Evidence of meeting #207 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was money.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Director, Employment Equity, Compliance, Operations and Program Development Branch, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
Yes.
Liberal
Director, Employment Equity, Compliance, Operations and Program Development Branch, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
Great. Thank you.
We're here today because we're seeking an adjustment to the reporting requirement outlined under the Employment Equity Act in order to implement pay transparency for the federally regulated private sector. It's a technical amendment to subsection 18(1) of the act to allow the collection of specific annual wage data from federally regulated private sector employers, which is currently authorized through the legislation. This amendment supports the introduction of pay transparency measures announced in budget 2018.
As amended, this provision will require employers to report salary information beyond salary ranges, as prescribed by regulations, to make wage gap information by occupational groups more evident.
Conservative
Director, Employment Equity, Compliance, Operations and Program Development Branch, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
Currently we collect annualized salary, so instead, now what we're doing is asking for components of the salary that allow us to calculate an hourly wage gap. In addition, we'll be collecting bonus information and overtime information.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Would that also include benefits for total compensation calculations?
Director, Employment Equity, Compliance, Operations and Program Development Branch, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
No, it doesn't include the benefits.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
There won't be benefits, say, the other half of the pension contribution. It won't include things like health and dental benefits.
Director, Employment Equity, Compliance, Operations and Program Development Branch, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
No.
Director, Employment Equity, Compliance, Operations and Program Development Branch, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
No, we won't be including any of that.
What we're looking at is trying to boil down to the hourly wage rate and then comparing those males against females as well as against the other three designated groups within the Employment Equity Act.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
But it says “any other information in relation”. Is there anything beyond this that you could ask an employer for?
Director, Employment Equity, Compliance, Operations and Program Development Branch, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
We could, but we would have to go back and change our regulations yet again—but, yes, potentially in the future. However, what we're doing is we're modelling on some work that's been done in the U.K. as well as what's happening in other parts of the world. We're starting with this first piece.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
When this salary information is collected, is it also adjusted for the salary ranges of employees? There's the basic and then additions. Do you collect information on the seniority of the person?
Director, Employment Equity, Compliance, Operations and Program Development Branch, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
The way that we collect the data under the Employment Equity Act is actually by collecting against what we call “employment equity occupational groups”. We've basically broken the workforce down into 14 strata, so you do know who are senior managers, clerical staff. Again, it's 14 different groups within that—so yes.
What we're envisioning is that we will be able to look at the highest and lowest within the four quartiles for each of those occupational groups.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Would federally regulated organizations like railways, airlines, banks, be required to comply with this?
Director, Employment Equity, Compliance, Operations and Program Development Branch, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
Correct.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Did you consult with anybody on adding these couple of lines here? Was anybody consulted?
Director, Employment Equity, Compliance, Operations and Program Development Branch, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
Absolutely. We've been out consulting throughout the process. We just completed seven in-person consultations. We invited 2,200 participants. We had approximately 260 who attended those. Then we went out with a further online consultation. Using the findings of our in-person, we made a few changes after what we heard and we sent those out. That just wrapped up at the end of March.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Okay, and that consultation included, I hope, the privacy and information commissioners.
Director, Employment Equity, Compliance, Operations and Program Development Branch, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
We work with the privacy group always throughout this process. However, what we're doing is changing the way we collect the information, but we already collect the salary information from these employers. It's really just changing it. We have worked with privacy in the past and we continue to do so.
Conservative
Director, Employment Equity, Compliance, Operations and Program Development Branch, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
Yes.
