Gender analysis kept under wraps
OTTAWA • A newly released memo from Finance Canada says departmental officials regularly examine how proposals from across the government affect women and men in different ways, but suggests they want to keep their conclusions secret.
The document discusses how the federal government would respond to a June, 2016, report on gender-based analysis from the House of Commons committee on status of women, which recommended such analysis be mandatory across all departments and agencies.
The memo, obtained under the Access to Information Act, indicates the longstanding practice of federal cabinet secrecy would prevent the sharing of analyses.
“While we aim for the highest level of transparency, due to Cabinet confidences there are limits to what central agencies can provide to third parties with respect to reporting on our challenge functions,” says the Aug. 30, 2016, memo to Paul Rochon, the deputy minister.
Gender- based analysis is a tool that helps government study how its policies, legislation and program decisions might affect men and women, or boys and girls, in different ways, along with taking age, income, ethnicity and other factors into account.
Canada committed to using gender-based analysis in 1995, as part of ratifying the UN Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, but the auditor general concluded last year that relatively few departments and agencies were using it, or that they were doing so in an incomplete and inconsistent way.
That is changing. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is said to have pushed for more rigorous gender- based analysis around the cabinet table. Finance Minister Bill Morneau pledged to put the 2017 federal budget through the same process and publish the results.
The finance department plays a special role in genderbased analysis.
It puts many of its own policies through the process, but it also reviews the gender- based analysis done by other departments on any budget proposals before they can go to Morneau.
Treasury Board and the Privy Council Office, the other two central agencies, perform a similar “challenge function.” A template for the new due diligence document that must now be submitted with every memorandum to cabinet shows proposals must include a summary of findings from a gender-based analysis.
Jack Aubry, a spokesman for the finance department, said he could not give any more details.
Isabella Bakker, a political scientist at York University who has done research on gender budgeting, said the finance department should be able to find some balance. “They could develop some kind of internal measure that would get around the issue of secrecy, but would at least give a broad indication of what they were doing.”