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(N) The Government of Canada’s eighth annual Gender-based Analysis Plus – or GBA+ – Awareness Week takes place this week to coincide with Gender Equality Week.

(J) GBA+ is a process used to assess how diverse groups of women, men, and non-binary people may experience policies, programs, and help ensure that everyone can equally benefit from government initiatives.

(N) The Defence Team is integrating GBA+ in all Defence activities across the organization, from the design and implementation of programs and services that support our personnel, to equipment procurement and operational planning.

(J) Additional information, training resources, and examples of how GBA+ is being applied can be found on the GBA+ intranet page.

(N) Hack the North 2019, Canada’s biggest hackathon, recently took place at the University of Waterloo.

(J) This is the third year that the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, or CANSOFCOM, took part and mentored students as they developed creative and innovative solutions to various challenges.

(N) Students were accepted from a pool of thousands of applicants from all over the world. Participants had less than 36 hours to work together in teams to build mobile applications, virtual reality hacks, robots and more with mentorship from some of the largest tech companies and organizations in the world.

(J) CANSOFCOM’s participation highlighted their role as an innovation leader and supported Virtual Force recruitment efforts through the Federal Student Work Experience Program. Virtual Force Analysts will have the opportunity to assist in a variety of operationally relevant, challenging, and essential defence projects that contribute to the security of Canada.