Thank you for the question.
I assume you're referring to our report, “In the interest of safety and security”, which is our analysis of contracting out at DND. In that report, we did not look specifically at a gender difference in those contracts.
I can tell you that most of the contracts we looked at are contracts for cleaning services, facility maintenance services or kitchen services. In fact, those contracts pay workers significantly less, even though they cost the government, on average, 35% more. We know that the government, by contracting out, is incentivizing precarious work for workers who are already marginalized. Bringing that work in-house will ensure that those workers have the protections of things like the Employment Equity Act, which they don't always have when they're contracted out.
The federal contractors program under the Employment Equity Act only applies to those contracts over $1 million. We could have scores and scores of $500,000 contracts out there that don't apply to the Employment Equity Act.
We think it's imperative, in order to further gender equity issues, to bring that work back in-house, so that the federal government can provide a fair and decent workplace for all workers on its work sites.