It's not the same, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to this issue.
I'm concerned about potentially overdramatizing this clause and making some strong assumptions that this clause will automatically end up at the Supreme Court of Canada.
I think what the government is trying to accomplish in this clause is not to prohibit females from being paid equitably. I think what this clause recognizes is that there is a diversity in the employer community. What we're striving for in the presentations we put forward is flexibility in the way that this is delivered. That's not on the outcome, but in the mechanisms and the mechanics of actually doing this within organizations that are large and complex and are not all the same.
When we think about things like defining what constitutes the establishment, things like access to short-term, highly skilled and what is largely very expensive labour, the use of comparators—internal versus external—the point we've been making all along around this desire for some flexibility is an allowance that would give employers, within the construct of the act, a way of achieving the same outcome but maybe not using the exact same mechanics to get there.
I don't think this clause necessarily dilutes the entire act. I don't think this necessarily takes us directly to the Supreme Court. I challenge those assumptions.