Feminist and Inclusive Dialogue (CA0071)

• Let's Put Some Pride into Open Government Action Plans (December 1, 2020)

Feminist and inclusive dialogue
Issue to be addressed
Open government should benefit all Canadians. Yet many communities continue to be
under-represented in government engagement processes. These communities seeking equality
can include women, girls, LGBTQ2 people, racialized communities, persons with disabilities,
young Canadians, low-income Canadians, and others who face barriers in accessing government
information and participating meaningfully in the government’s decision-making
Commitment
The Government of Canada will support greater inclusion and diversity in its public
engagement. We will apply an intersectional9 lens to open government activities and work to
ensure that the voices and experiences of marginalized and under-represented communities
are represented, considered, and included. In particular, we will:
• test ways to make government engagement and consultation processes more open to
everyone
• implement Gender Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) in public engagements and consultations
• build capacity for governments officials to design, facilitate, and support open and
inclusive dialogue
• engage Canadians on gender equality
• support initiatives that build the capacity and longer term viability of women’s
organizations
• increase access to gender and inclusion data
• put people with lived experiences of the consequences of public policy, including
members of vulnerable communities such as persons who are homeless or in poverty, at
the centre of Government of Canada policy design processes
• ensure our own National Action Plan on Open Government is as inclusive as possible by
conducting a rigorous analysis of gender-based impacts of all commitments10

9. Intersectionality refers to the idea that individuals’ lived experiences, and the organization of power in society,
are not only shaped by a single factor (such as gender, race, or social class) but by many factors that work together
and influence each other. These factors can include gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual
orientation, religion, age, disability and illness, as well as other forms of identity. For more a more detailed
definition, check our Annex B [link to follow].
10. This type of analysis is known in the Government of Canada as “Gender-Based Analysis Plus” (GBA+). GBA+ is
an analytical tool used to assess how diverse groups of women, men, and gender-diverse people may experience
policies, programs, and initiatives. The “Plus” in GBA+ acknowledges that GBA goes beyond biological (sex) and
38
Lead department(s)
Canada School of Public Service (CSPS); Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC);
Statistics Canada (StatCan); Status of Women Canada (SWC); Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
(TBS); other departments and agencies across the Government of Canada
Milestones
What will we do? How we will know we succeeded? What is our
deadline?
8.1 Test best practices for
inclusive dialogue and
engagement
(TBS)
10 public engagement or
awareness-raising sessions organized in
partnership with community
organizations representing
equality-seeking communities
April 2020
At least 4 best practices tested as part of
in-person events, for example, use of
alternative venues, event amenities such
as child care and transportation, and
event structure
Report on inclusive engagement practices
and guidance for government
departments published
August 2020
8.2 Promote development of
skills and competencies
required to design, facilitate,
and support open and inclusive
dialogue in policy
development, with support
materials and capacity building
activities
(CSPS/TBS)
Competencies for supporting open and
inclusive dialogue are part of a policy
competency framework for public
servants
March 2019
Capacity-building activities are developed
and offered to public servants
September 2019
Open and inclusive dialogue case studies
and supporting materials are published
and shared with the public
September 2019
8.3 Implement Gender-Based
Analysis Plus (GBA+) in public
engagement and consultations
A guide to integrate GBA+ in public
consultations and engagement has been
December 2018

socio-cultural (gender) differences. We all have multiple identity factors that intersect to make us who we are, so
GBA+ also considers many other identity factors, like race, ethnicity, religion, age, and mental or physical disability.
39
What will we do? How we will know we succeeded? What is our
deadline?
(SWC) developed and implemented, as part of
the Guide to Public Engagement
8.4 Engage Canadians on
gender equality by hosting a
national roundtable on GBA+,
leading a national conversation
on gender equality with young
Canadians, and developing a
strategy that engages men and
boys as partners in advancing
gender equality
(SWC)
In-person or online engagement sessions
held:
• Roundtable: targeting approximately
250 stakeholders reached in person
• Engaging men and boys: targeting
approximately 90 organizations
engaged on the development of a
strategy
June 2020
Engagement sessions include
participation from youth, Indigenous
people, officials from different levels of
government, academics, civil society
representatives, and industry
representatives
Information discussed during
engagement sessions are shared in public
reports (for example, What We Heard
Reports, website platform)
8.5 Support initiatives that
build the capacity and
longer-term viability of
women’s organizations
(SWC)
Capacity supports (for example,
resources, tools, strategic plans,
sustainability plans) are generated by
funded projects
June 2020
8.6 Increase access to relevant
and timely gender and
inclusion data
(StatCan/SWC)
More than 50 indicators are released to
improve access to sex-disaggregated and
gender data to support GBA+ analysis
June 2019
Data strategies are developed, including
concepts and standards, to address gaps
as the relate to the concerns of LGBTQ2
communities
October 2019
A gender-based violence (GBV)
knowledge centre is established to serve
Fall 2018
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What will we do? How we will know we succeeded? What is our
deadline?
as a hub to coordinate federal initiatives
under Canada’s Strategy to Prevent and
Address Gender-Based Violence, support
data collection and research, and
disseminate and mobilize GBV-related
knowledge and evidence
Annual reports to Canadians on the GBV
Strategy’s results are released
June 2020
Data and research in priority areas
related to gender-based violence are
released
June 2020
8.7 Put people with lived
experiences of the
consequences of public policy,
including members of
vulnerable communities such
as persons who are homeless
or in poverty, at the centre of
Government of Canada policy
design processes
(ESDC)
A Federal Housing Advocate and National
Housing Council are appointed and are
starting to consult and collaborate with
stakeholders, including people with lived
experience of housing need and
homelessness
August 2020
An independent National Advisory
Council on Poverty is established to
provide advice to the Minister of Families,
Children and Social Development. The
Council will be representative of Canada's
diversity in terms of gender, ethnicity,
regions, Indigenous people, and official
languages, and include members with
lived experience of poverty
December 2019
8.8 Conduct GBA+ for all
commitments in Canada’s
fourth National Action Plan on
Open Government
(TBS)
A feminist and inclusive peer review of
National Action Plan commitments has
been conducted
August 2018
A GBA+ review of National Action Plan
commitments has been completed
October 2018

Design Report

8. Feminist and Inclusive Dialogue

The Government of Canada will support greater inclusion and diversity in its public engagement. We will apply an intersectional lens to open government activities and work to ensure that the voices and experiences of marginalized and under-represented communities are represented, considered, and included. In particular, we will:

• test ways to make government engagement and consultation processes more open to everyone
• implement Gender Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) in public engagements and consultations
• build capacity for government officials to design, facilitate, and support more open and inclusive dialogue
• engage Canadians on gender equality
• support initiatives that build the capacity and longer term viability of women’s organizations
• increase access to gender and inclusion data
• put people with lived experiences of the consequences of public policy, including members of vulnerable communities such as persons who are homeless or in poverty, at the centre of Government of Canada policy design processes
• ensure our own National Action Plan on Open Government is as inclusive as possible by conducting a rigorous analysis of gender-based impacts of all commitments

Milestones

8.1 Test best practices for inclusive dialogue and engagement (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

8.2 Promote development of skills and competencies required to design, facilitate, and support open and inclusive dialogue in policy development, with support materials and capacity building activities (Canada School of Public Service / Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

8.3 Implement Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) in public engagement and consultations (Status of Women Canada)

8.4 Engage Canadians on gender equality by hosting a national roundtable on GBA+, leading a national conversation on gender equality with young Canadians, and developing a strategy that engages men and boys as partners in advancing gender equality (Status of Women Canada)

8.5 Support initiatives that build the capacity and longer-term viability of women’s organizations (Status of Women Canada)

8.6 Increase access to relevant and timely gender and inclusion data (Statistics Canada / Status of Women Canada)

8.7 Put people with lived experiences of the consequences of public policy, including members of vulnerable communities such as persons who are homeless or in poverty, at the centre of Government of Canada policy design processes (Employment and Social Development Canada)

8.8 Conduct GBA+ for all commitments in Canada’s 2018-2020 National Action Plan on Open Government (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

For more details about the commitment text, milestones, self-identified success criteria, and estimated completion dates see, https://open.canada.ca/en/content/canadas-2018-2020-national-action-plan-open-government#toc3-4

Start Date: August 2019

End Date: Varies according to milestone

Context and Objectives

The opinions expressed during the discussions with civil society and government stakeholders suggest that promoting feminist and inclusive dialogue is viewed as one of the three most important proposed areas of reform in the current action plan. In commenting on the inclusion of this commitment in the action plan, Pamela Robinson, associate dean and an associate professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson University and civil society member of the MSF summed up the rationale as follows:

If we don’t look at systemic barriers; if we don’t probe structural barriers to openness, there’s no point in talking about open government. We [the MSF] had the objective of flagging issues of exclusion that others don’t have the privilege to articulate

This commitment grows out of Commitment 20 of Canada’s third action plan which sought to “foster enhanced citizen participation through greater collaboration and co-creation with the public and stakeholders within and across government initiatives.” [58] In line with the OGP’s call for members to “enhance women’s participation and gender equality,” [59] the problem that Commitment 8 seeks to tackle is the under-representation of equity seeking groups in the Canadian federal government’s public engagement activities. The proposed strategy for enhancing levels of inclusion and diversity in government decision-making involves undertaking a number of steps aimed at ensuring the voices and experiences of equity seeking communities are represented, heard, and considered.

Central to this undertaking is the Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA+) tool that is used to “to assess how diverse groups of women, men and non-binary people may experience policies, programs and initiatives.” [60] Canada committed to applying GBA at the fourth United Nations World Conference on Women in 1995 when it adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and subsequently committed conducting GBA for future legislation, policies, and programs. [61] However, it was not until 2015 when the then newly elected Liberal government came to power that a feminist policy agenda boosting the application of GBA+ to deal with the long-standing gender equity issues was prioritized. The 2015 Report of the Auditor General of Canada “Implementing Gender-based Analysis” led to the development of an action plan for the years 2016–2020, collaboratively developed with Status of Women Canada, the Privy Council Office and the Treasury Board Secretariat, to close gender gaps [62]. Further, the Canadian government’s co-chairship of the OGP has provided it with an opportunity to advance the priority it places on promoting gender equity both domestically and internationally.

Commitment 8 clearly is in line with the principles set out in the OGP’s Open Government Declaration, [63] and its implementation can be reasonably expected to contribute to supporting ongoing efforts at promoting the greater inclusion and diversity in the federal government’s internal and public engagements. [64] The commitment aligns with the OGP values of Access to Information and Civic Participation. However, the extent to which the milestones, as written, align with OGP values is mixed. Milestones 8.1, 8.3, and 8.7 constitute reforms aimed at enhancing the operating environment within which participation in civic spaces takes place. The reform here is not so much about increasing transparency or augmenting participation of civil society organizations but rather about meaningfully including ‘atypical’ groups in government decision-making and service delivery. These milestones are relevant to the OGP value of Civic Participation. With its focus on increasing accessibility to gender- and inclusion-related data, Milestone 8.6 aligns with the OGP value of Access to Information. Milestones 8.2, 8.4, 8.5, and 8.8 are all laudable undertakings but it is unclear how they, as written, align with any of the four OGP values as defined in the IRM Procedures Manual.

Milestones 8.1, 8.3, 8.4, 8.6, 8.7, and 8.8 are uniformly verifiable; either the proposed action takes place, or it does not. However, the specified indicators of success for each of these offer no means of measuring whether and/or the extent to which the proposed activities foster greater inclusion and diversity in the GoC’s public engagement processes. The verifiability of milestones 8.2 and 8.5 requires exercising a degree of interpretation with regard to measurement not least because in each instance the proposed action is very similar to the proposed indicator of success. In the absence of benchmarks and indicators to measure the extent to which completing the milestones is contributing to closing key gaps for diverse groups of women, men and non-binary people, the outcomes of these initiatives will remain unclear.

Despite these limitations of specificity, commitment 8 marks an important proactive step in tackling a targeted set of systemic barriers that negatively impact upon the participation of marginalized and under-represented communities in the Canadian federal government’s public engagement and decision-making activities. If implemented fully, it could be considered a major step forward towards inclusion and enhancing participation of equity-seeking communities.

Next steps

Having member countries take concrete actions on gender actions, and more inclusive co-creation processes is an OGP priority. [65] In its role as Co-Chair of the OGP steering committee, the GoC has been at the forefront of this effort. Commitment 8 marks an important step in addressing the structural biases facing women and other equity seeking groups. [66] This view is aptly and concisely conveyed in a tweet from a participant at the 2019 OGP Global Summit in Ottawa who wrote: [67]

gender blind #opengov processes are not gender neutral...gender blind open gov privileges men. We must correct this for true open gov impact #BreaktheRoles

Bearing this observation in mind, the IRM researcher’s recommendations are twofold:

• as written, commitment 8 sets out a broad line of action that is lacking in precision and seemingly takes for granted that implementing the proposed activities and deliverables will necessarily contribute to improving the participation and engagement of equity seeking communities. In moving forward specifying benchmarks and metrics for determining whether, and the extent to which, the inclusion-centric reforms are fostering hoped-for outcomes is crucial given the ongoing need for information about what works, and what does not.
• that the development of future inclusion-oriented action plan commitments involve working directly with equity-seeking communities to identify the most relevant and pressing issues for consideration. One can envision that for some this might entail such actions as augmenting pay-related transparency as a means of reducing gender-based pay discrepancies, whereas for others it might entail, for example, augmenting the transparency of health-related information – subject to applicable restrictions associated with privacy and confidentiality – to identify biases in the delivery of healthcare services to LGBTQ2 people.

Transitional Results Report

Commitment 8. Feminist & Inclusive Dialogue

Completion: Substantial

Commitment 8: Feminist and Inclusive Dialogue

Aim of the commitment

As noted in the Design Report, both civil society and government stakeholders viewed promoting feminist and inclusive dialogue as one of the three most important proposed areas of reform in the fourth action plan. [101] This commitment grew out of commitment 20 of Canada’s third action plan. [102] In line with the OGP’s call for members to “enhance women’s participation and gender equality,” [103] it aimed to tackle the under-representation of equity seeking groups in the Canadian federal government’s public engagement activities by undertaking a number of measures to ensure their voices and experiences are represented, heard, and considered in government decision-making processes.

As written, the commitment set out a broad line of action that, despite including specific activities to be carried out, lacked specificity in terms of identifying concrete results or outcomes expected from implementing these activities.

Did it open government?

Did not change

As per the information reported at the National Action Plan Open Government Tracker, [104] five of the milestones (8.1, 8.2, 8.5, 8.6, 8.8) comprising this commitment were completed, and three substantially completed (8.3, 8.4, 8.7).

Substantial progress was made in terms of producing the outputs set by the milestones of this commitment. In terms of milestones that are relevant to OGP values, the outputs include:

Outputs from other milestones include:

The above outputs are all laudable and important for Canada to continue advancing participation and inclusion. One observes new information about Canadian society being gathered, analyzed, and disclosed as well as efforts to engage with a variety of publics. However, there is a lack of baselines and evidence from which to measure the extent to which these activities have enhanced the meaningful inclusion of marginalized groups in government decision-making and service delivery, and/or fostered changes in government practice.

The lack of indicators to measure the effectiveness of GBA Plus integration is an obstacle to assessing the extent to which these activities have contributed to the overarching aim of inclusive government policies and programs. As noted in the 2022 Reports of the Auditor General of Canada, Report 3—Follow-up on Gender-Based Analysis Plus, there is room to strengthen consistent and effective application of GBA Plus. However, “weaknesses in monitoring and reporting on the implementation and impacts of GBA Plus across government […] makes it difficult to assess whether actions taken are achieving better gender equality, diversity, and inclusion outcomes.” [116] Although WAGE, TBS, and partners have completed the relevant milestones, these activities have thus far had limited effect on the overall objective of ensuring government-wide application of GBA Plus to inform gender-aware policies and programs. Identifying appropriate indicators to assess the impact of GBA Plus in future OGP action plans will be a key step in measuring the full effect of this commitment over the near- and long-term.

It also merits noting that despite their constituting notable changes, many of the activities in this commitment reflected pre-existing government initiatives that likely would have been carried out regardless of their inclusion in the action plan. Indeed, many of the commitment’s results were tempered by the fact that activities—such as establishing the National Advisory Council on Poverty—were pre-existing government initiatives that were neither strengthened nor expanded as a consequence of their inclusion in the action plan.

Looking ahead, TBS’s Open Government Team and the MSF are encouraged to make use of the greater flexibility in the timeline and length of OGP action plans introduced by the updated OGP Participation and Co-Creation Standards. [117] This flexibility presents an opportunity to better align Canada’s OGP and budget process and to use the action plan cycle to pursue more ambitious open government reforms.