, in our experience in Guatemala, what has worked the best is with the researchers that we have supported on this particular issue, the issue of sexual violence. The difficulty when you are trying to move policy or you are trying to seize people of an issue is that you need two things. You need good communication and advocacy skills, but you need good evidence to back up what you are saying. What you are saying has to be based on sound research. You must have the numbers, the statistics, and you have to have the cases. In the case of Guatemala and research we funded in this area, the researchers we worked with were able to come together and make partnerships with civil society organizations that are quite good at advocacy and had inroads into policy circles, ministries and the judicial apparatus.
Those alliances and partnerships are also critical to us in the type of research we support. Someone has to take the message and put it into a form that policy-makers will sit up and listen to and take interest in, but researchers do not always have those skills. It is stodgy, it is not fast messages, and it is not framed in a way that is significant or meaningful to policy-makers. However, there are other people in the world of policy-making who know how to do that. One thing we try to do in IDRC is that as much emphasis as we put on the conduct of scientifically robust and sound research, we also try to put emphasis on the communication of that research. That research has to be communicated and disseminated in a way that it is actually useful to people and they can do something with it.
The Chair: Thank you very much. As you can see, a number of us have more questions, and we look forward to having you here again. I want to thank you both of you for taking time to meet with us today. We look forward to working with you in the future.
Now I have the pleasure of welcoming Ms. White once again to our committee meeting. She is the executive director of the United Nations Association in Canada and has been working on these issues for a long time.
Kathryn White, Executive Director, United Nations Association in Canada: Thank you very much. Honourable senators, champions of women all — and I know this for a fact as I look around the room — I am honoured to appear here before you to discuss the vital topic of Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. Today I will focus on the state of women's rights in Afghanistan, what role the Canadian government can play to ensure greater equality for women as we plan our exit strategy and execute the transitional process based on your ongoing review of the machinery of government dealing with Canada's international and national human rights obligations.
This Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights has contributed immensely on these topics, and I have been honoured to report to you before.
I was once again impressed with the level and depth of questioning, so I look forward to a lively debate. In fact, I will abbreviate some of my remarks so that I can get to questions. Let me dive in here.
First, my team would chide me if I did not say that as well as my role with the United Nations Association in Canada, I am also the elected chair of the board of the World Federation of United Nations Associations. In that capacity, I represent something like 110 different UNAs around the world, and you will recognize this is important international civil society engagement.
In both roles, I have the privilege of managing one of the Canada's most historic, non-partisan and respected non-governmental organizations. We focus on engaging the Canadian public in the work of the United Nations and the critical global issues that affect us all.
We meet our mandate through innovative signature programming like the largest national diversity initiative in the country, Multimedia & Multiculturalism; the national and international Millennium Development Goals and governance program, giving real results in citizen engagement and participation; and improved, responsible governance called Sport-in-a-Box.
We just hosted our highly recognized Canadian International Model UN, where we engaged the best and brightest of young Canadian minds on critical thinking and solution seeking. Last week in Edmonton, we had the UN Under-Secretary-General for Rio+20, Sha Zukang, address our model Rio+20. I was delighted to accompany him on a tour of Alberta's oil sands.
Through these initiatives, we have been fulfilling our mandate successfully and consistently. I thank you for this opportunity to discuss an issue as crucial as women's rights. Again I recognize that I have been in the trenches with many people around this table.
I would also like to recognize that we host a security and defence specialist. Some of you may remember that we have been actively engaged with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, or DPKO, and I will talk about policing in here, as well, so stand by for that. I also recognize the role of this committee itself on moving these issues forward.
I talked first a little bit to remind you about your own groundbreaking study, Training in Afghanistan: Include Women, and I mention here the five critical areas of focus: political reconciliation and protecting rights; supporting women's roles in any future peace negotiations, as well as security, which looked at trainers, the Canadian Forces and police, and encouraging that gender-sensitivity training and tools; justice or accountability for crimes against women — raising awareness and capacity building across justice systems required to implement existing laws — and you will know that the law around elimination of violence against women will be touched on, as well; education — and we know that this was some of the very first work done in Afghanistan, and Canada should certainly be proud of our role in that, including building schools; and in local development, and I think this is recognizing the imperative of local knowledge as well as global implementation.
We talk here about the advancement of universal values grounded in the local context. We continue to see that Afghan women desire improved access to services, quality education, skills development, and health care. As your report mentions, there is a local demand for political rights, despite the risks. It is worth noting that there were more women candidates in the September 2010 election than in 2005 when we thought that there was much more security. Therefore, that says something; awareness raising is not just about talking but also about acting. We continue to know that the soul of good development is local realities, and local culture and religion should be used as points of reference to explain and legitimize human and women's rights.
In terms of reconciliation, many NGOs and Afghan women fear their rights will be sacrificed in exchange for peace with insurgents. You know this is particularly on our radar right now. Reconciliation must include gender equality, and the Afghan government must include women in the talks. If local communities see benefits of women's advancement, they are more likely to protect women's rights, regardless of what the elite political class might agree to in any reconciliation process.
Canada has leverage to apply pressure to the Afghan government. Historically, it has done that really well. You know again that we are in a time of transition here, which is significant.
Again, this committee made recommendations also on issues of security, gender-sensitivity training and training on legal rights, and we know that the Canadian Forces and RCMP both were recommended they needed training. However, I would also say that there has been progress in this area, and I am happy to talk about that.
Justice is front and centre again. In a way, I am recounting the report, because these issues are still the key issues that confront us when we talk about gender equality, certainly in Afghanistan. Remember that, historically, it was also true in Canada that women did not make complaints. It took awareness, legitimization, and so on before this happened. Some provisions remain: Wives are required to seek permission of their husbands to leave homes; honour killings continue; and, while Karzai did adopt the elimination of violence against women law, it has not necessarily been seen to be applied consistently. In Afghanistan, conservative parliamentarians and those who are perhaps faith-based may continue to try to weaken the law.
Regarding education, I think I will leave that to you to look at. Yes, there has been progress, but Canada also recognizes it has to be beyond elementary; we have to look at training local teachers, as well, and we must do this.
When we talk about local development, I think I would like to really emphasize that men must be engaged in these projects targeting women's rights. It allows them to feel included and to understand the purposes of the initiative.
There is a risk. Again, the style of engaging for men in Canada, as well — and Senator Meredith, I am thinking about some of your questions to our previous interlocutor, about even issues in Canada. We know, for example, on our multimedia and multiculturalism program that we cannot get men together by saying we will talk about our feelings about the issue; it has to be more action-oriented. That this should be the same in Afghanistan should not surprise us in the least.
As we move forward with lessons of the past, I would like to bring to your attention the international and the role of the UN in all of this. Since it was on your tongues and in your questions, I thought this would be helpful.
This is a report that has just been released. Some of you may know that UN Women is about to release their report, Progress of the World's Women: In Pursuit of Justice. It is really, truly focused solely on justice. I have an advance copy of it and would be happy to share it with you, as well.
Let me go back to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, and touch on some of these issues, including progress. Again, Senator Nancy Ruth, it does talk about action, in particular — women being involved in the High Peace Council; supporting the Afghanistan government through an analysis of the elimination of the violence against women law; and also participating in reviewing regulations on women, protection centres and shelters. This has been quite controversial, by the way, and these shelters have been criticized by more institutionally conservative, faith-based legislatures, and it continues to be a challenge.
UNAMA supported the incorporation of gender into the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program, and this has been done quite significantly. It continues to support the Ministry of Women's Affairs, and I think that is very important, as well.
There is a worsening security situation, however, and we need to acknowledge that. You can see that I have listed that night raids by international military forces negatively impact rural women. We have had a horrible situation happen recently and we must acknowledge the deaths of local Afghans.
I do not think anyone in this room for a moment thinks that this has to do with an American view — a lone operator. Nevertheless, it happens at a time when there is already increasing insecurity. Most civilian casualties are caused by anti-government elements, and there are high civilian casuals. This has a profound effect on women and their feeling of safety as well as on the community. This incident yesterday, you will know, particularly targeted women and children.
The UNAMA mission supported mainstreaming gender concerns in 22 national priority programs, and this is important. Yes, it is about paperwork, but you have to look people in the eye and have a conversation with them before this happens. I think it is very significant.
I have also mentioned the loya jirga, which had significant engagement of women. The previous speaker talked about the importance of women learning advocacy to lobby and to strengthen women's voice as we move forward. Regarding policy advocacy, I will leave this with you, to look at some of the issues. I think we are particularly concerned with the fact that it is a presidential decree and so therefore not brought to Parliament. There are real concerns about reversal of rights that have been gained in this transition as the Americans leave and as Canada is looking at moving past simply training to an exit strategy in total.
In September 2011, the council of ministers approved regulations on women's shelters. This is an issue you have probably heard about, looking for support for women and girls who face violence and abuse in their home communities. UN agencies established a working group to produce messages and stories, and that is important. It simply engages the community on how you come forward and what you can say. These stories were uploaded onto websites of all participating UN agencies, and increasingly the UN struggles with this process called Delivering as One, so there are not the usual redundancies.
It may go without saying, but I will say it, at least out loud, how important the support to women parliamentarians in Afghanistan has been. UNAMA has been involved in that, but the Canadians in Afghanistan have also been very involved with this.
You will notice down a number of points that the training was facilitated through the office of the senior representative of the Secretary-General. This made a huge difference, and there was good follow-up research, a pre- and post-survey of the women who participated to say that it made a difference in their life.
They also advocated for more training, and when we talk about their asking for more respect to the protocol, there is a sense that parliamentarians are invited to different places around the world out of Afghanistan, but women parliamentarians are treated in a somewhat different way. I think that we have to find a way to address some of those issues.
I mention again the loya jirga and some of these activities.
Let me speak about the call for full and speedy implementation of the law to eliminate all violence against women. Kabul this year marked the ground zero, if you will, of the marking of International Women's Day. UN Women and UNAMA urged the Afghan government to implement fully and promptly the elimination of violence against women law. Unfortunately, there continues to be inconsistent responses on that. There still needs to be instruction to local officials and to police, and as you will see in all the subsequent comments I have made, they represent clearly some of the key issues you have identified. While we have stepped forward two steps, we may have stepped one back, and there are real concerns. I think again about this notion of Talibanization and what may happen next.
In terms of lessons learned, results of collaborative work have been quite positive. We can see there is a visibility of women in civil society, and their ability to lobby has improved. The feedback from female parliamentarians on training they received shows they are keen learners and ready to get out there.
A point that is of considerable concern to us is the divide, if you will, between the approach of Resolution 1888, which says that we should protect women as victims of violence and tends to see women as victims — there are countries that have bought into that — and Resolution 1325, which is about empowering women and their participating fully and so on.
I do want to commend our mission in New York, which still continues to chair the Friends of 1325. Please do look at my notes because I did make a couple of calls to New York, and they continue to be highly regarded. Their work is very much valued, even just in terms of technical support, but again, they are relentless, they keep at it, and they are making a difference. I am proud to commend them in particular.
The Chair: We have one copy of the notes, and we will circulate it to all of you. We will move on to questioning.
Senator Meredith: Thank you so much. It was refreshing to hear your presentation.
You were in the room when we heard the previous speakers talk about the fact that there is still a serious problem having women at the decision-making table. You talked briefly about how Canada is with the national action plan and will, we hope, put on some pressure.
What else do you think can be done? Last week was International Women's Day, and the comments from the president were not very welcoming at all to women around the globe. How do we get men to get it, in terms of just saying these women need to be involved, they need to be engaged, as their lives are being impacted by the decisions from the top?
Ms. White: The economic story is an important one. In other words, once it is recognized that women are a driver of a stronger economy, that, in fact, a high tide floats all boats, it makes quite a difference in a life. We need a few champions, those outliers who will say, "I will make this space," and courageous women. Remember, whether it was here in 1972 or Afghanistan in 2012, there will be women who recognize that they will not be welcome, that they will be called the usual harridan and so on, the more that we can support them even by providing the kind of service so that they know, for example, that there is a friends committee in New York that is working to make sure that they will be involved. Again, I throw the question ultimately to you, but when men see that their success is based on women's success and participation, we see changes.
Senator Meredith: Regarding economic development, we heard previously about security and economic development for women. How do you see it moving forward in Afghanistan for the women who want to become engaged entrepreneurially as we exit, as Canada has made enormous investments there? How do you see the future around economic development?
Ms. White: I am a little frightened in some ways, and I am frightened by the security situation and what will happen. There are some real and serious risks that we cannot downplay.
Having said that, I think if we can move forward, including this committee, its deliberations and its work with the other side, it can make a difference.
You talked earlier about corporate social responsibility. We know Canadian companies want to work in places where there is peace and security. We are actually working with women who feel they are behind the eight ball already, and that their security issues are not necessarily front and centre or a high priority makes them more at risk.
It seems to me that there is opportunity for pilots where we might do the same kind of business development centres that we have done in general for business or technology and different sectors that we might do. Bring imagination with reality, the reality being the grave concerns about the security situation.
Senator Meredith: Thank you so much.
Senator Ataullahjan: Thank you, Ms. White, for your presentation.
Quite often when we talk about Afghanistan, mostly you hear Kabul being mentioned. Do you think that life for rural women has changed? Do they feel more secure? Do we have any kind of numbers or data coming out of rural Afghanistan?
Ms. White: I will undertake to get you the full UNAMA report. I will tell you that your question is completely prescient, that it is the urban centres where all of the investments have been made, where difference is being made, and that is not the full picture of life in Afghanistan. We are not making the same kind of progress in the rural areas.
You can imagine all of the issues that we deal with in Kabul are intensified to a factor of 10 when you move into the rural areas. Forgive me for not having that on hand, but I do have some of those numbers in here.
I urge also that one of the recommendations is to work with Pashtun women because that is another area of neglect that I think we should be focusing on.
Senator Ataullahjan: I will ask you the same question I asked the previous witnesses. It is with respect to Hamid Karzai determining women to be second-class citizens. I know this is difficult for you to answer, but what is the message we need to send Mr. Karzai? Time and again, we find him making statements that are not in keeping with what we encourage the people in Afghanistan to do.
Ms. White: That was very disappointing news. In fact, I noted Khorshied Samad's op-ed that I am sure you would have seen as well, where she cited President Karzai's apparent endorsement of the council of clerics' stricter guidelines, which goes as far as to say, "Men are fundamental and women are secondary."
When Canada and each Canadian citizen and taxpayer have invested the kind of resources we have in goodwill in order to make a difference, this is nothing short of astonishing. We also know this is a very complex situation with tribalism and power and his worries with the Afghanistan-Pakistan security situation and so on.
However, if someone in the international community along with UNAMA — yes, it does need to be the international community through the UN, but I would suggest that Canada should have something to say about that. We do have our people in harm's way, and we have made the commitment despite the fact our American colleagues have made different egress plans more recently.
Again, I would encourage you not to be as disheartened as we all are to hear that in the first place and redouble our efforts because that is all we can do.
Senator Ataullahjan: I was in the city of Peshawar last Wednesday, and I was almost at the point where the tribal belt starts. With respect to the movement of people between various cities, a lot of them come to the city of Peshawar from Afghanistan for medical care. The women are afraid, and I think they have the right to be because they do not see their lives changing.
Ms. White: That is an important comment, and I will take that back with me. Thank you.
Senator Andreychuk: This is not the first time that President Karzai has been in the media. This has been an agenda, and we have chosen to put the emphasis on the fact that he is boxed in. I think this is another warning that what you see is what you get, and perhaps Canada and others should take a different approach. That is my editorial comment.
Your comments were interesting on Resolutions 1888 and 1325. While I had heard some of it, you said it much more forcefully than that. Resolution 1888 came, as I recall, at a time when we were trying to impress on the international community that rape was a tool of war, that it was unacceptable; the International Criminal Court had noted it, but there had been no prosecutions on the incidents that had occurred. There was a great push. Not to say that women were with the victims per se, but women were the objects of war and the tools within the power plays.
I thought that is what 1388 was about, a complement to the other resolutions that talk about women and children, who bore the brunt of the conflict that had been initiated by others. It was an effort to get women to the table and to change the economic dynamics in countries. You are saying now it has caused friction. Could you elaborate on that? That is troublesome.
Ms. White: It is very troublesome. In fact, I would be the last person to say we do not need Resolution 1888; we very much do. Even in its development, which was after 1325, you will know there are countries well known in this committee that are resisting the full engagement of women in politics and social and economic life. They seized the moment of promoting this agenda of 1888. Of course, we have seen women as weapons of war, and frankly, for any historian or old soldier, we know this has always been the case. This is not new; we saw it egregiously in the Balkans and in other places.
However, unfortunately, it does seem to have been hijacked in some way as a way of getting out of the responsibilities of 1325, which is having women at the table, making decisions, bringing their ideas and being engaged in leadership versus this role of we must protect them as victims of violence. Resolution 1888 does not ask them to be at the table. Is it a good thing? It is absolutely a good thing.
Senator Andreychuk: You cannot take one resolution in isolation.
Ms. White: Unfortunately, it has.
Senator Andreychuk: Where particularly is this trend coming from, geographically or institutionally?
Ms. White: I think you will not be particularly surprised to know that some of the group of 77, in particular the Arab states and so on, conservative non-democracies.
Senator Andreychuk: Has the Arab Spring changed that?
Ms. White: I am waiting to see what the Arab Spring has changed. We are closely following this.
We saw a powerful role of significant change for women, particularly young women, and of civil society. I fear for them because you will know even with new leadership and so on, they seem to have disappeared. I think it is an important question, and I encourage you to continue to be seized with it.
Senator Hubley: Thank you for your presentations. I would like to ask you about the progress we are making in women's education, especially young women's education. Has there been an impact? Are we able to measure that impact? You might tell us if there are mentoring programs. I think you did mention the work being done to encourage women parliamentarians.
Ms. White: Clearly, I was unyielding with my space; I am afraid I took some of those statistics out of my report, but I will be happy to share them with you.
What I do remember is that some of these numbers are old, but they are significant and worth repeating. In 2002, there were 700,000 young people in school, and they were all boys. In 2008, there were 1.75 million girls in school, as well as an increasing number of boys. Did it make a difference? It sure did.
I think something that keeps me up at night is whether we will be able to do the right thing by these young people who have now had some kind of elementary education and some kind of hope about a future. I am not so sure about that.
Again, I refer to your own excellent work, where you called on not neglecting secondary education with this focus on primary education, recognizing that we also need to train teachers so that we have an enduring solution there.
Senator Hubley: Thank you. Can you tell me how you create —
The Chair: Senator Andreychuk has a supplementary question.
Senator Andreychuk: Is that okay?
Senator Hubley: Absolutely.
Senator Andreychuk: When we did our report, it was to ensure that women were involved and educated. Since that time, there has been feedback to me. In discussion with one of the countries that we have an alliance with, they chose to fund whatever the Afghans wanted, particularly in the rural areas. Their idea was that if they wanted all-boys schools and no women, they would still build the schools and supply them, under the assumption that most of them had not gone to school at all, male or female. If you could get someone involved in education, male, they would then reach out and understand the world, whether by computers, and that may be another way of changing the dynamics. All our emphasis was on getting girls to school, but now I am wondering whether we should maybe be talking about getting more education to anyone outside of Kabul.
Ms. White: I would love to have a discussion with you — which probably does not have to do with this committee — about our disservice to boys in Canada. You may know that suddenly we have an incredible dropout rate and so on. However, let me go back to development, because this is the issue we are seized with at the moment.
The old adage in development is that if you educate a boy, you will educate a man; if you educate a girl, you will educate a family. If we are working in partnership with a country that says, "Give them what they want," and in addition we are saying, "We have the data," as my colleagues from IDRC said, "Have you got the data?" We do have the data. First, the fastest way to reduce the birth rate and to reduce maternal deaths is education, even if it is primary.
I hear what you are saying, and of course it does suggest that we are really grasping at any solutions here and that maybe a bit of column A and a bit of column B is in order.
Senator Ataullahjan: From what I remember about our report, we said that while we do need to have girls educated, we have to stress boys' education too, because in that society it is mostly the men and boys of the family who make the decisions for the women, and many of the women will not go against their decisions. I think we stressed that we need to educate both of them.
Ms. White: It creates potential stressors, other kinds of social stressors. Now you have all these empowered women and you are creating fear and perhaps increased risk in their families, so that is a problem.
Of course, the other problem we are seeing in terms of the transition itself is that if we have illiterate and "ill-numerate" — if that is a word — men, this is who we are now trying to train into a military, and it is very challenging. Yes, ultimately we need an educated society. Where do we start? It is a challenge. Ideally, you are creating readiness for women so they are not totally excluded, but it does not mean to say we are doing it at the expense of men and boys.
Senator Hubley: In partnerships and in engagement with other countries in the delivery of programs, does that happen? Do we share information? Are we able to decide on best practices that are working in other countries?
Ms. White: When it works at its best, I like to think that the United Nations has a role in facilitating some of that dialogue and knowledge transfer, moving knowledge and research from one country into action in others. My best hope is for the UN program delivering as one, so that all the UN agencies are working and sharing knowledge, and also sharing it with donor countries, likewise recognizing that some donor countries have extremely valuable data, whether it is piloting, in other words qualitative data on what might work, even as we have had some of these conversations around the table so that we share it. Certainly you will probably have experienced it yourself, hallway conversations at international dialogues, or even here, how we integrate that more. We ought to, but I am happy to say that it is increasingly happening, and I am seeing it.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Dr. White, I wanted to ask about Canada's plan for implementation on the resolutions dealing with women, peace and security. Are you part of the evaluation that is soon coming on? Do you know how that evaluation will be done? Are many NGOs being invited to participate?
Ms. White: I am not really apprised much of what is going on. However, I would be reluctant to say that is necessarily a fault of government. It is also our jobs to rattle and say, "Here we are, and we are watching." I certainly have had conversations, and that is, of course, the ancillary benefit of your standing committee. I have done lots of calling to be prepared to answer your questions. We will be looking more closely at this and doing what we can to support it.
Senator Nancy Ruth: To critique it as well?
Ms. White: Of course, supportive critiquing.
The Chair: I have a question for you. I am very much aware that you are very linked with many women's groups and women right across the country and around the world. You know that in our 2010 report our committee recommended three areas. One was enabling women to be decision makers, building gender-sensitive frameworks to strengthen justice, institutions and access to them. Did we get the three focus areas right, or should we be adding some other focus areas?
Ms. White: My view is that this was a very solid report. I think the work that went into it and the range of advice that you got was quite remarkable. As you have said, I have been plowing the fields of gender for a long time. I think they are suitably broad, that it covers a number of issues that might be left out. What I talk about, some technical tweaking and so on, I think I would, but again you have this sort of chapeau that captures the umbrella of the actions we need to do, so both knowledge and actions that we need.
The Chair: I was interested in the report you spoke about. Of course, I have not seen it. I understood you to be talking more from a justice point of view. I always call it 1325-plus, the resolutions, and that 1325 speaks about the impact of conflict on women. Then we have 1820, which talks about sexual violence against women; 1888 speaks about more of a monitoring role; and 1889 speaks about improving further participation of women post-conflict.
Should we be looking at an additional resolution that just looks at justice issues, especially around impunity? Impunity is included in these resolutions. It is certainly included in 1325. However, as we have been specifying other resolutions, like 1820, 1888 and 1889, should we be looking at encouraging our government to look at a resolution just around the issues of justice?
Ms. White: Madam Chair, you have pointed out a real conundrum, because of course if we have to create that new resolution every time there is a serious issue, it sort of dilutes the strength of what I think of as the centrality of 1325. On the other hand, of course, I defer to your legal training and the recognition that it is another tool of holding people's feet to the fire. I am torn, frankly, because of course it also takes a lot of institutional energy to move these new resolutions forward. You are bringing people together to the table. Is that good work? Yes, because it focuses scholars, researchers, parliamentarians, and so on, on the issue.
In my ideal world, we would be able to move forward with more countries describing a plan and implementing it, and we would add that this has to be part of the justice equation, as opposed to coming up with yet more resolutions.
The Chair: Because of your work with women, I would like to hear from you as to how we can make health providers, police, et cetera, sensitive to women's specific needs, especially around training. One of the great challenges we have is that our men and women have changed their role from combat to training — for example, in Afghanistan — yet when we speak to a lot of the men and women who are training, Resolution 1325 is not even on their radar. We have some challenges.
Ms. White: I agree with you. This is really imperative, and it is imperative throughout the UN system. I think it is a role that Canada can take on because, through Friends of 1325, through the CF — and sometimes there is great buy-in; sometimes it is about the personalities who are there, and so on — we have people who are moving these issues forward.
The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre was good around this and around policing in particular. I worry that we will lose that and that we need a champion. If the former chief were here, we might say how do you — in Canada is it the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police — work with the military, for example, to come up with best practices because there are ways forward. There are levers for change here on the domestic front that we could also be using internationally. We cannot let that one slide because it affects so many other things.
I also happen to think that it would be timely for the RCMP and for other police deployed through UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and certainly for our trainers. There is a window of opportunity, and I would love to see us go through it.
The Chair: Ms. White, as I listened to you, and having worked with you in many different capacities, I have been thinking that in 2002 and in 2001, when things were changing in Afghanistan, one of the reasons given for us, the U.S. and other people going to Afghanistan was because of what was happening to the women there. Yet, after all these almost 11 years, we have the kind of comments that President Karzai made about women.
There are many people watching these committee hearings who will wonder whether it was worth going to Afghanistan because we will soon leave. Will we leave the women in the same position as when we went in?
Ms. White: That is a hard question. I would not be doing the job I am doing if I was not an optimist, and if I did not believe that small changes beget substantial freedoms, world views, and so on. I do not think anyone imagined — maybe we did — that it would be easy and that, suddenly, there would be a great liberation, women would be educated, there would be great partnership and we would be moving forward.
I would put to you that even in Canada from time to time there is slippage on issues and we are galvanized to write to our MPs or to ask for change. We need absolutely a standing watch on this. I would say to Canadians that we made an investment for all of the right reasons. Yes, there were significant unknowns; there remain significant unknowns. However, we cannot let words like "culture" or "religion" pass as reasons not to respect human rights. I think that is the bottom line. That is exactly the business of all of you around this table, namely, to recognize that, when push comes to shove, as a free and democratic, wealthy society, we have some obligations, responsibilities and opportunities. I think, frankly, it has made us a better country. We have had to have some conversations that, perhaps, were uncomfortable that we did not have before. We have the agenda of gender more firmly in our own minds. I hope that we are having dialogue around our own kitchen tables in our own homes about the fair and full engagement of women.
I would tell Canadians that we did the right thing. It is never easy to do the right thing. We have to stay not necessarily in a physical presence, although we do need to make commitments — and I am here. Of course, you would expect me to say that we need to continue to make financial investments through the UN and through the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, but we did the right thing. How we follow up now will make a difference, if it is lasting.
We have raised the hopes of a lot young women and girls, and a lot of young boys and men, of a future working together. It behooves us to stay engaged on this.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. White. A number of times today, you referred to your paper, and you have given us a copy of it.
Honourable senators, I would ask that someone move a motion to table Ms. White's written presentation as an exhibit.
Senator Andreychuk: I thought we had a rule in the Senate that any witness can come and bring a paper and it can be filed. It would then go through translation, et cetera. If we have a motion, I am not sure I feel comfortable on the language issue — then it is our motion. Every witness is free to respond in either language. I think it is a technicality. We want the information, but I hope we will do it in that way.
The Chair: It will be translated and distributed.
Senator Andreychuk: I think it is simply the witness filing it.
The Chair: May I ask that you file the exhibit so that it can become part of our record?
Ms. White: With pleasure, thank you.
The Chair: We will get it translated. Ms. White, thank you very much for your presentation. We appreciate your once again joining us, and we look forward to working with you in the future.
[Translation]
Honourable senators, I now call to order the eleventh meeting of the Forty-first Parliament of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights. The committee has been mandated by the Senate to study issues relating to human rights in Canada and elsewhere in the world. My name is Mobina Jaffer, and I wish to welcome you to this meeting.
Dear colleagues, we are meeting yet again today to discuss issues of discrimination in the hiring and promotion practices of the Federal Public Service.
[English]
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights has been authorized to examine issues of discrimination in hiring and promotion practices of the federal public service. We have been studying the extent to which the goals of the Employment Equity Act are being fulfilled within the federal public service. The purpose of this act is to ensure that federally regulated employers provide equal opportunities for employment to four designated groups, women, Aboriginal people, persons with disabilities and members of visible minorities.
The act imposes obligations on employers to assess the degree to which employment equity is a reality in their workplace and to implement policies to produce the necessary changes. It also produces guidance as to how to make these assessments, such as by comparing how the representation of members of the four designated groups within a particular workplace compares with their availability in the Canadian workforce as a whole.
[Translation]
In the past, the standing committee has tabled reports on these issues. In 2004, the committee first began to examine the hiring and promotion practices of the Federal Public Service and to study the extent to which employment equity targets were being met.
In 2007, the committee further studied the hiring and promotion practices of the Federal Public Service and published a report entitled Employment Equity in the Federal Public Service: Not There Yet.
In 2010, the committee published its most recent report, entitled Reflecting the Changing Face of Canada: Employment Equity in the Federal Public Service.
[English]
The committee's major concern is that employment equity in the federal public service is not yet a reality for the four designated groups. Aboriginal employees mainly work in three departments: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, the Correctional Service of Canada, and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. Women still generally occupy lower-paid administrative support positions and lag behind men in employment in management positions.
The recruitment rate for persons with disabilities is below their level of representation in the labour force. The committee is particularly concerned to see that persons belonging to visible minorities are not yet represented in the public service in a manner that reflects their availability in the labour force, and we are also concerned that changes are slow in coming.
The Public Service Commission has just published this month the 2010-11 annual report, Reflecting the Changing Face of Canada: Employment Equity in the Federal Public Service. Before us today we have the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which is one of the three pillars in ensuring that this act is followed. I am pleased to have Mr. David Langtry and Ms. Marie-Claude Girard.
Mr. Langtry, I understand you have introductory comments.
David Langtry, Acting Chief Commissioner, Canadian Human Rights Commission: Thank you, senator, and I would like to thank the committee and the honourable senators for including the Canadian Human Rights Commission in this important discussion today. We hope we can contribute to the work of your committee, further to your June 2010 report, with Reflecting the Changing Face of Canada: Employment Equity in the Federal Public Service.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission promotes the core principle of equal opportunity and works to prevent discrimination in Canada by promoting the development of human rights cultures, understanding human rights through research and policy development, protecting human rights through effective case and complaint management, and representing the public interest to advance human rights for all Canadians.
[Translation]
Equal opportunity is the cornerstone of the Canadian Human Rights Commission's founding legislation. The Canadian Human Rights Act inspires a vision for Canada in which all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives they are able and wish to have.
[English]
Enacted by Parliament in 1977, the act prohibits discrimination on 11 grounds, including race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, and disability.
Parliament introduced the Employment Equity Act in 1986. Its intention is to achieve equality in the workplace and to increase the representation of four designated groups who had historically been disadvantaged. As you are aware, those groups are women, Aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities, and members of visible minorities.
A 1996 amendment to the Employment Equity Act made the Canadian Human Rights Commission responsible for ensuring that employers subject to the act were in compliance. The commission began conducting audits, pursuant to section 22, in 1997.
The Employment Equity Act applies to both the federal public sector and the federally regulated private sector. Approximately 1.1 million employees in 640 public and private organizations are protected by this act. Approximately 13 per cent of Canada's workforce is covered under the Employment Equity Act.
[Translation]
I would like to focus today on three things: the purpose of the employment equity compliance audit, the impact of our new approach and what we have learned from our experience with audits.
[English]
The purpose of the employment equity audit is to ensure that employers subject to the act are in compliance, through the implementation of measures aimed at achieving equality in the workplace. Employers must first determine the degree to which the four designated groups are under-represented in their organization. Employers must then identify their particular barriers to employment equity. In consultation with employee representatives, employers are then required to prepare, implement, review and revise plans to promote employment equity in their workplace.
In April 2010, we improved our employment equity audit process to maximize its impact and broaden its reach.
Our Employment Equity Compliance Program focuses on employers with 500 or more employees. This covers 90 per cent of all employees subject to the act. The program takes into account an employer's success rate in achieving representation amongst the four designated groups, and focuses on less successful employers.
The Employment Equity Compliance Program is now based solely on a results- and risk-based audit selection process. This means that employers facing the most difficulty in achieving adequate representation for members of the four designated groups are prioritized for audits. Employers who demonstrate employment equity achievement are acknowledged for their employment equity performance within their industry.
Our new approach allows us to revisit and assess less successful employers within a period of three years. This has proven to be crucial, as many underperforming employers need to continuously monitor their results and update their employment equity plan.
[Translation]
Furthermore, the new approach allows us to demonstrate to less successful employers that improvement is possible by comparing their results with the overall employment equity results of their respective industry.
[English]
Finally, in order to convey to a larger audience the need to go beyond meeting basic employment equity legislative requirements, we have started to produce employment equity status reports. These reports are aimed at the more successful employers to acknowledge their effort while encouraging them to maintain and improve on results. Issuing these reports, in addition to audit reports, allows us to double the reach of the program.
In March of 2010, we prepared a report entitled Impact of the Employment Equity Act and of the CHRC Employment Equity Program over the years. In it, we detailed how employment equity improved in the years between 1992 and 2008, as well as the differences in employment equity in both the private and the public sectors. We will be happy to deliver it to the clerk of this committee for distribution following this meeting.
Through experience with the audit program, the commission has observed that employers need to be reminded of their legislated employment equity obligations. Most employers who participate in a compliance audit are required to implement additional measures in order to fulfill all their obligations under the act. This is true even of employers who had previously fulfilled their obligations.
We have also learned some of the main challenges facing the less successful organizations in meeting their employment equity objectives. These challenges include inadequate recruitment strategies, a lack of training and awareness, and a lack of monitoring and accountability.
The commission continues to work with organizations and is uniquely placed to offer strategies to help employers manage these challenges. The commission has numerous discrimination prevention tools that we use in the administration of the Canadian Human Rights Act and which we have found also useful in helping employers achieve compliance with the Employment Equity Act. The commission's workplace accommodation guidelines, Aboriginal Employment Preferences Policy and our new Human Rights Maturity Model are just three of those tools that work towards achieving a more respectful and diverse workplace and workforce.
Before I conclude my remarks, I would like to briefly touch on the committee's June 2010 report. In it, the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights recommended that the Canadian Human Rights Commission:
. . . make use of the most recent census data as soon as it is published, for the purpose of assessing departmental and agency performance in meeting employment equity targets and setting accurate and realistic goals for the future.
I assure you that the commission always uses the most recent, available census data when auditing federally regulated employers, but more than that, given how the demographics of the employment equity designated groups are constantly evolving, the commission invites every notified employer to go beyond the basic legislative requirements.
[Translation]
It has been 15 years since the commission assumed its auditing role. There are still challenges, but we strongly believe employment equity audits have contributed to positive change.
[English]
While achieving and maintaining equal representation among four designated groups is first and foremost the responsibility of the employer, I am confident that, together, organizations such as HRSDC, the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and others, along with the work of your committee, can continue to support the progress made by employers. Let us keep moving towards a society where no person shall be denied employment opportunities or benefits for reasons unrelated to ability.
Ms. Girard and I will be pleased to answer any questions you might have.
The Chair: We are very pleased you are here. I also want to put it on record that, when we contacted you, you were very accommodating and looked forward to working with us. I appreciate that generosity.
One of the big frustrations for this committee is that we are looking at Census 2006 at the moment. In your remarks, you spoke about encouraging employers to look beyond that figure. Can you please expand on what you mean by "beyond that figure"?
Mr. Langtry: When we are doing our assessments, status reports and our audits, we look to representations, and you are quite right. One of the frustrations for the Canadian Human Rights Commission as well is that it takes several years before the data become available from the last census. It was 2009, if memory serves, when we started receiving the 2006 Census information. We recognize, however, that the census information has changed by the time we have it, so when we identify the targets, the goals for representation, we specify in our status report or audit report that the employer is encouraged to go beyond the numbers as shown and have a higher representation.
For example, we look at trends. The visible minority and the Aboriginal communities are growing fast. As well, in the Aboriginal community, the census data is not as reliable because many First Nations reserves and settlements do not participate in the census.
We bring that to the employers' attention and say that the numbers that are reflected in here are a basic requirement but we encourage them to go beyond that.
The Chair: I am not sure exactly what your audit consists of, but it would be useful for us to know because we have been struggling with this. In your audit, what is your number for workforce availability for women? What is the percentage?
Mr. Langtry: If I may I will explain the audit process first, and then I will ask Ms. Girard to speak to the actual numbers, as the director of the program.
I want to emphasize that the mandate of the Canadian Human Rights Commission under the act in performing an audit is to look at nine elements that are set out in the act and to determine whether the employer has met those nine elements. Those nine elements, essentially, are around having an employment equity plan, so it is both in terms of gathering the data and developing the plan, implementation and monitoring. I can tell you as a commissioner that one of the frustrations is when audit reports come before the commission to be approved saying that an employer is fully compliant with the Employment Equity Act, being fully compliant with the Employment Equity Act does not mean that they have full representation. In fact, they may not have representation in any one of the four, but as long as they have met the nine elements of the act, we have to say that they are in full compliance. Again, it is to have those items in place. Employers then say, "We are fully compliant with the act," but we say, "You have no representation," which is one of the reasons we have now moved to the results- and risk-based reporting, which is to say, "How are you doing? It is fine that you have those in place, but how are your numbers? What are the gaps and how will you achieve it?"
As far as the specifics, I would ask Ms. Girard to speak.
Marie-Claude Girard, Director, Canadian Human Rights Commission: Thank you for the opportunity.
First, it varies from employer to employer.
The Chair: I apologize. I should have been a lot clearer. I meant in the federal service.
I will go back. First, let us look at workforce availability in Canada for women, percentage-wise. Do you have that?
Ms. Girard: Overall, I do not know because it varies depending on where the employers are located, what specifically they are looking for and the qualifications of the women they are looking for. That is why it varies a lot from employer to employer.
Let us say you have a department that requires many highly educated women. The availability rate varies from one to the other. That is why it is not a fixed number that we are looking for. Each department has to identify its own availability rate for each of the distinctive groups.
The Chair: Moving on from there, do you know the percentage of women hired in the federal public service?
Ms. Girard: Overall, I cannot say because our role is really to audit organization by organization. For each of them, we check if their employment equals their availability rate. We do not gather the information. The information is gathered by the Public Service Commission. They are the ones monitoring the data source. When we audit, it is case by case. We do not own the overall information.
When we audit, though, the first thing we ask the employers is for them to provide us their workforce analysis, and then we look at how they established the availability rate for each of the designated groups: Does it make sense? Did they take into account all the requirements of the act? That is our first task in doing an audit of an employer. We start the audit by revisiting the way they do their workforce analysis.
The Chair: Ms. Girard and Mr. Langtry, our study is to find out the representation rates in the federal public service for women, Aboriginal people, persons with disabilities and visible minorities that are equivalent to the workforce availability numbers. That is what our study is about.
When you say "organization to organization," do you mean "department to department"? Is that what you are saying?
This is new information for me, at least. Do you have something available that we can look at, and then maybe we will have to call you again as to department to department? That is number one, if you can make that available to us. Next, if you can give us a sample of the nine things you ask for, I would ask that you make that available to us. My colleagues and I may want to call you again.
Finally, how are we doing in the federal service? Are we meeting the goals, not by being "compliant" as you said, but are we meeting the goals?
Ms. Girard: When compared to the private sector, it varies a lot. We have a dual role doing audits in the private sector and the public sector. Overall, the public sector has a good representation for three out of the four groups, namely, women, Aboriginal people and persons with disabilities. There are some gaps still for the members of visible minorities.
The Chair: What are the gaps?
Ms. Girard: The overall gap is that members of visible minorities are not fully represented in the public sector.
The Chair: I am sorry; it is very hard for me to follow. Forgive me; I do not do this every day.
When you say there are gaps, what do you mean by that, and what needs to be done for visible minority people?
Ms. Girard: They are not fully represented. When I say there is a gap, it means they should have more members of visible minorities within the public workforce.
The Chair: What is the gap? What should it be, and what is the gap?
Ms. Girard: Again, it varies by department. I can give the gap for each of the departments we are auditing. Regarding the gap, the study referred to by Mr. Langtry earlier has the trend.
The Chair: Can you please provide that to us?
Ms. Girard: I would like to add that compared to the private sector, it is completely opposite. In the private sector, it is only the members of visible minorities that are overall well represented, and they have major gaps for the four other groups.
Mr. Langtry: We will certainly provide the report.
As is indicated, our program is doing an individual audit. As an example, in 2011, we did 53 audits of employers, which would be the less successful employers where we did the whole audit. It would be 53 federally regulated private entities as well as the public sector employment. We also did 45 status reports, which are the more successful employers.
Each of those is a point in time, and we would look to that employer and determine what the availability is and what their actual representation is, so we identify the gap for the individual. It is not the broad pan-public sector; we take it department by department, and that is the difficulty in answering. The trends are in our 2010 report, which we will provide to you, and again, we would be happy to answer any questions.
The point you have raised about representation of members of visible minorities is of course a concern within the federal public service, as Ms. Girard has said. Out of the four, that is one area where the federal public service has the least representation. They are well represented in three of the four areas, and the federally regulated private sector is the only group that lags behind, as was indicated.
The report we will have does identify a number of issues as to why that disparity may be. We do not have the answers, again because it is the individual audits we do. However, one or two points have been raised as to why there might be some explanation for that disparity. One is geographic. If you look to the public sector, it is concentrated primarily in the Ottawa-Gatineau area, where 14 per cent of the population are members of visible minorities. When you look to the private sector, many are in the larger centres, such as Toronto, where 41 per cent of the population are members of visible minorities. The other is the requirement of the federal public service that to be a federal public employee, you must be a Canadian citizen, and 22 per cent of members of visible minorities in the workforce are not Canadian citizens, so they would not be entitled.
As we conduct our audits, one of the requirements of employers is they need to identify what barriers prevent them from hiring. We have heard, to use an example, three different issues. One is that oftentimes promotions and advancements are done from within. If one starts with a department that has a low representation of members of visible minorities, there is no pool to advance from. In addition, they acknowledge that they do not do effective outreach to visible minority communities in recruitment. They also acknowledge that members of visible minorities tend not to be on their selection boards.
A number of things are advanced. Part of our role as well is to require that an employment equity plan is designed and developed and continually refined in order to address those barriers to employment.
Senator Ataullahjan: Thank you for your presentation. You mentioned the Human Rights Maturity Model. What does it involve? Has it had a significant impact on improving employment equity?
Mr. Langtry: It is a brand new initiative of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. We are quite pleased about it and certainly would be happy to share more information. When I say relatively new, we just launched it two or three weeks ago. It is a self-assessment tool. We developed it over the last year and a bit and pilot-tested it with 12 federal employers, including ourselves, to define it.
To be perhaps somewhat simplistic about it, it is a self-assessment tool. The purpose of it is for employers to be able to develop and work towards having a culture of human rights. There are obviously a number of benefits of having a culture of human rights, but the Human Rights Maturity Model is based on a five-step process. The first very basic step is determining whether there is any mechanism in place to consider disputes or differences, to the fifth step where there is a self-sustaining human rights culture in the workplace. That would be where all of the employees feel welcome and feel they are able to raise any concerns they may have, which will be respectfully received and responsibly addressed, to use the words of our chief commissioner.
What we have done is applied that. As I say, it is new so we cannot say what impact it will have. We used to enter into memorandums of understanding with employers, and we found that was a very one-off way. When we are dealing with 640 employers, we cannot enter into memorandums of understanding with all of them. This tool is designed for them to do a self-assessment. There is a tremendous amount of work involved, and it requires the involvement of leadership, the union, management and so on.
As I say, I am being overly simplistic and perhaps not fulsome. We have applied it to employment equity as well, so in every report we do, we are identifying whether in our opinion they are at level one, two, three, four or five and encourage them to use the model and the tools that are part of the model to develop a culture of human rights in the workplace.
Senator Andreychuk: Thank you. What I am hearing is that the reports and the studies we have received before are pretty well correct in their assessments. You are coming in on an audit. Obviously there is a time gap. It does not bother me quite that much on the census because you cannot get it that fast and you are analyzing the past and lessons learned, I suppose.
We said there were four target groups and one was lagging. That was visible minorities. We also said there were not enough women in the upper echelons of management. We said disability was coming along, but we wanted to monitor that because it was still pretty fresh and the new convention would be coming in and we are not sure what that will do to it.
We thought we had the right milestones. You seem to be saying that we were correct. We also said there were two problems within the Public Service Commission, one you have enumerated, that the new visible minorities and others may be in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, but rarely find themselves in Ottawa. We had recommended that we go out and think of different ways of attracting them, not with the usual Globe and Mail ads, et cetera. We suggested utilizing new technology, using local newspapers of ethnic groups, et cetera. We put all that out, so I think we are on target there.
The other thing we pointed out is that when you do short contracts, which is often the way the government works, those people gain a skill, and when there is a competition, guess who wins — not someone applying from further afield but those here.
It seems that the analysis, the data and the conversations we have had with the Public Service Commission and others pointed out the difficulties and some of the ways we could overcome them. Your audit back seemed to point out that we were zeroing on the right issues at the right time and that we have to persist in that. However, you are not in the position to recommend all the things the Public Service Commission could do, or are you?
Mr. Langtry: I would say we are not because of the mandate we have, which is to do the individual audits. It is strictly an audit function.
If I may, to repeat somewhat on my remarks and the difference between our status reports and our audits, when we go in and look to see if they are making progress, basically what we do is we now compare, which we did not do prior to 2010; we just looked generally at the availability and whether they were meeting it. What we now do is compare the employer we are auditing within their own sector.
If we go into a trucking company, as an example, we would compare how the rest of the trucking industry is rather than generally. Then we can say within that, if you are one of the more successful in the trucking industry, it may still not be great, but from a risk base we will concentrate our resources, focus our resources on the less successful ones. For you we will give a status report, but for the less successful we will do a full audit and come back in three years' time.
The reason for that is we find that — and I put it delicately — employers need to continuously be reminded of their obligations under the act. When we begin an audit, we find that few employers are fully complying with the act, let alone representation. They do improve through the course of the audit and when we do the follow-up. That is why we have decided to go back in three years' time.
We do the same in the public sector. When we look at a department, we compare it with other departments and say, "Where are you in this? If you are below the average, then we will do the audit, even if you are doing fairly well in terms of representation."
Senator Andreychuk: We put some emphasis on the fact that those who are in charge have a responsibility to carry out the mandate, and if they do not, there should be consequences. One of them perhaps would be that they do not get the bonuses, that that is part of achievement, if you embrace them seriously.
There was some debate as to whether or not that is an appropriate tool. Did you find anything anecdotal or in your audit that would say it is a useful tool or it is not?
Mr. Langtry: I will start and then ask Ms. Girard if she might have something to add.
Certainly one of the things we look at when we are conducting the audit is accountability and whether it is built into the management performance, whether that is federal or private. However, in the federal, we simply provide the information. We do not do deputy minister accountabilities, performance management and that kind of thing.
Certainly in the private sector it has been at least my experience, reading the reports I receive, that in fact where it is built into the actual accountability and it is a requirement of managers to report on it, and when they have committees that are management and union driven, they tend to have better results in the process.
Ms. Girard: The commission also has an agreement with the Privy Council Office whereby at the end of each year we provide the results of our reports, meaning whether or not the departments we have audited are in compliance. We produce a report to the Privy Council Office on a yearly basis, based on our MOU, and PCO is responsible for the performance assessment of deputy heads. They are aware of the results of the audits made every year by the commission on the departments.
Senator Meredith: Thank you for your presentation. I listened to part of it on my way over.
Mr. Langtry, you pointed out the outreach to visible minorities — we know they are in our urban centres — and the fact that they would like government jobs. In your opinion, is the government doing enough? Senator Andreychuk indicated that those were the recommendations made, to advertise in local ethnic papers, in terms of the requirements for these visible minorities to be able to have an opportunity. You say 22 per cent of them, but then there is 78 per cent who still have that opportunity, who are Canadians, who would want to work in the public service.
Could you elaborate for me on what you think needs to be done going forward?
Mr. Langtry: I am not sure I can offer a positive as to what needs to be done. What I can say is that we administer the Canadian Human Rights Act as well, and we continue to receive complaints regarding discrimination in employment. As you may be aware, the bulk of the complaints against the public service are sent to the Public Service Labour Relations Board and not to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. I am speaking more perhaps of the private sector, but I am not sure there is a big difference between the two. We know that few federal employers have full representation.
I would also point to the recent federal Public Service Employee Survey, the results of which were just released, and 14 per cent of federal employees reported that they had been discriminated against on the job. One would draw the conclusion from all of those things that there is discrimination, and we continue to deal with that.
Having said all of that, again, our mandate is to do the individual audits; we are not responsible for the overall act, by any means, or the outreach. Our work would be on an individual basis with the employer, that we are either providing a status report or the full audit in doing an assessment of the steps they are taking. We do an analysis and make a determination as to whether their employment equity plan has in fact identified what are the barriers to employment and whether have they taken the necessary measures to address it. If we go back in three years, we monitor it.
One of the nine elements we do an audit on is that there is the continuous review and revision of the employment equity plan. It is not just a three-year plan with short-term goals. It has short- and long-term goals and continually needs to be reviewed. It includes such things, as the honourable senator has indicated, as to do outreach, whether in the Aboriginal peoples sector or whatever, and actually do an outreach to the community, but also to look at their hiring practices to see whether there are perhaps not even intentional barriers to employment.
Senator Meredith: You mentioned the Aboriginal community in terms of the First Nations and Aboriginal people still being way down with regard to the numbers; they are not meeting the quotas with respect to the government departments and so on. What would you say to the government regarding how we can improve those numbers within the Aboriginal community?
Mr. Langtry: The chair made a good point that Aboriginal peoples are well represented in the federal public service; however, that is concentrated in a few individual departments. This gets back to the issue that if we are auditing that particular department, we will find very low numbers. As well, from time to time, barriers for Aboriginal peoples are identified, which would include inadequate training and education availability and that kind of thing.
Rather than digressing, perhaps, on the national leadership of First Nations and the initiatives in identifying education as being a key component of that, when we do it, we divide it into the occupational categories as well. As is indicated, whether it is in the executive position, certainly when we look to Aboriginal peoples, you could say that yes, your workforce is representative — in other words, there are no gaps — but if we break it down into the categories, you might find that the entry level, clerical, are Aboriginal peoples or women. We do that as part of it, to identify the gaps by occupational category.
Ms. Girard: What we are also hoping to achieve is that even if we are trying to revisit or re-audit every less successful employer within three years, we are hoping to achieve better results. We will be there to remind employers to implement all the strategies they have developed to recruit members who are less represented in their organization. That is a strategy. That is why we redesigned the program to be a more risk-based approach. We redesigned the program to be more effective and to revisit the less successful ones more often. We find that in going to audit an organization every 10 years, they have forgotten their plan; they have not implemented it. There is a need to go more often to revisit them.
Senator Hubley: Thank you for your presentation. One of the issues that the Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada representatives have both identified as an obstacle to increasing representation rates in the federal public service for visible minorities in particular was the fact that many employees enter the public service as casual or term employees, a system that privileges those with connections or contacts in the public service.
To what extent is reliance on casual or term employee hires still acting as a barrier to increasing representation rates for visible minorities?
Mr. Langtry: I am not sure that Ms. Girard would be able to say. I am not aware that our audits would identify that as being problematic. On the Canadian Human Rights Act side, in the complaint function, we do receive complaints as well from people who have come in on casual or on term and then are not renewed or not continued. They do make allegations that it was not performance but may be based on one of the prohibited grounds of discrimination. That does not address your question in terms of the entry, but certainly we do receive complaints dealing with that.
I am not sure if an analyst would go in on an audit or a status report on the employment equity side.
Senator Hubley: When doing an audit, you do not differentiate or identify targeted groups as those who would be under the category of full-time employment and those who would be under the casual or term employment, do you?
Ms. Girard: We do not make a difference. We ensure that where a gap is identified, we identify measures to correct the situation. It is based on their analysis, but we do not differentiate between part-time, full-time or casual. They have to have a workforce representative of the population.
Senator White: The vast majority of the population in a number of the Aboriginal communities, in particular if we look at Nunavut, would be well under the age of recruitment, for example, when it comes to the Public Service Commission or many others. In fact, the vast majority of the communities that the Inuit live in, for example, do not have federal public service employment. If they do, it is limited at best.
Do we take any kind of geographic commentary when it comes to this, or do we just focus on the urban Aboriginal populations, which still have a predominantly high number of people under the age of what a hiring majority might be?
Mr. Langtry: We do look at that. That is why there is difficulty in answering it at the beginning in terms of gap. It is all based on geography. When we say "availability," it is not the availability across Canada. In Ottawa, it is within the National Capital Region, for example, and what are the numbers regarding availability based on the census data report.
Senator White: Following that, because I agree with that line of thinking, if we look at the number one language spoken in Ottawa after English, it happens to be Arabic. About 160,000 people identify Arabic as their number one language. Yet in Ottawa, from that community they would have a greater chance of learning French.
What are we doing when looking at communities in Toronto, Lower Mainland Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton, where visible minority populations may not have the opportunity to have French as a second language? If they do not, are we also using that against their opportunity to increase the public service pool? It is fine in Montreal. I would argue that they can learn both English and French, the same as in Ottawa. However, I am not sure that you have the same access to deliver that capacity to the visible minority communities in other cities. Do we consider that as well?
Mr. Langtry: We do. We have looked at that issue because we ask employers for their assessment as to why they are not representative and they have told us that. However, we have not been able to satisfy ourselves that bilingualism or lack thereof is a factor in terms of members of visible minorities. I am not saying whether it does, but we have not seen proof of that. However, we have heard that from employers who have said that is the reason or a reason.
Senator White: Have we heard that from the communities? The employers will defend their inability to deliver. Have we heard that from those communities stating that the reason why in the Lower Mainland Vancouver we are not seeing equal representation from the Chinese community is because we do not have access to English, French and Chinese in our community when it comes to education?
Mr. Langtry: Not that I am aware of.
Senator Meredith: It is always one of these issues where we do reports and you do audits. One of your reports — I think it was in 1995 to 2008 — indicated that there were some improvements to equity targets. What do think those were attributed to?
Mr. Langtry: I would suggest that it was attributed to the fact that we were doing employment equity audits. The act was amended in 1996, and we began doing the audits in October of 1997. When we go in to any of the employers, they are often not in compliance. A low number are in compliance with the act, not again representation, when we begin. Under our act, if they are not in compliance we request they do undertakings to bring them into compliance if they are somewhat resistant. The legislation requires that we do this by both persuasion and negotiation. If that is not effective, then we can issue a directive.
Senator Meredith: How often have you issued directives?
Mr. Langtry: After directives — and I believe the number is around 23 — if they still have not complied, then it can be referred to the Employment Equity Review Tribunal. We have only done four referrals to the Employment Equity Review Tribunal, and those were all prior to 2002. We began in 1997 to 2002.
I would suggest again that, although it is a limited mandate of simply doing an audit, the employers realize that not one of them went to a hearing because the employer complied. We have not seen the need to do so since that time. I would suggest the reason for the improvement and the reason why we would say the Employment Equity Act has had some success and is still needed is because the audits do result in an improved performance. We have almost doubled our reach of the program by now doing the status reports in addition to audits. The more employers we can touch — again, by dealing with the larger employers over 500, reaching 90 per cent of employees and going back for the less successful ones — the better. After two years, we will continue to see improvements because they continue to be reminded. They are aware that, if need be, we will issue directions. The act states that it is as a last resort that we can refer them to the tribunal, but they are aware that we are prepared to do it, if necessary.
Senator Meredith: You mentioned three years several times. Maybe we need to be going back more frequently than three years, or are we bound by the act for that three-year time frame?
Mr. Langtry: It is not necessarily bound by the act; it is somewhat restricted by resources.
Ms. Girard: Usually an employment equity plan is developed for a three-year period. It makes sense to go back after a three-year period, for example, to see if they have implemented their plan and if they have developed a new one based on the remaining gaps. That is why we want to go back to do the monitoring.
The Chair: I want clarification. You have emphasized geography a lot. I have looked it up, but we do have federal offices across the country, right?
Mr. Langtry: Yes.
The Chair: We have federal offices in Toronto, and we would look forward to seeing your audit in that area. We do have federal offices in my city of Vancouver and in Alberta. The workforce is not just from this area. Would you agree?
Mr. Langtry: Absolutely.
The Chair: Thank you very much. You have given us a lot to think about. We are hoping that we will see you more often.
Mr. Langtry: We would be delighted to be here any time.
The Chair: We will take a five-minute break and then we are going in camera.
(The committee continued in camera.)