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THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AFFAIRS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

EVIDENCE

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OTTAWA, Wednesday, September 21, 2022

The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met with videoconference this day at 4:06 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 our committee is beginning its study of the role of gender-based analysis plus, or GBA Plus, in the policy process.

For our first panel, we welcome representatives from the Office of the Auditor General of Canada: Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada; Carey Agnew, Principal; and Stephanie Moores, Director. Thank you so much for joining us today.

I now invite you to provide your opening remarks, and I remind you that you have five minutes allocated for opening statements, followed by questions by our members. Over to you, Ms. Hogan.

[Translation]

Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: Madam Chair, as we mark the 2022 edition of Gender Equality Week, I want to thank you for the opportunity to discuss our follow-up report on gender-based analysis plus, which was tabled in Parliament in May of this year. I would like to acknowledge that this meeting is taking place on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. Joining me today are Carey Agnew and Stephanie Moores, who were responsible for this audit.

As you are aware, gender-based analysis plus — or GBA Plus — is the main tool used by the government to consider how gender and other identity factors can impact how Canadians experience the delivery of programs and services.

Many demographic factors beyond our gender can impact how we experience life and how we access government programs and services. For example, a person may be part of a visible minority, be Indigenous, be old or young, have a disability, live in a rural setting or be a newcomer to Canada. Using GBA Plus, the government must take our identity factors into account when developing, implementing, or adjusting programs and services.

We found that long-standing challenges that we previously identified continue to hinder the full implementation of GBA Plus across government. For this audit, we again included the Privy Council Office, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, and Women and Gender Equality Canada. Although the lead organizations have addressed some of the recommendations from our 2015 audit, many others date back to our first audit of gender-based analysis in 2009.

It’s been 25 years since the government committed to GBA Plus. Progress on identifying and addressing barriers has been slow.

Despite our previous work and recommendations, it is unclear whether actions are achieving better gender equality, diversity and inclusion outcomes.

[English]

We found that the actions taken to identify and address the challenges of undertaking GBA Plus did not go far enough. The Privy Council Office, or PCO, and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat made GBA Plus analysis a requirement for some submissions and implemented a more rigorous system for senior management review, as we recommended in our 2015 audit. However, these central agencies fell short in using their knowledge and the results of their challenge-function role to advance GBA Plus implementation across government.

Women and Gender Equality Canada took action by developing tools and delivering training to build capacity across government to perform GBA Plus. Despite this, departments and agencies still faced challenges that limited the meaningful application of GBA Plus.

One of the challenges identified by most departments and agencies was GBA Plus data availability. Even though they are trying to improve disaggregated data availability, this challenge was not resolved. The lack of disaggregated data makes it impossible to understand how diverse groups experience inequality, and all three of the organizations we audited identified this issue as a significant challenge.

Finally, we also found that there was no approach to sharing information between the central agencies and Women and Gender Equality Canada to track progress of GBA Plus implementation throughout government over time. As GBA Plus is the main tool used by government to consider gender and other identity factors, Canadians should know whether it is effectively implemented and having real impacts on programs and service delivery.

The Privy Council Office, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat and Women and Gender Equality Canada need to better collaborate and ensure that all departments and agencies fully integrate GBA Plus in a way that produces real results for all Canadians.

Madam Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Hogan.

Colleagues, I neglected to give you the opportunity to introduce yourselves, so I will try to remedy that as you ask questions. As is our usual practice, I would like to remind senators that you have limited time both for your questions and for your answers. We have almost a full house but not quite. Today, as an exception, we will try five minutes per senator for question and answer. If that doesn’t work out, I can hasten it.

We will throw our first question to the deputy chair of the committee, Senator Pat Bovey from Manitoba.

Senator Bovey: I appreciate the presence of the witnesses and the work and commitment to this issue.

My question is really simple. I’d like to know what barriers you feel there are for the full implementation of GBA Plus, and once you’ve defined those barriers, I wonder if you could tell us what the solution might be.

Ms. Hogan: I would summarize the barriers that we found into three different buckets. It’s important to note that many of these barriers remain from our previous audit work, both in 2009 and 2015.

The first would be the lack of capacity in departments to do the analysis. I would describe that as lack of time and availability of tools or resources.

The second would be the lack of availability or use of data. We found that many departments didn’t understand the importance of gathering data, especially disaggregated data, or when they did gather it, they didn’t use it.

The third barrier would have been the lack of focus on intersectionality. This includes breaking down data by different diversity factors. While there has been a great dialogue and better awareness in recent years, it is just that; it’s a lot of dialogue. So it’s really some concrete action that is required.

You asked about remedies. I think that would be the first place. One is actually setting ourselves up to measure outcomes and then reporting against them. We see a lot of output measurement, activities that are done, but not necessarily measuring whether or not there is a change to a program or policy, and whether or not there is a real impact on Canadians.

The next big action that would help address those barriers would be to have data collection strategies. Every department should have one. You need to know what data you have to gather, what data you have and how to store it, use it and retrieve it. Then, you also have to actually do something meaningful with it. I would summarize it that way for you.

Senator Bovey: As a follow-up, I’m really concerned that you said some departments don’t seem to understand it. So it seems to me we’re all over the map a bit. Who should be ultimately responsible for ensuring that the GBA Plus is conducted?

Ms. Hogan: I think you’ve described it well. I guess I did a good job. It is a bit of an all-over-the-map sort of finding that we found. It really did depend. We saw really good action toward GBA Plus and some not so good. Ultimately, the accountable party, in my opinion, is the deputy head of every department. They’re responsible to deliver on their programs. Many of the mandate letters to deputy heads included the need to consider GBA Plus. We see GBA Plus in the budget. Those are the promises. Then it is about the actual actions and outcomes in closing that accountability loop.

So I see it as coming down to the departments. I do believe the central agencies play a key role in supporting all of that activity, as well as Women and Gender Equality Canada. They are the experts. I would recommend to them that they need to occupy a bit more space in that field and have a louder voice to make sure this becomes a priority.

Senator Bovey: That includes training people so they know how to collect the data, store the data, use the data and build from there.

Ms. Hogan: That is definitely one of the elements of training that is needed, but I think just making people a little more aware and comfortable with intersectionality and what that really means when you look at a policy or program is also needed.

The Chair: We will go next to the sponsors of the study, Senator Moodie, from Ontario, followed by Senator Dasko, also from Ontario.

Senator Moodie: Thank you for being here today. I look forward to hearing your wise words on this. One area that has been bothering me a bit as I listen to a number of comments around this is the question of capacity, capacity within departments, sections, ministries or wherever, within government.

You talked a bit about this as being a real issue. Can you speak a little bit more about that? Where is the issue? Is it at the level of training of advisers that are part of the process of policy-making or is it an issue — where is the deficit? Or is it at a number of levels?

Ms. Hogan: I’m going to take a crack at that, but I will ask my colleague Carey to perhaps jump in if I don’t answer it in a comprehensive way.

I think we saw a lot of capacity training. Treasury Board and Privy Council Office offered a lot of training to their analysts about analyzing submissions, but I don’t think it went much further than that. What do you do with the information that you had and gather?

There’s also training needed in the department to those who actually have to apply this lens to policy development. There has to be an understanding that it’s not just to be applied to new policies being developed. You can start to gather data now about existing programs and use it to inform adjustments or future changes.

I think the training is about just that awareness to start off with, and we mentioned intersectionality earlier.

We saw that Women and Gender Equality Canada actually did 30 training sessions and developed tools and guidance, yet departments were still self-identifying as not having the right tools, enough tools or not knowing what to do with the tools. The department did a survey that actually highlighted that, I think, 76% of the departments that responded to the survey said they had a lack of time and capacity, so it’s a bit of both. Everyone is looking for time, so I would put capacity and time in the same bucket.

Carey Agnew, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: Just to add to that, 10 years ago, Women and Gender Equality Canada, or WAGE, established the GBA Plus framework, which has six elements that build the foundation of GBA Plus capacity in departments: a responsibility centre, needs assessment, a policy statement, training and tools, piloting it and then monitoring it over time. Across the past 10 years, WAGE took a survey, and 5% of the departments and organizations that responded hadn’t initiated even one of the elements, and 40% of the departments and organizations had neither a statement of intent nor a formal GBA Plus policy.

Senator Moodie: The follow-up question I have relates to the culture and the timing in which this tool is being incorporated in the process of policy-making. What did you learn? Where is it occurring? Is it initiated from the start of deliberations, or is it something that’s considered once the policy — where in the spectrum?

Ms. Hogan: It’s an interesting question. We actually looked at that and highlighted some results in our report. Ideally, using the GBA Plus tool should happen right at the outset when you’re defining the problem or the issue that you’re trying to resolve with a policy or program. That’s the critical place to do it. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it later, but that’s really the critical place.

The survey that we talked about that WAGE had completed found that only 39% of departments did it at that early stage and only 60% of the time. That means that for most of the policy decisions, it’s happening afterward. Then it is too late, or it requires a lot of adjustment, to ask what kind of data should we have gathered, how we should go about getting it and how we make sure we are informing any modifications to the policy. To know that information, you need to know how people are experiencing it.

When you miss the critical stage of definition at the beginning, then you’re always trying to play catch-up.

Senator Dasko: Thank you for being here, for your presentation and your work on this. It’s very important for us.

Some of us have heard from various sources that GBA Plus analysis has the character of a kind of ticking off a box; we have to do this, so we’re ticking off the box and saying, “Okay, we’ve done GBA, and off we go. We’ve done that.”

I wanted to get your reaction to that, because that would suggest that the exercise is not being seen as very important within government. It’s just one of the things that one has to do to get from A to B — from legislation creation to its conclusion, implementation and so on. I’d like your reaction to that. I know it may not be a good question for somebody who’s an official, but there you go.

Ms. Hogan: My answer to that question would honestly be that it depends. It is a requirement to consider GBA Plus in memoranda to cabinet and in Treasury Board submissions; there is an official requirement there that it must be done. However, the action after that is what matters.

In some cases, we saw that the requirements are all that happens. In some cases, that’s what we saw. In other cases, we saw there was a real intentionality to gathering data to help inform the outcomes or how people were experiencing a program or policy, but then nothing was done with that data. In other cases, we saw the tool being used, the gathering of the data and some analysis but then no adjustment; the program or policy continues as is.

It really is across the spectrum of reactions as to how it’s being implemented in a meaningful way.

Senator Dasko: I’d like to drill a little deeper on the topic of disaggregated data. Is the problem with disaggregation the fact that sample sizes are too small when you start to go to the disaggregated level? So you are looking for sample sizes of groups that are much smaller in the population and, therefore, you don’t have the data. You can’t pull out the data to analyze because you don’t have enough to analyze. You don’t have it because it’s not collected. Is that part of the problem with disaggregation, or is there something else about disaggregation that’s more important?

Ms. Hogan: I’ll ask Carey to jump in on this, but any time you are trying to target a subgroup within a population, you always run that risk. That is the traditional head scratcher about statistical sampling or data analysis: You don’t want to be able to identify a group.

Senator Dasko: That’s right; it has to remain anonymous so you have to make sure your sample sizes are robust so you can reach the anonymity requirement.

We have been talking about disaggregated data in this committee and in other settings in the Senate for quite a while now, and it’s something that comes up an awful lot.

Ms. Hogan: We noticed the lack of data about different elements of intersectionality. I don’t know if you wanted to jump in on that, Carey.

Ms. Agnew: Yes. There are a few challenges in terms of getting that data. There tends to be a high volume of requests in a dispersed area of fact-finding. Sometimes organizations like Statistics Canada has to prioritize in terms of how they will help departments get that data. There’s often a rapid turnaround for requests. It’s just the speed of government and fact-finding. Getting that data, especially from difficult-to-reach populations, takes time.

Then there is the challenge with survey fatigue. Often, some communities are raising their hands and noting that there are too many surveys. It’s a challenge to get quality data from those communities.

[Translation]

Senator Petitclerc: In your opening statement, you spoke of the analytical process that applies to policies, programs and services.

As we know, the federal government committed to taking GBA Plus into account when developing bills. My question is about how GBA Plus applies to legislative measures. In your 2009, 2015 and 2022 audits, did the gaps you mentioned a moment ago also pertain to the development of bills, or do they differ? Would you mind commenting on that?

Ms. Hogan: Our sample did not take into account bills introduced by the government in the House of Commons. The implementation of policies stemming from a bill does not undergo analysis until the bill has passed.

Senator Petitclerc: That’s quite helpful to us — and to me, on a more personal level — because, as lawmakers, we want to have that information and we have GBA Plus questions about bills we study. If I understand correctly, then, no GBA Plus information is available on that front.

Do you know whether departments subject to the requirement systematically carry out GBA Plus assessments for bills that are brought forward?

Ms. Hogan: Usually, that’s a requirement included in the memorandum to cabinet. Yes, I would expect that information to be taken into account in submissions to cabinet. No real policies were examined, only implementation by the departments.

Senator Petitclerc: What I gather, then, is that we don’t really have a way at this time to tell whether the analyses have gaps.

Ms. Hogan: Not through our work, no.

Senator Petitclerc: Thank you.

[English]

Senator Lankin: Thank you Ms. Hogan, and also your officials, for being here. I had a briefing on a piece of legislation this morning from three departments. All women were briefing me. I call them a dream team. And here we are again. It’s wonderful. I was reading your report until 11:30 last night, and I think it’s really quality work. I thank you for that and for your presentation today.

My first question was around the memorandum to cabinet. I understand the answer you just gave. Are there any thoughts that you might have, publicly or privately, at some point in time, about how we shift to that level? This will not have the impact we need if it is not taken into account beyond determining how many women or how many members of various groups, which we can identify through the use of intersectional, disaggregated data, will be affected. That is not an analysis. That memorandum to cabinet provision came in around the early 2000s. When I was a member of the province of Ontario cabinet in the early 1990s, we created it. It was hard to get a good analysis. I don’t know what the state of it is now. However, if you don’t know what your legislation is going to do, all of the implementation adjustments that you can try to put in, or the policies, or the regulations, or whatever, are not going to do it.

Your report raises an issue for me beyond how many people and the capacity for intersectionality analysis. With the lack of outcome expectations stated, how do you measure progress if you don’t know clearly what the outcomes are that you’re seeking? That seems to be varied from department to department. I’d like you to comment on that a bit more with respect to what you saw, namely, really good practices with respect to setting outcomes, understanding impact and measuring and reporting on that.

My second question is around public transparency. I became so frustrated when I realized that we don’t regularly have access to the analysis that is done. This is in part because we’re dealing with the legislative side of it. It’s contained in a memorandum to cabinet and it’s governed by all of those restrictions unless it is released by departments, ministers, et cetera. I have not experienced great public access to this information. For government to get the response from communities and from legislators, I would think that’s an important aspect of it.

In your review, did you find best practices in any departments? Are there Treasury Board rules? A central agency can set some of these expectations. I’d like to understand what is stymieing us in getting public access to the analysis, whether it’s good analysis in some departments, not so good in other departments or none at all in others?

The Chair: You have less than two minutes to answer that question.

Ms. Hogan: There’s a lot in there. I’m going to try to go quick. I will ask Carey to talk about best practices and outcomes, but I’ll tackle the first part about how to get access to information in policy design.

My job does not comment on policy. I comment on implementation. PCO and Treasury Board, who review all of these submissions, see many things. We found that they’re not really sharing that information with WAGE to help guide changes or better training and so on. That might be a way to help improve the policy design part.

Regarding transparency of analysis, I get to see things in cabinet submissions as the Auditor General, but again, I am bound by confidentiality. Again, the House and the Senate together would have to solve that dilemma for better transparency. We do believe that WAGE could do a much better job in talking about what they’re seeing and the outcomes and being more transparent about what they have seen, because they haven’t reported on that in a while.

Do you want to talk about outcomes, Ms. Agnew?

Ms. Agnew: We found that targets weren’t specific or measurable. We need those levels of performance to determine the impact of these decisions. Our recommendation for monitoring and for reporting on the status of implementation is important because GBA Plus is an investment. When it’s done right, you can see those results for those communities that need them most. They’re difficult. They can be difficult to reach. They can be marginalized. Without the reporting, without the monitoring, how do you know?

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Senator McPhedran: It’s a pleasure to see all of you here and to read the in-depth work that preceded your joining us.

It’s been awhile. You may or may not know the anecdote, but this is a good time to acknowledge that much of the work we’re discussing with you today started in an elevator. Senator Nancy Ruth happened to step into an elevator with one of your predecessors, Sheila Fraser, and a conversation started about the need for the kind of work we’re discussing today.

To build on what has been asked of you previously, I’d like to add to Senator Lankin’s question about best practices or learning. What do we know about other countries? Is there a country out there that’s doing better than we are? What are the markers that indicate that?

Ms. Hogan: I’m going to admit that I think I forgot the country, so I’m going to turn to Stephanie to fill in some of the details.

We mentioned an assessment by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, in our report. Canada should be proud that we ranked fifth. We are seen as a leader in terms of advancing GBA Plus, but you can’t lose sight of that, because you can fall quickly to the bottom of the pack.

I am going to ask Stephanie to talk about a couple of the countries we saw that are really good examples and to explain some.

Stephanie Moores, Director, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: There are a couple that come to mind. Sweden and Iceland are two. Sweden, in particular, has a program called the Government Programme for Gender Mainstreaming that they use to monitor the implementation of what is considered gender mainstreaming there. GBA Plus is a bit of a Canadian term but it amounts to the same thing.

In that case, the participating agencies dropped specific action plans that were then presented to the Minister for Gender Equality. They’re accountable for those results and the minister then looks at all the results together and makes an assessment on that progress.

In Iceland there is also a department that reports directly to the Prime Minister. They have a four-year action plan with a publicly available dashboard. If I read Icelandic, I would be able to provide an example of what some of those indicators are, but I can’t. Those are some interesting practices that Canada could look to internationally for ideas of how to continue to grow.

Senator McPhedran: Are you able to be a little more specific in comparison so we can get a sense of where there might be specific initiatives we can address?

Ms. Hogan: They talked about a publicly available dashboard to monitor progress. Here in Canada, that is sort of pushed back down to the departments to put into a supplementary table in their departmental results report. The guidance we saw related to how you should fill that out was of poor quality so what we saw in supplementary tables was sporadic and inconsistent. That would be a great place to start. If the departments did their own, then WAGE could do the consolidation and put something forward. There really is nothing in Canada right now that talks about that at the federal level in a global picture.

Senator McPhedran: That is very helpful. Thank you.

Senator Kutcher: Thank you very much for being with us today and for a very thorough and thoughtful accounting of this issue.

What I’m hearing — and I’m a bit concerned about it and want to make sure I understand properly — on the responsibility and accountability side of things is that responsibility is diffuse across different departments, and accountability may not be as robust as it should be.

Is there a role for a single-point accountability within government? If so, should there be such a single-point accountability? Would WAGE be the department that might be able to provide that across the different departments?

What I’m hearing is almost a cultural problem. There’s a problem in capacity. There’s a problem in understanding. There’s a problem in training. There’s a problem in responsibility. There’s a problem in accountability. At almost every level that one chooses to look at, there’s a big problem, and it’s been going on for a few years.

If we want to solve the problem and the current way of doing it isn’t working, is there an alternative way that could be put into place to try to make that work?

Ms. Hogan: That’s the age-old question: How often do you repeat the same thing and hope that the outcome will be different? I wish I had a magical answer for you.

When it comes to accountability in a central place, I think WAGE could play that role. WAGE currently is responsible for consolidating and reporting publicly the advancements that GBA Plus is bringing across the federal government, but they’re hindered by not having consistent information or any information across different factors. There’s a lot going on about gender, but the “plus” side is really where a lot of extra work is needed.

Would a central accountability body work? I see this in many of my audit reports. When the government does a horizontal program, what we hear is that while one department is accountable, they can’t compel other deputy heads. So they’re kind of at a loss. What information they get is the best that they can do on the reporting side.

Until that horizontality of program and policy delivery gets resolved in the federal public service, we’ll always have a bit of this “we could do better” approach. I see it in many different programs.

Senator McCallum: Thank you for being here and the work that you do. I did go through your report, and I have spoken to you about this before.

How has the situation improved or worsened, especially when you look at the “plus,” without application of GBA, over these years since the first report came out in 2009 and then 2015? Is there any way that that could be tracked?

Ms. Hogan: We tracked some of it, and we talked about some progress that we saw. In 2009, the “plus” was not part of GBA. It was just GBA. The “plus” came in a bit later.

There is some progress in that now. There is recognition that that needs to be factored into how individuals experience programs, policies and services at the federal government.

What we did see in progress from 2015 is that there is some requirement now to force all departments to think about the GBA Plus lens when they do memoranda to cabinet and Treasury Board submissions. So that’s progress. We are seeing a higher-level review over those submissions. Someone is acknowledging and being a bit more accountable about that analysis.

Where we’re not seeing progress is data availability and capacity. Those are two areas that we highlighted in 2009, 2015 and again now.

It doesn’t mean they’re not making progress, but it isn’t enough when you think that this commitment went back 25 years. I’m disappointed in the lack of progress, because there has been a lot of attention and dialogue on this for so long. Now it’s time to have action with that dialogue.

Senator McCallum: Thank you. How many departments consistently do rigorous GBA out of all the departments? What happens to the individuals who are experiencing human rights violations based a lot on their diversity?

We do work with people who deal with resource extraction, so that’s where we’re looking at GBA Plus and have been working with Indigenous communities in that way.

Ms. Hogan: I’m not sure I can answer the last part. We didn’t look at the angle of taking it over to human rights complaints and how those were being resolved.

To your first question as to how many departments are doing it rigorously, I actually don’t have the answer to that. Our report here didn’t look at all departments and do an assessment.

What I can tell you is I have made a commitment throughout the office that every single one of our performance audits considers equity, diversity and inclusion. We look for the GBA Plus analysis, and we are trying to mainstream it in our audit to challenge departments to be more rigorous about it. But again, all of those audits are seeing exactly the mixed bag of results that we saw in this one.

I do offer that I believe that Treasury Board Secretariat, in some of their submission reviews, could do a better job of getting a more rigorous assessment. We saw that there really isn’t an incentive to beef up that assessment when the submission is approved with a weak GBA Plus assessment. There are a lot of ways that we can, as the federal government, target this and, hopefully, strengthen the assessment going forward.

The Chair: Ms. Hogan, if I may quickly ask a question, because there are senators lining up for a second round. It is a variation of Senator Kutcher’s question.

In your opinion, would it help or hinder if every department had a GBA Plus specialist with the appropriate education, competency and authority to apply appropriate measurements, both pre-policy, during policy and post-policy? Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

Ms. Hogan: That is an interesting question. I can tell you that I personally think it would be a good thing. When I went on this journey of asking every audit team to take on GBA Plus and equity, diversity and inclusion, I said we need a team of specialists. So we have that. We’ve trained people and have people dedicated to working on it.

If I was going to walk the talk, I would tell you I think it is a good thing, because that’s where I started in order to be able to start holding departments to account for the commitment.

The Chair: Thank you. You just completed an audit in 2022 on GBA Plus, and the one before that was 2015. When do you think you will conduct your next audit?

Ms. Hogan: I don’t know. We obviously have to give entities time to implement the action plans they plan to put together to respond to our recommendations. You want to give it some time to actually see the outcomes come forward.

I’m hopeful that I will see some of that in audits on other topics, because, as I mentioned, we are looking into this in every performance audit that we do.

It’s in the future. I just don’t really know if I have a date in mind, but it is a very important topic. It’s an area that if we look to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and we don’t want to leave anyone behind, this is a great way to not leave people behind, but ignoring it will just leave them further behind.

My intention will be on it in every audit. I just don’t know when I will come back to a full, dedicated audit on it.

The Chair: Thank you.

We will now go to the second round of questions from senators.

Senator Dasko: I wonder if you can provide a couple of examples of really superb analysis that you’ve come across. Could you describe what the policy area was, what the analysis did and how it was used? That way, we can get a sense of a couple of examples of what was really, in your view — because you’ve had a chance to go across government and see what they’ve done.

I’d like to hear a little bit about what that might look like.

Ms. Hogan: To give you two examples, I’m going to ask Carey to give you one, and I am going to give you one that I saw in a previous audit. We did a preliminary audit on two COVID relief programs: CERB, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit and CEWS, the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy.

The GBA Plus analysis for those programs was done combined, and it was actually a really well-done analysis. We saw acknowledgement that there were perhaps disincentives or individuals forgotten. The program was rolled out and subsequent adjustments happened based on that assessment. For example, other industries were added to be eligible for the wage subsidy, and there was recognition that people still needed to be able to earn income, to work for their employer, and still get the wage subsidy.

So there was an acknowledgement that the GBA Plus analysis really fed changes into that program. It was such a unique example, however, because it was in a time of emergency.

I don’t know if you have another example you’d like to give, Carey.

Ms. Agnew: I do. I had one in the context of disaggregated data supporting decision-making. This was an example where the Department of Justice Canada used a link to existing data, and they integrated criminal court survey data with census tax and health data survey information. The goal was to address data gaps related to demographics and the socio-economic, revenue and health profiles of people in the criminal court system. That provided a rich amount of data for individuals who might be marginalized and not able to fully use the criminal court system as they should be able to.

Senator Moodie: My follow-up question is around intersectionality — the “plus” side. What are you seeing; what did you see? It’s clear that there’s obviously a deficit, but can you give us a sense of the landscape? Is it not happening at all in some cases?

Would you also address a question that’s beginning to emerge, which is this: Should we be separating these two, the gender and the “plus”? Would it improve the situation?

Ms. Hogan: I’ve been asked the question many times about the tag — GBA Plus — and whether it is driving disincentive toward focus on the “plus” because “gender” is right in the title. It very well could be. I don’t know. I don’t think we have any empirical data that would support that.

Splitting it up now would mean there are two things to think about. My concern would be one getting forgotten. When we have one, let’s maybe try to be more robust on the one that should be addressed. There are lots of solutions to try to put a little bit more emphasis on the “plus” side.

In our audit, we saw, and we actually put a little exhibit about, disaggregated data along different factors. If you have the report in front of you, it’s exhibit 3.4. In the English version, it’s page 24 and it’s page 28 in the French. We saw that there’s very little information gathered along different identity factors. In fact, you’ll hear again some of the indicators. There was no disaggregated data available for anyone with a disability. So you had the gender, but you didn’t have whether there was a disability. You’ll see all the numbers listed in that exhibit, and they’re very poor and weak in some instances.

Senator McPhedran: I note in the background material that you shared with us that the federal action plan lapsed in 2020. We now have your report in 2022.

Is there a long-term action plan in development now since the last one lapsed in 2020?

Ms. Hogan: I believe there’s a new one coming, but I don’t know with certainty.

Senator McPhedran: Are you being consulted as part of the process of developing a new action plan?

Ms. Hogan: I’m typically not consulted in policy-making or action plans, so no, not to my knowledge.

Senator McPhedran: Is that a protocol issue, or is that an improper-crossing-of-silos issue? Your report is fulsome, and I’m sure it’s being used — I hope it’s being used — in developing a new action plan, but is there a formal impediment to asking you for suggestions since part of your mandate is to focus on effective implementation?

Ms. Hogan: Every one of our recommendations really informs a change that we think would only improve action plans, policies or programs, so I don’t believe there’s an impediment there.

We need to be careful of being part of the design of something and then coming in and auditing whether it was effective. There does need to be a bit of a line drawn to maintain our independence. We shouldn’t be doing what management should be doing and then come back in and audit.

That said, we’re always happy to elaborate on our findings and make some suggestions.

Senator McPhedran: Thank you very much. That’s very helpful.

Senator Bovey: I really appreciate everything that’s been said this afternoon. You mentioned that you’re going to include this as part of all your audits. Does that include the audits you do on Crown corporations? I’ve been involved in them for the past number of years, and it would be really interesting to see how this is flowing into the work of Crown corporations. Everyone knows I’m from the art world, so let’s say the National Gallery and Natural History Museum. I’d be really interested in knowing whether you’re taking that there too.

Ms. Hogan: The commitment I made to ensure GBA Plus is considered in all of our performance audits lined up with my predecessor’s commitment to sustainable development goals, and I maintain that.

It’s been a good year now that we’re doing it on all our performance audits. I pushed the envelope and asked teams to do it in our special exams. Our special exams are the equivalent of a performance audit, but in Crown corporations, you only have to do one once every 10 years.

What we’re starting to see with some of the Crown corporations is them saying that they aren’t obligated or compelled, but we are still saying to them that, to be a good Crown corporation, they need to think about sustainable development goals. As a good employer, they should be thinking about equity, diversity and inclusion. So we’re still looking into it.

You’ll start seeing it in a few of our special examinations. In one that I think was recently tabled, the Public Sector Investment Pension Board, we talk about sustainable investment strategies. You will start seeing it coming through, to the degree that we can, because we’re looking at processes in special exams, but we’re really trying to hold everybody to account.

Senator Bovey: I think that comes to risk management for audience involvement, so thank you very much for that.

The Chair: Thank you very much, senators. That brings us to the end of this panel. I’d like to thank our witnesses for their participation today. Your assistance with our study is greatly appreciated.

We will resume our study of GBA Plus. We have witnesses online, and today we welcome Bonnie Brayton, Chief Executive Officer, and Sarah McLeod, Human Rights Officer, from The DisAbled Women’s Network of Canada, or DAWN; Professor Lindsay Tedds, Associate Professor, Economics and Scientific Director, Fiscal and Economic Policy with the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary; and Anna Cameron, Research Associate, Fiscal and Economic Policy with the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.

Thank you very much for joining us today. Some of you joined at short notice. We appreciate that.

I now invite you to provide us with your opening remarks. I’d like to remind you that you have five minutes allocated for your opening statements, followed by questions from our members.

Please proceed. I think DAWN will go first, so Ms. Brayton and Ms. McLeod.

Bonnie Brayton, Chief Executive Officer, DisAbled Women’s Network of Canada: Thank you so much for inviting us to be here today.

I would like to start with acknowledging that DAWN Canada is located on the unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ká Nation and the city — also known as Montreal — Tiohti:áke. Our presence on their lands today and the fact that we are here in a time of truth and reconciliation reminds us that the needs of Indigenous sisters, how we can make reparations to them and make their lives better now and in the future, must be centred in all our work.

A brief is coming to all of you. Again, it’s going to be much more substantial. We did have short notice as was acknowledged by the chair. So I will be brief, but I’m very excited to be in front of all of you. Some of you are people we’ve had the pleasure of working with before, and we welcome your questions and an opportunity to have a discussion with you and the other members.

GBA Plus as a policy lever has its good, bad and ugly. DAWN Canada is one of the civil society organizations that the government can point to for some measurable results in terms of GBA Plus as a policy lever. But given how clearly women with disabilities are still underserved and under-represented, despite being one quarter and one third of the most marginalized women, girls and non-binary people in Canada, we appreciate this opportunity to examine some outcomes.

An intersectional framework is essential, however. A plus symbol limits the diverse lived experiences and needs of various marginalized and equity-seeking groups by putting them into one entity. Just within the group of women with disabilities, there are diverse needs and experiences, across disability, that impact social and economic inclusion, and, of course, there’s much more to say there about the intersectional framework juxtaposed to GBA Plus as a policy lever. I know many other of the witnesses will explore that more fully.

To consider women with disabilities as a monolith erases the diverse experiences among a quarter of the population of women in Canada and points to the challenges with a policy lever like GBA Plus.

As a whole-of-government policy approach, GBA Plus has been unevenly applied, but it has a direct impact on our work and our funding. Programmatic shifts since its implementation have resulted in an increase in access to funding for organizations like ours, for sure. Some trends we have noted in our funding and that of our partners, however, would suggest some of this is driven by the policy, but most of it is driven by DAWN Canada’s approach. There are still very few civil society organizations that are actually working at intersectional practice and the concept of full inclusion.

The Accessible Canada Act has resulted in a new policy project for all departments called the Disability Inclusion Action Plan. We have genuine concerns that this well-intentioned mechanism risks creating another challenge for the public service policy and program folks as they attempt to make it effective. Will it really address the silos that have failed the GBA Plus targets largely already?

Statistics Canada reported again — and I repeat this because it’s so important when you consider what this question is about — that 24% of women live with a disability. For Black and Indigenous women, this number is closer to 35%. Existing research from the government and human rights bodies across the country confirm that women, girls and non-binary people with disabilities remain the largest unserved group in Canada.

Beyond the intention of intersectionality, how is the government measuring the impact of GBA Plus? We are asking for a measurement framework to evaluate the impact for women with disabilities for GBA Plus. Further, it’s time for us to ensure that the budget intentions and the commitments in place are fulfilled. We are also clear that this is only so we then have the opportunity to properly evaluate where budget and resources should be directed to have meaningful results and change, for this is still the most underserved population in our country.

We welcome the opportunity to respond directly to your questions because we have a lot of information about GBA Plus. I know that all of you understand that this study goes beyond the policy process to the real question of how we can better serve the most marginalized of our people. I’m pleased to be here today with our Human Rights Officer, Sarah McLeod. We want to reserve as much time for questions and dialogue as possible, so I’ll stop there, Madam Chair. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Brayton.

We will now hear from either Ms. Tedds or Ms. Cameron. Which one of you is going to make the statement? I’m not quite clear about that.

Anna Cameron, Research Associate, Fiscal and Economic Policy, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, as an individual: I will. Thank you for the invitation to appear before your committee on this topic. My name is Anna Cameron. I’m a Research Associate at the University of Calgary, where I work as part of a team that seeks to bring GBA Plus and intersectionality to economic and social policy. Joining me today is Dr. Lindsay Tedds, who leads our team. Both Dr. Tedds and I will be happy to answer any questions you have following our remarks.

Being asked to think about the role of GBA Plus in the policy process makes one reflect on a number of things: on the ways in which we’ve progressed and stalled and reinvigorated our efforts since 1995, but also on the work that remains — work that was made clear in the Auditor General’s recent report. We often collaborate with governments to address policy issues, but as researchers we’re also working to drive an intersectional shift in the broad policy community.

Our remarks on the work that still remains with GBA Plus will highlight priorities that emerge from expertise and experience in both these spaces. Some priorities are conceptual.

First, we want to emphasize the importance of shifting to a critical intersectional approach to policy analysis and development, whether this means recasting GBA Plus or setting it aside altogether. This is not just about moving beyond gender to consider impacts on other groups. It’s about shifting analysis away from identity to engage instead with systems, processes and power structures that give identity meaning and to consider how they complicate intersections with the state, with institutions and policy and produce disadvantage and need. Understanding these links can help us determine how policy might intervene to address systemic oppression and its effects.

Second, we need to ask how intersectionality might be in tension with traditional policy analysis frameworks, ones that prioritize efficiency and cost-benefit analysis, and think creatively about how we might shift this traditional framework to come in line with social justice goals. The members of the B.C. Basic Income Expert Panel, including Dr. Tedds, took a first attempt at this, and we need to build on it. To do the above, though, with need to value diverse forms of evidence and not remain fixated on this lack of data. Quantitative approaches are but one way of answering questions and understanding the world, and we need to build capacity to be creative and engage in different types of analysis. This alone will not be enough, however, to achieve visions of equality and diversity and gender justice, if these are indeed our visions.

As, if not more, important than these shifts will be whether the policy community in Canada can get behind an intersectional shift. Here I want to emphasize three points.

First, the shift can’t just be government-driven. Mainstreaming intersectionality must take a multi-pronged approach involving government, civil society and the research community.

Second, within the research community, economists still dominate and outside certain feminist and anti-racist and Indigenous cohorts, economists have a long way to go in embracing GBA Plus and intersectionality, and we need to change this. One approach is to build strong transdisciplinary networks within policy to achieve a critical mass of experts committed to an intersectional shift.

Third, we need to invest thought, time, expertise and resources to train policy professionals of the future in this type of thinking, just as we currently train them to think about cost-benefit analysis or writing a briefing note. In surveying policy schools across the country, including the one which we are associated, we found zero indication that this is being done.

So how do we bring all of this together? Because the federal government cannot shoulder the entire burden of transformative policy, no matter the strength of its tools. Canada’s broader policy community must get engaged. Though momentum is building in this direction, efforts are scattered. What is needed is a collective effort to bridge this gap, that is, the investment and infrastructure to launch and nurture a pan-Canadian network of scholars, practitioners and sector and community leaders who are working at the nexus of policy and intersectionality.

In conclusion, while tweaks to GBA Plus design and implementation are important, taking this broader approach would actually ignite an intersectional shift capable of transforming Canadian policy. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Cameron. We will now go to our first question from Senator Bovey from Manitoba. There will be three minutes per question and answer.

Senator Bovey: I have one question for Ms. Brayton, if I may, and one for Dr. Cameron.

My question is, Ms. Brayton, you mentioned that there were positives and negatives and problems with GBA Plus, which I certainly appreciate. You mentioned policy versus approaches and civil society.

I want to know what you think the advantages are to a full implementation of GBA Plus and its impact on policy development, implementation and success. That’s a question for you.

Just for Anna Cameron, if I may, you talked about tools and capacity. I’d like to know what necessary tools and capacities do you think are needed so that the broader approach you mentioned, to ignite an intersectional shift, will be possible.

Ms. Brayton: Thank you for that wonderful question. I’ll go first, Anna, since I was asked the first question, and we’ll pivot to you. Thank you very much for your interventions — they were wonderful too — and thank you for this question.

If we’re talking about GBA Plus, again, DAWN’s position I think leans toward what you also heard from our colleagues, including Anna, which is that GBA Plus doesn’t appear to us to be the long-term solution. If we are talking about the concept of intersectional policy framework and not really, like I said, overinvesting in GBA Plus, which is, as we pointed out, a lever that’s being used with some success but, in our view, doesn’t merit going to full implementation — if we say that’s where we’re going, then I would say that the whole-of-government approach would have to be taken much more seriously. To understand what GBA Plus is, as an intention, and how it should be applied, we would have to look at some of the departments where there’s a deeper understanding of it and there’s been successes, like WAGE. That’s been a department that’s had meaningful policy and programmatic success.

I don’t want to in any way underemphasize, however, something that Anna touched on and that’s really key, which is that the heavy lifting with GBA Plus continues to be with the civil society organizations that work with the government and policy people. I have to be everywhere. Too many of you have seen me in far too many places, at far too many tables because DAWN Canada is cross-disability, intersectional and it’s everything to do with women and girls’ lives. You can imagine, senator, the number of times we are asked to consult and provide information. We do not have resources to do that. We don’t have this giant machine behind us to do this, but we have to. We’re placed in a position constantly of having to look at just about every call for proposals that comes out to see if we can find a partner or a fit or somebody to step into the space to ensure that women with disabilities, who are this huge population, are going to be addressed and to see that if we can’t be at the table, someone who cares can be.

The full implementation would, like I said, if we are to be considering that, require a much more robust, whole-of-government approach, a lot of education around policy-makers.

The Chair: I’m very sorry. I’m going to have to cut this off. Hopefully we’ll get back to it. I am going to extend the question to five minutes, given that there are two panellists. Perhaps we can hear either Ms. Cameron or Professor Tedds on the question. We will get back to you, Ms. Brayton.

Ms. Brayton: Of course. Thank you, senator.

Ms. Cameron: I can begin a response and Lindsay may want to supplement.

In terms of tools, I think what would be very helpful — listening to the testimony of the Auditor General’s office as well — to build a different understanding of intersectionality among civil servants. I think more broadly and a very simple way of doing this is moving beyond the tools that WAGE uses to teach that concept and very simply moving beyond the flower.

This is where partnerships — for example, with civil society — could be very helpful because power/privilege wheels are abundant in the advocacy tools of many women’s and other organizations across the country. They are experts in that area and those materials already exist.

In terms of capacity, I’ll speak to one element that I raised in my opening remarks. I’d reiterate that we need to train policy students in intersectionality and GBA Plus right when we’re teaching them how to write briefing notes, right when we’re teaching them the elements of the policy cycle, right when we’re teaching them about policy windows. It’s as important as those elements yet doesn’t come up. Sometimes it comes up as an elective, but then that’s within gender and public policy more broadly.

Dr. Tedds, I don’t know if you have anything to add.

The Chair: I think we’re going to go on to the next question from Senator McPhedran.

Senator McPhedran: I want to get down to essentially the nitty-gritty of this whole reality of participation in an intersectional, intersectoral way, and it goes to all of our witnesses, please.

Can you be more specific for us about the resources that you don’t have and that you feel you need in order to be able to bring more meaningful, timely interventions, research and analysis, to the development and the implementation of Gender-Based Analysis Plus? And could you please help us understand what difference these resources would make for you in terms of the effectiveness that you desire to bring about?

The Chair: Who would like to answer that question first? Perhaps we’ll throw it to Professor Tedds.

Lindsay Tedds, Associate Professor, Economics, Scientific Director, Fiscal and Economic Policy, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, as an individual: I can start with that one. I think that one of the barriers — it’s not always resources, but sometimes it’s access. WAGE has a preferred list of individuals that they tell departments to engage with. There are about four people on that list. If you want to talk about capacity and the ability to respond, that demonstrates a lot.

We have been contacted by a number of departments and agencies to help them understand intersectionality. They have not found the responses and documents from WAGE to be all that helpful to them. But we also face capacity challenges. Teaching, research, service — there’s only so much to go around. So we need to be training the future Anna Camerons of the world.

Capacity within academia is lacking as well. As Anna said, policy is dominated by White male economists who don’t see this as a priority, or even understand what it’s like to live life and experience policy with any other identity.

So there’s a very major cognitive challenge to overcome.

Bonnie, I’ll hand it over to you.

Ms. Brayton: Thank you very much, Lindsay. Thank you very much for the wonderful question, Senator McPhedran. It’s great to see you.

It’s a big question, and, I was going to say, certainly one that I live every day in terms of DAWN and our work. As you may know because you’ve followed us for a number of years, we’ve gradually, over the last few years, done a fairly good job of building our own capacity on some level, and some of that has been linked to government funding. I think, interestingly, in terms of what I heard also from Lindsay in terms of not being able to keep up, there’s a huge interest from the private sector, from federally regulated entities and a wide range of actors, in DAWN Canada, in our work, research and expertise.

We work across four pillars: research, education, policy and advocacy. That’s our approach at DAWN. I think the obvious thing to say in terms of resources is that we need to be better funded.

I don’t want to make the mistake of making it sound like it’s about money. It’s about stability. It’s about being able to focus on those four pillars instead of on how many grant applications we have to write and how many people we have to reach out to make sure that the work is fully inclusive and being done the way it needs to be done.

Leaving the heavy lifting to DAWN to think through all of those things, in addition to having to lead so many important dialogues at this point, is certainly where I would start, senator. As I said, I’m very grateful for the ability DAWN has had over the last few years to grow, but that is because we put our shoulders to the wheel, not because somebody came and lifted us up.

I won’t say for a moment that I don’t recognize the support we received from WAGE and, to some degree, from Employment and Social Development Canada in terms of some of the funding envelopes that are available. However, they’re wholly inadequate and don’t represent a meaningful level of support, resources and otherwise, to the only civil society — I say this again — the only civil society organization in this country that is actively working and exclusively focused on women, girls and non-binary people with disabilities in this country. I have to say over and over that this isn’t our job to do alone, and that we aren’t trying to corner the market. We’d love some competition —

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Brayton.

[Translation]

Senator Petitclerc: I’m not sure who will be able to answer my question. We’re talking about GBA Plus, where the “plus” refers to a number of identity factors, such as race, ethnicity, religion, age and disability, whether physical or mental. Sometimes I get the impression — Given the intersectional method of analysis, I wonder whether the disability factor receives the weight it should. Is it assessed properly? Does disability factor adequately into the analysis, given your experience?

Ms. Brayton: Thank you for your question, senator. I agree with you. We’ve been told in the past, Ms. Qualtrough, you and I, that we weren’t “pluses.” To label us with that symbol is clearly problematic. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, it’s important to look at —

[English]

— a measurement framework. It is critical. There is nothing at this point that tells us what actually got spent on women and girls with disabilities by department. There are promises and there are commitments in budgets, but the actual follow-through to show measurable results, to show me, for example, what projects were funded across the government — The government could not provide me with a report. I could provide them with a report, but they couldn’t provide me with one, and that’s a problem.

One quarter of all women in the country, again, and nothing, really nothing in terms of measurement framework for the government’s performance in that context. The mandates of these departments are to do these things. While I applaud individuals we work with, this system is broken. Yes, DAWN Canada is doing the heavy lifting to at least two or three departments to make sure that women and girls are included.

So, yes, the GBA Plus is failing women and girls with disabilities because, like I said, we’re still the ones who are pushing on the plus lever all the time.

[Translation]

Thank you for that question.

Senator Petitclerc: Thank you.

[English]

Ms. Tedds: I’ll take that one. I think one of the biggest problems and challenges that we face is that the representation of gender-based analysis is in that flower, which tries to indicate that our identities are fixed and our identities are additive.

So when you start with identity, government is failing to understand how those identities are shaped with interactions with the system and how systemic oppression is the barrier we’re trying to take down. That’s the point of doing this analysis.

Anna and I have a paper coming out in Canadian Public Administration that’s going to show that instead of starting with identity in the centre, you have to start on the outside. The outside is where the systems and institutions take place. Then you have to think about what the barriers are and then think about how those barriers are faced by different individuals with different identities.

So long as we keep focused on the centre, we’re going to have this problem of gender-based analysis being an add-on — a checklist — and not appropriately intersectional.

Senator Lankin: Thank you for your presentations. What intelligent, smart contributions you’re making to our study.

We’re looking at the government and GBA Plus, but I found it refreshing to hear you talk about the idea that the capacity of government alone isn’t going to do this and that we need those partnerships with community and research; we need to build that capacity. How many years have we talked, across many sectors, about building capacity and about core funding and not project funding, et cetera?

I would like to hear you on your suggestion about this broader capacity challenge that we see in Canada. How would you recommend we incorporate into our thinking the development of a community-of-practice approach to share best practices and to work in partnership in the community of practice between government officials, WAGE and other departments that are necessary to that, along with research capacities, schools of public policy, NGOs — a specific focus on NGOs working on intersectionality writ large?

Help us think about what a recommendation might look like to suggest that an approach that acknowledges that this is a much bigger issue to tackle than simply the government’s GBA Plus program.

Ms. Tedds: I’m working on a vision within the public policy community, not only academia but also civil societies. I am looking at bringing us together into transdisciplinary intersectional public-policy study analysis that includes both design and implementation — because I take issue that design and implementation can be separable; they’re not. Bringing that network together requires effort. We’ve been working on this for the last two years. Bringing that network together takes time.

But I would liken it to what Bonnie said: Without funding, you’re not going to get this. Whether it’s civil society, academia or even the federal government engaging us, whether we like it or not, funding and resources are an essential component of this. We have to stop thinking that people will do this out of the goodness of their hearts. It hasn’t worked for us.

Nor will one institution be able to do this. WAGE overly relies on the Institute for Gender and the Economy, or GATE, at the University of Toronto and neglects a whole spectrum of researchers and individuals engaging in this work across Canada. There are great pockets in Western Canada and in Eastern Canada, and we are, for the most part, locked out of the WAGE funding because we just don’t satisfy their need, or there’s an anti-competitive pressure here.

So that would be where I would start from my end of things. That, then, would help ensure that public policy schools and schools of public administration have training in intersectionality as a core course of our curriculum. Of course, that also means that our provinces would have to get on board, and mine’s not, because I’m in Alberta. To have the federal government behind this actually really helps to push this forward, because there’s a training need.

The Chair: Thank you. Ms. Brayton, you have less than a minute, but I’m sure you can enlighten us further.

Ms. Brayton: From a civil society perspective, capacity building is a more complex topic than we could do in a quick question.

One of the things I’ll build on, and it’s something DAWN has done — we have an initiative called “Do the Rights Thing,” largely based on the reality that the majority of human rights complaints in this country at the federal, provincial and territorial levels for more than a decade have been disability-related — a majority. That initiative is focused on the business case for human rights, not because human rights shouldn’t be what they purport to be, but like I said, there’s a lot of human rights that are seen from the failure perspective instead of the success perspective.

When I say “the business case for human rights,” I mean that we can show through some good work that’s been done already that this societal shift that we’re after is something that has to be done through a lot of different mechanisms. Some of what Lindsay is talking about is extremely important, of course, but like I said, the complexity of thinking about how you make that capacity shift on the kind of scale that you’re suggesting, senator, is more than I can answer in the little bit of time I have here, so I’ll leave it. Thank you.

Senator Dasko: I’d like to explore what Ms. Cameron was saying about the kind of analysis you’re trying to do now, which is to take the traditional economic analysis framework — cost-benefit and so on — and add to it the new approaches to that, such as the intersectional approach. Can you describe a little bit more how that works? What are the benefits of doing that? How far advanced is that analysis?

Is this something the government should be doing? We’ve heard about all the issues with GBA Plus analysis in government, and I’m just wondering if you think this is an approach that government should take. Would this be useful for them?

I’d just like to hear more about that.

Ms. Cameron: Honestly, I think Dr. Tedds could probably speak better to this than I can because she just finished a book chapter — or several chapters — on the approach. Sorry to put you on the spot.

Ms. Tedds: As a result of our work on the British Columbia Expert Panel on Basic Income, which we worked on for three years in B.C. — it was me, David Green and Rhys Kesselman — we spent a lot of time taking the usual policy framework — efficiency, equity and that kind of thing — and adding a social justice lens and an intersectional lens so that we have what we call an inclusive intersectional policy analysis framework. That book is coming out from IRPP imminently, but it’s publishing, so I don’t know how “imminent” that is.

Any sort of innovation or change in mind requires somebody to be open and available to understanding that our policy analysis framework is limited. The barrier we have faced as economists is getting other economists to understand that a policy framework that we developed a hundred years ago in a discipline that is not representative itself cannot, in fact, lead to policy that is representative.

So as our material comes out, we will always freely and openly share it — and we look forward to doing so; we’re doing that with government — but it’s not going to happen overnight. That’s because you have some tough nuts to convince of something different.

Senator Dasko: Like economics departments, you might say. Thank you.

Senator McCallum: Thank you for your presentations. I wanted to say that the GBA Plus never worked. It has never been a solution, because it hasn’t been implemented. There is difficulty getting people to apply it.

I want to go back to your shifting the focus of analysis away from identity, to engage instead with the systems. I understand that. As Indigenous people, that’s what we have to do when we decolonize. It’s the shifting away from that socialization of disability or socialization of Indigeneity and to consider how these factors complicate interactions with state institutions and policy. I can understand it at some point and then I lose track.

To understand the ramification of the historical braiding of racism, exclusion and marginalization by state institutions and policy, how can you separate the individual when they are so braided with that institution?

They’re so intimately braided. I really saw that with the Pope’s apology. I saw people I knew who immediately fell back into the learned behaviour they had been given. A lot of this is learned behaviour. It’s about accepting what the privileged have set in place.

I just want to understand how this would differ from GBA. Isn’t that what GBA was to do, to understand these systems so that we could change them and give people better lives? If you can explain that, I would appreciate it.

The Chair: Senator McCallum, who would you like that question to be answered by?

Senator McCallum: Whoever wants to answer it.

Ms. Cameron: I can answer that. Thank you for that question.

I completely agree. The statement that I was making about shifting this analysis away from identity and instead engaging with systems was just to make the point that, in current implementation, GBA Plus often focuses only on gender. It asks, what is the impact on this nebulous woman or woman who has a disability and also might be Indigenous? This approach doesn’t really engage, as Dr. Tedds said earlier, with systems of oppression, power structures, institutions or the state. Instead of taking that type of approach to analysis, we could think about how different people might interact with and are shaped by these systems, structures and institutions. You’re still talking about the individual; you’re just starting from a much richer place: a place that actually enables you to engage with, to ask questions of and critically examine the complicity of institutions and governments in exactly what you’re talking about with Indigenous people in particular.

Ms. Brayton: I’d like to add something here.

The Chair: Please do.

Ms. Brayton: Thank you. If we just think about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls inquiry, one of the things DAWN knows from our work is that a high number of women involved were women with unmet disability needs. Many of them had invisible disabilities and brain injuries.

Despite the fact that this is so obvious to an organization like DAWN and our work and to some Indigenous folks, this was never even brought up during the inquiry. It was never raised. They were supposed to be looking at systemic and root causes.

I appreciate that what you’re trying to get at is where the failure and success are here. In terms of GBA Plus, I think we all understand it’s a list thing instead of a holistic approach. That is the best way I can think of it. That is always the problem when you get into that kind of identity politics, as Anna was saying. Then people are starting to say, “Okay. There’s a disabled woman there and a Black woman over here,” and then all of a sudden everyone thinks everything is all good.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Senator Moodie: Even if we are able to broaden the responsibility across civil society and education systems and engage very broadly and attempt to shift culture, to educate and build capacity, we’re still left with a government that we have heard is quite dispersed, where responsibility is dispersed; silos exist; departments are loosely, if at all, affiliated; and learnings are rarely shared.

How do we hold our government accountable? What is the single point of accountability that you see right now in the system that could be engaged to help our government and its multiple departments address this mandate in a more aggressive and much more accountable way?

Ms. Brayton: I was very direct in my speaking notes about this. An example I can give you is that in any given program, there will be commitments to women with disabilities. I don’t want to pick a specific department, because I think that could be risky at this point. As I said, that could happen.

As I mentioned before, there isn’t anyone but DAWN who could tell you how much work was actually done related to women and girls with disabilities, because there isn’t a measure. The very first thing we have to do is start to measure results. How many projects do you actually fund? Who was involved in the projects? What were the outcomes?

Senator Moodie: In your view, is there an agency that we could charge with this responsibility? What is the best agency right now within this structure that could help us at least attempt to start the shift in culture that we think we need?

I understand the gaps in accountability frameworks and process versus outcome measures. I understand that there are serious gaps, but I’m trying to understand who would be charged with this.

Ms. Brayton: I think some of the things that have happened in some of the work we’ve done with WAGE have shown promise. I’m not saying it’s a perfect solution, but one of the things we have seen emerge more is some of the contract work that WAGE gives to institutions, universities and civil society organizations.

You’re hearing from me, Lindsay and Anna some of the same things, so some of this has to be assigned across a civil society-government partnership for it to be credible and designed in a way that the measurement results will satisfy everyone and not just the government. I think that might be part of it.

We have to think outside of what’s been done before. There are some newer models in terms of some of the consultations around the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence that speak to an attempt. I don’t think it was a full success, but there were some attempts to use the feminist organizing model that is so well developed by feminist organizations to get at this.

I see Lindsay nodding. I’d love to hear from her too. If we’re going to be pragmatic, we need an approach that could be the beginning of that.

Ms. Tedds: We can look back at when program review dismantled the women’s state to actually understand what we dismantled. What we dismantled is exactly what we need as part of this problem.

I used to work in government. I caution about designating one centre because this is such a disparate sort of topic. We get contacted by Finance Canada, Global Affairs on trade agreements and Innovation, Science and Economic Development on SME, small- and medium-sized enterprises, policy. No one person will have all of that. But in order to get the bureaucracy to take this seriously, the Clerk of the Privy Council has to be a champion of this, without a shadow of a doubt.

Within the ministers and public policy, there needs to be a champion. While we have Minister Ien and Minister Freeland, we actually need a minister to champion it in a way that actually makes change. Nobody at the ministerial level is doing that at this point in time. I think there’s a lot of hope being placed on Minister Ien because she came into this with a better understanding of the intersectionality that existed in WAGE, but we’re lacking the true champion model that I see in departments like Global Affairs, which has amazing research done on trade chapters that no one is ever going to see. They have a champion inside their department that’s pushing this forward. Interestingly, though, they’re not getting their information from WAGE.

Senator Kutcher: Thank you to all the witnesses. This question is for Ms. Brayton, but anyone else can chime in.

I noted that you had concerns about the Disability Inclusion Action Plan, or DIAP, in your briefing note. I’d like you to flesh out a bit more about what those concerns are. Also, what could be done, in your opinion, to mitigate those concerns that you have?

Ms. Brayton: They’re largely based on what we’ve been talking about, which is that GBA Plus is already a concern. GBA Plus has had a lot of resources put behind it, a lot of focus in the government behind it, and it’s presenting challenges for some departments in terms of how to interpret it and apply it, how to be effective in doing that and how to measure it.

I understand the intention of the DIAP is to ensure that we realize the goal of full implementation by 2040. But in practical terms, I work with departments, with senior policy people, with program people and with the people who work with us on individual grants. In all of those conversations, what always comes clearly to me is that there’s a real challenge, because of the way department and staff change, to keep something consistent with GBA Plus. I have no doubt there will be the same type of challenges with the Disability Inclusion Action Plan. I do think it’s because we keep moving away from what Anna has been talking about from the beginning of today. We’re not talking about what we should be talking about: intersectional policy frameworks. These frameworks serve the DIAP, GBA Plus and all of it and get us moving in the right direction about how we should have this 360-degree shift in the way we do things. We need to move out of the silos. The government is organized in silos and it’s a real challenge. That is the challenge for this government now.

You referenced Minister Ien. I know there’s a small group of ministers who are now beginning to see that they have the same challenges. I criticized it not because I don’t think it’s a well-intentioned idea, but I still think it’s going in the wrong direction. This is not the way forward. The real way forward is in recognized, well-developed research such as the research that has been well developed — as Lindsay has pointed out and Anna has articulated so well — around intersectional policy frameworks.

The Chair: Ms. Cameron, do you have anything to add? We have a minute left in this round. No? Okay. Thank you. That gives me a minute for my own question, and it is to Ms. Cameron.

You noted in your presentation that in order to really get to our aspirations in GBA Plus analysis, we need to look at diverse forms of data. Could you amplify that a bit for us?

Ms. Cameron: Yes, absolutely. Thanks for that question. Mentioning “diverse forms of data” emerges out of this ongoing lamentation about lack of data and about how that is going to prohibit us from doing GBA Plus or intersectional analysis. I work with economists who love data, so I come up against this a lot because I have a background that’s more political science and theory. When I talk about diverse data, I talk about diverse ways of understanding problems. I think about all of these social sciences and humanities disciplines we have that teach us how to ask different kinds of questions and teach us how to think about problems differently. I think about qualitative research that isn’t just surveys, qualitative research that is about storytelling and involving different ways of sharing one’s story. I think about historical analysis. I think about sociology. I think about just making logical arguments and asking questions about why do we do things the way that we do them when there’s an obvious impact. I don’t think that you always need data to see that something is quite obviously bad for people. That’s what I’d say about that.

The Chair: Thank you very much. Ms. Tedds, this a variation of Senator Lankin’s question. I think it was you who said we need a pan-Canadian network of scholars and students who are committed to the science. I don’t believe it will happen organically. Do you believe the federal government should have a role in funding the creation of such a network?

Ms. Tedds: Yes. It’s driving this. The whole reason why I started to get into this as a scholar was because in 2015, when the election went to the Liberals, there was a commitment to roll out gender-based analysis and policy analysis. That’s when I decided I should get to know this. I trained as an economist. I was not equipped to help the government do that.

It has that obligation because it’s made that commitment. When you think about the think tanks involved in putting out research on policy analysis like the C.D. Howe Institute, or the Conference Board of Canada, who has seen gender-based analysis or intersectionality in their work? The only big organizations you’re going to see it from are the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives or an organization that has “women” or “gender” in its title. It has to be, if I may be so bold, mainstreamed, and it has to stop being a gender issue. It’s not a gender issue. It is about society.

We also have to remember that there are individuals with lived experience, to pick up with Anna’s topic here. We cannot leave behind the valuable information that is in the experience of people in engaging with the system. It’s actually that kind of information that helps you understand the data. I can do cross tabs and regression analysis all you want. I just get a number. It tells me nothing about what that number means, where it came from and how to dismantle the system that leads to that number.

Yes, there’s a lot here. Stats Canada has a role to play, but the federal government should be leading the effort to bring this network together and be funding it, and it’s not doing that.

The Chair: Thank you. Professor Tedds, Ms. Cameron, Ms. Brayton, Ms. McLeod, thank you for your excellent testimony and assistance with our study. It’s greatly appreciated. Please do forgive me for cutting you off. It’s the hardest part of my job. I dislike it very much, but there is something I have to do, which is to get things done on time.

Honourable senators, our next meeting will be Wednesday, September 28.

Ms. Brayton: Madam Chair, I just want to say thank you and to tell you that our brief will be coming to the committee. I hope all senators will take time to read it in detail.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Brayton. We look forward to that.

We are not meeting tomorrow, but steering will be meeting to discuss the work plan for the fall.

Senator Lankin: You made reference to a steering meeting tomorrow. The following week, will we be moving to two meetings a week? Are we meeting next Thursday?

The Chair: I will let you know. That is exactly what will happen in the steering meeting tomorrow. I know which way I want to go, but it is the steering committee that will decide.

(The committee adjourned.)