ARCHIVED – Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration, 2005

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Section 6
Gender-Based Analysis of the Impact of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act includes a legislative requirement to report annually on the impact of this legislation and the corresponding Regulations from the perspective of gender-based analysis (GBA). As a public policy tool, GBA focuses on important social and economic differences between men and women, and different groups of men and women, over their life cycles. The IRPA requirement to report on gender-related impacts is unprecedented in federal statutes. The integration of gender-based analysis into policy and program development is a means of strengthening the quality of public policy and programs, and ensuring they meet equity and effectiveness criteria.

Implementing a Strategic Framework for Gender-Based Analysis at CIC

In early 2005, CIC launched the Strategic Framework for Gender-Based Analysis (2005–2010). The framework sets out CIC’s strategic objectives and principles for gender-based analysis and the steps that will be taken to strengthen capacity and performance throughout the Department.

Central to the framework’s implementation are the individual GBA Branch Plans, which identify the priority issues for preparing gender-based analyses of the impact of IRPA. In this past year, efforts have focused on laying the groundwork for future reporting in terms of raising awareness, preparing branch plans and building the capacity to implement the plans.

By early 2005, GBA plans were completed in the five branches that have particular responsibilities under IRPA. These branch plans identify a range of IRPA reporting priorities, including the Pre-Removal Risk Assessment and the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States. A preliminary assessment of gender issues for Francophone minority communities has also been identified and a gender-based analysis will be incorporated into the upcoming evaluations of the federal skilled worker and business immigrant programs.

Other key initiatives include incorporating GBA in the review of the Live-in Caregiver Program, in a preliminary analysis of international trade agreement obligations for the temporary entry of businesspersons, in visa policy development and in the development of promotional Web sites and publications. Collection and analysis of gender-disaggregated data for impacts on the family class and humanitarian and compassionate cases, and in the Biometrics Planning Project are also planned.

Implementation of the plans has begun. For example, mechanisms are being developed to collect sex-disaggregated data and, in some areas, these data are already being collected for analysis. Commitments have been made to incorporate GBA into data reports and data gathering. Also, to further increase capacity, the Department will continue to provide GBA training and to develop branch-specific training modules.

The Department is committed to considering GBA in the legislative and regulatory process for modernizing the citizenship program. In addition, CIC continues to include GBA in various horizontal policy issues at the federal level and in international processes.

6.1 Overview of Key Immigration Statistics by Gender

Of the 235,824 new permanent residents admitted to Canada in 2004, 51.6% (121,668) were female and 48.4% (114,155) were male. Overall, these figures would seem to indicate that the distribution between the sexes is reasonably equitable. However, a closer look at Table 11 reveals that there are proportionately more women than men in the family class, but more men than women in the economic class. The proportions in the protected persons category are quite close.

In the family class, females comprised 61.9% (38,533) of newcomers, while males represented 38.1% (23,712). Among the protected persons landed in 2004, 48.1% (15,707) were female and 51.9% (16,978) were male.

With respect to the economic class (which includes dependants as well as principal applicants), the total figures seem to indicate a fairly equal balance between the two genders: 47.6% (63,673) were female and 52.4% (70,073) were male. Nevertheless, as Table 12 shows, when these figures are broken down into principal applicants and dependants, a gender imbalance becomes evident. The great majority of the principal applicants (69.6%) were male, while the majority of spouses and dependants were female (59.7%). Almost all of the new permanent residents who entered Canada as live-in caregivers, however, were female (97.1%).

Table 11: New Permanent Residents in 2004, by Immigration Class and Gender

Table 12: 2004 Permanent Residents in the Economic Class, by Principal Applicants versus Spouses / Dependants and by Gender

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