Evidence of meeting #3 for Pay Equity in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was question.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Justine Akman  Director General, Policy and External Relations, Policy and External Relations Directorate, Status of Women Canada
Manon Brassard  Assistant Deputy Minister, Compensation and Labour Relations, Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat
Anthony Giles  Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy, Dispute Resolution and International Affairs, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development
Renée Caron  Senior Director, Equitable Compensation, Compensation and Labour Relations, Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat
Julie Mackenzie  Committee Researcher

6:30 p.m.

NDP

Sheri Benson NDP Saskatoon West, SK

I have a quick question. The Canada Labour Code applies to all federal employees, both public service and private, but the Canada Labour Code doesn't apply to the public service...?

6:30 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy, Dispute Resolution and International Affairs, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development

Anthony Giles

The Canada Labour Code has three parts. One of those parts only applies to the federal public service. That's the occupational health and safety part.

6:30 p.m.

NDP

Sheri Benson NDP Saskatoon West, SK

Right, so when I say that it's sort of comparable to pay equity, it's looking at it like occupational health and safety, which would have that part of the protocol apply to all federally—

6:30 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy, Dispute Resolution and International Affairs, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development

Anthony Giles

Or a free-standing piece of legislation, yes.

6:30 p.m.

NDP

Sheri Benson NDP Saskatoon West, SK

If it were free-standing legislation, would it fall under your department?

6:30 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy, Dispute Resolution and International Affairs, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development

Anthony Giles

I think it would be a shared responsibility much like the Employment Equity Act, for example, which gives various ministers various responsibilities to implement and report on employment equity. It gives the Human Rights Commission a role as well. It would be a shared piece, I think.

6:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anita Vandenbeld

Do the other departments have a comment?

6:30 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Compensation and Labour Relations, Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat

Manon Brassard

I'll echo what my colleague said. Certainly, the Bilson report would be a good starting point.

Twelve years later, we know that some provincial jurisdictions have taken parts of that work in looking to establish their own legislation. It would probably be something to go and consult with in order to see how their legislation was built—what was their experience, what are their lessons learned, what they would do again, and what they would not do—to see how much of that is transferable to our experience and then maybe come up with something a bit new and different.

As far as the Treasury Board role goes, Treasury Board is the biggest employer and therefore has a shared policy role vis-à-vis pay equity and is of course the employer of the public service and therefore has a responsibility in that way as well.

6:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anita Vandenbeld

From Status of Women, did you wish to answer? You have 20 seconds.

6:30 p.m.

Director General, Policy and External Relations, Policy and External Relations Directorate, Status of Women Canada

Justine Akman

Our role is more of a challenge function, as I say in the last slide, so we wouldn't actually have a concrete role in developing or implementing any apparent legislation.

6:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anita Vandenbeld

Thank you very much.

We'll go to question number four with Ms. Dzerowicz.

6:30 p.m.

Liberal

Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I unfortunately missed the first presentation, but I want to thank everyone for the excellent presentations. Thank you so much.

I have two questions. The first is for Mr. Giles. On slide 7, you took us through the medium- and large-sized firms and the low unionization in small firms. You made reference that there may be a need for flexibility and mentioned the kind of flexibility you're looking at. Could you elaborate a little bit on that?

My second question is for Ms. Brassard. You did a wonderful job of taking us through the different wage comparison methodologies. I wonder if there is an international example you might want to refer us to. It's hard to decide between methodologies. I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I figure there might be an international country that we can compare ourselves with in terms of unionization or business structure.

I wonder if you might be able to share some international lessons, in terms of methodologies and which ones have worked better in pay equity legislation.

That's it. Thank you.

6:30 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy, Dispute Resolution and International Affairs, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development

Anthony Giles

In terms of the sorts of flexibilities that might be considered, one has to do with how employees are engaged in the process of pay equity. Obviously, in unionized firms you have bargaining agents who already represent certain groups of employees, but even highly unionized firms have non-unionized groups as well. In the non-unionized sector, you're facing quite a challenge for how to engage employees in the absence of some sort of representational structure. What I would say is that the legislation cannot presume one situation or the other, but has to be sensitive to the fact that particular types of organizations, whether they are coast to coast or small or split into complex structures with different divisions or whether they're more simple.... The legislation has to be flexible enough to allow tailor-made solutions to that problem.

The other thing about the size of firms that needs to be taken into account, and I think different provinces have handled this in different ways, is what sorts of obligations you put on employers in small firms and how you define “small” firms. Most pay equity legislation and similarly the Employment Equity Act makes employers generally obliged to respect fundamental principles, but then it alters the reporting requirements, for example, to take into account the difference between the big firms and the small firms. That's another example of a potential flexibility to be considered.

6:35 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Compensation and Labour Relations, Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat

Manon Brassard

We don't have an international comparator at the moment, and it's probably something that would be good to consider as the committee looks at this question in the next few weeks and months.

6:35 p.m.

Liberal

Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON

Is there more time?

6:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anita Vandenbeld

Yes, you have three minutes still.

6:35 p.m.

Liberal

Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON

Oh my goodness. That is so much time. I could give a speech in that.

One of the things I thought about as I was hearing the presentations was something I learned coming out of MBA school. My female professor said to me “Julie, negotiate as high an income as possible when you are negotiating your first job out of MBA school”, because that is where—this is what I've been told—women fail to negotiate, coming out of school. I don't know if I did that very well, but I did try to do it.

I wonder, in the case of the federal sector when you look at people coming out of professional programs, whether that's where we're failing or where the gap starts, and whether there's been any research or a look at that.

I wonder whether anyone can address that.

6:35 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Compensation and Labour Relations, Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat

Manon Brassard

If I take it from a public service employee perspective, what we have is.... We negotiate with the lawyers. Any groups we have are represented, and we collectively bargain for pay ranges. When I was a lawyer in the government, there used to be LAs: LA-1, LA-2, LA-3, and LA-4. They are now called LPs: LP-1, LP-2, LP-3, and LP-4. Within this, you have set increments as you move from year to year to year.

There isn't a whole lot of arbitrariness, and the negotiation happens at the collective bargaining table with the bargaining agent on those items. Then, when you arrive, it's a matter of your experience in terms of where you fit at the beginning. The rule is pretty much the same for everybody. As you get one more year of experience and have a good evaluation, you move up. After a few years, you hit the ceiling and unless you are promoted, you stay there.

In terms of individual negotiation in a universe such as this one, there isn't a whole lot, if any, negotiation on that. It eliminates that part. The negotiation is done elsewhere for the entire group, and it's pretty set.

6:35 p.m.

Liberal

Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON

Is there anyone else?

6:35 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy, Dispute Resolution and International Affairs, Labour Program, Department of Employment and Social Development

Anthony Giles

It's a little different in the private sector, in the sense that most professions are excluded from that sort of regimented approach, so I imagine there would be more scope for that kind of negotiation on an individual level. In most jobs it probably doesn't happen very much, but in those professional categories you are talking about, it probably does.

I am not familiar with any research that proves that, though.

6:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anita Vandenbeld

Thank you. I'm sorry, the time is up.

We will now start with the second round of questions. The first questioner is Mr. Albas, for five minutes.

6:40 p.m.

Conservative

Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate the witnesses' testimony. Going back to what we were discussing earlier, I wanted to go back to the assessments that are done. I believe the formal name of it is....

6:40 p.m.

A voice

SERWC?

6:40 p.m.

Conservative

Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC

No, no. It's basically the assessments that are done as part of the Public Service Equitable Compensation Act. Could you explain the rationale for doing those, and maybe some of the background as to what goes into them?

6:40 p.m.

Senior Director, Equitable Compensation, Compensation and Labour Relations, Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat

Renée Caron

An assessment of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions is the typical way of doing a job evaluation, whether you are doing that for classification purposes inside an employer's organization or for pay equity purposes. The idea behind using skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions is to establish the internal value of the work.