THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AFFAIRS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, September 28, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met with videoconference this day at 4 p.m. [ET] to examine and report on such issues as may arise from time to time relating to social affairs, science and technology generally.
Senator Ratna Omidvar (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, my name is Ratna Omidvar, senator from Ontario and chair of this committee. Today we are proceeding with our study of the role of Gender-based Analysis Plus, or GBA Plus, in the policy process. We have witnesses in person and by video conference.
For our first panel, we welcome Melanie Omeniho, President, Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak by video conference; Lisa J. Smith, Senior Director, Governance, International and Parliamentary Relations, Native Women’s Association of Canada, in person; and from Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, we welcome Gerri Sharpe, President; and Amanda Fletcher, Senior Policy Analyst, GBA+, who are appearing via video conference.
Thank you so much for joining us today. I now invite you to provide your opening remarks. Our time is limited; you will have five minutes allocated for opening remarks, followed by what I hope is a really productive and fruitful Q & A from our members. As is our current practice, I would also like to remind each senator that, when you ask questions, you will have five minutes for your questions and your answers.
Melanie Omeniho, President, Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak: Hello and good afternoon. Thank you for giving Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak, or LFMO, the opportunity to speak to the committee today as you continue your study on what we know to be the absolute necessity of including a Gender-based Analysis Plus approach to policy. I am presenting to you from the unceded, unsurrendered Anishinaabe Algonquin people in Ottawa, but I personally reside on Treaty 6 territory and the motherland of the Métis Nation in Edmonton.
We are heartened to hear from our partners in various federal departments, like WAGE, ISC, CIRNAC and CMHC, that they are either beginning or are continually applying GBA Plus approaches to their work. We are encouraged to see that you are studying the role of GBA Plus in the policy process and we hope that you will consider culturally competent GBA Plus consistently along the way.
GBA Plus is at the heart of all that we do at LFMO. In 2019, LFMO developed its own Métis-specific Gender-based Analysis Plus toolkit using similar approaches as the Department of Women and Gender Equality, but taken further to include Métis ways of thinking, values and worldviews, and to reflect the unique personalities of Métis women and gender-diverse folks. This toolkit is available on our website and was prepared to assist Métis individuals, communities and organizations, including self-governing bodies, as well as federal and provincial governments and mainstream agencies, for which GBA Plus can be applied through a Métis-specific lens.
As Métis GBA Plus includes consultation at the centre and throughout every step, bringing women, youth, elders and gender diverse folks to the table, it refers to current, historical and political Métis realities. It is collaborative, strength based and distinctions based, and it also equally values mainstream and traditional forms of knowledge.
With roots based upon Métis history, traditions, teachings, activities and intergenerational relationships, LFMO’s GBA Plus tool was designed to represent a flower. The leaves outline more generalized intersectional GBA Plus factors, such as geography or life stage, while the flower petals describe Métis-specific identity factors, including self-determination and relationships with the land.
Like all living things, the flower is impacted by external factors. For Métis-specific GBA Plus, these factors refer to community capacities and resources, Métis rights and Métis land, as well as the criminal justice, economic and social systems that we exist in. In all of our engagements, in the creation of each of our policy papers and position statements, and in our relationships with partners, LFMO employs our Métis-specific GBA Plus approach and continually refers to our toolkit.
No two individuals are alike, and no two individuals are impacted by policy in the same way. Using GBA Plus ensures that we are considering the unique positions of every individual at each step of the policy development, implementation and evaluation stages. Indeed, an employed Métis transgender woman living in British Columbia whose mother is a residential school survivor will have very different housing needs than those of an unemployed non-binary Métis cisgendered woman living in Northern Ontario who is looking after her kookum.
Often when discussing Métis policy issues and impacts, as well as experiences in general, deficits-based narratives are used, largely because of external factors like colonialism, the Sixties Scoop and residential school systems, which have disrupted our close-knit Métis ties and kinship networks.
We need to consider instead all policy through a strengths-based lens, which means looking through a lens that focuses on resilience, the ways that Métis women and gender-diverse folks are positively contributing their strengths, skills and their stories from their own lens and in their own terms.
There is also a great absence of data surrounding Métis populations largely because of pan-Indigenous approaches that are taken when gathering data and because of a lack of understanding about who the Métis are. Métis organizations seeking to gather their own data often struggle with a lack of capacity or resources to continue their work. In order to effectively use GBA Plus in any policy process and to close these data gaps, there must be available data that is gathered by the groups themselves.
As the federal government deepens its commitment to thoroughly applying a GBA Plus approach throughout its policy process, I encourage you to dive more deeply and to seek out culturally competent GBA Plus tools that are created by and for the populations they represent.
Thank you for your time.
The Chair: Thanks so much, Ms. Omeniho.
Lisa J. Smith, Senior Director, Governance, International and Parliamentary Relations, Native Women’s Association of Canada:
Hello. First of all, I want to say I am honoured to be here in person beside you, honourable chair and honourable committee members. I am going to echo a lot of what we just heard.
At the Native Women’s Association of Canada, or NWAC, we advocate for the advancement of culturally relevant gender-based analysis, which we refer to by the acronym CRGBA. So, what is CRGBA? Let’s start there. It is an important analytical tool that evaluates the impacts of policies, programs and legislation on Indigenous women and girls, and two-spirit, transgender and gender-diverse people.
It centres traditional knowledge and considers the historical and current issues faced by Indigenous peoples, including the impacts that colonization and intergenerational trauma have caused. The CRGBA approach takes into account the patriarchal histories, structures and social norms imported from Europe that have been imposed on Indigenous communities since contact, which have had devastating consequences for their governance, community and family relations, with direct impacts on health and wellness.
This discussion is a timely one, chair, because, as you know, we are two days away from the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
It also integrates the specific cultural, geographical, historical and spiritual contexts and strengths of diverse Indigenous communities that have survived and resisted the imposition of patriarchal worldviews.
Honourable senators, the implementation of a CRGBA framework builds on GBA Plus to assess the impacts of policy and programming on the lives of Indigenous women and girls and two-spirit, transgender and gender-diverse individuals over a western framework. It is more inclusive as well as socially just. A culturally relevant gender-based perspective is one way of minimizing the potential for harm as well to increase safety. So let’s think of the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Let’s think about what we can do to make our sisters safe.
CRGBA has four key pillars. First, it must be distinctions based by recognizing the distinct lived experiences of First Nations on and off reserve, status and non-status, Inuit, land-claim beneficiary or not, and Métis. Second, it must be inclusive of gender diversity — cisgender, transgender, gender fluid or agender. Third, it must account for the intersectionality of cultural identity, race, class, ability, sexual orientation and so on. Finally, fourth, it must place value on Indigenous women’s ways of knowing.
So, what is the risk of not employing a CRGBA lens on policy work? I’m going to go off script a bit because there is a statistic from the Correctional Investigator of Canada, Dr. Zinger. In his last tabled report to Parliament on February 21, he said then that Indigenous women make up 4.9% of the population in Canada — we now make up 5% according to the census that just came out, I think, last week — but in any event, Indigenous women, honourable senators, make up 50% of the federal inmate population. So this work is urgent. I’m just expressing the urgency.
When policy work lacks a CRGBA, there is a risk of perpetuating further marginalization and further oppression and/or violence against Indigenous women. It is essential to consider the impacts of policy and programs, specifically as they pertain to First Nations, Métis and Inuit women.
I think I covered most of what I wanted to say, so I’ll end on this, honourable senators. It will also help policy-makers deconstruct colonial ways of thinking that trickle down to our communities and help perpetuate harm toward our people. With that, I thank you, honourable senators.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Smith.
Gerri Sharpe, President, Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada: Unnusaakkut. My name is Gerri Sharpe, and I am the President of Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada. With me today is Amanda Fletcher, our GBA Plus senior policy analyst. It is my pleasure to appear before you today to discuss the importance of utilizing not just Gender-based Analysis Plus, or GBA Plus, but a culturally appropriate GBA Plus lens in the creation of policy.
Pauktuutit is a national representative organization of Inuit women in Canada and is governed by a 15-member board of directors from across Canada. Pauktuutit’s work is grounded in Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit techniques, our Inuit principles and values and gender responses to issues affecting Inuit women.
Pauktuutit’s mandate is to foster greater awareness of the needs of Inuit women, advocate for equality and social improvements and encourage Inuit women’s full participation in the community, regional and national life of Canada.
Why is it so important that GBA Plus be incorporated in policy-making processes? GBA Plus is a method of analysis that acknowledges that each person is made up of many contributing factors and pieces of identity that define who we are. This includes examples such as race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, colonial impacts, land claim beneficiary status and physical location.
These factors do not stand alone, but all work in concert to shape who you are and impact how you experience and navigate systems and society. This illustrates the importance of the application of a GBA Plus lens to policy development and analysis, as diverse groups of people can all experience the same issue differently.
Pauktuutit would like to acknowledge that we see the Government of Canada as a leader in adopting and implementing GBA Plus to ensure the best outcomes are realized. This is especially true given that, while Inuit women are now invited into the decision-making platforms, we are often still denied a seat — and a vote — at the tables. This is true at the community, regional and national levels, where the capacity and talents of Inuit women and Inuit women’s leadership to address critical challenges are often diminished or untapped.
It is for this reason that, in 2019, Pauktuutit saw the need to develop an Inuit-specific GBA Plus framework as a policy and research tool to fully incorporate an intersectional approach to understanding the many personal, psychosocial, economic and political factors that shape the lived reality of Inuit women living both within and outside of Inuit Nunangat and Inuit Nunangit wherever we live.
GBA Plus has a heavy reliance on practitioners’ abilities to critically think and research. In order to make equitable decisions and realize positive outcomes, policy-makers need to continuously develop these abilities. This underlines the need for tools like Pauktuutit’s Inuit-specific GBA Plus framework, which includes information and exercises that will develop policy-makers’ abilities and knowledge regarding Inuit women, gender-diverse people, children and families. As GBA Plus is a competency, our Inuit-specific GBA Plus framework is a tool that can safeguard against practitioners’ existing blind spots and build on their competency around developing policy and programs that result in advanced equity outcomes for Inuit women, children and families.
Pauktuutit’s Inuit-specific GBA Plus framework positions the agency of Inuit and their resistance to oppressive forces such as colonialism, racism and sexism as central. Our framework requires a deep respect for Inuit worldviews, values and knowledge. It requires the sharing of power whereby Inuit determine the policies and programs that affect our lives.
The Chair: Ms. Sharpe, I apologize. Sadly, you are out of time. Hopefully, the Q & A will help you complete your presentation in different ways. Thank you so much to all the presenters. We will now proceed to questions from our committee members.
Senator Bovey: I would like to thank all the presenters. You have made very compelling arguments and insights, and I certainly appreciate the need to respect each and every individual cultural diversity.
What I have heard is you all have made it very clear that there needs to be different GBA approaches, each representative or relevant for your own situations. I would like to ask you how these different types of gender-based and intersectional analyses should be conducted for different types of policies.
I’m going to do a follow-up right away, because you can mix all this up for me. At what stages of policy development should GBA Plus be applied — at the beginning, throughout, from beginning to end or at the end? I’d like to hear your insights on that. I really value what you’ve said.
Ms. Sharpe: Thank you for that question. Pauktuutit’s Inuit-specific GBA Plus framework sets out ways to effectively include data; important information about Inuit; take account of Inuit values, experiences, strengths and diversity; and will effectively engage as a policy is developed, implemented and monitored — so at all stages.
Our framework takes a strengths-based approach and is based on the belief that the people and the communities have existing strengths, experiences and capacities, have the resources and can learn new skills and solve problems, and can use existing competencies to identify and address their own concerns.
The recognition of our Inuit GBA Plus framework represents a shift in how the Government of Canada understands issues that are important to Inuit women and gender-diverse people. Our Inuit-specific GBA Plus has already begun to create systematic change and build successful relationships across governments and key stakeholders, and it has also provided a path forward to ensuring Inuit rights, Inuit women’s rights to participate and the strengthening of Inuit leadership. Qujannamiik.
Ms. Omeniho: From our perspective, I believe we would have to do GBA throughout. It’s not a matter of us just starting and introducing and being like a Band-Aid on something else in the middle of a program. We can’t start it by saying we are going to do this.
More importantly, even to us, is to see what the outcomes are, because then we can measure the effectiveness of our GBA Plus culturally relevant toolkits. We want to see a better world for all individuals, and to do that, we have to be able to evaluate exactly how effective the tools have been in how we have applied them. Thank you for the question.
Ms. Smith: Thank you for the question, honourable senator. I’ll give an example. I echo a lot of what the other members said, but I think we need to take account of intersecting identities as the foundation, remembering that people are whole and the whole person comprises many intersecting identity factors, and taking that into consideration throughout the entire policy-making process.
I’ll give you an example. Say we have a pregnant person who lives in a remote community. She is transported to a community that has the necessary medical infrastructure to provide them with care. We ask ourselves some key questions: Do they have a close family member or friend who is able to make the trip with them? If they are 2SLGBTQ+, will the hospital be a safe space for them? Will they or their partner be treated with the same respect as a heterosexual or cisgender couple? Thank you.
The Chair: That is extremely illustrative.
Senator Patterson: Thank you to the presenters. I would like to direct my questions to Pauktuutit.
[Inuktitut spoken]
You have developed an Inuit-specific GBA Plus framework that is a tool for policy-makers to help them get over their blind spots. Our committee is going to be making recommendations in this study. What would you like to see us recommend be done with your Inuit-specific GBA Plus framework?
Ms. Sharpe: Senator Patterson, [Inuktitut spoken].
I would like to refer that response to Ms. Fletcher. She has helped develop this and my wish list is quite lengthy. She can make it more succinct.
Amanda Fletcher, Senior Policy Analyst, GBA+, Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada: Thanks for giving me the floor, Ms. Sharpe. I also want to acknowledge that our framework was built from the ground up with community, with Inuit women. As Ms. Sharpe referenced, it was really trying to figure out what we wanted to include.
The question referred to what we would like to see and how we would like this to be done. For us, an Inuit-specific or a culturally specific GBA Plus lens, such as one that is provided by our framework, is really about creating that space to amplify and prioritize perspectives and priorities of Inuit women, gender-diverse Inuit, their families and communities. As I am sure the committee is aware — and all the speakers here today could attest to this — our populations tend to be traditionally and systemically neglected or ignored.
For us, it’s about incorporating this lens, as Ms. Sharpe and all the other members referenced, across the policy cycle. We’re talking about implementation. We’re talking about roll-out. We’re talking about evaluation. Really, the end goal and the outcome we want is to have our voice recognized so that we are able to sit at those tables, participate equitably and have leadership in the policies and programs that affect our communities.
As Ms. Sharpe said, I could go on, too, but at the foundation, that’s what it’s about. As we said, GBA Plus is a competency, but it’s really important, as all the speakers referenced. We really need to recognize those intersectional pieces. Policies and programs are going to affect everyone very differently. It’s about having that acknowledgement but also really centring our voices in the policies that affect us. That is what it is all about — to ensure that policies are effective and that we’re achieving the outcomes we’re looking for and really taking leadership in these pieces. Thank you.
Ms. Sharpe: Just to add to that, it builds on IQ — Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit.
Ms. Fletcher: Absolutely.
Ms. Sharpe: This already exists in Inuit, as you’re aware, and is used in N.W.T. as well. Any place where there are Inuit businesses, they build in IQ. This starts from that.
Senator Patterson: Thank you very much. Look, I have another quick question. You mentioned that there are tables where you are denied a seat, but I know that Pauktuutit is active in the Inuit-Crown Partnership Committee table. And I know that table has developed an Inuit Nunangat Policy that hopes to have all federal departments sensitized to Inuit-specific needs. What other tables were you referring to when you said you’re denied a seat? Thank you.
Ms. Sharpe: We actually have a seat there. We do not have a vote. We do not have a voice. We are at the table and we can speak, but we do not have a vote. We are a permanent participant, but it’s more like an observer.
Senator Patterson: Thank you very much.
Senator Moodie: Thank you to the witnesses who have joined us today. My question is directed at Ms. Fletcher. As a policy analyst who specializes in GBA Plus and specifically in the Inuit tool that you’ve created, I’d be interested in your thoughts on the whole issue of training. Specifically, do you think that government policy analysts have access to sufficient training, especially very specialized tools such as yours? Do you think that we’re dealing with a significant training deficit here in terms of application of this tool or these tools?
Ms. Fletcher: That’s a super interesting question, and I could probably speak to that at length, but I will refrain. There is GBA Plus training that is available for all federal public servants. It’s a very fulsome training, but it is obviously geared to more of a broad look at GBA. GBA Plus is a broad competency. It definitely gives you the basic building blocks to be able to carry out GBA Plus and carry it out well.
The way that we see our framework and the way that we have been working with our government partners — who, by the way, have been fabulous in terms of really wanting to now incorporate a culturally specific way of doing GBA Plus because they acknowledge that it’s great — all federal departments have a mandate to implement GBA Plus, and they are really making a concerted effort to do so. But there is an acknowledgement across government that we also need to have that culturally specific lens.
We see it almost as a kind of puzzle that’s all fitting together. We’re not saying this GBA Plus tool is better than that one or we need to do this rather than that. We see GBA Plus as a competency that grows and evolves. When we’re talking about how a policy is going to impact a particular population, we really do need to have that cultural lens.
In terms of training, the willingness is there, and Pauktuutit — I can speak for our organization — we are currently working with them to incorporate our framework into their training modules. We are on the way to it being done. I would not say there is a deficit. I’m comfortable speaking for our organization to say that we’re thrilled to see the strides being made at the federal level in terms of ensuring, across government, through all stages of policy, that they are incorporating that lens. Now, it is just about incorporating the culturally specific pieces, slotting those into their current training. It’s happening. We’re doing it right now. They’ve been fabulous about putting training modules into their current GBA Plus training schedule around our Inuit-specific GBA Plus framework.
Ms. Sharpe: For your information, this is one of the reasons why I don’t do interviews in Inuktitut, because I don’t know how to say “gender-based analysis” in Inuktitut. There is no word for it.
Senator Moodie: I am asking you all, as very important participants in the process, to give us a sense of whether you think the tools available to government analysts are being used appropriately and in the right timing. I know you commented earlier on when you thought they should be used, but what is your impression of when they are actually being used? What’s happening currently?
Ms. Sharpe: Actually, over the past couple of years, a number of different federal organizations have contacted our office and have been working with our office on the GBA Plus lens and Inuit-specific framework. This is something that our staff has developed for us, and it has been used widely. The fact that the federal ministers are using it — and our staff make regular presentations as well — makes us very proud. For our board of directors, this is something they’ve been very happy to hear about because it’s been working.
Senator Dasko: Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. I would like to drill down a little bit on some previous questions that have to do with the way you’ve developed GBA. I would interpret from your comments that you actually don’t rely very much on the government’s GBA because you’ve all developed your own analysis. So you’re not actually taking what they’ve done, or you are taking something that they’ve done and you’ve worked with it.
I want to ask whether you apply your framework to all government policies. Do you have a kind of protocol that you would deal with to apply your analysis to all government policies that your communities are facing? That’s my main question. Just as an example, I think we all know that safe drinking water is an important policy of the federal government with respect to Indigenous communities right now and creating safe drinking water in communities across the country. I wonder if you would and how you might apply your analysis to a very high-profile policy like that. Thank you.
Ms. Omeniho: I would like to start by telling you that we did develop our own toolkit as well, and it was because the culturally relevant gender-based analysis toolkits didn’t exist, actually, and the toolkits missed the mark on the issues. They were more relevant to what would have probably been perceived as a feminist movement at the time, so we created our own toolkits from the ground up, much like Pauktuutit did.
As far as applying it, we still work very hard, even internally within our own Métis governments, to have them apply our toolkit. But more and more they’re starting to adapt parts of it, and they do come forward and ask us to do training with them so they have a better understanding of it.
Some departments, like I mentioned in my earlier talk, are CIRNAC, CMHC and WAGE. They’ve all come forward, and we have done presentations with them. There are other departments that are still not considering a gender-based analysis — actually, I’m going to say I don’t think they’re doing GBA on anything. Many times, policies are developed that may negatively impact us from an intersectional lens that nobody’s really ever thought of, but it is very rewarding to be able to talk to places like CMHC and make them understand how housing policies and programs may or may not actually meet the mark when it comes to Indigenous women or the LGBTQ community. We’re able to help them understand that better by applying our GBA Plus tool. Thank you.
Ms. Smith: Thank you for the question; it’s an important one. I echo again the other panellists. It didn’t exist, so we created it ourselves because of the need, but I will also say that we were doing it before it was articulated. NWAC will have a toolkit ready later this fall that will hopefully help all senators and everyone.
On the water point, Indigenous women have a special connection to water as life carriers. All women have a special connection to water, so there is a spiritual element as well. With the CRGBA lens, we’re not only looking at a human right that is being denied, we’re also saying that is an attack on spirituality as an Indigenous woman. I want to raise that.
I think with the implementation of UNDRIP through Bill C-15, coupled with a CRGBA analysis, I have more confidence in policies in Canada going forward. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Cordy: Thank you all so much; this has been a fascinating discussion. I had the privilege on Monday of listening to a panel on the Indigenous Peoples Committee of young Indigenous men and women who presented a lot of the same ideas you spoke about today, particularly intersectionality, that you can’t look at things in isolation and that you have to look at where people have come from in order to determine what needs they require. It was things you’ve all spoken about — race, gender, the Sixties Scoop, residential schools, where you live, colonialism — all of those things make you who you are. It was nice to hear the young people saying that, but also to hear you saying that today. Thank you all so much for that.
My question is for Ms. Smith. The document that you gave us, the starter kit for gender-based analysis, was very helpful to me, as I’m not a full-time member of the committee, to read through that last evening. I noticed that one of the things you talked about were the gaps in mainstream GBA and that it fails to adequately bring up the role that colonization has played. You spoke about policy and programming being developed not taking that background and intersectionality into account and looking at it. How do we change that?
I know someone said earlier that they are actually giving messaging and workshops to government departments, which is a very positive thing. But how do we ensure that all of these things are taken into account before we come out with all of these government policies that may or may not work?
Ms. Smith: Thank you. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission imposed Calls to Action on governments and civil society, but in my opinion, we all have a part to play. As policy-makers, it’s as simple as questioning what you believe. That’s hard to do. It sounds simple, but it’s a hard thing to do. I have a formal colonial education from law school. I have to constantly deconstruct my own thoughts. It’s not hard, but truth and reconciliation isn’t, but obviously it’s worthwhile.
In terms of gaps, we really need to have a trauma-informed approach in terms of policy-making, really understanding trauma and identifying how that affects Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences. Thank you.
Senator Cordy: You’re talking about a trauma-informed approach, and on Monday we had that very discussion about generational trauma. When I was questioning one of the witnesses I said that I’ve heard that this happened many years ago, so I asked how it can still be affecting people today and not understanding the generational trauma. How do you explain that to people who don’t understand that, even though it happened 50 years ago, it’s still very much affecting the young people that I heard from on Monday? It’s still impacting their lives.
Ms. Smith: That’s a great question. Part of the truth aspect of reconciliation is having those discussions. I often give personal experiences of people I know who have lived experiences in terms of having a parent that was a survivor of a residential school. Oftentimes the abuses of being a survivor of residential school meant that there were ways that they were trying to overcome their trauma that weren’t healthy, which affected the well-being of their children, not giving them what they needed to foster healthy relationships. If we look at it like that and demonstrate the links between generations and how it does go down the line and affects them, it still is very much — and a big part of this is it’s nothing for us without us. It’s listening with humility and open hearts and ears.
Ms. Sharpe: I feel I need to add something here because I have something I need to say. You mentioned this happened 50 years ago. This is not something that happened 50 years ago. I’m 52. I attended residential school. I’m part of the Sixties Scoop. I’m part of the truth and reconciliation effort. I’m part of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This is something that we need to remember and keep in mind. This is not something that was 50 or 60 years ago. My mother was born on the land. That’s the missing gap. The missing gap is the information of the people that you’re serving.
Senator Cordy: That’s important. Thank you for clarifying that.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: My question is also for you, Ms. Smith. I have looked at your document and I will explain the context. I myself am a person living with a disability and I have noticed that when we collect data, we often tend to ask, for example, “Are you a person with a disability, yes or no?”
It remains very general and, as a result, it puts all people with a disability in the same category.
I get the impression that we do the same thing when it comes to First Nations, Métis and Inuit people in Canada. Is this still a challenge, a problem?
Are we improving? How far should we go into the details and identity of an individual to properly identify challenges and create appropriate programs and policies? That was a long question.
[English]
Ms. Smith: I thank you for that. I apologize, I couldn’t get my translation to work, so I don’t think I understood fully. I apologize.
Senator Petitclerc: I can try again very quickly. That’s fine. What I’m saying is, as a person with a disability, sometimes what I see is that when they collect data they will ask whether you are a person with a disability. I have a feeling that the same approach still exists when it comes to Indigenous Canadians. Is it getting better? How important is it to go into detail in order to have approaches that are appropriate?
Ms. Smith: Thank you. That is such an important question. I’m doing work on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and this is a timely discussion. I’ve overseen an engagement session just this week and that was a big part of the discussion. I was engaging with people with lived experiences. There needs to be a level of detail because I also engaged with service providers who also need to know the level of detail, for example, of a disability so that it can be accommodated correctly. I thank you for that, because that is a very important piece of this. You also asked if it is getting better. Are we generalizing still and not getting to the level of detail so that we can fully implement the needs of our people in an inclusive way?
Ms. Sharpe: I do like the question that you asked for the pure fact that, within the Inuit community, when we speak of our community it can mean one community — my home community is Gjoa Haven. I can speak of my home community of Gjoa Haven, or I can speak of the Inuit community, which is all Inuit. This takes into account all of their physical abilities, their mental abilities and their identities. When it comes to Inuit, when we think of identities, 60 years ago, the term two-spirited would refer to shamanism, being able to take your skin off and become the animal that you were, the bear, and then putting your human skin back on. There was not LGBTQQIA+; it was human or animal. If you’re living, you are human in your human flesh.
The fact that there are multiple different ways of looking at a person and how they act as a human, that is all considered with the Inuit GBA Plus framework and it is rare. So when we refer to midwifery services in Inuit Nunangat, it implies right there that the majority of them need to deliver outside of Inuit Nunangat because they do not have those services. We take that into account when we refer to that. And when we refer to those requiring ramps, we know that’s going to be a problem within Inuit Nunangat because the capacity is not there for all that need a ramp to have that ramp.
Senator Martin: Thank you to our presenters. Just listening to my colleagues’ questions and your answers, many of my questions are already answered, but a few remain. I’ll go to those. Thank you for bringing forward your very carefully considered, culturally specific tools.
You represent your region, but also the national organization. I was wondering if there are other culturally specific frameworks that other groups have created; is there a list that we should be aware of? I know that Ms. Sharpe says she’s been working with different departments and various ministries, but I was wondering if the Government of Canada and all of its ministries are aware of these really wonderful tools. If not, we should make sure they are through this report.
Ms. Smith: Thank you for that question. That’s a great question. The way that NWAC is governed is that there is a provincial-territorial membership association in every province and territory. Those are our grassroots women and gender-diverse people that then inform our mandates at NWAC. We have a starter kit, but we will have a toolkit that people can use. All of the research that goes as a part of that is influenced by our grassroots members of NWAC all across the country. It would speak to regional and cultural differences within that governance structure.
Senator Martin: Very good. I’m curious about the Métis nations.
Ms. Omeniho: We have a gender-based toolkit that actually has been used by the Métis governments. They have us, as Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak, to come work with them. We also have provincial Métis women’s organizations that we go to, and we share that with them as well. We have also already shared it with the departments of the federal government that are open and receptive. Some departments that have not been as open and receptive are places like Environment and Climate Change Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, and we’re still working on things like ESDC. They have not all been as receptive and responsive to doing gender-based analysis, but I continue to push that work forward. We have also made inroads with Health Canada, I believe. Thank you for the question.
Ms. Sharpe: I’m going to say that Pauktuutit did a jurisdictional scan before creating our framework, but I’m going to leave it to Ms. Fletcher to finish answering.
Ms. Fletcher: That’s perfect, Ms. Sharpe. That’s where I was going to start. We can provide a list to the committee members afterwards. We did a full environmental scan of current culturally specific gender-based tools that existed, not just in Canada, but in the world. So we do have that, which we can provide at a later time.
In terms of looking at the broader government scope and the kind of dissemination and pickup of these tools and what that looks like, I mentioned before that we are looking at different ways and we have been engaging with a variety of government departments around the uptake of our Inuit-specific GBA Plus framework, what that will look like and what training will look like.
I also want to make a point to say that we are doing the same within communities. Our framework was built with Inuit communities, and we will continue to take the knowledge that they gifted us with, go back to them with our framework and try to build a lot of those pieces around how to utilize the framework in a more standardized, holistic way on the ground.
We do a lot of work with grassroots Inuit women’s organizations, and all of them have different levels of capacity. That comes down to need, funding and how that rolls out, and we can have a discussion on that. We’re concentrating on ways to build Inuit women’s leadership via this framework and to do that on the ground in the community as well, so everybody is familiar with this framework, which, again, as Ms. Sharpe said, is built on Inuit cultural principles.
This is not new information we will be giving them, but it’s just how it is applied and utilized at the ground level. It’s kind of hitting at getting government departments more familiar with this culturally specific way of doing GBA but also building that competency at the ground level with Inuit women’s organizations across Canada.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Fletcher. Senators, this brings us to the end of this panel. I would like to thank our witnesses very much for their participation. Your wisdom and assistance in completing our study is so much appreciated. I want to especially thank all of you for providing written material in advance, and I know some of you promised to send further material, which you can send to our clerk.
We will now move to our second panel. We welcome Dr. Sarah Kaplan, Distinguished Professor and Director, Institute for Gender and the Economy, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; and Dr. Wendy Cukier, Founder and Director, Diversity Institute, Toronto Metropolitan University. We have just received regrets from Dr. Bipasha Baruah, and we will ask her to submit her comments to us in writing instead.
I think our two panellists know how we do things. They have been before committees before. You will have five minutes for your opening statements, and then we will follow up with questions from the senators. Thank you so much.
Sarah Kaplan, Distinguished Professor and Director, Institute for Gender and the Economy, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto: Thank you so much. It is an honour to appear before this committee. I join you from the traditional lands of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca and the Mississaugas of the Credit.
As mentioned, I am a professor and director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy, and in this role, I promote the use of rigorous academic research to inform policy and practice. To prepare for this testimony, I reviewed the scholarly literature as well as government audits and reports on GBA Plus.
I would like to start by emphasizing that the introduction of GBA Plus into government policy analysis has been an essential step forward in assuring that policies, regulations and programs are advancing greater equity in Canadian society, which has been further reinforced by the Canadian Gender Budgeting Act and the Gender Results Framework introduced in Budget 2018.
Canadians can be proud that intersectional GBA Plus is recognized by the Canadian government as a key competency in support of the development of effective programs and policies.
The promise of GBA Plus is that not only can it measure and evaluate policy impacts, it can also inform policy priorities, shape policy and program design and guide implementation, yet there continue to be opportunities for improvement as it has yet to achieve its promise.
My review of the literature and audits suggests that although GBA Plus is supposed to be used across all government departments and agencies, it is inconsistently applied and often used only late in policy design and evaluation. Only 39% of departments perform it at the critical problem-definition stage more than 60% of the time. By only applying GBA Plus late in the process, policy-makers miss out on opportunities to use intersectional gender-based insights to identify policy priorities and shape policy design. Instead, GBA Plus tends to be used to identify impacts after the priorities and policies are established and then to suggest some incremental modifications around the margins that could mitigate gendered, racial or other impacts. Thus, the true potential of GBA Plus is missed.
Why might this be?
First, the staff charged with GBA Plus may not have the skills or the time to use GBA Plus in the most appropriate ways, and there is a lack of oversight and engagement by senior staff. While the government and the Canadian College have augmented training, tools and guidance since 2015, the capacity of departments to do GBA Plus has still remained a challenge. Much of the training is focused on the technical and administrative processes for GBA Plus, such as how to fill out the appropriate forms for budget submissions but not on how to engage in GBA Plus for policy prioritization and design. At the Institute for Gender and the Economy, we conducted a stakeholder analysis associated with the development of our own gender analytics training program and competency framework and found that many people within the government did not have the knowledge about how to undertake true GBA Plus.
Second, some of the challenge in assuring effective GBA Plus is in the lack of quantified data. The collection of disaggregated data on diverse groups has been slow. However, getting better quantitative data will not automatically lead to better policy.
Scholars who have studied GBA Plus have pointed out that the current implementation of GBA Plus does not include a process for a critical reading of policy or a consideration of how problems are defined. A focus only on numbers may divert attention from consultations with and support of feminist, community, Indigenous and social justice organizations who have originated — and are keepers of — GBA Plus knowledge. It risks turning GBA Plus into a seemingly “neutral” and bureaucratic methodology without recognizing the ways that power is embedded in the process.
Third, intersectionality is not yet effectively applied. The “Plus” focuses on adding race or income or disability or Indigeneity to gender rather than considering them simultaneously to understand the ways policy impacts, either negative or positive, can be amplified or dampened because of these intersections.
Further, gender is often treated as a binary without recognizing the diversity of gender in non-binary, two-spirit, intersex and transgender peoples.
So, what could be done to improve? Some recommendations include, first, reframing GBA Plus as central to policy and program planning rather than an add-on requirement, and monitoring departments and agencies in their appropriate use of GBA Plus, including making sure the “Plus” of intersectionality is foregrounded.
The second recommendation is building capacity in GBA Plus, including at the most senior levels, not just in service of administrative procedures for completing budget submissions but in how to use GBA Plus to set priorities, question assumptions, design policies and programs and monitor impact.
The third recommendation is engaging more deeply with — and financially supporting — grassroots and academic organizations that hold GBA Plus knowledge, involving them in both data collection and the co-design of policies and programs.
The final recommendation is investing in better collection of intersectional data through Statistics Canada and other mechanisms, while at the same time recognizing that quantified data is not the only important input to a good GBA Plus analysis.
In conclusion, GBA Plus holds great promise, but it will be least effective if it is only used as a policy evaluation tool. Its true power will come when the insights generated lead to innovative policies that can overcome the many impasses faced by efforts to achieve greater equity in society to date.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Wendy Cukier, Founder and Director, Diversity Institute, Toronto Metropolitan University, as an individual: Thanks very much for the opportunity to present today.
I don’t want to repeat the important insights and recommendations that have been made to date in this review of GBA Plus in government. I wanted to add a few things based on the conversation so far.
I should say, to start, that like Dr. Kaplan, I’m joining you from the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Haudenosaunee, the Wendat peoples, the Chippewa and the Anishinaabe. I’m from the university formerly known as Ryerson, which has a deep commitment to truth and reconciliation that is reflected, in part, in its recent name change.
The work that we do at the Diversity Institute is very much grounded in trying to link GBA Plus to organizational goals and objectives, and so I wanted to add a slightly different perspective to the discussion.
I also wanted to note that we are currently one of the ecosystem partners for the 50 – 30 Challenge and have collected a range of tools to advance gender-based analysis and increase diversity in organizations. I’m happy to provide some of those different approaches because, as you heard, many grassroots organizations have different strategies and tools that they have developed to specifically address the needs of persons with disabilities or the 2SLGBTQ+ community and so on. I am happy to share those.
I should also note that in addition to leading projects like the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub, I am on the board of the Federation of African Canadian Economics and very involved in some of the work that’s currently being done to address anti-Black racism. Again, some tools are specifically designed to deal with anti-Black racism and an intersectional lens.
Here are some points that I just thought were worth considering. It was raised by the last panel that some government departments are more focused and more receptive on this analysis than others. I think Dr. Kaplan mentioned the fact that very often it’s an afterthought; it’s part of evaluation and so on. Our strong recommendation is to embed a gender and diversity perspective into the very framing of policy.
One of the most impactful things that the government has done in the last couple of years is putting a big emphasis through Treasury Board and through the letters from the Clerk of the Privy Council and the mandate letters for ministers. Those actions, I would argue, more than almost anything, have really raised the commitments in departments to gender and diversity issues. I think that really signals what many of us understand, which is that leadership is essential.
So you have ministers who may talk about gender and diversity when they are meeting with equity-deserving organizations, but they forget about it when they are doing their main jobs. That’s what we really must combat. We have to ensure that gender-based analysis and gender and diversity analysis are embedded in the core business of these organizations. We have to consider some of our assumptions. How do we define innovation? How do we define entrepreneurship? How do we prioritize investments and economic development? I can talk about that in more detail, but those fundamental questions have a huge impact on who gets access to resources, and we have to start pushing the analysis further upstream.
The other point that I wanted to note is that, in our experience, what gets measured gets done, and so metrics and accountability frameworks are absolutely key. Training is necessary but insufficient. It has to be in a context where there is accountability for results.
The final point that I would like to make is that, in our view, the way to bring more than the usual suspects to the table is to help them understand how this will enable them to do their jobs better, how this will enable them to serve people better and how this will enable them to do a better job of policy development. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you to both our witnesses. We will now go to questions.
Senator Bovey: Thank you both. I could ask all sorts of questions, but I’ll limit it to two. I’ll come at it from a practical perspective.
I gather from what I have heard from both of you that you feel that those who are conducting GBA Plus do not have access to all the tools and resources and perhaps even the philosophy that they need to make it effective. So I want to ask you who should be ultimately responsible for ensuring that GBA Plus is both conducted and acted on. I appreciate that you’re talking about its aid in the development of goals of an institution and development of policy and measuring and all of that. But just who should be responsible for ensuring that those effects carry on? I would like to ask that of both our witnesses.
Ms. Cukier: Personally, I think the Clerk of the Privy Council and Treasury Board have far more influence over setting priorities in federal departments. I think that’s where the focus needs to be because many departments will, like other organizations, follow the money. If they really believe that doing this well is going to have an impact on the budgets that they receive, I think that will move behaviour faster than many other initiatives focused on raising awareness, for example.
Ms. Kaplan: Thank you. I completely agree with Dr. Cukier. I would also add, as I indicated in my testimony some time ago on the formation of Women and Gender Equality Canada, as a department, it has a crucial role in developing the competencies and helping the other departments develop the competencies. I agree that people will follow the money, but if they don’t know how, if they don’t have the skills and the tools and they don’t have the individual capabilities and the organizational processes to do this effectively, then they won’t be able to accomplish what Dr. Cukier is talking about.
Senator Bovey: I don’t know whether you heard the previous panel. Obviously, each of those organizations have their toolkits and those are obviously specific to their cultural needs. How does that get woven into government policy and government applications if we want this to be effective throughout government and all ministries?
Ms. Kaplan: It’s very important to recognize that there are all of these various tools. Departments and agencies should be investing time in getting access to those and building capabilities in using them or in engaging some of these community-based organizations in helping them use them. This is not just about the government doing stuff for people, but about engaging; as many of the earlier speakers said, “nothing about us without us.” Part of it is engaging those communities, but there needs to be a much greater attention to building up those skills.
If we look at the training that is available currently, it is offered by the government or the Canadian College. It is much more focused on how you actually create that budget submission — what are the forms and what do you need to know to be able to fill them out? There’s not very much on what you actually need to think about in doing an intensive gender-based analysis on the design of the priorities and the policies. That’s the missing piece to me.
Ms. Cukier: The other missing piece is the motivation, the “why.” From my point of view — and, again, I’m in a business school, so perhaps I have a distorted perspective — I think people are often moved through enlightened self-interest. I see that organizations are more likely to respond if they see how this will help them do a better job of what they are trying to accomplish, as opposed to driving it through a compliance model.
There is a lot of nuance in how that works. I’m happy to talk more about what we have seen with some of the economic development ministries, the regional development agencies, ISED, and so on, on how to frame some of this work in a way that really resonates and motivates people to move forward.
Senator Patterson: Thanks very much for your presentations, both of you. Dr. Kaplan, I heard you clearly say that many people in government don’t have the knowledge of how to apply GBA Plus. In some cases, they end up tacking on the analysis at the end of the policy-making, rather than making it formative.
Your recommendation was that we build capacity in GBA Plus at all levels. Pauktuutit appeared just before you and said that this should be built into federal training modules.
Would you expand on how this capacity should be built into GBA Plus at all levels? What is the mechanism for doing that? We’re going to have a chance to make recommendations to the government. How would you frame that, please?
Ms. Kaplan: Thank you very much for the question. I do not believe there is just one solution to this. One could be improving and augmenting the training that is already offered through WAGE and through the Canadian College.
But another is taking advantage of, again, these organizations. The witnesses in the previous panel said that they have training that they offer. They are also organizations that are completely resource poor and are not adequately supported. I think there is a real opportunity here for the government to support those organizations to be bringing that training and sharing that knowledge with communities.
We at the Institute for Gender and the Economy have designed our own training that is not just for government, although it includes government, and also for NGOs and the corporate world. We offer it as an online program. We will start an in-person program.
One of the challenges we have heard from talking to government folks is this particular training is not authorized or doesn’t officially count, and so they can’t take it as a way of proving that they have developed these competencies.
So I think this is a real opportunity. Who are all the outside organizations, whether they are universities or whether they are community-based organizations, who could offer the training in these competencies, and how can those be certified and made official so that the government officials can take advantage of them?
Senator Patterson: Thank you very much.
The Chair: Ms. Cukier, would you comment on that?
Ms. Cukier: I agree. In my mind, training is, as I said, necessary but insufficient. I know if I eat too much and don’t exercise, I will be fat. But it doesn’t change my behaviour. So I do think that in addition to thinking about the range of training that should be available and allowing some choice — if you’re running programs in downtown Toronto, anti-Black racism is kind of fundamental. If you’re running programs in St. John’s, Newfoundland, maybe not so much or maybe it’s not as central. So I do think there is an advantage to having a range of diverse programming.
But again, my view is that’s part of the process. Where it really has to start is when government is setting priorities and ensuring that they are asking really fundamental questions about basic definitions.
Do I have time to just give you one example? The COVID relief programs were designed around loans and initially focused on small- and medium-sized enterprises with one employee. Of women-owned businesses, 90% don’t have employees and are not incorporated. Most Indigenous businesses are not incorporated. When we looked at Black entrepreneurs, 98% said they could not take on additional debt.
So there are fundamental questions that needed to be asked at the outset in order to design those programs properly. We were lucky because the government was very responsive and iterative, but I would argue that we have cases where gender and other forms of bias are baked into our fundamental framing of what we’re trying to do in ways that we have to be able to address. The only way to do that is at the cabinet table and around the most senior decision-making fora.
Senator Moodie: Thank you to our witnesses today. My question is going to focus on data. We are aware of the renewed focus on the collection of disaggregated data and the investments that have been made recently. But we still have a problem with a lack of data. It remains a key issue.
What do you think can be done to address this barrier? While we increase our data collection capabilities, what sorts of other sources of data or information can analysts use to address some of this in the meantime?
Ms. Cukier: I’m the research lead for the Future Skills Centre. One of the things that we pushed very hard — and we’re seeing other departments picking this up — is building in identity markers to every single program so we know what programs are being delivered to whom, and what the impacts are.
I can tell you that a lot of government departments, even WAGE, do not know what data they can collect from the organizations that they are serving. All of the Statistics Canada work has been amazing, but if you’re not collecting data from the people that you’re serving and analyzing that, you don’t actually know who is benefiting from all the programs that are being offered by the federal government. So that’s one area that really needs work.
Ms. Kaplan: I would like to build on that and say, for example, in the United States, they have the EEOC, and every employer therefore has to collect this identity data, so there is so much more data available in the United States than there is in Canada.
This is a very radical suggestion that is not something that can be done by tweaking on the margins. But my view is we need a similar national program that requires all employers to collect these data. Ms. Cukier is describing how each individual program might do it. That becomes incredibly fraught because there is so much effort and energy that goes into every time you have to collect these data.
I will recognize that it is often hard to collect it. You have to pay attention to a lot of cultural sensitivities. I have been on panels where Indigenous people say they refuse to fill these out because they don’t want their data collected. So we have to be extremely sensitive about how to do this.
I think we are missing, on a national level, a huge opportunity to understand more who is employed and who is being served, because we have not historically collected that data, and as a result, you can ask StatCan to do all sorts of things, but they don’t have the data to do it.
I also think we need a much greater investment in StatCan on doing collecting and analyzing along these lines that we have been talking about.
Ms. Cukier: A piece of that is also linking StatCan data to administrative data so that you can really understand the connections between investments and programs and outcomes in terms of employment, wages and so on.
Senator Dasko: Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. Many of the issues about gender-based analysis that both of you have talked about today we also heard from the Auditor General, who was here last week. She said some very similar things about lateness in the process and capacity and all of the other issues, so I think there is a common theme here that is definitely supported.
I wanted to probe a little bit more on where you may have seen successes. Dr. Cukier, you already mentioned one success in terms of GBA with respect to COVID, but I wonder if there are other case studies that you can point to in the federal government where they have really done a good job at GBA on some policy area. I would like to hear about some successes.
As well, in any instances where, let’s say, the academic community has assisted government, done an analysis for them on GBA and again at the case study level, I would like to hear about the analysis, how it was done and how it was used. Why was it successful? That’s my first question to both of you.
Ms. Kaplan: I’m eager to hear what Dr. Cukier has to say, because in our stakeholder analysis and the consultations we did in government, we asked everyone for examples of successes and no one could give us any. I’m sure there are, but there were a lot of people who said they couldn’t think of something where it had been transformational in the way that Dr. Cukier and I are talking about. I’m curious to hear where we might be seeing some of the bigger successes.
Ms. Cukier: The question is whether the glass is half empty or half full. Nothing is perfect, but I’ll point to some things that I think are really encouraging.
ESDC, for example, has recognized that our success in terms of the skills strategy nationally depends not only on fixing job seekers but also on tackling employers, their practices and what needs to happen. It’s only been in the last year that we’ve started to see organizations like ESDC, which put a lot of money into training, focusing on demand-side factors. That was a direct result of work that was done looking at gender and diversity impacts.
Another example — and Dr. Kaplan was involved in this, as was Senator Omidvar — is the research done on issues around representation and leadership that highlighted the intersectional lens and shifted the focus from simply looking at more women in leadership roles and accountability frameworks through the OSC, and so on, to women on boards focusing on the four designated groups, and then the subsequent 50 — 30 Challenge. I think you can trace a direct connection between those policy initiatives and gender-based analysis with a real diversity lens. For me, those are encouraging initiatives.
Some of the work that is being done around the Black entrepreneurship strategy and the Black Opportunity Fund — focusing on generational wealth in the Black community and recognizing that anti-Black racism is something the government has to deal with specifically based on disaggregated data which is undeniable — is encouraging.
I can point to individual programs and examples. The regional development agencies are now collecting a full range of gender and diversity data when they’re giving out money. The NRC IRAP is looking at how it can leverage its positioning as a funder to advance gender and diversity among small- and medium-sized enterprises across Canada. Those are the things that will actually drive change in the ecosystem. Again, I focus primarily on innovation, skills and so forth, but I see those as being very encouraging.
Senator Lankin: Nice to see you, Dr. Cukier. It has been quite a while. Welcome to you and to Dr. Kaplan.
I have a series of questions. I’ll put them all out and then ask both of you to respond. They build on your most recent comments, Dr. Cukier, and the work that many have contributed to — including, as you mentioned, Senator Omidvar — around board diversity and a range of other things.
When you were talking earlier about enlightened self-interest, I was thinking about that and about the book Good to Great and others that have been saying to corporations that your involvement of the community, of stakeholders and of understanding not just the shareholder perspective — all of that — has been a very important part of the shift in the corporate sector. Government has a role in the regulation of that.
I’m thinking of a number of things. First, how could you help us look at the network of training facilities, whether they’re in universities or whatever? Do you have a network? How could we approach the idea of seeing certification that would make these kinds of programs across the country available and certified so that government departments in those areas could know and approach it?
I assume that part of your work is training policy analysts of the future that are going to come into government. What if we talked to the government about criteria for hiring into policy kinds of jobs, and skills competency in understanding GBA Plus was part of that?
Looking at the actual issues around board governance with corporate, Crown and not-for-profit boards, we’ve seen a huge move on social responsibility — not just on shareholder relationship management but on stakeholder relationship management. Dr. Kaplan, when I attended the Rotman Directors Education program many years ago, there were materials on social responsibility. But there was nothing around whether the board has a responsibility not just on diversity in the numbers of people, but on how they’re going about doing their business and interacting in the community. Is there something you have already done or can we influence all of the directors education programs?
Also, what kind of interaction could we have with securities commissions and organizations like the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance? I’ll leave it at that. Thank you.
Ms. Cukier: Yes, I think the idea of curating resources as opposed to picking winners makes a lot more sense because it allows people choice. I think the Standards Council of Canada is moving into this area with formal standards processes. They might be very interested in doing something like that.
I love your suggestion of introducing competencies around gender-based analysis into hiring processes. I would add to that lived experience because, as someone once said, “Why is it working in a soup kitchen is considered good experience to be a doctor and growing up poor is not?” I really think we devalue people’s lived experience and what that brings to policy processes.
There is a whole other discussion we can talk about with respect to boards and leadership. I do think the 50 — 30 Challenge is offering some real tools and best practices around how to take a whole-of-organization approach, recognizing that if you don’t deal with all aspects of the organization, you can’t change who’s at the top of the house. So there’s lots to talk about. I’m happy to send some follow-up stuff. I’m sure Dr. Kaplan can as well.
Ms. Kaplan: Thank you. I wholly agree on curating resources. I love this idea of putting it into the hiring criteria. At universities, we ask all applicants for academic jobs to submit a diversity statement about the commitment to diversity and how they work that into their research and not just into their commitment to whom their team members are and things like that. I could imagine something similar. With the support of WAGE, we developed a gender analysis competency framework that can be used for evaluation of the competencies of individuals and organizations. I’ll be sending that to the committee afterwards.
On board governance, I’ve been trying to intervene on that front with the 360 Degree Governance program document that I developed with Peter Dey, emphasizing that you cannot be a good director in the 21st century without dealing with these questions of Indigenous rights, diversity and inclusion in your organization. It’s not just the diversity and inclusion of your staff, it’s the ways that your products and services actually go to market and whether or not those are inclusive. I agree that is incredibly important. It’s a personal passion of mine.
Senator Lankin: Has that been incorporated into the Rotman Directors Education program yet?
Ms. Kaplan: No, but I have been asked to help make that happen, so it will be.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: I’d like to get your point of view on something I find hard to reconcile. On the one hand, we heard testimony on this subject today and last week, and the auditor also commented on the extensive lack of disaggregated data. We also lack data quality and consistency. On the other hand, we also heard previous testimony about how important it is to go into further detail, in terms of what data we are requesting and collecting. We therefore need to collect even more disaggregated data.
Should we tackle both problems at the same time, or should we do one before the other? Who should be responsible for this challenge? Is it realistic to try to accomplish it all?
[English]
Ms. Cukier: There are a lot of mechanisms and points at which government touches people, corporations and businesses through a whole variety of programs. There are some principles in data management that talk about “ask once.” You get a profile of the business, the business comes and asks for money from ISED, and you have the demographics on that business. They ask for money from IRAP, and you have information on them; they file their taxes, and you have information on them.
From my point of view, what’s inconsistent right now is the demographic data that we’re collecting, whether we’re talking about corporations or individuals who are accessing programs, et cetera. A lot of that just has to do with will. The government simply has to start asking more questions when they are providing policies and services, recognizing the point that Dr. Kaplan made about having to be concerned about privacy confidentiality; you can’t compel people to self-identify and so on. But if we don’t have that data, we really have a problem.
I would also argue that the government can compel other organizations. Right now, the Employment Equity Act requires financial services to report on their employment. There is no mechanism in Canada for requiring financial institutions to tell us who is getting access to money, even though they control access to student loans, mortgages and loans for small businesses, and fundamentally impact generational wealth for women, racialized people, Black people and so on. I think the government can do a lot to encourage more data collection and sharing on the delivery of services, for example, and that would make a huge difference.
Ms. Kaplan: I completely agree. I will also re-emphasize the point that I made in my opening remarks, and that echoes points that were made by the previous panel, which is that not all data can be quantified. While it is extremely important that we collect better data in exactly the way Dr. Cukier has said, we have to pay attention to the engagement with communities and knowledge keepers. A lot of what we can really learn in terms of creating more equitable policies will be through co-designing and information about the lived experience of people that can’t be captured in numbers.
Even as we talk about the dearth of quantitative data, the part that policy-makers really struggle with is how to do a good job with qualitative data collection, which is not simply doing a consultation where everyone talks for five minutes. No offence to this panel, but I’m saying I’ve been on government consultations, have had five minutes to say something and then the policy gets made. That’s not what we’re talking about here.
Ms. Cukier: There is such a bias in government toward quantitative data, and there tends to be a marginalization of other forms of knowledge. That’s an embedded bias that we have to address as well.
The Chair: I would like to ask a question of my own, and it is to both or either one of you.
We heard in previous panels that adding the “Plus” after GBA is not ideal because it disadvantages the paths of people of racial minority backgrounds — Indigenous, disabled, et cetera — that it is an afterthought and it does not take centrality in the government’s work. They cited examples or instances where the GBA may have been conducted, but there was no “Plus” attached to it. There was discussion around whether it would be important or imperative to have a separate analysis conducted on the “Plus” as separate from the GBA. Would you comment on that, both of you?
Ms. Kaplan: We have to keep in mind that gender is diverse and diversity is gendered. That is, I don’t believe that a separate analysis is possible because the whole point is that the impact of a policy on a White woman without children, like me, and a Black woman who is a single head of household or something else is going to be very different. We also know that there are policies that affect men, gender-diverse people, et cetera, depending upon their race, their socio-economic class and whether they have a disability or not.
So I do not think the answer is a separate analysis. I think the answer is to understand that what we’re paying attention to are the intersections. I agree the branding of GBA Plus is problematic. We have the same thing with the Institute for Gender and the Economy, which is inherently intersectional, in our view, but gets understood differently. It needs to be more of a reframing about how we do the analyses than saying we’re going to do gender separately from race or Indigeneity or socio-economic class. That’s dangerous because a lot of the impacts come from the ways in which gender intersects with those other factors.
I think that there is a real opportunity, and when you read all of the academic articles that have critiqued GBA Plus, many have focused on this issue of the “Plus” being a has-been and needing to figure out a way to integrate it where the intersections are centred as opposed to gender or race or disability, et cetera.
Ms. Cukier: Intersectionality is important, but so are the designated groups, sexual orientation and gender diversity.
My belief is that we will end up with a lot of different approaches. I know from an end-user perspective, if you put the hat of the organization on — we’re working with a couple right now — trying to navigate between multiple forms of analysis can be really challenging. My solution would be to simply rebrand it as gender and diversity analysis or something that makes it clear that the “Plus” isn’t an add-on.
I know diversity is sometimes considered pejorative as well, so I don’t really care what the term is, but I do think people don’t understand that the other dimensions are just as important.
The Chair: That’s an interesting point about rebranding.
Ms. Kaplan, I have a quick question for you. It is based on the recommendation I think I heard you make that, ideally, you would like to see Canada implement the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s data collection method. I just got a note from the Library of Parliament analyst here who informed me that the difference between the two is that, in Canada, we ask for this information through employment equity surveys, but self-identification is what gets us the data. Are you suggesting that we collect data in a way that does not give people a choice for self-identification? I’m not quite clear about this, so enlighten me.
Ms. Kaplan: Even at the EEOC in the U.S., people self-identify because it’s the individual employees who fill it out. I’m not suggesting anything other than self-identification in those choices.
My understanding is it would be extremely difficult to implement this system in Canada, given Canada’s history and the way that the laws and regulations have developed. I think this is more of, as I said before, a pie-in-the-sky wish that there were some more systematic way to collect these data than we have now. The examples that we talk about otherwise are just different organizations each individually implementing their own system, having to redesign and rethink it themselves. There is a lot of lost efficiency, and there’s no centralization of that data to use it effectively for policy design. I’m not sure that within the Canadian framework it’s even possible to implement it in the way that it’s implemented in the U.S.
Senator Bovey: I want to come back to training and how we create this paradigm shift that is really needed. The training is to make sure that people understand both the need for and the implementation of GBA Plus.
You’re both from academic organizations, obviously. Are GBA Plus training programs ingrained through academic curriculum so that students coming through the system will understand what it is, or is it just in gender studies and public administration programs? If I were going back to teaching cultural policy, I can tell you that, after today, it would be in the very early part of the course. What about in arts, medicine, engineering, et cetera? Is there a way to get this incorporated into the curriculum for students to engage with before they have to apply it?
Ms. Cukier: Universities are among the most difficult organizations to change. They make changing the government look like a piece of cake, because there is a lot of autonomy.
Institutions are increasingly making available courses but the extent to which they are mandatory — I did mandatory training on gender for all the first-year engineers at Ryerson from 1991 to 1996. That was a requirement of professional practice introduced by the Professional Engineers Ontario, but I can tell you that it still remains very uneven and spotty in the professional schools as well as in programs, generally.
Ms. Kaplan: I agree with Dr. Cukier. I’ve been trying to make this happen at the University of Toronto for a very long time. What will drive it is if employers start asking for it, so to the earlier conversation about the idea that if you want to go to the government, you have to actually show that you have GBA Plus competency, that will drive it through all of the programs.
The way we do change in academia is that employers change what they want, students create demands and then we’re forced to do it. But it’s very hard for us to drive it proactively. That’s the way we’re going to get change. It’s just like Dr. Cukier said: When it became a requirement of professional practice, there had to be a course, and people received training in it.
Senator Dasko: My brief question is to Dr. Kaplan. You mentioned your view that Statistics Canada should be doing more. What do you think they should be doing? Should they do new studies, or should they add to existing studies? If it’s existing studies, which ones? Should they be adding questions or sample size?
Ms. Kaplan: I’ll offer some examples. We’re doing a study on the gender wage gap and the degree to which it’s driven by women switching jobs after the birth of their first child. One of the things we want to know is the characteristics of employers, who they are switching to and whether those employers have more family-friendly policies. We were using a workforce employment survey that got closed down, so we have to do this study based on very old data because that survey is no longer run. We don’t have current data on the kinds of policies that organizations are implementing that might or might not be more family friendly. That’s an example.
Also, in doing this study, because of limitations in the staff and the constraints within StatCan, it took us two and a half or even three years to get the multiple data sets we needed to match in order to be able to do that study.
There would be a lot more opportunity if there were greater funding and more staff. They could do these studies and provide the data in a much more timely fashion than they’re doing now.
A lot of the recent stuff they’ve been doing on gender is focused on senior leadership, such as women on boards. That’s fine. Yes, we have a problem with women on boards, but a lot of the inequality is happening with the poorest and most marginalized people in our society. There is not capacity to do a lot of those analyses that we would like to do.
I think they’re underfunded and don’t have the capacity to do studies even with the data they have, never mind collect data that would be useful.
Senator Lankin: Thank you very much. I appreciate all of the dialogue we have had with you.
I asked earlier if there is a network of schools and institutions like yours. If there is, please send that to us because that could be part of our approach to government around this issue of potential certification, et cetera.
This is almost an academic question, but who better to ask than two academics? I want to come back to the discussion that Senator Omidvar raised about the marginalization of the “Plus” and how it really is about intersectionality. There is also concern among some feminists that we only got GBA going; now, is there a threat to consideration of the issues that affect women directly, including the richness of the analysis for intersectionality? I’m not opposed to a rebranding or anything like that, but I’m trying to understand the competitive pressures that are at play for various equity-seeking groups. Do you have any comments on that?
Ms. Cukier: Human rights are not a pie. It’s not a competition. I’ve been working on these issues, and I know many of you from the early days. There is always a side of me that is worried that we’re going to lose the focus on gender because there are so many people that will say, “That’s already done, and we know for sure today.” But we need to be very careful to guard against — and Senator Omidvar knows my most horrifying stat, which is that half the population of Toronto is White and half the population is racialized, and half the population is men and half the population is women, more or less, and yet White women outnumber racialized women 12 to 1 on corporate boards. Search in a place and you can look at wage gaps and all sorts of things.
We have to recognize that women are making progress — maybe not as fast as we would like — but other groups are really being left behind. We have to find a way to move everybody forward at the same time.
Ms. Kaplan: I completely agree.
In the corporate world, there is a “bright, shiny object problem,” which is that sometimes they want to talk to you about women; sometimes they want to talk to you about transgender and non-binary people. Then it’s, “Oh, we don’t care about that. We care about Black Lives Matter now.”
We get waves of interest in the different aspects, but we need to talk about all of these all the time. I don’t know how you can talk about Black Lives Matter without talking about Black women. The problem is that people want to see things one-dimensionally. The “Plus” is so important because we need to shift the focus to think in the ways that Dr. Cukier is talking about in that it’s not that women are making progress; maybe it’s that White, elite women are making progress.
I agree with you that it is incredibly important not to lose the gender and the focus on women and people of diverse genders, but if we don’t incorporate all these other intersecting identities — disability and socio-economic class, and not just the four protected classes, but all the ways people’s identities intersect — we’re never going to achieve the equality we want to achieve.
The Chair: Thank you to our witnesses for a most interesting and insightful session. Thank you for your offer of sending materials to us. We would be more than happy to receive them.
Honourable senators, our next meeting will be tomorrow morning, when we will begin our study on the federal framework for suicide prevention.
(The committee adjourned.)