Honourable senators, I rise today to speak in support of Bill S-213, sponsored by Senator McCallum. This bill amends the Department for Women and Gender Equality Act to require the minister to examine the potential effects of certain bills on women and to report to Parliament accordingly. The department used to be called Status of Women Canada.

In my opinion, gender-based analysis should be a requirement. GBA+ indicates the potential effects that a certain bill would have on women, particularly Indigenous women, but also on other segments of the population. Reiterating the primary objective, which is to promote equity among all Canadians in order to make our society truly equal, Bill S-213 will force us to reflect on the crucial role that Indigenous culture and gender play in policy development and implementation.

Women are more harshly affected than men by the adverse effects of policies and legislative measures. These days, the question on everyone’s lips is this: Who will take care of the children at home if the schools are closed during the pandemic? If we go back a century, we see that the right to vote was given only to some women more than 100 years ago, but for some Indigenous women, that right only gradually solidified in the 1960s.

Gender bias has been around for a long time. I’m going to take you on a brief tour of the medical and scientific world to introduce you to some of them. Around the time Christopher Columbus landed on this side of the Atlantic, on the other side, Leonardo da Vinci drew the Vitruvian Man, an illustration of the mechanical vision of medicine, which then considered the body of the white man as the point of reference. This sex-based, measured and ethnocentric bias has been passed down from generation to generation and from one scientific field to another.

Although the original intention of the architect of the Vitruvian Man was to imitate nature, for centuries the men of science have failed to incorporate the diversity of this nature into science. This belief persists in the main biases that can still be observed in medicine today.

In her 2020 book entitled Sex Matters and in a 2014 Ted Talk, Dr. Alyson McGregor indicated that 80% of drug recalls were related to side effects affecting women. It was found that women metabolize some drugs more slowly than men do. To give a more specific example, in 2013, the United States Food and Drug Administration found that the recommended dose of Zolpidem, a sleep-inducing hypnotic, was two times too powerful for women, who make up 50% of the population. Clinical evidence showed a difference in the way this drug was metabolized by men compared to women. As a result, for nearly 20 years, the population was at risk because some women were unknowingly driving impaired, since they were taking a dose adjusted for men. In a rare move, the FDA recommended a different dosage according to whether the drug was taken by a woman or a man.

Another example relates to alcohol. The enzyme that metabolizes alcohol is less active in women than in men, so women do not metabolize alcohol as quickly as men do. The concept of consumption varies greatly depending on sex, ethnicity, age and health condition. For example, nearly 50% of people of Asian origin have a genetic variant of the enzyme that makes it impossible for them to metabolize alcohol. This genetic feature exposes them to serious health consequences.

Here is another example: heart attacks. The typical symptoms, common in men, are pain in the left shoulder and chest. In women, the symptoms tend to be stomach pain, nausea and vomiting, which sounds more like indigestion. As a result, cardiac disease tends to be under-reported and under-treated among women. According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, women of Indigenous ancestry are more likely to have a stroke and two times more likely to die from it than non-Indigenous women. They are more likely to have high blood pressure and diabetes, which are two risk factors for stroke.

As you just heard me say, this kind of bias even exists in medicine, but we have these findings thanks to research. The more inclusive the research, the more medical science can continue to advance.

Today, the COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted gender issues and their greater impact on Black and Indigenous women. I have been at the epicentre of COVID and seen this first-hand, working alongside health professional associations. It would be interesting to have the Senate special committee on COVID-19 examine the evidence in detail to better understand the multiple environmental, financial, health and other impacts on communities. Last Monday I participated in a medal presentation with the MP for Bourassa, in Montreal North. All of the winners were team leaders, women involved in the fight against COVID. It is no coincidence that the burden of the pandemic rests on the shoulders of women, especially women from diverse backgrounds.

Let’s get back to the bill before us. I’d like to paint a picture of the evolution of gender-based analysis at the federal level. In 1995, the Beijing Declaration, with its 361 measures, including 40 or so that deal with gender-based analysis, was supposed to address the many inequities facing women by the year 2000. In response to this declaration, the Government of Canada developed the Federal Plan for Gender Equality. This plan was meant to implement GBA in all federal departments and agencies.

In April 2005, the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women tabled a report that pointed out a lack of consistency in the way departments applied GBA. In the spring of 2009, the report of the Auditor General of Canada included a chapter on GBA noting that its application varied considerably from one department to another. In 2015, six years later, the new report of the Auditor General reiterated that the departments were still not applying GBA+ properly.

Today, in 2020, Bill S-213 would respond, albeit partially, to the Auditor General’s finding. Honourable senators, I invite you and your teams to watch the micro-learning videos on GBA+ that are available on the Status of Women Canada website.

Without giving you a whole lecture, the seven major steps proposed for putting GBA+ into practice are the following.

The first step is to identify the issue. We must begin by determining the context of the bill and the gender equality and diversity issues to be reviewed.

The second step is to challenge assumptions. We all have preconceived notions. We must always ask ourselves how they affect our decision making.

The third step is to gather the facts and conduct research and consultations. All of the data used should be disaggregated by sex and include other intersecting identity factors, such as ethnic origin, age and disabilities. We should use GBA+ when drafting legislation and conducting consultations. It is not enough to consult the public and then make generalizations. In committee, we need to get different points of view, from many perspectives, to do a deeper analysis. We cannot forget that accessibility challenges and socio-economic situations may prevent people from participating in the consultation process. Take, for example, having internet access, knowing how to use technological devices or even having these devices.

The fourth step is to develop options and make recommendations. We need to explain the measures we are proposing to improve the bills we are studying, much like you would find dosage information on a prescription. If we find that a bill could create barriers for one segment of the population, that means it requires amendments. Our words matter, and we must choose them carefully.

The fifth step is to monitor and assess. We must identify groups that the bill could benefit or harm if we want the analysis to properly reflect the inequalities.

The sixth step is good communication. We have to tailor the political message to the target audience by supporting diversity and using inclusive examples, languages and symbols. We mustn’t perpetuate stereotypes in our messages.

The seventh step is documenting, because the data and analysis that guide our recommendations must be diverse and documented.

Honourable senators, I support Senator McCallum’s Bill S-213 and want to see the committee study it as soon as possible. It’s high time we examined the potential impact of bills on women. GBA+ should become a legal requirement to ensure that future governments apply it whenever they draft, debate and pass legislation. That will make our laws more equitable and get us closer to fulfilling our international commitments.

Although gender-based analysis is not yet commonplace, honourable senators, you can ask the Library of Parliament to do GBA+ on any bill systematically. Our office requested it for Bill S-213. The analysis identified two important points. First, the fact that the bill stresses the analysis of potential impacts on women and Indigenous women means that it could inadvertently exclude the potential impacts on other groups of people, such as people who do not identify as women or who have other identity factors. Second, Bill S-213 does not seem to support an analytical method.

I hope this information will be useful to the committee during its study of Bill S-213. Thank you.