Evidence of meeting #59 for Science and Research in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was universities.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:45 p.m.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Thank you for your answer.
I want to make sure I understand. Based on your involvement at your own university, what can the Government of Canada do to advance pay equity among faculty?
5:45 p.m.
Director, Academic Staff Relations, Dalhousie University
We've been chatting about this a lot at our institution. It's important to look at hiring practices for faculty but also at what we're doing earlier on in the pipeline for graduate students in general. I think scholarships and opportunities for graduate students, to make sure that we're graduating high volumes of scholars from equity-deserving groups, will be critical and important to filling those roles.
5:45 p.m.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Thank you.
My last question has a broader scope. What do you expect of the federal government?
5:45 p.m.
Director, Academic Staff Relations, Dalhousie University
I don't know that I have a lot of expectations of the federal government for that particular piece. I think the pay equity requirements relating to the federal contractors program and the CRCs make a lot of sense. I think dealing with targeted initiatives to bring students into universities makes more sense at the provincial level.
5:45 p.m.
Bloc
5:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Lloyd Longfield
Thank you.
Bring us home, Mr. Cannings. You have two and a half minutes.
5:45 p.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thank you.
I'll stay with you, Ms. Neals. In your remarks, you touched on pensions and how the adjustments might have helped there. Could you expand on that and explain how there might be some residual differences with pensions and how you could help deal with that?
5:45 p.m.
Director, Academic Staff Relations, Dalhousie University
Typically, with pension plans you'll encounter two types. There's the defined benefit, where the plan promises a set benefit, almost regardless of contribution. That is what we have at Dalhousie. Your pension payout is based on your best three years of earnings. The second type of pension plan is the defined contribution. Your pension payments are dictated by how much you've paid into the plan over the course of your career.
Because we have a defined benefit plan, which is based on your best three years of earnings, by adjusting female full professor salaries, if we caught them in the three years before retirement, their pension payout would be based on their higher salary. The impact of that pay equity gap over the course of their career, in terms of their pension payment, would be smaller. If we had the defined contribution plan, which is based on what they've been paying in over the course of their entire career, you can appreciate how the impact would be significant.
But I don't let us off the hook entirely, because of course someone's salary.... We have a pension plan, but folks are also investing in their own retirement savings. Their career earnings will impact how much they're able to put away for that.
So a defined benefit plan doesn't save the day, but it certainly helps.
5:45 p.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Perhaps I'll turn to Ms. Naidoo-Harris and ask her as well about how we can help women after their career ends and they're in that pension period.
5:45 p.m.
Associate Vice-President, Diversity & Human Rights, University of Guelph
I think the support that women need continues past the time of their work period. I think we need to continue that pay transparency and examine what is happening in terms of pensions and the equity involved in the system. We're doing reviews right now, as you know, just to make sure that with our faculty and salaries there is pay equity. We have a compensation department in place at the University of Guelph. We're doing a number of pieces in that way.
I think you are right to identify that perhaps more needs to be looked at when it comes to pensions. As I'm sure you know, more and more faculty are being hired these days as sessionals or contract workers. This really puts a great burden on these individuals. Many of those folks who aren't being hired as tenured individuals are women, so we need to examine that.
5:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Lloyd Longfield
Thank you very much. I wanted to get the completed thought, and I appreciate your getting it in to us.
Laura Neals and Indira Naidoo-Harris, thank you both for being with us, for your preparation for being here, and going through the stress of dialing in and all that stuff. It was a very good session for the committee. I'm sure I speak on everybody's behalf. If there is any additional information that will help our study, please send it to us.
Before we adjourn, I want to give you a heads-up that we'll be continuing our study on the use of federal government research and development grants, funds, and contributions relating to China. The first part of today we'll be repeating on Wednesday, and then we will look at the draft report on the study of the Government of Canada's graduate scholarship and post-doctoral fellowship programs, to consider committee business items. There'll be a bit more work on that, and more work ahead.
Thank you, everybody, for your great participation.
The meeting is adjourned.