Canada Border Services Agency Departmental Plan for Fiscal year 2022 to 2023: Supplementary Information Table for Gender-based Analysis Plus

Institutional GBA Plus Capacity

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is committed to making GBA Plus an integral part of its policies, programs and initiatives to understand 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 Plus Centre of Responsibility (CoR), which is housed within its Strategic Policy Branch, supports the implementation of its GBA Plus policy, including increasing GBA Plus information resources and providing strategic guidance on mainstreaming GBA Plus principles into common work practices and GBA Plus considerations into policies, programs and operations. The GBA Plus CoR 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.

The GBA Plus CoR also works closely with the Agency’s Chief Data Office (CDO) to ensure that necessary data is available to help the Agency understand diverse experiences, identify impacts, and improve outcomes for different groups.

CBSA senior officials are responsible for ensuring the ongoing implementation of GBA Plus across the Agency, as well as for supporting employees by providing resources to integrate GBA Plus into everyday work practices.

CBSA employees are encouraged to familiarize themselves with their GBA Plus responsibilities, which include undertaking basic training and understanding how to incorporate gender, diversity and inclusiveness considerations into their work processes to achieve equitable outcomes. This fiscal year, the CBSA plans to implement mandatory training on diversity and inclusion for employees, which is complementary to GBA Plus. This will include the introduction of a new unconscious bias training requirement for managers, in line with direction received from the Public Service Commission, along with a new anti-racism training component for employees that was developed in collaboration with the Customs and Immigration Union. These trainings will help employees better understand racism, discrimination and unconscious biases, which are important considerations in GBA Plus.

Additionally, the CBSA’s capacity to advance GBA Plus will be strengthened through several key initiatives:

• Modernizing Sex and Gender Information Practices: The CBSA will continue its multi-year implementation of the Government of Canada’s Policy Direction to Modernize Sex and Gender Information Practices with a view to assessing the need for the continued collection, use and display of sex and gender information, defaulting to an individual’s gender identification, wherever possible. Through implementation, the CBSA is committed to ensuring 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 review of the differential impacts of gender-based violence (GBV), including human trafficking, throughout its immigration enforcement and inadmissibility policy frameworks, with a view to ensuring that policies account for specific considerations related to victims and survivors of human trafficking and GBV, and that policies do not inadvertently re-traumatize victims. To that end, GBV considerations will continue to be included in related legislative and regulatory work.
• Respectful Workplace Framework: Through its multi-year Human Resources Strategy, the CBSA is pursuing a number of initiatives that align with GBA Plus objectives, including its Respectful Workplace Framework and Anti-racism Strategy, with the goal of identifying and eliminating systemic barriers, including the analysis of gender and other identity factors.
• 2021 to 2024 Employment Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EEDI) Action Plan: This action plan complements the CBSA’s Anti-racism Strategy, Accessibility Strategy, and Indigenous Workforce Strategy, and includes clear targets, goals and activities to measure progress and report on outcomes against deliverables. The plan focuses on collecting equity and diversity data, increasing workforce diversity, and building an inclusive workplace.
• Officer Induction Model (OIM): The CBSA will continue its broad review of the OIM to ensure consistent support of GBA Plus goals throughout the OIM, comprising approaches for the recruitment, training and development of border service officers (BSOs) suited for the public service in the CBSA’s operational context. This fiscal year, the CBSA plans to launch a BSO recruitment process focused on equity-seeking groups.

Highlights of GBA Plus 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 do have direct impacts on diverse populations are highlighted below:

• Force Generation: This program comprises the recruitment, selection and development of BSOs, and promotes gender balance across the BSO workforce. The CBSA collects data to enable the identification of program impacts by gender/diversity. This fiscal year, the Agency will review attrition rates in equity-seeking groups to better understand and refine mitigation strategies and address differential impacts of recruitment, training and development activities. Additionally, the Agency will update its three-year recruitment and outreach strategy and accompanying action plans, while also working with the Public Service Commission to increase the number of women and visible minorities within the BSO workforce by setting targets (based on workforce availability statistics) for each new cohort that participates in officer training.
• Trusted Traveller: This program seeks to simplify the border clearance process for pre-approved, low-risk travellers entering Canada. While the CBSA collects data from individuals to assess their program eligibility, this data is not currently utilized to assess program impacts on diverse population groups.
• Traveller Facilitation and Compliance: This program involves a wide range of GBA Plus considerations, along with a wide array of traveller data collected, including by gender and other identity factors. The CBSA will continue assessing program impacts, including those associated with policies affecting the traveller experience, such as policies for the examination of digital devices. Although policies may be applied equally to all travellers, they may have differential GBA Plus considerations and impacts by gender/diversity.
• Intelligence Collection and Analysis: This program collects, interprets and analyzes information on people, goods and conveyances bound for or leaving Canada, enabling the CBSA and law enforcement partners to identify potential threats to national security. The program collects sufficient data to identify specific intelligence trends that guide targeting of high-risk entities.
• Recourse: This program provides CBSA clients with a mechanism to seek an impartial review of CBSA decisions and to voice any feedback or complaints in accordance with policies and legislation administered by the Agency. This fiscal year, the Agency will continue advancing efforts to assess whether data on intersecting identity factors can be collected when submissions are made to this program, in line with privacy obligations and in keeping with the Government of Canada’s Policy Direction to Modernize Sex and Gender Information Practices.
• Buildings and Equipment: This program serves to maintain the CBSA’s real property portfolio in a good state of repair that is capable of supporting a safe, functional working environment for employees and members of the travelling public. GBA Plus considerations are factored into numerous aspects of this program (e.g., environmental operations, health and safety, procurement, etc.) as detailed in the Agency’s Departmental Sustainable Development Strategy. This fiscal year, the Agency will conduct technical accessibility assessments on its nationwide Crown-owned portfolio in order to identify accessibility improvements and address new legislative requirements under the Accessible Canada Act. In addition, when ports of entry are redeveloped, non-gender-based signage as well as gender inclusive washrooms and change rooms will be included to better serve the needs of program recipients.

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 do 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: This program investigates and reports, and (where appropriate) arrests and detains, foreign nationals and permanent residents in Canada who are or may be inadmissible to Canada as per the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA). The ability to collect data under this program is limited by legislative authority and information technology (IT) system capabilities.
• Detentions: This program takes GBA Plus considerations into account when detaining individuals pursuant to the IRPA. To help address program impacts by gender/diversity, the CBSA maintains national detention standards (including provisions for the treatment of women, families, LGBTQ2 persons, and the best interests of the child) for placing individuals in Immigration Holding Centres or provincial correctional facilities, or releasing individuals into the community through alternatives to detention.
• Removals: This program applies GBA Plus 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/diversity. The program takes into account intersecting identity factors and engages individuals in accordance with domestic and international human rights protocols.
• Criminal Investigations: 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 the ability to collect and report on other diversity factors is currently limited by IT system capabilities.