Canada Border Services Agency Departmental Plan for Fiscal Year 2021 to 2022
Supplementary Information Table

Institutional GBA+ capacity

The CBSA is committed to making GBA+ an integral part of its policies, programs and initiatives to understand the impacts and effects on diverse population groups in order to make better decisions and achieve better results for clients, stakeholders and all Canadians.

The agency's GBA+ Centre of Responsibility, which is housed within its Strategic Policy Branch, supports the implementation of its GBA+ policy, including increasing GBA+ information resources and providing strategic guidance on mainstreaming GBA+ principles into common work practices and GBA+ considerations into policies, programs and operations. The GBA+ Centre of Responsibility works closely with colleagues responsible for developing and reviewing Cabinet proposals, submissions to Treasury Board, and other significant initiatives in order to strengthen these proposals and their outcomes.

Also supporting the agency's institutional GBA+ capacity is its GBA+ champion, who is responsible for promoting the understanding and use of GBA+ across the agency, and for serving as the liaison at senior-level interdepartmental meetings and events.

CBSA senior officials are responsible for ensuring the ongoing implementation of GBA+ across the agency, as well as for supporting employees by providing resources to integrate GBA+ into everyday work practices. CBSA employees are encouraged to familiarize themselves with their GBA+ responsibilities, which include undertaking basic training and understanding how to incorporate gender, diversity and inclusiveness considerations into their work processes to achieve equitable outcomes.

In fiscal year 2021 to 2022, the CBSA will continue strengthening GBA+ governance across the agency by expanding its internal advisory network to support the GBA+ Centre of Responsibility in identifying and validating strategic priorities. Additionally, the CBSA's capacity to advance GBA+ will be strengthened through several key initiatives:

• Modernizing sex and gender information practices: The CBSA will continue its multi-year implementation of the Policy Direction to Modernize the Government of Canada's Sex and Gender Information Practices with a view to assessing the need for continued collection, use and display of sex and gender information, defaulting to an individual's gender identification, wherever possible. Through implementation, the CBSA will adopt measures to help ensure that its practices do not discriminate against people on the basis of their gender identity or expression.
• Immigration enforcement policy framework: The CBSA will continue its assessment and review of the differential impacts of gender-based violence (GBV), including human trafficking, throughout its immigration enforcement and inadmissibility policy frameworks. This will ensure that the immigration enforcement and inadmissibility policies account for specific considerations related to victims and survivors of human trafficking and GBV, including by ensuring that policies do not inadvertently re-traumatize victims. As part of this work, GBV considerations will continue to be included in legislative and regulatory work on facilitated immigration enforcement.
• Respectful Workplace Framework: The agency is finalizing its human resources strategy with a number of initiatives that align with GBA+ objectives. In particular, the agency will advance its Respectful Workplace Framework, including the development of an anti-racism strategy, with the goal of identifying and eliminating systemic barriers, including the analysis of gender and other identity factors.
• Officer induction model (OIM): The OIM is a comprehensive approach to recruiting, training and developing CBSA officers suited for public service in an armed border security agency. The OIM comprises 3 components: Officer recruitment; the Officer Induction Training Program; and the Officer Induction Development Program. This fiscal year, the agency plans to undertake a broad review of the entire OIM to ensure consistent support of GBA+ goals.

Highlights of GBA+ results reporting capacity by program

Border management

The Government of Canada's Gender Results Framework (GRF) supports Canada's gender equality goals of equal opportunities for education and skills development, full participation in the economy and decision-making, and equal access to justice and health outcomes.

Through its core responsibility of border management, the CBSA assesses risks to identify threats, manages the cross-border flow of admissible travellers and commercial goods, and manages non-compliance. As several programs under border management deal with business entities or are focused on technology and infrastructure, they are not directly aligned with GRF goals or indicators. The programs that have direct impacts on diverse populations are highlighted below:

• Force Generation Program: This program comprises the recruitment, selection and development of the agency's frontline border service officers (BSOs), and promotes gender balance across the frontline BSO workforce. The agency currently collects data to enable monitoring and reporting of program impacts by gender/diversity and, this fiscal year, the agency will continue its review of the OIM (detailed in the section above) to help better understand the differential impacts of its recruitment, training and development initiatives by gender/diversity and to make improvements. The agency will also work in partnership with the Public Service Commission to increase the number of women and visible minorities within the BSO workforce.
• Trusted Traveller Program: This program seeks to simplify the border clearance process for pre-approved, low-risk travellers entering Canada. While data is collected from individuals to assess their eligibility for the program, this data is not currently utilized to assess program impacts on diverse population groups.
• Traveller Facilitation and Compliance Program: This program involves a range of GBA+ considerations and a wide array of traveller data is collected, including by gender and other identity factors. This fiscal year, the program plans to address the examination of digital devices and its associated policies. Although policies may be applied equally to all travellers, they may have differential GBA+ considerations and impacts by gender/diversity.
• Intelligence Collection and Analysis Program: This program collects, interprets and analyzes information regarding people, goods and/or conveyances bound for or leaving Canada, enabling the CBSA and law enforcement partners to identify potential threats to national security. This program collects sufficient data to identify specific intelligence trends that guide targeting of high-risk entities.
• Recourse Program: This program provides travellers and businesses with a mechanism to seek an impartial review of CBSA decisions, as well as to voice any feedback or complaints, in accordance with policies and legislation administered by the CBSA. This fiscal year, the Recourse Program will assess whether data on intersecting identity factors can be collected when complaints are submitted in line with privacy legislation. These data elements could be used for statistical or trend analysis to inform decision-making on the agency's programs, policies and operations that impact service delivery.
• Indigenous reconciliation: This fiscal year, the CBSA will continue the following reconciliation efforts:
  • Border Collaboration Initiative: The CBSA will continue ongoing collaborative work with the Mohawks of Akwesasne First Nation to improve the daily lives of all who work at, utilize or travel through the Akwesasne-Cornwall border crossing, including efforts to enhance service capacity at the port of entry and options to improve processing for domestic travellers.
  • Policy on the CBSA's Relationship with Indigenous Peoples: This will further strengthen the agency's relationship with Indigenous Peoples and will advance efforts to address long-standing border crossing issues and impacts experienced by Indigenous Peoples, while also facilitating travel and trade for Indigenous Peoples and fostering a welcoming and respectful culture in the CBSA.

Border enforcement

Through its core responsibility of border enforcement, the CBSA contributes to Canada's security by supporting the immigration and refugee system when determining a person's admissibility to Canada, taking the appropriate immigration enforcement actions when necessary, and supporting the prosecution of persons who violate Canada's laws.

While the GRF includes the goal of eliminating gender-based violence and ensuring safeguards and access to justice for persons affected, the associated GRF indicators are not directly aligned with the CBSA's border enforcement programs. The programs that have direct impacts on diverse populations are highlighted below, noting that the primary measure of program impact is the ability to contribute to Canada's security:

• Immigration Investigations Program: This program investigates, reports and, if appropriate, arrests and detains foreign nationals and permanent residents in Canada who are or may be inadmissible to Canada as defined by the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA). The ability to collect data under this program is limited by legislative authority and IT system capabilities.
• Detentions Program: This program takes GBA+ considerations into account when detaining individuals pursuant to the IRPA. To help address program impacts by gender/diversity, the CBSA is currently finalizing a national detention standard related to the treatment of women, families, LGBTQ2 persons, and the best interests of the child when placing individuals in an immigration holding centre or a provincial correctional facility, or when releasing individuals into the community through alternatives to detention.
• Removals Program: This program applies GBA+ principles to assess impacts of proposed initiatives on diverse groups of people who are removed to their country of citizenship or habitual residence, and collects sufficient data for reporting based on gender and identity. The program takes into account intersecting identity factors and engages individuals in accordance with domestic and international human rights protocols.
• Criminal Investigations Program: This program focuses on complex cases involving organized fraudulent activities or a history of non-compliance and measures program impacts accordingly. The program collects data that can be disaggregated by gender, but IT system capabilities currently limit the ability to collect and report on other diversity data.

Internal services

Internal services comprise the activities and resources that support program delivery across the CBSA. Only those services that directly contribute to the collection of data and the monitoring/reporting of impacts by gender/diversity are listed below:

• Management and oversight services include internal audits and program evaluations. This fiscal year, the CBSA will complete and publish its Evaluation of the Traveller Program, including an assessment of program impacts by gender/diversity. The final report will provide recommendations that may enable future data collection, monitoring and reporting of program impacts by gender/diversity.
• Communications services comprise the authority for internal and external communications on behalf of the CBSA. This fiscal year, the agency will continue to adopt the use of plain and gender-neutral language in communications products to ensure broad and equal reach to its audience.
• Human resources management services comprise the development and review of demographic profiles for comparison against Public Service Employee Survey results and Government of Canada targets for underrepresented groups, which inform employment equity plans. This fiscal year, the CBSA will finalize a human resources strategy that provides further guidance for reporting on demographic profiles, including GBA+.
• Information technology (IT) services will be refining performance indicators this fiscal year to assess the ability to provide non-biased services to all internal clients. IT services may also assist business lines in facilitating or enabling IT solutions for the collection and reporting of gender/diversity data based on program requirements.