Evidence of meeting #56 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was employees.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Ann Therese MacEachern  Vice-President, Human Resources, Canada Post
Amanda Maltby  General Manager, Compliance, Canada Post

11:55 a.m.

General Manager, Compliance, Canada Post

Amanda Maltby

Maybe I'll take a first crack at that.

We most recently tried to address it through the development of the workplace violence prevention and protection initiatives. We specifically looked at remote and rural communities in the risk assessment and identified, to answer your point, that these employees are potentially going to face particular risks associated with dealing with the public. There are also just the potential stresses of that work environment.

In the training we've put together, we do address situations in which people are working alone and they don't have the same support network that you would have in an urban setting.

I'll say that I don't know if we have completely cracked the nut. I think one of the issues we have is reaching those individuals sufficiently with the prevention or protection materials they need to have. We've moved to workbooks and some self-study guides for them to use. It's difficult for us to have the same type of training environment in those northern and remote communities as there would be in a large urban centre. We are still working that through. It's something particularly for employees in our retail network and in those communities that we have to solve.

I know that in Quebec in particular our human rights representative has spent time going to some of those northern communities with her team to try to address some of the unique situations that have come up. It's something we're still working on and seeking solutions to.

Noon

NDP

Niki Ashton NDP Churchill, MB

Perhaps that could be an approach taken across the country as well given that I believe the challenges faced by workers will only get more serious if the supports aren't there.

Obviously we are dealing here with gender and often with women facing inequality. Of course the pay equity lawsuit has meant that Canada Post needs to pay many women who weren't paid equitably for the work they were doing. I'm wondering where Canada Post is in terms of dealing with that.

Noon

Vice-President, Human Resources, Canada Post

Ann Therese MacEachern

We are obviously very committed to applying the pay equity ruling as efficiently as possible. It's a complex issue and it is taking time. We have about 30,000 employee files that have to be reviewed. The records go back 30 years. Many of them are paper-based and on microfiche so it's quite a daunting task. I want to assure you that we remain absolutely committed to respecting that ruling.

Noon

NDP

The Chair NDP Marie-Claude Morin

Thank you.

That concludes today's meeting. Thank you very much for taking the time to meet with us. It was very interesting. I wish you all a good day.

However, I invite the committee members to stay, if they wish, since we do have a short informal meeting.

The meeting is adjourned.