Gender budgeting promise criticized for lax accountability measures

The Trudeau government’s promised gender-based assessment of the 2017 budget must come with strengthened reporting requirements and measurements to track progress, or it runs the risk of sputtering out as a limp public relations exercise, say critics. Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu (Sarnia-Lambton, Ont.), chair of the House Status of Women Committee, told The Hill Times that while she wants to see the analytical tool used efficiently to gauge proposals in the budget, she worries the Liberals won’t put the necessary policies in place to ensure success. “I’m supportive of doing the analysis, and doing it correctly, but that said, I don’t have great faith in this government’s ability to execute anything,” she said in an interview. “They always talk well and say the right things, but their actions are always nonexistent or way too little.” The Liberal government promised in its fall economic statement last November to publish a gender-based analysis of all measures included in Budget 2017, and for future budgets. A gender-based analysis (GBA) assesses the effects of government policies, programs, legislation, and services on women and men. It works by providing a snapshot of the realities for the women and men affected by a particular issue. A GBA-plus refers to analyses that consider the impact on other discernible demographic groups beyond the gender divide, like racialized and disabled populations. Several government departments have conducted GBAs but this information is rarely, if ever, released to the public, and when it is, it’s usually not until years later, according to Jean-Denis Fréchette, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, an independent agent of the legislature tasked with scrutinizing spending plans. “These kind of analyses are actually done by departments, or most departments, and we never had access to it because it’s generally kept as confidence,” he explained. For example, a Finance Canada official told members of the Senate Human Rights Committee last fall that the department had completed a GBA on Bill C-2, which introduced the government’s heavily-hyped tax cuts for middle-income earners, but couldn’t release the information because as budget advice to the minister, it's “covered as a cabinet confidence.” While several women’s groups applauded the government’s initial announcement to publicly release GBAs, critics are warning that potential gaps in information and sparse-to-nonexistent tracking standards could neuter any analysis. NDP MP Sheila Malcolmson (Nanaimo-Ladysmith, B.C.), her party's status of women critic, said the Liberals should have put in place legislation mandating gender-based analysis, which she argued would ensure better accountability and transparency measures. If legislation was enacted, the government could be held to account on whether it is conducting GBAs and doing so in a manner consistent with rules laid out in the law, she explained. It would also empower the auditor general's office, which is mandated to assess government activity based on its legislated commitments. But while the government maintains that it currently has in place a so-called gender checklist it uses to scrutinize and inform cabinet decisions, Ms. Malcolmson said that because of cabinet confidence nobody has any idea what kind of questions are being asked, or the results of the analysis. “The most transparent way to do gender budgeting would have been to implement gender-based analysis legislation,” she said in an interview. “What the government is doing is a fallback.” Currently, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada is the only department legislatively mandated to conduct GBAs, and it produces “good work” as a result, she said. When the House Status of Women Committee called for legislation last spring, Ms. Malcolmson pointed out that the government only responded by saying it would provide an answer in 2018. “It’s so noncommittal,” she said. In her response to the committee's recommendations, then-status of women minister Patty Hajdu (Thunder Bay-Superior North, Ont.) said the government agreed that "more needs to be done to strengthen accountability and oversight for GBA," but did not commit to enshrining requirements for the analysis in law. Ms. Hajdu was moved from the portfolio in January to become the minister of employment, workforce, and labour. Writing in The Globe and Mail, Lynda Gullason, an adjunct research professor at the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Ottawa’s Carleton University, flagged the absence of any requirement for departments and agencies to produce GBAs as particularly problematic. At the United Nations’ Women’s Conference in 1995, the Canadian government committed to analyzing gender-specific policy impacts on women and men before making decisions on policies, legislation, and programs throughout its departments and agencies. But 22 years later, only 30 out of 110 departments have even signed on to the government’s internal gender-based analysis action plan, according to Ms. Gullason. Furthermore, in 2015, the Auditor General’s Office released a report on its study of 16 initiatives that it believed had the potential to impact women and men differently. The initiatives were under the consideration of four departments. The office found that GBAs were only completed for eight of the 16 initiatives, and for the other eight, the respective departments had concluded that there were no gender-specific impacts, though these conclusions were not “adequately supported.” On its website, the Treasury Board, which acts as the manager of the federal civil service, states that it’s the responsibility of individual departments and agencies to determine if there’s a potential gender issue within the proposed policy, program, initiative or service. Under the current GBA strategy, the Status of Women department is responsible for tracking how departments utilize GBAs, and if they do so. But Ms. Gladu points out that not only does the department lack the ability to enforce compliance, there are no mechanisms in place to ensure GBAs are completed appropriately or to track the effects of the policies scrutinized by the assessments. “I haven’t seen anything that is holistic that would be rolled out across departments,” she said. As recommended by the House Status of Women Committee, Ms. Gladu called on the Liberals to empower the federal Treasury Board to study any government-developed legislation to ensure an “appropriate” GBA was conducted, and if not, to punt it back to the relevant department. In addition, she called for “follow-up audits” on government initiatives to assess whether the GBAs were effective, such as studying how resettled female Syrian refugees are “experiencing life in Canada.” In its report on the topic, the House Status of Women Committee also recommended that the government ensure all analyses produced are GBA-plus, and more money be provided to the Status of Women and other departments to cover the additional expenses of preparing and monitoring GBAs. When reached by The Hill Times, the office of Status of Women Minister Maryam Monsef (Peterborough-Kawartha, Ont.) declined comment, citing a lack of details about the impending budget. Spokesperson Alex Wellstead said the minister is waiting for the budget announcement to see the analyses that stem from the government's pledge. Annie Donolo, a spokesperson for federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau (Toronto Centre, Ont.), refused to elaborate on the structure of the gender-based analysis of budget initiatives, though promised that details would be released when the budget is tabled next week. The Liberals, she noted, increased funding for gender-based analysis in the last budget to ensure "more effective and inclusive decision-making," and will continue to "build capacity" across government to ensure the "impacts of our decisions on men and women are considered." The Liberals earmarked $23.3-million in funding over five years in Budget 2016, starting this past year, for the Status of Women department to increase its capacity to support gender-based analysis across the federal government, and to expand its regional presence to support local organizations working on women’s issues and gender equality. mvigliotti@hilltimes.com The Hill Times

Gender budgeting promise criticized for lax accountability measures

'I don’t have great faith in this government’s ability to execute anything,' says Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu.

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Gender budgeting promise criticized for lax accountability measures

'I don’t have great faith in this government’s ability to execute anything,' says Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu.

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