Archived: Departmental Results Report 2018 to 2019, supplementary tables: Department of Environment, chapter 4

Gender-based analysis plus

Governance structures

The Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM) of the Strategic Policy Branch is Environment and Climate Change Canada’s (ECCC) Gender-based analysis plus (GBA+) Champion. As such, GBA+ functions are managed by the Branch, which includes the GBA+ Centre of Excellence.

The GBA+ Centre of Excellence was established in 2018-19 as the ECCC responsibility centre for GBA+. The Centre of Expertise reviews all mandatory GBA+ products produced by the Department, and it’s mandate is to:

• Build and strengthen ECCC capacity to carry out high quality analyses of population-level impacts to accompany policy products such as Memoranda to Cabinet or Budget Submissions;
• Support the integration of GBA+ into functions such as planning, evaluation and regulations, in line with Cabinet Directives; and,
• Encourage the use of a GBA+ lens across all facets of ECCC work.

In order to accomplish these aims, the Centre of Expertise provides guidance, advice and support, establishes tools and templates, and liaises with the Department of Women and Gender Equality to maintain awareness and involvement with interdepartmental GBA+ activities and initiatives.

The Centre of Expertise also serves as chair for an intra-Departmental GBA+ Branch Advisory Network. The Branch Advisory Network was established in 2018-19, to bring together representatives from each Branch on a quarterly basis to share and discuss progress, challenges and innovations for GBA+.

Human resources

The Centre of Expertise was staffed consistently with one dedicated FTE, and the Strategic Policy Directorate provided additional support on an as needed basis. An additional 0.5 FTE, within the Regulatory Innovation and Management Systems sector has also been dedicated to GBA+.

The creation of a departmental Branch Advisory Network sought to build horizontal GBA+ capacity to ensure expertise across the department. While members are not dedicated to GBA+ full time, they are used as GBA+ resources by their Branches.

Major initiatives: results achieved

In 2018-19, ECCC sought to institutionalize support for GBA+ to strengthen analyses for policy projects and to mainstream the use of a GBA+ lens.

ECCC conducted GBA+ for all Budget Proposals, Memoranda to Cabinet and Treasury Board Submissions for 2018-19, and the Centre of Expertise reviewed all these analyses. Additional advice was provided for other areas of work such as procurement and trade agreements. Resource banks of relevant and targeted references and training were established to aid the development of analyses and GBA+ consultation/coaching was provided on demand. Care was taken to ensure that these analyses took an intersectional approach to considering the impacts of programs and policies for all Canadians.

Over the last two years, Canada has worked with the Women Environmental Development Organization, an international non-governmental organization and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie to sponsor two training workshops for women who are climate negotiators for countries in the Caribbean region and in francophone Africa. ECCC has also supported the participations of 10 women negotiators from these sessions to attend Conference of Parties 23 and 24 for their home countries.

Canada has also supported the active engagement of Indigenous organizations to climate change negotiations, including the Native Women’s Association of Canada on its delegation to Conference of Parties.

Further, as a part of the ECCC Youth Engagement Framework implementation, ECCC sent youth delegates to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. For the Conference of Parties 24 (December 2018), held in Katowice, Poland, ECCC worked with the Climate Action Network Canada to nominate Canadian youths on Canada’s delegation. ECCC provided financial support to four Canadian youths to attend the Conference of Parties 24 as delegates, as well as two members of the Prime Ministers’ Youth Council. Youth delegates were invited to attend daily briefings and consultation for the Canadian delegation at the Conference of Parties 24, and were provided full accreditation access during the Conference of Parties 24.

Additionally, in May 2018, the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, hosted the Climate Leaders’ Summit: Women Kicking It on Climate, which supported Canada’s focus on climate action and gender in the G7. It also recognized women’s key contributions in taking climate action.

Reporting capacity and data

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