2023-24 Gender and diversity: Impacts on programs

Example from Employment and Social Development Canada

Program: Supports for Student Learning program (SSLP)

Goals: SSLP is to help learners succeed in school and develop the skills they need to transition to the job market. The program funds organizations at the national, regional, local and grassroots levels to provide learners with the financial and non-financial supports needed to graduate high school and transition to and succeed in post-secondary education.

Impacts: In 2023–24, SSLP supported more than 152,000 youth across funded projects. Where possible, funding recipients reported on the number of students enrolled in their projects annually, disaggregated by:

• gender
• First Nation, Métis, Inuit status
• disability
• race and ethnicity
• sexual orientation
• income
• housed status
• age
• immigration status
• rural, remote or northern status
• identification with official language communities

The Outbound Student Mobility Pilot (OSMP) aims to increase participation in study and work abroad opportunities for Canadian college and undergraduate university students. Between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024, a total of 5,687 students participated in the program, of which:

• 73% identified as an underrepresented student
• 62% identified as a low-income student
• 19% identified as a student with a disability
• 11% identified as an Indigenous student

As of December 2023, SSLP program officials have engaged funding recipients to:

• discuss project and participant data collection
• refine data collection and reporting processes
• explore ways to build capacity, survey youth and balance various methodological factors to ensure that the data collected are accurate and reliable

This will help track and measure the intersectional impacts of program participation on youth that identify with equity-seeking groups. The SSLP provided opportunities for stakeholders to report and describe how their tailored support benefitted learners from underserved communities.

Work was also done to improve the department’s understanding of factors contributing to student success and to strengthen the evidence-based approach used to improve program implementation. This was done by actioning key items from the Impact Measurement Framework work underway and as identified in the Evaluation of the SSLP (June 2023 Final Report), including the launch of a pilot Youth Feedback Survey to understand the influence of SSLP supports and services on youth participants.

Example from Indigenous Services Canada

Program: Indigenous Entrepreneurship and Business Development

Goals: The program supports Indigenous economic development and innovation, and reduces socioeconomic gaps between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous people with co-developed and distinctions-based policies and programs.

Impacts: The Aboriginal Entrepreneurship Program – Access to Capital provides funding to expand and diversify the network of Indigenous Financial Institutions and Métis Capital Corporations, enhancing access to capital for Indigenous businesses across Canada. For 2023–24, among other indicators, the program reported on the number of Indigenous businesses accessing funds. Results were reported based on:

• gender of principal owners
  • 28% of businesses are owned by women
  • 6% of businesses are equally owned
  • 66% of businesses are owned by men
• age of principal owner
  • 18% of the entrepreneurs are under 35
  • 50% of the entrepreneurs are ages 36 to 50
  • 25% of the entrepreneurs are ages 51 to 65
  • 8% of the entrepreneurs are 66 and older
• Business location
  • 48% of the businesses are in urban areas
  • 38% of the businesses are in rural areas
  • 14% of the businesses are in remote areas

The program has begun to collaborate with experts and Indigenous organizations to improve its data collection and analysis structure to better address identity-based needs.

Example from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)

Program: Research Training and Talent Development

Goals: The program provides grants, scholarships and fellowships to attract, retain and develop the next generation of scientists and engineers, as well as to promote science to Canadian youth to encourage an early interest in science. The student support provided at all post-secondary levels helps Canada develop a talented, skilled and inclusive workforce.

Impacts: Black scholars are largely underrepresented as recipients of NSERC’s scholarship and fellowship funding. In 2023–24, NSERC provided 126 additional awards to meritorious Black students and fellows.

In 2023–24, the Indigenous Scholars Awards and Supplements Pilot Initiative increased the number of awards offered to Indigenous applicants. This pilot leveraged the Canada Graduate Scholarships—Master’s program by awarding all meritorious Indigenous applicants with a scholarship and a supplement. Overall, 18 Indigenous students received awards.

• Percentage of newly funded recipients who self-identify as “Indigenous peoples”: 3.8%
• Percentage of newly funded recipients who self-identify as “women”: 48.3%
• Percentage of newly funded recipients who self-identify as “persons with disability”: 7.8%
• Percentage of newly funded recipients who self-identify as “visible minority”: 31.9%

Example from Environment and Climate Change Canada

Program: Community Eco-Action

Goals: The program is a suite of initiatives aimed at increasing Canadians’ participation in activities to protect, conserve and restore the environment. It includes funding programs such as the Environmental Damages Fund (EDF) program and the Science Horizons program, as well as the Sustainable Development Goals.

Impacts: Through the Climate Action and Awareness Fund, funded in large part by the EDF, 130 projects for approximately $167 million have been approved so far and projects are ongoing. The EDF aims to have a positive impact on the lives and natural environment of Canadians and their communities by providing funding for community-based projects that benefit the environment.

During funding proposal intake periods, concrete actions were taken to recognize various cultures and languages through the engagement of Indigenous communities and official language minority communities to build awareness of funding opportunities. These included:

• using a linguistic lens when answering inquiries and evaluating proposals that involve official language minority communities
• funding projects in communities negatively impacted by climate risks (such as, coastal, northern communities)

Program impact statistics reported on the sociodemographic makeup of groups engaging or directly benefiting from the program. For example, the Science Horizons Youth Internship Program reported on Indigenous youth hired (4%), racialized youth hired (25.5%), youth with disabilities hired (7.2%) and women hired (55.2%).

The Science Horizons Youth Internship project continued its commitment to help enable employment and skills training for youth furthest away from employment. For its new program delivery cycle for fiscal year 2023–24, the program has incorporated new targets and increased targets for equity-seeking groups, specifically:

• Indigenous youth
• racialized youth
• youth with disabilities
• youth from an official language minority community
• youth from rural, remote and fly-in communities
• 2SLGBTQQIA+ youth
• women

Targets were informed by industry research and are proportionally representative to the size of the respective equity-seeking groups in Canada, with the goal of increasing participation and resources directed towards youth.

Example from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

Program: Marketplace Protection and Promotion

Goals: The program regulates and provides oversight over a number of aspects of the Canadian marketplace, including trade measurement, insolvency, corporate governance including federal incorporation, market access and consumer affairs.

Impacts: Corporations Canada published its fourth annual review in May 2024 on diversity of boards of directors and senior management teams of federal distributing corporations created under the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA), using 2023 data. Corporations have to report on the representation of four designated groups defined in the Employment Equity Act on their board of directors and senior management teams: women, Indigenous peoples (First Nations, Inuit and Métis), persons with disabilities, and members of visible minorities.

The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy (OSB) collects data for GBA Plus on a voluntary basis to analyze and address potential barriers in the insolvency system. In 2023–24, OSB revised its outreach and engagement strategy and undertook a project to better understand the needs of marginalized groups, particularly Indigenous Peoples. This included engaging with Indigenous debtors to identify challenges and developing a “What we heard” report with recommendations for improvement, which will be finalized in 2024–25.

The department reported impacts based on multiple identity factors, specifically noting the volume of consumer insolvencies by the following:

• gender
• age
• annual income
• Indigenous identity
• disability
• visible minority status

Corporations Canada met with various groups representing Indigenous entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs, and Black-owned and -led businesses to understand their needs, inform on our services and receive feedback. Feedback is intended to improve services (simplify wording, navigation, ease of use and increase overall accessibility).

Corporations Canada also developed an Indigenous engagement plan in collaboration with Indigenous organizations, Indigenous people and other government departments. The plan encompasses many areas, such as Indigenous languages research and inclusion, equitable communication and eliminating internal barriers.

Example from Indigenous Services Canada

Program: Public Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

Goals: The program offers First Nations and Inuit the flexibility to implement integrated, holistic health services, while also supporting the transfer of these services to their communities. The program’s key activities encompass mental wellness, healthy living, child development, communicable disease control, and environmental public health.

Impacts: Indicators reported identified a wide range of impacts across five sub-programs. For example, the Communicable Disease Control and Management sub-program identified the rate (per 100,000) of newly reported cases of HIV among individuals living in First Nations communities based on age and gender. The COVID-19 pandemic affected surveillance and delayed reporting for 2022, as resources were shifted away from other diseases. It also disrupted access to prevention and care for sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBIs). Stigma, power imbalances and asymptomatic cases further limited testing for STBBIs like syphilis across all age groups.

Further impacts from COVID-19 were identified, specifically ways in which the pandemic and the need to reallocate public health resources disrupted immunization programs across Canada and delayed annual reporting. Vaccine hesitancy and public fatigue further reduced immunization coverage, including among children.

Additional statistics under the Mental Wellness sub-program reported included the percentage of adults who reported “excellent” or “very good” mental health for First Nations on and off reserve, Inuit living within Inuit Nunangat and Métis communities (female and male).

The Mental Wellness Program will continue to use data from surveys such as the Regional Health Survey, Indigenous Peoples Survey, and the forthcoming National Inuit Health Survey. The program prioritizes Indigenous-led data strategies that focus on distinctions and aggregate-level, outcomes-based reporting and supporting Indigenous communities’ control over their data and storytelling. It is also exploring ways to integrate Indigenous-developed indicators and measurements into its reporting.

Example from Health Canada

Program: Tobacco Control

Goals: The Program aims to reduce the prevalence of tobacco use in Canada through uptake prevention efforts and helping people who use tobacco to quit. The program also addresses the health risks of using vaping products and works to prevent their use among youth and Canadians who do not smoke.

Impacts: The program’s reported impacts noted that tobacco use is not spread equally across the population. To address that, Health Canada implemented policies and interventions that are specifically targeting adults who smoke, youth and/or people who do not smoke.

The program’s indicators on the prevalence of Canadians (aged 15+) who report current cigarette smoking are shared by gender, age, sexual orientation, educational attainment, socio-economic status and diagnosis of anxiety and/or mood disorder. The department’s Sex- and Gender-based Analysis Plus (SGBA Plus) data collection plans include collaborating with Statistics Canada to assess key aspects of tobacco use through population health surveys, such as the Canadian Community Health Survey and the Canadian Tobacco and Nicotine Survey. A Public Opinion Research project was conducted in 2023–24, taking a deep dive into the barriers and enablers of smoking cessation among Canadian adults who smoke, and exploring whether attitudes and behaviours around smoking cessation differ by high and low prevalence groups.

Health Canada funded five projects through the Substance Use and Additions Program (SUAP) focused on prevention, protection and/or cessation of use of tobacco and vaping products. Projects informed Canadians about harms and risk of tobacco and vaping products, including projects designing cessation interventions for people who smoke as well as youth who vape. To improve SUAP’s capacity for collecting and reporting on demographic data and to support funding recipients, SUAP provided a demographic data collection guide to recipients which supports the collection of relevant SGBA Plus data. This guide included examples of quantitative and qualitative demographic data collection tools.

Example from the Canada Border Services Agency

Program: Buildings and Equipment

Goals: The program oversees infrastructure and equipment maintenance activities and capital investments delivered at air, land and marine ports of entry; at the Canada Border Services Agency College; at immigration holding centres; and at staff housing units. GBA Plus is incorporated into building designs for infrastructure replacements and/or construction, ensuring barrier-free access.

Impacts: All Canadians, specifically the demographic of those with vision impairment and those facing gender-based barriers, will benefit directly from the incorporated GBA Plus elements. In terms of changes in its delivery model impacting outcomes on gender and diversity, the design guides for Canada Border Services Agency ports of entry have incorporated elements of gender-neutral washrooms and change rooms, as well as textured flooring, and will incorporate levels of accessibility and accommodation into the built environment for future port of entry construction.

Example from Public Safety Canada

Program: Serious and Organized Crime

Goals: The objective of the program is to enhance the safety and security of Canadians by combatting and reducing the impact of serious and organized crime in Canada. The program aims to prevent and disrupt criminal activities such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, cybercrime, and other illicit activities.

Impacts: In 2023–24, the National Strategy for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet supported Statistics Canada to produce a Juristat report on the Statistical profile of online child sexual exploitation police-reported incidents in Canada in order to better understand how this crime impacts various populations.

This report illustrated that online child sexual exploitation is a gendered crime, which largely impacts girls as victims for all offence types. The majority of victims of police-reported online sexual offences against children were girls, particularly girls between the ages of 12 and 17 (71% of all victims). Boys and men represented the vast majority of accused across all offence types. This report helps inform policies and programs in addressing this crime.

The full scope of human trafficking is unknown due to the under-reported nature of the crime. As a result, police-reported and court-related data provide only a partial view of the issue. While formal data are limited, qualitative evidence illustrates that individuals at greatest risk of victimization in Canada are generally those facing socio-economic challenges and marginalization. Particularly at risk are Indigenous women and girls, immigrants and newcomers to Canada, youth in foster care, people with disabilities and 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals.

As of April 2024, there have been over 3,000 project participants in the 12 community-led Empowerment projects funded under the Contribution Program to Combat Serious and Organized Crime. Almost all of the projects addressed the need for individualized supports, as their clients’ needs can be diverse and, as one project noted, “healing from trauma is non-linear.” For those projects targeting youth, as of April 2024, there have been over 44,000 individuals reached both in person and online. Youth feedback indicates appreciation for survivor-led stories and the ability to engage and provide feedback to the material.

Example from Canadian Heritage

Program: Youth Engagement

Goals: The program aims to strengthen young people’s connection to Canada by fostering civic engagement, appreciation of diversity and national identity. The program targets youth across Canada, with a strong focus on equity-seeking groups, including Indigenous youth, racialized youth, youth with disabilities, those from rural or low-income backgrounds, and 2SLGBTQI+ youth.

Impacts: The Exchanges Canada Program provides grants and contributions supporting youth exchanges across regions, promoting national unity and understanding. Impacts show strong results:

• 80% of women, 79% of men and 77% of non-binary participants reported a better understanding of what Canadians have in common
• 90% of women, 89% of men and 85% of non-binary participants reported a greater appreciation of Canada’s diversity

Notable initiatives include “Connecting Young Canadians,” which supported reciprocal exchanges for 2,088 youth, including 413 from official language minority communities. The project helped enhance youth attachment to Canada through knowledge-sharing and relationship-building.

The Youth Take Charge Program empowered nearly 2,000 Francophone youth in New Brunswick—especially from official language minority communities—to design and lead projects that educate their peers and communities about Canada. This youth-led model fostered civic engagement and a deeper personal connection to national identity.

The Youth Secretariat played a key role in ensuring a whole-of-government youth strategy, leading a senior-level horizontal committee to promote youth priorities. It maintained and promoted the Youth Impact Analysis Tool, which helps integrate a youth perspective, especially related to gender and diversity, into federal policy design.

In 2023–24, the Youth Secretariat led inclusive recruitment for the seventh cohort of the Youth Council, prioritizing equity through digital outreach and efforts to reach underrepresented youth.

Example from Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada

Program: Negotiation of Treaties, Self-Government Agreements and other Constructive Arrangements

Goals: The program supports Canada’s commitment to the negotiation of treaties, self-government agreements and other constructive arrangements to reconcile Indigenous rights with the sovereignty of the Crown. The intent is to co-create an enabling environment where Indigenous groups can exercise their right to self-determination and improve the conditions in their communities.

GBA Plus is applied in various ways: the parties may identify ways to ensure that the process is community-led through an inclusive and accessible community outreach campaign and ratification, with a particular focus on women, youth and other socially vulnerable groups, such as persons with disabilities and 2SLGBTQI+ individuals, and includes consideration of optimal times, places, persons and methods.

Consideration is given to how a provision proposed for a treaty or self-government agreement would impact individuals based on the intersection of various identity characteristics (for example, gender, sexual orientation, age, educational attainment, family and socioeconomic status). Once an agreement has been concluded, Indigenous groups have the sole authority to allocate the associated funding.

Impacts: Some research has shown that Indigenous groups with modern treaties have, on average, higher community well-being compared to those without modern treaties. In addition, Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQI+ people face gender-based barriers to participate in the exercise of Indigenous self-government, stemming from past and present discriminatory provisions in colonial policies and legislation, such as the identity and status provisions of the Indian Act. As a result, they are often excluded from governance processes and decisions. Modern treaties also have increased rates of gender equality of leadership compared to Indian Act bands.

Example from National Film Board (NFB)

Program: Audiovisual Programming and Production

Goals: The program’s mandate is to create relevant and innovative audiovisual content that interprets Canada and its diversity to Canadians and people around the world. By working with filmmakers and artists from every region of Canada, the NFB seeks to reflect the perspectives and experiences of communities that are systematically underrepresented in the media and to develop innovative new storytelling forms and approaches.

Impacts: In 2023, the NFB strengthened its commitment to equity in storytelling by setting a new target: by March 31, 2025, over 30% of its productions will be directed by Black or racialized filmmakers. This builds on earlier commitments to gender parity (2016) and Indigenous reconciliation (2017), ensuring greater representation for underrepresented groups including 2SLGBTQI+ communities, people with disabilities, and official language minority communities.

Key impacts:

• Percentage of completed works directed by Indigenous filmmakers and artists: 20%
• Percentage of production budget allocated to works directed by creators from official language minority communities^{Footnote **}: 18%
• Percentage of works in progress directed by filmmakers who belong to an official language minority community: 23%
• Percentage of production budget allocated to works and percentage of works in progress directed by women^{Footnote **}: 55%
• Percentage of production budget allocated to works directed by Indigenous filmmakers and artists^{Footnote **}: 25%
• Percentage of works in progress directed by Indigenous filmmakers or creators: 23%
• Percentage of works in progress directed by Black and People of Colour filmmakers or creators: 36%
• Percentage of works in progress directed by filmmakers or creators who self-identify as a person with one or more disabilities: 12%
• Percentage of works in progress directed by filmmakers or creators who are a member of the 2SLGBTQI+ community: 20%

Example from Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

Program: Comptrollership

Goals: The program provides functional direction and assurance for financial management, internal audit, investment planning, procurement, project management, and the management of real property and materiel. As part of this work, the program provides policy guidance and leads initiatives to help departments implement requirements related to gender and diversity. It also helps departments to build a skilled, inclusive, diverse and equitable comptrollership workforce and to serve diverse stakeholders and communities.

Impacts: The program reported on distribution of audit committee members and internal audit functions by gender, official first language, visible minority status, disability status, Indigeneity status, location, among others.

In 2023–24, the program also:

• continued to work with Indigenous Services Canada, Public Services and Procurement Canada and Indigenous partners to help departments follow the Mandatory Procedures for Contracts Awarded to Indigenous Businesses
• published the Guide to Official Languages in Federal Procurement to help make sure departments meet official languages obligations during the procurement process
• ensured that new financial management systems being adopted by departments were accessible and available in both official languages
• worked with departments on a range of recruitment, talent management and development activities to foster a skilled, inclusive, diverse and equitable comptrollership workforce

Example from Indigenous Services Canada (ISC)

Program: Indigenous Governance and Capacity Supports

Goals: The program aligns the department’s governance capacity programming to strengthen the fabric of Indigenous governments and communities across Canada.

Impacts: Efforts to modernize Canada’s support for First Nations governance have included analyzing the impacts of governance capacity programs on individuals, sub-groups and community-level factors. A key milestone in this process was the completion of a disaggregated salary data collection through Statistics Canada in March 2023. This analysis involved a preliminary review of self-government agreements, which identified 21 occupational classes related to governance functions. The study revealed that First Nations’ average salaries on reserves were 28% lower than in non-remote Canadian communities and 21% lower than in remote ones. This highlights the challenges First Nations face in offering competitive salaries, impacting their ability to hire and retain staff for governance and administrative roles.

Further efforts were made in 2023–24 to enhance data collection within the Professional and Institutional Development sub-program, specifically targeting the involvement of and impact on equity groups like youth, elders, women, persons with disabilities and 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals in governance projects. Indicators disaggregated included capacity building funding allocated through the Professional and Institutional Development program, broken down by region/province and territory.

Under the New Fiscal Relationship Grant sub-program, since 2019, ISC and the Assembly of First Nations have been developing a National Outcome-Based Framework to enhance the measurement of First Nations outcomes. This initiative involved extensive engagement with First Nations citizens, data experts, leaders, Regional Indigenous Organizations, and Tribal Councils to inform socio-economic reporting.

The 2023–2026 Data Strategy for the Federal Public Service supports this shift by committing ISC and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat to advance self-determination and data sovereignty. The National Outcome-Based Framework is moving away from government-prescribed reporting mechanisms towards offering a toolkit that First Nations communities can customize to measure their success based on their Indigenous ways of knowing, with ISC examining correlations between grant participation and factors like community size, remoteness, employment, and income.

Example from Global Affairs Canada

Program: Anti-Crime and Counter-Terrorism Capacity Building

Goals: The program builds local capacity with a particular focus on recipient states in the Middle East, Africa, the Americas and South-East Asia to prevent and respond to global security threats, which consequently should reduce the negative impact on Canadians and Canadian interests.

Impacts: Projects under the program achieved significant results to help address gender issues in a variety of contexts in 2023–24. Impacts reported were primarily focused on gender, such as the number of total capacity-building recipients (678) who reported increased knowledge, skills or abilities related to addressing security threats (348 male / 330 female).

As part of Global Affairs Canada’s anti-crime programming, the Organization of American States Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission supported capacity-building in Latin America and the Caribbean to strengthen development and implementation of gender-sensitive alternatives to incarceration (ATI) for drug-related offenses. To support the implementation process, a sensitization training workshop was provided to more than 50 judicial and health operators (35 women, 21 men, 4 preferred not to answer) in Colombia and Peru to ensure awareness on the importance of incorporating gender perspectives on drug-related offenses in the criminal justice and ATIs policies and programs. This project improved the participants’ application of the core concepts and strategies regarding implementation, monitoring and evaluation of alternatives to incarceration policies, programs and practices.

In partnership with the Organization of American States (OAS) Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, Global Affairs Canada’s Anti-Crime Capacity Building Program supported programming in OAS member states to strengthen law enforcements’ operational capacity to counter drug trafficking by increasing gender mainstreaming and achieving inclusive and gender-equitable law enforcement agencies. To this end, an in-person visit was conducted to update and finalize the action plan to strengthen gender equality in counterdrug law enforcement agencies in Argentina, with the participation of 20 female representatives from the Ministry of Security’s four counterdrug agencies. Following the visit, all seven OAS beneficiary countries had the first draft of their action plan completed, being one step closer to strengthening gender offices, updating recruitment practices and crafting gender policies for counterdrug law enforcement agencies.